Above the Line or Below?

Watch out. The Line is getting blurred.

Two broad trends are blurring the line between Above-The-Line and Below-The-Line.

One, consumers are getting immune to classical ATL advertising. They have less time, attention and patience and are more advertising cynical than ever. They are multi tasking more than before. If they are not so in some geographies or categories, they soon will be. Two, marketers realize that their products are increasingly similar to their competitors’, and they do not have the luxury of years to build their brands. Their view of how brands are built is also changing. The traditional and linear cognition-emotion-action theory of brand choice is morphing into a more multidimensional experience-adoption-preference-repeat-recommendation model.

These two concurrent changes are accelerating the pace of adoption of integrated marketing and IMC [Integrated Marketing Communication] thinking. What was traditionally called BTL fits very comfortably today with ATL to form IMC. The important thing is, today it’s not a subservient discipline, it’s an equal.

In a 2004 Forrester Research survey amongst US marketers, 90% agreed that ‘media fragmentation and consumer ad blocking and skipping required big changes in marketing strategy’. 70% said ‘to be effective in today’s media environment, TV must be part of an integrated marketing campaign’. If we have to do a similar survey in India, the figures might not be that high; but something tells me, they won’t be insignificant either.

We are in an age where exposure based thinking is giving way to engagement and experience based models. Smart marketing practitioners know that delivering a positive brand experience to the consumer is the starting point of a lasting brand-consumer relationship.

Price promotions apart, many successful BTL activities of today can be best described as Experiential Marketing. It’s about creating brand encounters that change the way consumers evaluate competitive options and feel good about themselves. So whether it’s General Mills’ Betty Crocker baking experience, or AXE Deo’s longest party or Castle Lager’s Castle Loud events, or Western Union’s festival related consumer activation initiatives, the emphasis is on what we may call face-to-face marketing.

Not long ago, most new product launches saw a launch conference meant typically for the trade. Today, brands often prefer a consumer launch event, where at least key influencers and opinion leaders are invited. Brands are learning not to jump headlong into a launch without having seeded the product with real consumers and learning from their experiences over an extended period. Product sampling is no longer an afterthought; it’s a cornerstone of experiential marketing. Even classical BTL disciplines such as PR and direct marketing, are and can be much more proactive, and consumer directed. For many categories, sports can become a powerful way of creating and carrying the experience. Branded Entertainment can be used to communicate brand values in more engaging and more credible ways than classical advertising.

Increasingly mass media is being used to amplify activation and experiential initiatives, in a kind of follow-up role, rather than only as an initiator of the communication process.

Already tools such as Integration’s Market Contact Audit [MCA^SM] are helping marketers measure the effectiveness of the entire spectrum of marketing and communication activities. Adoption of such tools will help us avoid drawing an artificial dichotomy between ATL and BTL- strategic Vs tactical, measurable Vs whimsical.

Well orchestrated, integrated marketing is undoubtedly the future, where all marketing and communication efforts must help create a positive brand experience for the consumer.

Because experiences last; memory often doesn’t.

[Published in the Hindustan Times, June 3, 2006]