SHANGHAI — Tom Doctoroff’s new book, “Twitter Is Not a Strategy: Rediscovering the Art of Brand Marketing,” is not so much an attack on one social-media platform as it is a rallying cry for the advertising industry to refocus on actual brands.
Despite the title, Twitter isn’t a major subject of the book, due for release on Tuesday. Rather, it’s used as an example of the current compulsion of today’s advertising industry to embrace technological advancements and “big data” to the detriment of traditional brand-building principles.
“The reason I wrote this book is that, ultimately, there is a big dilemma in our industry right now between traditional brand-building and mass media — what I call top-down marketing — and bottom-up marketing, which is fueled by consumer empowerment and technology. These things need to be brought into alignment; they need to work holistically together,” the author and chief executive of JWT Asia Pacific explained.
Related Articles
For Doctoroff, the brand idea is sacred — whether it be Nike’s “Just Do It” or Kellogg’s “Breakfasts for Better Days” — but the idea itself is being drowned out by the clamor of newer-better-best engagement platforms.
You May Also Like
To create a long-term relationship between a brand and consumers, message clarity and consistency are vital, Doctoroff argues.
Nike is raised repeatedly throughout the book as an example of a strong brand that has a consistent core message, which, ultimately, is aligned with cultural truths. Nike’s “Just Do It” message suggests a liberation from barriers that appeals to the West’s sense of individualism while being cleverly tweaked so as not to appear threatening to the East’s collective cultures.
The “Just Do It” spirit of Nike is consistent and refined across all media. Even as the company has embraced technology through its Nike+ apps and the social-media engagement that has flowed from them, the brand message remains the same, he observed.
Quick to point out that he isn’t antitechnology — “I’m not a Luddite” — Doctoroff isn’t an advocate of abandoning the bottom-up strategies; rather, he suggests using technology in conjunction with a central brand idea to get the best of both worlds.
“I think that people have embraced technology in a panicked way. The amount of brands that are consistent with their messaging across various digital platforms, whether it’s e-commerce or social strategy — it’s very few,” he said. “People are afraid of being left behind. There is this idea of disruption, but what exactly are you capsizing?”
Despite being hailed by Doctoroff as “one of the world’s most inspired digital marketers,” fast-fashion giant Uniqlo is called out for its ineffective use of social media ahead of the launch of its U.K. e-commerce site in 2010.
The Fast Retailing Co. Ltd.-owned brand tried to build buzz for the launch by running a Twitter promotion called “Lucky Counter,” in which more tweets generated from a specially designed microsite yielded incrementally lower prices. As a pure discounting exercise, the promotion lacked any brand message and, as such, did nothing to engender long-term relationships with consumers, Doctoroff argued.
Chinese consumers — the subject of Doctoroff’s previous book, “What Chinese Want” — are rightly considered a digitally savvy bunch. This sentiment is particularly true in terms of the country’s youth, who have abandoned traditional brand media, such as television, more aggressively than their Western peers.
Despite the massive shift in message consumption currently underway in China, Doctoroff believes that strong brands are still key in this market, perhaps even more so than elsewhere, because of the importance of “face” in Chinese culture.
“A clear positioning in China, with its bloated brandscape, is more important here than just about anywhere else. Brands need to be carefully defined, or they disappear in the mist. I think, obviously, the need for message clarity is great everywhere, and, if anything, it’s even greater in China because people need to project a very known brand association in order to project status,” Doctoroff said.
As well as making his case for the primacy of ideas in advertising, Doctoroff aims to outline a framework that takes advertisers and marketers from insights about consumers to executing consumer engagement strategies.
“Now, the question is, how do you do it? How do you execute it? And this requires very confident marketers,” he said. “It’s our job to give clients and consumers confidence as they explore the new shores of the digital era.”