Brand Reinforcement in the Digital Age

From Todd LaRoche, EVP, Managing Director of Creative, Palio

With the advent of digital communications, consumers are now finding themselves engaged with brands in ways they never have before. It’s not simply a matter of being exposed to more “push” advertising, in the form of Web banners and pop-ups, for example, but it’s about actually being engaged with a brand – even “pulling” its presence into one’s personal digital space – while engaging in the various contexts that digital communication technology has spawned.

What are digital contexts? They are ways of behaving within, and with, the digital environment. In other words, look at digital not as a medium but as a mode of interacting.  For example, when you’re ‘googling’ a word or a phrase, you’re searching for information about that term; when you’re tweeting, you’re conversing with others. In each case, you’re performing an activity that involves a particular desired end result. When you look at digital communications this way, the following contexts, as I’ve heard them defined by Barry Wacksman at R/GA, can be identified: information, participation, conversation, application, transaction, location, diversion, aggregation/distribution, visualization and, finally, interruption; the last one being the traditional role of marketing – that of interventionist, a message that literally interrupts or cuts into content… “and now, a message from our sponsor.” Not necessarily the best way to promote a brand, if you don’t want to be regarded as a potentially bothersome presence.

We’ll be talking more about each of these digital contexts in greater detail over posts to come on this blog, but the point to take away from this post is that digital contexts are now opening up ways for marketers to engage consumers with their brands at a deeper, more active level… in a way that can reinforce a brand’s value like never before. So, yes, the interruptive conveyance of a creative campaign advertisement is still a fundamental way to reinforce a brand’s value to the consumer, but more and more, the type of experience a consumer has while in the various digital contexts can reinforce a brand’s value to the consumer in a more powerful way.

Think about it. Maybe the most effective way for brands to promote themselves isn’t to talk about themselves at all, but to be facilitators to their consumers, helping them achieve something while in the digital contexts, without a hitch.