【The Age of Information Fragmentation】How brand marketing works to break through?
TEXT_Irene Hung
With the rapid advance of modern technology and under the catalysis of 3-year Covid pandemic period, consumers increasingly get used to acquiring information and knowledge through the Internet. Cyber-addiction not only happens to youngsters of the digital age but also spreads to older people subtly. Consequently, I am about to illustrate information fragmentation into 2 major parts:
- How is information fragmentation affecting people’s lives? What are the disadvantages and advantages? What are the trends that branding enterprises should be aware of?
- Some interesting and inspiring examples of brand marketing that capture consumers’ attention in seconds to break through the tide of information fragmentation.
How is information fragmentation affecting people’s lives?
In the age of tons of accessible knowledge and excess unverified information on the Internet, people tend to read merely title of the articles, picture of the posts when phubbing media sources that have not yet established their loyalty to those brands or internet celebrities. What’s more, research has shown that the average time it takes people to scroll through a post is 1 second or even less. Hence, people can only remember the crucial points of the massive quantity of news. In other words, most of the ideas and advertisements are totally out of their attention and do not appeal to them at all.
What are the disadvantages and advantages of information fragmentation?
Disadvantages such as excess information distracts people from concentrating on the helpful news, instead they spend too much time searching and judging useful ones. Additionally, consumers are increasingly able to distinguish which are KOL business ads or traditional promotion ads. Thus branding and marketing should be reshaped in a more creative and lifestyle way.
Advantages for example because of a variety of brand options for consumers to choose, what they need is the brand value concept that they identify with, the practical comparison and analysis of different options, and the well-organised life proposal. As a consequence, if enterprises spot the consumers’ needs, they make a breakthrough over numerous competitors.
What are the trends that branding enterprises should be aware of?
- Retail & Business : Retail company cooperates with its consumers, and designs & creates virtual goods or retail stores together.
- Food & Beverages : Consumers are fascinated by immersive catering. They go to restaurants not for delicacy (cause they can normally cook at home) but for unexpected diverse experience like shows, recreation, sporting, a sense of belonging, etc.
- Career : People re-examine and introspect the priorities in life. For instance, adjust career paths or pursue self-realisation value.
- Travel & Recreation : Travel abroad to experience different culture rather than stay domestically.
- Branding & Marketing : Social media is starting to become an inspiring healing place for people’s souls. Lifestyle proposal short-form videos can be popular.
- Fashion & Makeup : Brands start to search for sensory memories that have long since disappeared or been forgotten, and continue to grasp the value of environmental sustainability and natural materials.
Some interesting and inspiring examples of brand marketing to overcome information fragmentation crisis
Allbirds is an American new eco-friendly footwear brand, with the slogan of the most comfortable shoes in the world, its brand concept focuses on simplicity, nature and environmental protection. It creates a market cap of USD $2 billion in six years. Its advertisements feature in 30-second short-period videos and communicate its ideas with interesting and humorous contents, capturing those consumers who value quality simple lifestyle. The short but funny advertising videos eliminate consumers’ distraction from information fragmentation.
When the blockbuster movie Avatar2 was released, the Avatar-character IG AR story filter spreads everywhere, this can be an effective way to promote this movie widely when seeing friends’ face with avatar-like special effects and the filter sound effect makes it even more immersive.
Early in 2018, Burger King launched a successful marketing strategy “Whopper Detour”, which was introduced that consumers could get promotional price at USD $1 for a classic Whopper burger if they purchased the burger through APP within 600 feet of a McDonald’s location. This interesting activity captured the nature of consumers who love interaction and immediate feedback, using gamification to establish the relationship between brand and consumers.
Reports have shown that there is a stable rise of people listening on Podcast and digital devices. Moreover, voice ads can be more effective than visual ads since auditory memory will make people automatically associate. However, most of the cases are that people cannot remember long contents of voice after hearing them for seconds. Hence, Spotify has launched a function of Call-to-Action Cards, which is whenever a voice ad plays, it will occur in the visual form of ad in the digital card, allowing consumers to browse through the helpful ads again. New form of advertising drives twice as much traffic to client’s website.
An American meat brand, Oscar Mayer, has partnered with online ride-hailing company, Lyft, to develop a “fantasy journey ride in a giant hot dog”. The hot dog-shaped vehicle became not only a kind of taxi but a place for marriage proposals, Airbnb accommodation. In the vehicle, consumers had the chance to get a customised hot dog pattern T-shirt, a hot dog toy, or free hot dogs provided by Oscar Mayer. This was a whole new ride immersive experience and great way for branding.
An American ketchup brand, Heinz, in 2021 launched a Halloween activity to ask consumers to upload short videos to TikTok about a horror scene using Heinz ketchup. This activity rapidly attract Gen-Z youngsters to participate in and establish a dominant brand position in the minds of consumers.
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