Don't burn long term for short term

We met Jenni Romaniuk, International Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science at the Festival of Marketing.

You have a message from Jenni Romaniuk, International Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, which we met at the Festival of Marketing: “Yes, you can only plan for the next quarter, but remember that what you do will have an impact beyond the next quarter.”

Your new book Building Distinctive Brand Assets has been released. Can you tell us about the book?

The book briefly describes how to use, measure and apply your brand identity. One of our problems with brand identities was to determine how to understand that you have a good brand identity. How will you know that you have a strong brand identity? What will you be able to change, how will you know if what you are doing is working? I've gathered all this in one place so you can understand how distinctive values ​​work.

How can marketers identify brand identity elements that can translate into distinctive values?

First of all, most brands have a history. So, you should go back and look at your history. What have you consistently applied? For example, you may have been using the same packaging for a very long time, or you may have used the same person for a long time in your ads. You may have used the same color, the same image, or the same style of ads in the background. When you look back at your history, you will realize that there are things that you repeat, both intentionally and unintentionally. These are your starting points. See how strong these are. Then look at what your competitors are doing; because you are fighting against your opponents in people's memory. Once you have gathered all this information and looked at your competitors, you can see how you can combine them and develop a distinctive value.

When it comes to a prominent brand such as Oatly, what is your view of the “brand aim” discussion? Is there any data from the institute on the idea that brand-oriented marketing affects business results?

No not. I mean, there was always the idea that companies should do good in the world. Companies should avoid packaging that harms the environment, reduce their carbon footprints, and contribute to the communities in which they use their resources. But it's because it's the right thing to do. The real danger is that marketers think that this is something the consumer drives and that they do it because they think the consumer will reward them. There is no data to support this. It hasn't happened in a long time. So there are two purposes here. The first is the ability of the company to maintain its continuity as a profitable mechanism. For this, the company must be able to receive money from its customers. The second is the brand; sustainable use of resources, labor, raw materials and the environment. I think every company should respect them, but this is not a goal of marketing. The marketing objective of each company is to ensure economic sustainability. To do this, people need to produce products that they might want to buy. The purpose of each brand is to make sales.

Read the full interview on MediaCat.