Few brands invested as heavily in television and print advertising as Gap. According to Ad Age , "Marketing expenditure at Gap Inc. was trimmed 18% during the quarter, driven by the absence of TV ads for the Gap brand, company executives said. That contributed to a 40% jump in profits at Gap Inc., compared to the same period a year ago."

What’s behind this shift? For one thing, the economy. In these shaky times, Gap found that aggressive brand advertising was not driving as much foot traffic. Instead, they shifted their marketing focus on capturing revenue in-store via merchandising to the folks who were already moving through their aisles.

"It’s a waste of money [for the Gap brand to advertise right now]," said retail analyst Jennifer Black. "In this kind of an economic environment, traffic is slow anyway, and there’s so much competition with advertising. … If there was a time for them to do this, it’s not that bad of a time. You really want to yell and shout and scream about the product when it’s really fantastic."

Which leads us to the second reason Gap pulled back: their brand is well-known, but suffering. Fashion brands are notoriously fickle, and the Gap has been limping for a while now. Why blow tons of advertising dollars until the brand is fixed?

Note that during this time, Gap’s revenue has declined while profits went up. There is a clear trade-off. Gap is not building for the future with this strategy, it is simply watching the bottom line. Is this smart for any company in difficult economic times, or for those facing financial pressure?

Not necessarily, but it is worth summarizing the lessons from Gap’s experience:

• If you drop advertising, prepare to face a drop in new customers and overall revenue.
• Cutting advertising will boost profit, but probably only in the short-term.
• Don’t burn advertising dollars if your brand and value proposition are not effective; you’ll only be adding to the noise in the marketplace and will most likely not drive a healthy return on investment. (Note the retail consultant’s reference to "…there’s so much competition with advertising." If you’re brand can’t break through, you’re probably wasting major dollars.

• Creating value propositions and messaging that create separation between you and competitors

• Building a story-driven brand that emotionally connects with the target audience

• Using a proven “success” template for “sticky” communications

Apparently we’re steering away from the discipline and onto creativity.

The Sticky Story.

Dare to be different. What is it that can or does makes you different from your industry?

The building of the brand. Emotions built into a logo. All us people want to be understood as individuals. Brands unique markers of human identies. We are all our own brand. Connecting customers around a way of thinking as opposed to the product.

BEACONS OF DIFFERENCE.

I likes it.

Best cost. Best product. Best total solution.

Walmart = cheap Asian sweatshops.

Please don’t get me going on BOSE. Look around and check what the influencers on audio messageboards and sites have to say about Bose. There is a very different perception of Bose by the general public and the online influencers.

Apple vs Microsoft

Innovative. Creative. Cutting edge vs Practical. Clunky. Unusable.

Hasten to say, I’m a Windows guy. Smug Apple fanatics.

Do not confuse your branding message by claiming the best service then offering huge discounts.

One has to develop the emotional connection and couple it with the functional to be truly successful.

Make people feel. And I’m feeling weary.

Play a role in the life of a customer and provide an emotional attachment.

Jeff’s on fire here. So I’m actually going to listen.

Ok. Stopped listening and time to bang on about stories. It’s not that you have to find a story as a business but that you are welcome to tell your story as a business online through tools such as blogs.

EVERY BUSINESS HAS A STORY. And you can, as Jeff points out, frame it in one of the emotional archetypes that’s described in the presentation.

Made to Stick

SUCCESs

Simplicity – finding the core of an idea
Unexpectedness – combining surprise and interst
Concreteness – bringin git alive with the five senses (memory velcro)
Credibility – tapping the power of authority – or any-authority- to build belief
Emotional – priming people to care
Stories – generating involvement that leads to action

WVU sports as particular products split between various sports and corporate sponsorships. The prawn butty brigade as Roy Keane may have said about certain Man Utd supporters….Nice oblique British sporting reference.

How to pitch to WVU:
A one stop shop regarding all media elements. Huge complaints regarding music played at half time during Basketball. The moral of the story being that you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Heavy into radio , built in network of 50 stations for advertising ….newspapers down…internet increasingly important.

How do those media channels work together

1. Best and worse part – best: constantly talking about WVU sports. There’s always a good conversaion. Can be a great conversation of a dire one dependent on obvious factors. Reactive to other media outlets. Ie radio.
2. All pieces cross pollinated via different platforms and relatively cheap. Use wom to float and idea and let it go. A fan day promoted via messageboards.
3. The stickier the story the less you have to work to get people interested.

Most difficult way to manage and measure the impact:
1. Maybe too much to keep up with what’s going on. Cross over of sporting seasons. V. difficult big challenge to promote increasingly important events. Internal clutter. How many sports can folks truly attend..brand dilution? Zero competition on the sports front.
2. Definition of competitive set suchas other leisure activities. Footie tickets vs Quiznos. GO to subway and sit in the bleachers….

Question from the audience

WVU hositng own messageboards?
NO. The message is out there and it’s addresses but they don’t respond directly. However, the media Trad actually monitors and they can tell when they’re gonna get a call. Rivals network……college sports. Extreme messageboard users as minor celebrities.

Struggle in WV catching up and converting online ticket sales.How to convince and convert?
Use of direct mail. Changing the force of habit. Someone over 38 years in the mail is hard to turn onto online e ticketing. Slight incremental changes. Still doing hard tickets via fedex. Student ticketing online printoffs similar to the airline e-ticket.

Derek and his crossover tickets…was a student when they switched tickets. Negative feedback. From first come first served to whoever whenever.

Just had to deal with criticism. Nobody likes change and some will never acclimatise. Just shove it people (in a nice paraphrased way, of course).