07 Jun CREATING A SUSTAINABLE BRAND STRATEGY IN A FRAGMENTED MARKETPLACE.

Ongoing fragmentation of the marketplace is certainly asking much of our industry, and it might be fair to say the brute force of the problem is falling to our Marketing Managers and Marketing Decision Makers.

Knowing where to spend the elusive marketing dollar is getting harder, especially when advice can be conflicting and it falls to the Marketing Manager to decide, test, drive the strategy and keep multiple suppliers honest.

This coupled with a soft market and more channels, delivery has become harder than ever for Managers to navigate this space.

Breadbox Marketing and PR Director Emma Potter, has seen firsthand how this fragmentation leaves businesses at risk – this risk being that creative strategy isn’t executed consistently and therefore leads to the erosion of the brand meaning over time.

With more responsibility for making these decisions and less time to know and understand these channels, more and more business are losing their strategic direction

For Potter a consolidated approach could be the answer to keeping brands strong for the long term.

“We have tried to embrace these challenges, and have created a model which is designed around a more cohesive delivery of the strategy right down to the last Instagram post,” says Potter.

“It works well, because sometimes a creative idea doesn’t rely just on advertising, it shares the space and marketing dollar with PR, experiential, social or digital – rather than these being an afterthought.”

Breadbox believes this reduces dilution when there is a multi-pronged approach, and new channels are tested.  From an efficiency point of view, it also seems counter-intuitive to have all these elements working separately potentially losing control of the output.

Potter also recognises that some fragmentation may be necessary, including a sometimes separate traditional and digital agency, as long as there is a commitment to the bigger brand strategy.

“Our goal as an consultancy is to create brands that are sustainable and support long-term as well as short-term goals.  A good brand strategy should form the foundation of many campaigns, not just one, and is an investment in the future to support a business through good times and bad and,” concludes Potter.

Breadbox has worked alongside some of WA’s household names, including,  Fleetspec Hire, WA Potatoes, Golden Eggs, Surf Life Saving WA, Thomas Meihofer, Smart Homes for Living, Variety WA and Sweetlips.