What is brand salience and how can it help you thrive?

The pan­dem­ic has seen the glob­al econ­o­my in freefall. Ad spend is at its low­est lev­els since records began. Mar­ket­ing is feel­ing the heat.

Speak­ing to 600 senior busi­ness-to-busi­ness (B2B) mar­ket­ing lead­ers in Sep­tem­ber, the team at alan. and I dis­cov­ered more than half (53 per cent) have suf­fered bud­get cuts and 43 per cent expe­ri­enced head­count reduc­tions. In par­al­lel, the major­i­ty of mar­keters are now being forced to prove return on invest­ment, with one in four see­ing it as crit­i­cal to the exis­tence of the mar­ket­ing depart­ment. The pres­sure is on.

In such adverse con­di­tions, nat­ur­al instinct is for self-preser­va­tion. In mar­ket­ing terms, this often means a focus on short-term tac­ti­cal activ­i­ty that can be mea­sured in sales per­for­mance. Such an approach is short sight­ed.

In an envi­ron­ment where demand is sup­pressed, invest­ment in acti­va­tion offers dimin­ish­ing returns. Instead, mar­keters need to learn the lessons of the pre­vi­ous reces­sion and invest in brand build­ing. At the point the econ­o­my bounces back, it will be those brands which have deployed a long-term strat­e­gy and remained front of mind that will win.

It’s not all about brand awareness

Indeed, accord­ing to the Insti­tute of Prac­ti­tion­ers in Adver­tis­ing, brands that invest­ed in grow­ing excess share of voice, or ESOV, by 8 per cent dur­ing the 2008–9 down­turn, grew their mar­ket share by an aver­age of over four times more dur­ing the recov­ery phase. 

As a rule of thumb, brands should seek to main­tain share of voice equiv­a­lent to mar­ket share. How­ev­er, the real­i­ty is if com­peti­tors are cut­ting their activ­i­ty, brands can get away with reduc­ing their bud­get accord­ing­ly. As cal­lous as it may sound, reces­sion offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty for dis­count­ed share of voice.

Encour­ag­ing­ly, this brand-build­ing school of thought is gain­ing trac­tion. Some 43 per cent of the B2B mar­keters we spoke to are pri­ori­tis­ing invest­ment in brand aware­ness and increas­ing share of voice. How­ev­er, doing more of the same is not going to cut it. 

Sim­ply focus­ing on brand aware­ness is a fal­la­cy. Aware­ness is, of course, fun­da­men­tal, but alone it is not what wins a cus­tomer or client. Instead, I would argue it is brand salience or fame that should be strived for.

The importance of “brand salience”

Salience is ulti­mate­ly how quick­ly a brand comes to mind in a spe­cif­ic pur­chase envi­ron­ment. Those brands that “appear” first are those a buy­er will instinc­tive­ly feel more con­nect­ed to and con­sid­er to be more rel­e­vant to the deci­sion. Intu­itive­ly, this makes sense in a busi­ness-to-con­sumer con­text, but a 2019 study by LinkedIn shows it is equal­ly true in B2B. The study goes on to demon­strate strate­gies tar­get­ing salience out­per­formed those based on ratio­nal mes­sag­ing twelve­fold.

Salience requires brands to become embed­ded in wider cul­ture. An implic­it under­stand­ing of the brand’s advan­tages has to devel­op. Nei­ther are easy tasks.

To achieve this, brands have to engage their audi­ence on an emo­tion­al lev­el at scale. This may seem daunt­ing, but is some­thing all brands are capa­ble of. In my expe­ri­ence, it comes down to two key things: a reimag­i­na­tion of audi­ence and mar­ket­ing brav­ery. 

B2B brands need to see their audi­ence in a wider con­text, beyond the job role, to under­stand what ener­gis­es, delights and fas­ci­nates them. This appre­ci­a­tion of them as humans pro­vides a crit­i­cal cen­tre of grav­i­ty to the cre­ative process, enabling exper­i­men­tal and orig­i­nal think­ing with­out los­ing focus. Armed with a com­pelling, dis­tinc­tive, remark­able piece of cre­ative, it is then down to the mar­keter to have the courage of their con­vic­tions.

Tak­ing such a bold approach may seem anath­e­ma to an indus­try increas­ing­ly con­strained by the need to deliv­er imme­di­ate, quan­tifi­able results. How­ev­er, with one in three mar­keters we spoke to see­ing the pan­dem­ic as a cat­a­lyst for tak­ing risks and being more dar­ing with cre­ative and cam­paigns, the tide could be turn­ing.