In this tellthetruths video, Rebeca dives into what it means for brands to be SMART, highlighting how bold choices, while daunting, can lead to big rewards.
How Can Brands Be SMART?
From Nike’s controversial Colin Kaepernick ad to Domino’s bold admission of past mistakes, both brands took leaps that paid off and strengthened their connection with audiences.
What do you think? Is taking risks essential for brands to grow?
This video originally appeared in LinkedIn.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Hey guys, it’s Rebeca with BrandTrue, and what I want to talk about today is how can brands be SMART? And what I mean by SMART, this is an acronym that my friend Janice Cave cooked up, it’s Smart Marketers Are Risk Takers. I think that strategy is choice, you’ve probably heard me say that many times, and choice means really going out on a limb sometimes, and that is terrifying and very, very hard to do, but there are lots and lots of examples of how that’s really paid off I’ll share too.
The first, which I’ve talked about several times on here, is in September of 2018 when Nike was celebrating the 30th anniversary of their Just Do It campaign, they reinvigorated it with a very controversial move: their Colin Kaepernick ad. And what happened? There was initial outcry and some people claiming that they would boycott the brand. However, I think Nike is way too smart. They knew their audience and they knew that their core audience would understand Just Do It with new vigor. And sure enough, even a week later, the stock started to rebound and by a year later it reached record highs and the brand has only grown ever since. So you know that risk paid off.
Another one, an example that happened right around the same time, but I learned about it more recently, was Domino’s and a campaign they called the Pizza Turnaround. And it was a really big risk. Basically, their pizza sucked. And I think if your pizza sucks and then you say, “Hey, our pizza’s better now,” or “New improved great taste,” it’s not very plausible. And so they did something that’s sometimes called a symbol of reinvention, I’m gonna talk about that in another video, because those are very powerful moves. They did something to really bring attention to the fact that they were changing their ways and it was really risky. The campaign was around how they were going to do better, how they had gotten this feedback and they were going to do better. And I imagine that was very difficult to sell in. But as consumers, the risk paid off. It was more plausible that they were making an improvement and their sales really increased and they did add better, more positive perception to the quality of their pizza. People believed them that it got better. So risk taking is risky, it’s scary, it is difficult to sell in, but is super important, and according to Janice and me is the mark of a smart marketer. That’s what I think. Let me know what you think. Thanks, bye!
