Increase your brand's mental market share with Branded Content

Marketers haven’t always fully grasped the fact that consumers rarely think about brands. Ensuring that consumers do think about them in those few relevant situations has thus become a high-stakes game. The key differentiator in this competition is a brand’s ability to align with a consumer need and “pop up” in a relevant (purchase) situation. Professor Byron Sharp (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute) calls this a Category Entry Point, or CEP. Smart brands identify which CEPs are important in their category and which ones specifically align with their brand. Once this is clear, consistency in communication is a major factor in successfully claiming the CEP. Recent research by Noud Schartman, a Ph.D. candidate at VU Amsterdam and Validators, shows that Branded Content can act as a catalyst in this process.

The Mechanism of Mental Availability

To grow your market share, your brand needs to be relevant in more situations. We also refer to this as mental availability. The mission for marketers is therefore to influence this mental availability. Mental availability can be explained using two theories: the Associative Network Theory and the Weak Theory of Advertising. The Associative Network Theory posits that memory is a network consisting of “nodes” connected by “associative links.” Brand information is stored in brand associations. According to the Weak Theory of Advertising, advertisements rarely directly convince consumers to buy your brand. However, advertisements do ensure that associative links are created or that existing associations and links between your brand and relevant category cues are strengthened.

Improving mental availability

To improve a brand’s mental availability, you’ll need to ensure that consumers’ minds retrieve the right brand associations more quickly in the appropriate (purchasing) situations. You do this by strengthening and expanding your association network. Take the Nespresso brand, for example. When seeing or hearing this brand name, many people think of “coffee” or “waking up.” Another association has also been established with actor George Clooney and the phrase “What else?” By “building” an association network through consistent communication, the creators increase the likelihood that consumers will actually pick up Nespresso from the shelf.

The Benefits of Branded Content

More "traditional" advertising remains very important for brands, but in recent years, branded content has also secured a permanent place in the media mix of many brands. What are the similarities and differences between Branded Content and more conventional advertisements with regard to the mental availability issue? Because Branded Content is not bound by a fixed format or medium type, it is a highly flexible form of content. This creates more opportunities for new nodes and associations. Branded Content is often very authentic. By presenting a story in a more credible way, the nodes become stronger.

But what effect does branded content have on mental availability?

To investigate this, we analyzed two promotional pieces from Hyundai. These include a standard TV commercial featuring a product launch and a short documentary-style film.

We tested both approaches, and what did we find? Branded content performs just as well as advertising. And in some areas, it even performs better.

The Keys to Successful Branded Content

Noud Schartman: “This study really was an eye-opener regarding the added value of branded content compared to more traditional advertising. For example, Branded Content was better at evoking positive emotions: Branded Content scored a 4.1 on overall rating of the message, while the commercial scored a 3.6. Viewers were better able to recall the Hyundai brand after seeing Branded Content (87%) than after watching the commercial (75%). We also observed that people were significantly more inclined to share the content with friends, colleagues, or other acquaintances. The NPS was 6 versus 4.5.

Branded content is more effective for the target audience

One of the most striking and interesting findings concerned relevance to consumers. The chart below shows that for people who are not interested in cars, the impact of the ad is greater (an increase from 10.0% to 14.14%, compared to 11.45% for branded content). However, when your Branded Content reaches the relevant target audience, the impact of Branded Content skyrockets. In that case, it even outperforms the ad. This immediately boosts the relevance of this media type.

You can also read this article on MarketingTribune.

Would you like more information? Please contact: business@validators.nl