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American Express, Procter & Gamble and Sports Authority are
among a growing number of companies engaging in "asset activation" to
achieve a greater return on their marketing and media investments.
"Asset activation"
is a relatively new term. Essentially, it means leveraging brand assets -- both
internal and external -- to achieve brand objectives. Internal assets may include
employees, databases and even billing statements. External assets, meanwhile,
typically center on sports or entertainment sponsorships, as well as retailer
and media sponsorships.
The goal of "asset
activation," in most cases, is simply to improve the accountability of
the brand's marketing plan by making better use of these assets. Interestingly,
as documented in a recent Reveries survey of 274 marketing executives, 93 percent
say most brands come up short when it comes to "asset activation. "
Respondents also
identified a broad array of reasons for this shortfall. The reasons ranged from
a "gap between sales and marketing organizations" to "insufficient
commitment or follow-through" to a "dearth of creative thinking."
The number-one
reason given, however, was that certain "assets simply are not evaluated
for their marketing potential." That leads directly to one of the central
challenges of "asset activation" -- that there's often a tendency
among brands to pursue the acquisition of new assets (e.g., sponsorships) before
fully exploring the potential of the assets they already have.
The trap is, brands
tend to evaluate an asset in terms of what it is currently returning, instead
of what additional return it might be able to generate. For example:
- Events.
Sports and entertainment sponsorships were widely cited as under-activated
assets among survey respondents. In part this is because such sponsorships
sometimes are acquired for non-strategic reasons (i.e., the CEO likes bowling,
or is a Beyonce fan).
This belief
is that a sponsorship asset is not sufficiently aligned with the brand strategy
sometimes causes it to be ignored, or even totally abandoned. However, there
may be ways, for example, to connect that bowling sponsorship to certain
consumer segments, or in certain markets.
- Media.
Much
of the interest in "asset activation" is in direct response to a
sentiment that traditional media -- television, especially -- may not be getting
the job done for brands as well as it once did. Indeed, as John Hayes, CMO
of American Express recently told The Wall Street Journal: "We just don't
feel we are going to get the impact and sustainability by just doing a TV
ad."
However, it's
important to remember that media partnerships are themselves assets that
can be activated to stunning effect. For example, Cingular Wireless recently
activated a media partnership with CBS, in which fans of Survivor: All Stars
could vote via text message to award a million dollars to their favorite
Survivor contestant.
Not only did
the novelty of this promotion generate incredible incremental publicity
both for the show and Cingular, but it also extended the partnership in
new ways by allowing fans to purchase Survivor logos, graphics, photos and
ring-tones by downloading them directly to their wireless handsets.
- Retailers.
Working in partnership with retailers was identified as the top "external"
asset that remains under-activated by most marketers. Perhaps that is not
surprising, given the long history of uneasy relations and conflicting agendas
between brands and retailers. Without question, it is not always easy for
the two parties to find common ground. As a result, too many marketers don't
even try.
However, as
leading brands such as Procter & Gamble and Kraft have demonstrated
via their co-marketing initiatives with retailers, it is worth the effort
-- for the simple reason that retail is where the cash register rings. If
accountability is the endgame, it is hard to think of an asset that is more
worthy of activating than retail stores.
- Employees.
When you consider that a brand's employees are its "handshake"
at so many consumer touch-points, any effort to marshal their power to project
an image or seal a deal is bound to reap dividends.
For example,
have you been to a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream store? Whenever a customer
puts a little something in the tip jar, the staff erupts into a rap-style
cheer. What could more directly demonstrate the link between employee asset
activation and building sales and profits?
- Databases.
Some would contend that many marketers are far better at collecting
data on their customers than they are at using it. However, at least one company
-- Sports Authority -- used an analysis of customer credit card purchases,
in combination with other data, to completely re-make its marketing strategy.
Although the potential
of "asset activation" to build brands and improve the accountability
of marketing expenditures is significant, it is not necessarily an easy path
to take. Indeed, when Reveries survey respondents were asked to pick the key
obstacles to "asset activation," they pretty much picked all ten of
the listed choices in roughly equal numbers. In other words, the obstacles are
many.
To be sure, it
is not easy to develop retailer or media sponsorships, to invest in employees
to the point where they function as brand advocates or to decipher databases
to reveal the kind of insight that can drive brand strategies to new stratospheres.
Nor is it necessarily
the easiest thing in the world to take a fresh look at an existing sponsorship
and try to make it align with brand strategy when ostensibly it just doesn't.
But that is what
"asset activation" is all about. Those who take the time and expend
the effort to get more mileage out of the many assets that may be hard to find
and difficult to activate will reap the rewards of improved return on marketing
investment and, with it, competitive advantage.
Stephen O'Shea
is Chief Executive Officer of The Concept Studio, a Westport, Connecticut-based
promotional marketing agency that activates assets for clients including Cingular
Wireless, ABC TV, Disney Kids and ABC TV’s Enhanced TV.
“The
most powerful thing in the world is an idea whose time has come.”
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