Crossing the Line, Part 2
Building brand equity through Direct Mail (Part 1 here)
I have always been envious of mass advertising and its hold on brand! Mass is a sexy means to promote anything, and in the words of my favourite Absolutely Fabulous heroine, Edina Monsoon, it ‘turns even the dull into delicious…’
But as our media world becomes more and more fragmented, enhancing brand equity is no longer a single domain’s claim. Direct mail is proving instrumental in enhancing the associations a brand creates in the mind of the consumer – in other words, building brand equity.
Why would direct mail enhance brand equity? I believe when direct mail is timely, relevant and compelling, it acts as a ‘peak-positive’ (if untimely, irrelevant and lacking a call-to-action, as a ‘peak-negative’) experience for the consumer.
Nobel prize-winning psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, points out that people only remember two things during an experience – how they feel at the peak (no matter how good or how bad) and how they feel at the end. These peak-end feelings summarize the whole experience process and are stored in our brains at a subconscious level. These feelings eventually direct our next buying decisions; while the proportion and duration of pleasure or pain throughout the whole experience barely registers in our memory – we only remember the peak-end. (Quote from: Branded Customer Experience Ikea vs. Staples – by www.gccrm.com)
Case in Point
To demonstrate how brand perception is enhanced with direct mail in the mix, consider how brand attributes vary in the mind of the consumer when the latter is exposed to mass media only versus mass media plus dm. In a follow-up survey to Telus’ Addressed Admail recipients and to a control group exposed to mass media only, the addressed admail group:
-Perceived TELUS as a company that delivers great customer service at a significantly higher rate than control
-Recalled TELUS advertisements in other media by at least 6% over control
-Expressed less positive opinions about the quality and reliability of high-speed service provided by TELUS’s largest competitor; specifically, the competitor’s brand attributes were scrutinized or put into question based on exposure to Telus’ detailed offering in the direct mail piece (Full Case Study here.)
In addition to the qualitative results, the quantitative results from the campaign also align with the peak-end theory; namely, the feeling generated during the mail moment (the peak) directed the next buying decision. How? Recipients of the direct mail piece signed up for Telus high-speed internet at twice the rate of the control group.
We all agree that managing the brand is a complex marketing activity with increasingly more viral influence. Still, we should disengage from the limiting view that mass media is the only viable brand-enhancing medium and to keep in mind that direct mail, when done properly, is a critical component for building and increasing brand equity.
