4Es - The music marketing mix. Many of us who studied marketing are familiar with McCarthys marketing mix.
How his four Ps and the right ingredients of product, price, placement and promotion help to position a brand on the market. Fifty years later and still many marketing departments follow a model that was meant for a world before branding, new technology and hyper competition changed everything. Don’t get me wrong, the four Ps still work great for products but in today’s world where a company selling experiences, association and lifestyles more and more, this model is long since outdated. Branding today is about positioning a company in the mind of the target group. Companies today focus on building a more emotional and exclusive brand that offers an experience that engages their audience. In the following four posts I will present how the four Es model works in music branding. Tags: 4e, 4p, branding, McCarthy, music. #1 EMOTIONS (4Es of music branding)
A purchase decision takes around 2.5 seconds and is anything but rational.
Many of the most important decisions we make in our life are based on feelings. A feeling is subjective and often irrational and impulsive. We experience this when we fall in love as well as when we shop. We consume, love and relate to products both with our hearts and our minds. But in today’s market where supply has long surpassed demand and products are more and more similar, the emotional aspect is the differentiating factor. Music is distilled emotion. Tags: 4e, branding, emotions, music. #2 ENGAGEMENT (4Es of music branding) People are sick of advertising.
A recent conducted survey by the SIFO Institute showed that 75% of people actively avoid advertising, whether it’s on TV, Internet or radio. New technology has set the customer in charge of the remote control. In order to reach out to customers today you have to deserve their attention. To deserve their attention you need to engage them. If you engage them they will pass on your message, creating word-of-mouth which has always been marketing’s strongest tool (ranked as having seven times as much impact as traditional advertising). People love music. #3 EXPERIENCES (4Es of music branding) In this year’s best global brands ranking by Interbrand, brand experience is profiled as one of the key factors for success.
The concept of an experience economy was coined ten years ago by authors Pine and Gilmore when they published the book ‘The Experience Economy’. The authors argued that we are now facing a new important step in the processing of economic value, where companies sell memorable experiences rather than just products and services. In today’s digital age people look for authentic experiences that they can engage with emotionally. To be successful a brand you need to offer a multi-sensory experience that touches all five senses.
In order to command a higher price, build strong loyalty and ultimately create value for the customer, companies need to understand that there is more to a brand than what meets the eye. According to the Sounds Like Branding survey, hearing is ranked as the second most important sense when building a strong brand today. #4 EXCLUSIVITY (4Es of music branding) When in Tokyo I recommend a visit to a ‘Pachinko hall’.
It’s a type of game hall with vending machines and a games called ‘Pachinko’. The sound wave when entering is shocking - your senses are literally bombarded by flashing lights, spinning wheels and hysteric techno music. What fascinates me is that the people don’t pay any attention to all the noise and flashing lights anymore but just sit quietly playing their game. They have become numb and have learnt how to screen out all the messages and focus on their interest.
The Pachinko halls work as a metaphor for today’s market place. In a reality that increasingly resembles Tokyo, the need to differentiate your brand and take a unique and exclusive position in the mind of your audience is more important then ever. There is of course a reason why Coca-cola has worked with sonic branding for more than 20 years, and everyone recognises McDonalds ‘Da da da da dah, I’m loving it‘. Tags: branding, exclusivity, heartbeats, pachinko, sonic. 4Es. Posts Tagged ‘4Es’ Experiences – Brands need to provide memorable experiences (4Es) Wednesday, October 13th, 2010 Brands offering direct and authentic experiences are more likely to create deeper and more meaningful relationships with their customers than brands that don’t.
In order to feel important, understood and connected today, people need meaningful and memorable experiences. A recent consumer survey in UK showed that people’s brand recall of an experience is 60%, while for newspapers only 30% and for TV almost as low as 20%. Brands with the ‘fingerspitzgefühl’ of navigating between culture and commerce and direct authentic experiences, will be able to create a deeper and more meaningful relationship to their customers, and more easily succeed in building brand advocacy. Today, we can also see more brands that have started to approach experiences in a more strategic way. Emotions – Something humane in the marketing mix (4Es) Monday, October 11th, 2010 Friday, October 8th, 2010.