What is Brand Response?
Brand response is a form of advertising used to enable growth and sales traffic through a clear call to action. It uses the storytelling techniques of brand TV advertising to aid your company’s longer term goals.
Meaning a brand response Advertising is a style of marketing your brand. There used to be a common view that there were only two sorts of TV commercial: brand or DRTV.
What Is A Brand Commercial?
Brand commercials were usually produced with high production values, and their sole purpose was to raise awareness of a product or service; the viewer would act on that awareness by making a purchase at a later date thanks to the memorability of the commercial.
Examples Of Brand Commercials
Common examples of this include commercials for Cadbury (Phil Collins Gorilla ad), Sony (Bouncing Coloured Balls), John Lewis (Animated Ad) etc.
Why The Need For Brand Response?
DRTV was regarded (often in disparaging terms by some in the advertising industry) as a vulgar offshoot.
What Makes A Direct Response Ad?
Direct response ads tended to be made more cheaply, and they were festooned with large phone number graphics and repetitive “call-to-action” exhortations in the voice-over.
Then Why Make A DRTV Advert?
Despite these reservations — DRTV adverts work extremely well in generating immediate enquiries and orders for the advertiser.
How Does Brand Response Work?
Nowadays many advertisers want the best of both worlds, and that’s where BRTV comes in. Brand Response TV, or BRTV as it is typically referred to, combines the higher production values associated with traditional branding commercials.
Why Do Traditional Branding Values Aid A BRTV Advert?
Employing these values means the ads lend themselves perfectly to traditional and modern, data-driven media buying patterns, with the response-driven techniques of DRTV (direct response) style advertising.
What Does A BRTV Advert Look Like?
These commercials are typically short, snappy and use some techniques similar to traditional branding commercials. The response element is still of paramount importance, so they commonly run to just 30 seconds. BRTV ads tend to take a softer and more creatively memorable approach; the aim is still to sell but with less of an ‘In your face’/’hard selling’ style.
What’s The Difference Between BRTV & DRTV?
Brand advertising aids brand recollection over a long period of time. Direct response is fantastic for company sales and growth, however it is more short term, and is often advertised in a crowded marketplace of similar content and categories. This means companies are increasingly moving towards “brand response,” what Space City like to call, the hybrid strategy.
The Benefits of Brand Response TV Advertising
The gap between direct response and pure brand commercials has narrowed – particularly with the ease of app/website response mechanisms. This has led to the creation of a new genre of TV advert: Brand Response commercials (BRTV). So what Is the difference between brand marketing and direct response marketing (or equivalent), see here for more info.
What Makes A Good Brand Response Advert?
A good brand response can be successful in two ways. It can generate immediate enquiries or orders from viewers who need your product or service now. But it can also establish awareness of your company name, so that viewers who need what you have to offer at a later date will recall the ad and search for you by name.
What To Consider When Making a brand Response Advert
1 – CALL TO ACTION
This one appears pretty obvious right? Well without a call to action, your ad is substantially less likely to get a “response” unless you’re an incredibly popular household name, such as Cadbury, John Lewis etc. The power of a brand response call to action is in the integration of the ad as a whole – if you simply stick an endboard graphic and a promo code to the video and hope it works, it’s unlikely to as your audience will experience a mixed message. The trick is to Define the exact action you want to generate with your ad, then use this to guide your entire narrative. Otherwise the story elements can feel arbitrary and actually hinder your objective.
2 – STORY
As we touched upon above, brand response advertising requires an actual narrative, it must reach beyond a simple testimonial, presenter, problem-solution, or how-to video. Of course these are all great DR tools, however for a brand response advert they feel too functional and ‘like a pitch’. With BR You need to show, not tell. A testimonial ad for instance won’t become brand response simply by the presenter wearing a memorable costume, a successful brand response advert will illustrate a narrative that causes an actual emotional connection and response. A top tip for deciding on your advertising story is to make sure that the plot actually sounds interesting before you’ve even sourced a cast, crew, props and location. Then it is up to you to ensure there are moments in the story that are calibrated for maximum humour, empathy, pathos, or whatever emotion you’re intending to install.
3 – Transition
Transition is when your adverts story begins to provide sales information needed to convert interest to sales. A stereotypical strategy is to spend 15 seconds advertising a comedic scene or scenario, followed by then underlining the solution to the exact problem it’s describing. You’d then likely transition into 15 seconds of more classic DR advertising to really hammer home your brand and call to action. Effectivly, once you’ve earned the audience’s trust and attention, that’s when you transition from storytelling to sales. Ideally the moment of the transition should feel organic and rewarding. The actual announcement of what product or service the scenario is advertising gets the biggest and most rewarding emotive response.
4 – Aspiration/Needs
It’s common knowledge that benefits to a consumer are more alluring and persuasive than advertising your product features. This is because the benefits of your product or service are connected to the customer’s aspirations/needs. Brands know this, and intertwine their ethos and marketing in order to connect with their demographics aspirations and needs on a deeper level. In addition to the call to action, the brand response narrative should illustrate a consumer mindset: I will buy this because I want: a more organised life, a healthier life, a happier life. In conclusion, all of you ad creative choices need to reinforce how you want your audience to feel, a clearcut understanding of their aspirations and needs is the key to marketing to a relevant audience, and ensuring they perform your call to action.
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How Can Space City Help?
Space City has produced dozens of successful brand response TV adverts. We know how to construct scripts and creative ideas that will create the greatest response, while also achieving maximum possible awareness and recall of your brand name.
Examples Of Space City’s Work
If you are looking for a brand response agency to produce a commercial that promotes and protects your brand, whilst simultaneously gathering responses, check out a few of our recent brand ads below:
For more check out our showreel!
