Fighting fragmentation

We live in a time of ‘global warming’ in the field of communication and branding. It has been said that people living in developed countries see at average 550.000 brands each year. And a far larger amount of other commercial messages. It is a challenge for companies to survive and be successful in this fierce and constant battle of brands for the hearts and minds of consumers. We live in a thoroughly ‘fragmented’ world. Our society consists of images, the number one international language is a visual one. Consumers are thoroughly trained to read, understand and reject advertising messages. This ‘catch me if you can’ game has become increasingly complex and difficult to tackle.

This means that brands have to fight in order to be noticed. But how do you make efficient use of the budget and ensure return on investment? It starts by defining fragmentation as the process in which a brand looses its focus and consistency; the brand expression (the physical product or message) shows unwanted variation over different timeframes, different places, different media and different occasions.

The basic cause of fragmentation is that the level of complexity in marketing a brand exceeds the span-of-control in a company.

The degree to which the complexity exceeds the span-of-control equals the degree of fragmentation. This leads to a loss of power, results, return-on-investment of marketing investments.

Fragmentation is difficult to fight. It is not something you can pin point, isolate and solve. It is part of a gradual process that can come from any corner of the organization. No one is to blame, but still the brand is undermined, bit by bit on a daily bases. It can be the product manager who starts a direct mail campaign that is not in harmony with the overall brand, or a communication label that doesn’t comply with the brand portfolio strategy, or in store material that is based on a different positioning.

The threat of fragmentation can hardly come as a surprise. For years professionals have been trying to fight it. More then twenty years ago the phrase ‘integrated communication’ was en vogue in an effort to achieve better co-ordination between communication disciplines like public relations, direct marketing and advertising. It put the subject on the agenda, brought improvement, but did not lead to a solution. Fragmentation still exists. Nowadays professionals care to coin phrases like ‘multi-channel’, ‘through the line’ or ‘media independent’ to ward off fragmentation. The need to offer the market and consumers a more integrated, holistic brand expression and experience is evident.

I have analyzed and weighed a few factors that create this unattended complexity. Important criteria are the number of people, departments within companies and agencies involved in building and promoting the brand.

Companies need increasing budgets for a decreasing effectiveness of reaching consumers and selling their brands. This is downward spiral. Can you recall the days when a relatively simple media plan of television commercials and print ads could reach a national target audience. Today, the road from A to B (the consumer) has to be planned through a refined and elaborate media-landscape. And looking at the ‘all IP’ era that we are entering; the complexity will grow.

Traditionally, mass media communication meant that a specific selection of media could reach a mass audience. Right now it means that you have a massive amount of media that can only reach a specific selection of people.

The combination of these internal and external developments does indicate why fragmentation is such a difficult and important issue to tackle. It can put strong pressure on communicating effectively. The brand, acting as a bridge between the company and the consumer, is under great ‘stretch’ pressure to create a good balance in being consistent and flexible over time (regular updates) and in submarkets and target groups (differentiation). This uncertainty puts fear in professionals who have to account for their actions and investments.

In this respect, Visual Branding is important. I explained in the first two outlines that the visual element in branding is crucial. In the current situation, brand DMU’s (decision making units), review boards, brand tracking research, and other brand management instruments are basically focused on advertising or marketing communication. By acquiring control over all the visual manifestations you can seriously start to fight fragmentation. It helps to create a brand expression that is both dynamic and consistent – any where, any time, any place. In other words; consistency is not equal to uniformity and rules, it has everything to do with bringing the brand personality to life through it’s visual manifestations, from advertising, to product design, retail, internet, packaging, folders, interiour design etc. etc..

The parent brand will become more important as the hallmark, the basis of strength and trust; sub brands and endorsed brands become more and more important in their role as the targeted answer to the dynamics of the market and the specific nature of certain target audiences. This means that the brand architecture will have to stretch (from parent brand to sub brand to endorsed brand) without losing its soul, its core. This increased brand stretch in the whole brand portfolio can be facilitated by the visual presentation of all brand appearances (Visual Branding).

The wording ‘Visual Branding’ as such is important for this purpose. It will help business & marketing professionals to see that design is not a purely aesthetic profession but an essential part of branding and marketing. When a company is in control of all visual expressions in its branding and marketing efforts, it will be able to fight fragmentation effectively – and outperform competitors in the battle for the hearts and minds of the consumers.