The Real Games of Brand Outreach
By Yemi Omitola
20th September, 2023

Contents for brand have been crowned as the king of customer engagement while the social media platforms are regarded as the queen of the game. If you don’t create compelling contents to drive your brand outreach, then it is very likely that your brands may lose resonance and relevance. This idea is rooted in the age-long marketing philosophy of keeping your target audience consistently informed if you really want them to plug your brand in their minds.
At the centre of this notion is the overriding position given to brand communication as the major driver of consumer purchase decision. The fact that you have a brand, and you are not pushing the brand messaging out constantly sound unwise and unsavvy as a brand owner.
Here is the Truth…
The reality today is that consumers are very bored, tired, and irritated by the massive bombardment of brand marketing contents that assault them online. We are already entering into another phase of consumers resolution to blatantly ignore brand-centred messages. Remember, when 30- or 60-seconds TV advert was the rule of the game. The pattern was predictable. You have product or service; you commissioned an agency to create and launch TV commercial to get your brand message out there. It happened that consumers enjoyed the charade for a long time. The jollification ended when internet, especially social media, entered the marketing scene. Brand owners took the destiny of their brand communications into their hands. So, what followed was a jamboree of social media marketing. But alas! Consumers have arrived at another saturated point. Consumers are screaming- Spare me your marketing messages!

The New Rule of the Game is Connection, Experience and Engagement.
If your brand outreach is not structured and programmed around these tripodic standing, you are missing the big show. You are not in tandem with the consumer impulse. You may have to render your marketing programme into a paradigm shift.

The Connection Game
Consumer culture has progressed beyond mere telling them how your brand cares about their needs or what benefits it delivers to them. You cannot bombard them into becoming loyal to your brands by screaming the universe of benefits offered by your brands. Connection is the new game. You need to seek a chord to strike in their world. But howe do you do that without understanding their world. You need to come to one factual conclusion: They don’t need your product. Thy don’t need your service. If they don’t need it, they don’t care either.

They care deeply about one thing. They care only about themselves. They care about their beliefs. They care about their happiness. They care about their worries. They care about their fears. They care about their self-perpetuation. Their world is filled with uncertainties, unpredictability, ambiguities, unfulfilled aspirations, confusions, helplessness, missed opportunities, self-esteem and identity crisis and other struggles. They are constantly seeking for ways to reconcile their fears and worries with their hopes and dreams. You should be very worried if your brand is showing up in that world. Your brand should build the bridge or actively act as the bridge between their struggles and the future they envision. Therefore, your brand could be the hope, joy, comfort, prosperity, fun, laughter, fulfilment and all the totality of what they desperately search for in their world.

The Experience Game
Don’t just be a metaphor for any of these ideals. You should actively deliver any of them experientially. Let your brand live actively in the world of consumers as they search for deeper meaning of their existence. If they are searching for happiness, deliver your brand to practically make them happy. If they want laughter, let your brand be comical in their world. If they are searching for a better tomorrow, let your brand provides them a quick leap into their future. That is where your brand can activate real connection with this audience.

Please don’t confuse this with experiential marketing which many consumers have recognised as part of awareness gimmicks mainly to drive purchase and brand loyalty. The experience in this regard is totally biased in favour of your product/service design and the value proposition that summarises this bundle of offering to be rendered to consumers. I champion the idea that your brand should not just act as a symbolic representation of the desires and needs of the consumers but the real thing. Let your brand become an authentic expression of what they are searching for. Let your brand solidify the original means, methods, and platforms of what the consumers are desperately searching for in the complex world they live.

The Engagement Game
Brand or marketing communication still occupies the vital place in midwifing brands into the market. But the game has shifted with new rule, process, and parameters. Engagement is the new coin, acting as meaningful exchange between the brand owners and the market. The idea of engagement prioritises conversation, collaboration, and commitment to collectively navigate the constant changes and challenges that constantly assail the reality of our world today.

So, what issues are your brand exploring in the world of consumers today? What is the pattern of your dialogic exchange with your brand audience? What mindsets, beliefs and ideology are shaping your engagement with your audience? Is our engagement reflecting your brand as the lord or the only custodian of knowledge in that conversation space? Do you sometimes come to the engagement platform to learn and be tutored by your audience? The best form of brand engagement happens when you, as a brand owner, takes the learner role some other times. It shows the humanity side of your brand. It demonstrates that you brand can learn from the other side too.

Wrapping it up…
Well, many brand owners might defend an argument that they are doing all these stuffs. But I have studied and observed that many brands are detached from the current global shifts, changes, and total overhauling of the old game in brand marketing.

Brands are screaming today. Consumers are blocking their hears. Brands are puffing up their identities to push for visibility. Consumers are shutting their eyes. Even when they hear or see your brand, it takes just a few minutes before they log off or log out. Why? They don’t see you or hear you in their universe of life meaning and pursuits. Simple!

About Yemi Omitola

Yemi is the Founder/Tribe Chief of Kukumba Tribe, a movement of creative entrepreneurs and innovation mavericks. He creates and delivers extra-value solutions at the intersection of Innovation design, Creative technology, and Brand expression. He supports startups and underdog entrepreneurs, especially ethnic-minority businesses in diaspora markets.