What do brands do when their marketing budget is running low?

Brand marketers today may miss the old days a lot.

A commercial aired during the 1984 Super Bowl made Apple famous. Despite that this ads did not feature any product images or unique selling points, it generated $150 million of sales of Macintosh within 100 days of its release, doubling the original expectation.

This ads, named 1984, only appeared once during the broadcast of the Super Bowl game. However, with its metaphorical disdain for totalitarianism, Apple conveyed the message that technology should be used to liberate people, not to control them, responding to the prevalent cybernetics of personal computers at the time.

The rebellious girl in the commercial who smashed the screen became a preacher of the hippie spirit, not only making a name for the Mac, but also spreading the ideas of innovation, saving humanity from “conformity”, and freedom to the public.

Ads campaigns are just a snapshot of a brand’s values. During Steve Jobs’ era, the innovative spirit of Think Different was reflected in every aspect of Apple.

However, nowadays, campaigns of spiritual brand value is giving way to promotions of product functions that can generate more direct sales. In fact, Apple has reduced its overall branding campaign budget in most markets, allocating more budget to conversion oriented ads.

Apple’s posters now demonstrate a more direct product promotion strategy. The brand that once stood alongside Einstein, Lennon, and Gandhi has now turned to celebrities that can bring to Apple their influence on millions of netizens. What motivates people to buy an iPhone is no longer the idea of changing the world, but the more practical use of privacy protection.

Apple is not the only one. Many well-known brands are currently reducing their budgets for branding campaign. The value of brands is changing, and businesses are simply following the trend.

A marketing professional has explained that this is related to changes in consumer mentality. “Cost-effective mindset is particularly strong among the younger generation. Under the value concept of ‘affordable alternatives,’ consumers no longer choose branded products but opt for more affordable products with little difference in quality.”

The emergence of new e-commerce platforms, the more than needed choice of products, and changes in the economic environment have collectively made brand stories less appealing than ever.

The gradually evolving brand marketing teams

Brand marketing teams that always need to spend money but hardly generate direct sales are gradually being replaced or redefined. Many companies have their brand marketing teams integrated into marketing or e-commerce teams, requiring brand marketers to be responsible for not only brand reach and reputation, but also sales revenues.

Therefore, “Doing two jobs for one salary” has become the new norm for brand marketers.

For example, a leading cosmetics company has posted a “Brand Content Marketing” position. In addition to the usual brand planning responsibilities of a typical brand role, this position also requires managing social media operations, doing daily content updates across the brand’s social media platforms, and tracking platform and competitor data to optimize content strategies for better sales conversion.

Spending budget solely for higher ROI

“Cash, though, is to a business as oxygen is to an individual: never thought about when it is present, the only thing in mind when it is absent,” said Buffett at the 2024 shareholders’ meeting.

As capital cools down, brands are beginning to realize the importance of profit and cash flow.

Some brands have been ahead of this groundbreaking change. As early as two years ago, they recognized the risks of relying solely on marketing to drive growth and began consciously adjusting their marketing strategies, keeping expenses within a reasonable range. This prudent strategy adjustment has allowed them to smoothly stepped into profitable status.

According to a marketing manager, when making the decision about whether to launch a new marketing campaign or not, the team would ask themselves 3 key questions:

• What value will this campaign bring to us?
• Is the value it brings what we desire?
• What if we don’t run this campaign?

However, not all brands can adapt in advance. Most brands were pushed to change their marketing strategy, as they are struggling with keeping up their profitability. Rapid market changes are forcing them to focus on more practical metrics – ROI.

“Spend money solely for higher ROI” has become the common sense for business decision makers now. From the start of this year, a craft beer brand has abandoned brand marketing campaigns like music festivals sponsoring, and even collaboration with top-tier influencers has been cancelled – as there are more cost-effective ways.

Moving from top-tier influencers to KOCs became a common trend for brand marketing

Unlike top-tier influencers (KOL), KOCs, although bringing only a fraction of the traffic top-tier influencers can bring to the brands, are often more knowledgeable in specific fields and have closer relationships with their followers due to their authenticity and credibility. Brands are starting to develop more detailed and more specific content with KOCs to build their brand influences.

Using AI for brand marketing is another trend for higher ROI

Compared to relying on real humans, using AI gives brands more control and flexibility. The aforementioned craft beer brand has gradually moved away from collaborating with influencers to placing ads on social media themselves. By using audience targeting, they run campaigns even more precisely.

Some brands are even more aggressive, almost relying on AI completely to create marketing content.

A sports brand indicated that their current content production process is they first manually create lots of content, until one piece of content becomes viral; then they use AI to change people’s faces, clothes, skin tones, music, and backgrounds of this viral content to rapidly replicate it. This method has greatly improved the brand’s content marketing efficiency.

Small contents that build up big branding influence

Although brands put speed, precision, cost reduction, and efficiency as their top priority now, the impact of good content remains true.

For brands, content has the potential to achieve great results with small efforts. Unique content can create a deeper emotional connection between consumers and the brand.

However, content marketing is not easy. Refining the unique brand’s personality takes time. On one hand, brands need to have a comprehensive understanding of their vision and philosophy. On the other hand, they need to understand what kind of content will resonate with their desirable consumers. Otherwise, it may turn into self-indulgence, failing to achieve the marketing goals.

In today’s decentralized and small screen era, an ads like 1984 with the overwhelming influence may be difficult to replicate. However, in each segmented fields and niche market, brands can still build connections through building trust. Although these connections are not as broad as 1984, they are more in depth and more personalised.

Final words

Marketing is to build a connection between brands and consumers. Changes in marketing channels will inevitably bring changes in the forms of communication and the content that fits.

We never know whether the era that spirits and beliefs could bring great commercial value will return. We also do not know if the current marketing landscape will be disrupted again with the rapid development of AI and VR. However, we believe that truly great content that connect with and touch people’s hearts will never fail.

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