Brand Advertising: The Game of Building Customer Trust and Increasing Revenues [+ 3 Must-See Examples]

When you see a red truck with Christmas lights, you think of Coca-Cola. When you hear the phrase “I'm Lovin' It”, McDonald’s immediately comes to mind. Nike has become a symbol of empowerment due to its “Just Do It” campaign. In 1984, Apple spent an incredible amount of money to produce a single TV commercial called “1984”, which helped triumphantly launch the Macintosh computer and later became iconic. What’s in common for these cases? All of them are successful brand advertising examples.

In this article, we’ll explain the essence of brand advertising and discuss its types and benefits. We’ll solve the dilemma of “direct response vs brand advertising” and give you tips to create an efficient campaign. Also, you’ll learn about the secrets behind some incredible brand advertising examples. When you’re done with reading, you’ll be ready to bring your brand’s connection to the audience to the next level.

What Is Brand Advertising?

First of all, let’s clarify what a brand is.

Sometimes, marketers confuse a company’s brand with its name, logo, or other elements. However, the brand is an integral part of the company's image in customers’ eyes. The name and logo are just parts of this image. Also, brands are all about meaningful connections with customers and the emotions they experience when interacting with a company.

With this understanding in mind, we’re offering you the brand advertising definition:

Marketing strategies often promote a specific product or offer and focus primarily on short-term results. With brand advertising, the company aims to achieve long-term results, create a solid brand identity, and maintain it over the years, along with customers’ trust.

Except for long-term aspirations, other characteristics of brand advertising include:

• Focus on building a lasting connection with customers, involving warm emotions.
• Increasing brand awareness among broad audiences.
• A specific tone of voice and style in all brand advertising campaigns.
• Reliance on storytelling, narratives, and characters, such as advertising brand mascots.

Therefore, if a company wants a broad audience to know its brand, shape its image, and stand out among competitors, the brand advertising strategy is the right path to take.

Direct Response vs Brand Advertising

Now that you know the brand advertising definition, it’s time to explain the differences between this approach and another common type of advertising called direct response.

Direct response advertising is a marketing strategy focused on stimulating immediate actions from customers, like buying a new product, visiting the website, downloading the app, signing up for offers, etc. Direct response ads come in multiple forms, from social media ads to TV commercials, emails, etc.

So, the main difference is the long-term focus in brand advertising vs. short-term orientation in the direct response approach. Also, these two types of advertising use different tools to achieve their goals. For instance, brand advertising often requires telling the story about the company or its values, while direct response just communicates the offer, loud and clear. If you see a banner saying “Buy today!”, you can be sure it’s not a part of the brand advertising strategy.

With such contrasting goals, it’s understandable that these approaches use different success metrics. Direct response typically utilizes straightforward metrics like sales, leads, or clicks. In brand advertising, on the other hand, the key metrics are long-term brand awareness, brand perception, and customer loyalty.

As you can see, the solution to the puzzle of “direct response vs brand advertising” is pretty simple. Companies can (and do!) use both approaches, depending on the desired goal. For example, a brand advertising campaign can strengthen a brand’s reputation in the market, while direct response ads help drive immediate sales.

What Are the Benefits of Brand Advertising?

We’ve already mentioned some strong sides of brand advertising, but let’s spotlight them for real.

Increasing Brand Awareness

Your product may be terrific, but until the brand is recognizable, it won’t become a success. So, brand advertising introduces it to a broad audience and allows people to pay attention the next time they see your product or hear your company’s name. Simply put, brand advertising is an investment in building awareness.

Building Trust and Loyalty

In today’s market, you often sell not just a product with its characteristics and functionality but also the values and emotions associated with this product. For instance, you don’t buy sports equipment. Instead, you pay for a new lifestyle, new body image, etc. If your brand advertising sends the right message, it creates an emotional connection that impacts the customers’ purchasing decisions. That’s why the most successful companies don’t just launch campaigns but narrate, create symbols and advertising brand mascots, and reinforce emotional connection with the audience. The more people trust you, the higher chances that they will stay loyal to you.

Higher Brand Value and Revenue

Building awareness strengthens your brand and increases its value. As a result, the company can charge more for its products because customers appreciate the values behind the brand and are willing to accept premium prices. A typical example is Apple.

Long-Term Success

Consistent brand advertising leads to more evident differentiation from your competitors. Eventually, a strong brand creates a solid basis for business growth despite market challenges. Moreover, a good brand reputation may be helpful in times of crisis and new opportunities, such as launching new products. If customers trust you, they will likely meet your new projects open-heartedly and forgive you for your mistakes.

As you can see, brand advertising is a powerful tool for achieving outstanding results. And since you’re already wondering how to do it, let’s skip to the chase!

How to Create a Brand Advertising Campaign

Launching a successful brand advertising campaign requires a thoughtful approach. Follow these steps to ensure you don’t miss out on anything important.

Establish Your Brand Basics

Before starting to plan a campaign, you need to make sure your brand identity is clear. Ask yourself: what are your brand’s values? What are its characteristics (how can you describe it)? What’s unique about your brand? What’s the story behind it?

Also, you may need to conduct market research to understand your competitors and the audience better.

Define Campaign Goals

What do you plan to achieve? Goals may vary from increasing brand awareness to building customers’ trust and so on. In any case, you should formulate your aim as clearly as possible.

After defining the goal, don’t forget to think about the budget because it will impact the next steps.

Create a Message and Visuals

The message must take into account brand values and the campaign’s goals, be authentic, and evoke emotions. Also, the message and visuals must be catchy and memorable. It’s a tricky task, and sometimes, it makes sense to involve a brand advertising agency to generate the creatives, but we’ll talk about it later.

Choose the Right Channels

In the research stage, you’ve learned much about your target audience, including favorite channels and platforms. It’s time to put this knowledge to work. Choose the channels where customers will likely see your ads, and, of course, be consistent in messaging across different channels. No matter where you place your ads, on social media, CTV, DOOH, podcasts, etc., your banners and video ads must tell the same narrative.

Next, allocate the budget between the selected channels according to your priorities.

Launch and Assess

Starting the campaign is just the first step. After you roll out your ads in various channels, you should measure their performance and make necessary adjustments. For example, you may reallocate the part of the budget to the highest-performing channels.

After the campaign is over, you should assess its overall results. Have you achieved the goals? What can be done better next time?

Brand Advertising Agency vs Self-Made Campaign: What’s Best?

As you’ve noticed, creating and launching a brand advertising campaign isn’t an easy task. That’s why some companies turn to professionals, such as a brand advertising agency.

Sure, this decision may bring you numerous benefits. For instance, a brand advertising agency has vast expertise, a team of professionals, and access to advanced analytical tools. Also, external specialists are unbiased; hence, they can help you notice insights you would’ve missed otherwise. At the same time, professional service costs more than DIY campaigns.

On the other hand, creating a campaign by yourself means having total control over the process. Moreover, you know your business, vision, and values much better than any brand advertising agency, which makes your decisions more profound.

So, how can you choose the right option? First, consider your budget constraints, the market type (how competitive is it?), and goals. Hiring an external agency is a smart solution if your budget is sufficient and your internal team lacks brand advertising expertise. If your budget is limited, you want to stay in control, and your employees are skilled, you can create DIY campaigns.

However, there’s a third option, and it’s a hybrid approach. For example, a brand advertising agency helps you develop the strategy, and your team handles execution.

As you can see, there are enough options for everyone! You just have to experiment to understand what’s best for you.

What Makes Brand Advertising Examples Great

To strengthen your brand reputation and market position, you can examine exceptional brand advertising examples and strategies that made them extraordinary.

Sense of Humor: KFC

Several years ago, KFC changed its food delivery vendor in the UK. Unfortunately, this led to a lack of ingredients and, eventually, the closure of hundreds of restaurants. Angry customers were all over the news and social media. They even invented hashtags like #ChickenCrisis and #KFCCrisis. Brand reputation was at stake.

Luckily, with the help of the brand advertising agency Mother, the company came up with a bold idea. Instead of blaming the vendor, KFC produced an ad featuring their traditional bucket with the letters “FCK” on it. The apology itself was written with honesty and humility.

The campaign was massive: only on social media, around 219 million people saw it. It prevented reputational damage and solidified the brand image.

Visual Image of Values: Duracell

Advertising brand mascots represent an efficient way to connect to customers. They are often cute and fun, making forming strong associations with companies much easier.

One of the long-lasting and famous advertising brand mascots is the Duracell Bunny. It was created in the 1970s, and since then, it has become a symbol of reliability and endurance.

Emotional Connection: Heinz

In 2022, Heinz started an experiment. The company asked people from 18 countries to draw ketchup. It turned out participants drew the Heinz bottle. Later, these drawings appeared on a limited-edition line of ketchup, on digital billboards, and in the video ad.

This campaign aimed to increase brand affinity, which had started to decline. And it was a success: 1496% social engagement and a 10% increase in sales.

There are many ways to strengthen your company identity, as you can see from all these brand advertising examples. You just have to find the one that suits your values and aspirations.

Programmatic Approach in Brand Advertising

Brand advertising has existed for many decades, but with the development of technologies for automatic ad placement, it has gained much more power and impact. Programmatic advertising helps companies buy ad inventory, plan and execute massive omnichannel campaigns, track performance, and optimize ads.

Numerous ad formats can be helpful for brand advertising purposes: display ads, banner ads, video ads, CTV, etc.

The programmatic approach can help advertisers reach the proper audience, optimize the budget, and scale the campaign efficiently. It offers creative personalization of ads and real-time optimization. So, it’s definitely an option worth considering.

If you want to try the programmatic approach in brand advertising, you should choose a reliable platform. For example, Epom White-Label DSP allows for the easy and convenient launch and management of various campaigns. The best news is that you can try it for free and test all its features.

FAQ

• What is brand advertising?

  Brand advertising is a marketing strategy focused on building and improving the brand's desired image (so-called brand identity) and driving customers’ trust and loyalty.

• What's the difference between direct response advertising and brand advertising?

  Direct response advertising is a marketing strategy focused on stimulating immediate actions from customers, like buying a new product, visiting the website, downloading the app, signing up for offers, etc.

  So, the main difference is the long-term focus in brand advertising vs. short-term orientation in the direct response approach. Also, these two types of advertising use different tools to achieve their goals.

• What are the benefits of brand advertising?

  Brand advertising introduces your message to a broad audience and allows people to pay attention the next time they see your product or hear your company’s name. If it sends the right message, it forms an emotional connection that impacts the customers’ purchasing decisions. Eventually, a strong brand creates a solid basis for business growth despite market challenges.

• How can I create a brand advertising campaign?

  First, you need to make sure your brand identity is clear. Then, define campaign goals and the budget. Next, create a message and visuals that are authentic and evoke emotions. Choose the channels where customers will likely see your ads, allocate the budget between them according to your priorities, and launch.

• Do I need a brand advertising agency?

  Hiring an external agency is a smart solution if your budget is sufficient and your internal team lacks brand advertising expertise. If your budget is limited, you want to stay in control, and your employees are skilled, you can create DIY campaigns.

  Also, there’s a third option, and it’s a hybrid approach. For example, a brand advertising agency helps you develop the strategy, and your team handles execution.