For generations, brands have successfully generated demand for goods and services. However, some are now questioning whether the disruptive power of the Internet may disrupt even this, perhaps one day rendering brands irrelevant. We think this is an over-simplification: brands are being disrupted, yes, but they are not being destroyed. While the theory and practice of brand management is changing fast, brands will endure, even if many of the tactics used to build them will not.
Nothing to see here?
For those who believe all of this talk of change is overblown, there’s no shortage of data to suggest business-as-usual for brand advertising. Americans have never watched more TV, and the market for TV advertising has not collapsed. A recent study in the journal of advertising research (Hu, Lodish, Krieger & Hayatithi) showed that TV advertising ROI remains within 15-year norms, returning, on average, 10% over and above the investment made.
Of course, the story is not quite that simple: as Nielsen’s 2012 “Global trust in advertising” surveyshowed, trust-in-advertising in the developed world is in long-term decline. Nor is this a simple linear swap, with traditional advertising being replaced by digital and mobile formats. As the same study shows, all-media advertising trust is eroding, with TV bearing the brunt and digital only partially filling the gap left in its wake. Between 2009 and 2011, global trust in TV advertising declined from a respectable 71% to just 47% worldwide.
