Brand is the Medium

Marshal McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message”. I guess, in today’s time & age, extending that analogy, one could say that brands are the medium & hence also the message.

Why? How?

With the plethora of segments (their sub-segments), brands (& yes, their sub-brands) in each category, and also the tonnes of advertising in dozens of mediums happening across the globe (thanks to cable & DTH, we get to see it all in our own little home theatre) through hundreds of channels in scores of languages & genres, the poor little consumer has without doubt an information load which is unprecedented in human history.

In such a scenario, a sarcastic but honest comment by one of the senior advertising professionals in the industry makes perfect sense, “You know, some brand managers actually think that advertising will increase their sales!!”

Well obviously, the comment might be a little overstretched by the advertising professional’s personal/emotional frustrations (the kind one faces in advertising industry ;-), but on the whole it does sum up the state of the industry, for it is perhaps next to impossible to get a direct correlation between advertising spends (or GRPs for that matter) and sales. In fact even a very weak correlation with awareness scores often leads to unprecedented elation in the advertising industry which starves desperately for adulation.

Anyways, coming back to ‘Brand is the Medium’, one can see that in many cases it is perhaps the message (tag line, positioning, theme, story) which benefits more through advertising rather than the brand. In technical language, one could say that the thematic/creative recall is higher than the brand recall.

So, a ‘Journeyman’ from Apollo Hawkz might get more leverage than Hawkz it self, thereby reducing the poor brand to just the medium, although it is also the message. (Again, ‘medium’ is the message). Thus, the advertising professional’s job becomes all the more tough to get a connect as strong as say NIKE and “Just Do It!” or perhaps PEPSI and “Ye Dil Maange More!”. Even the Army Major who died fighting in Kargil, conquering one peak after another (and thus also winning the Param Vir Chakra) is said to have famously said during his last conversation with his senior officers, “Ye Dil Maange More!”. I am sure that the audience which heard that news report on TV recalled PEPSI right away.

So, the challenge is, HOW DO YOU GET THERE?

However, before we move there, let us, for a moment, place a hand on our hearts and honestly think whether at times the satisfaction of having the message dominating the medium (brand) is not truly exhilarating.

More often than not, the brand manager/ account planner/ creative/ servicing guy’s personality does leave an impression on whatever brands/campaign they handle/create.

An adventure enthusiast has a high chance of leaving that impression on his brand. A philanthropist is bound to raise his brands to CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) planks naturally. So on and so forth.

Thus, it becomes extremely important to detach & rise above one’s ego & do justice to the brand without bringing one’s personal biases/inclinations to the picture for it is very tempting to use the brand as a medium for our own little agendas in life, because the high of doing so might rival that of a hefty raise in your remuneration or even being given an elevated designation/a stake in your firm ;-)

Now, getting over this slight detour & focusing back on, HOW TO DO THAT is not as easy as one might suspect. As mentioned above, the media & advertising clutter makes it extremely tough to truly benefit brands unless you go niche (focused on select mediums for your TG) or go extremely big, say using IPL for bombarding the audience with a budget which would rival that of a telecom player.

Surely, there are other ‘scientific’ & ‘well researched’ ways of getting across messages cognitively, affectively, thematically ……& every other ‘…..lly’ that we know of in the world. But the dilemma remains tough unless a Bruce Lee ;) technique is used to fight out the dozens of rivals & one’s own segments, sub-segments, brands & sub-brands.

So do we have a catch-22 on our hands with ‘Brand is the Medium’ being the future of communication through advertising?

Long live advertising!