Branding in an Omnichannel Environment –Interview with Jenni Romaniuk (Author of Building Distinctive Brand Assets)

I was privileged to have work with Jenni Romaniuk here in Manila Philippines. She is a research Professor and Associate Director (International) at Ehrenberg- Bass Institute. I was very impressed with her explanation on building “Distinctive Asset and Mental Availability strategy and measurement.? She does advisory roles in several companies all over the world on best practice and long- term brand management using evidence –based knowledge.? Jenni is based at University of South Australia Business school, the Ehrenberg – Bass Institute is the world’s largest institute for research into marketing.? The global pandemic was a catalyst in the rapid adoption of e-commerce in the Philippines, I reached out to Jenni Romaniuk to get her initial thoughts;??

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1. what are the critical elements to consider in building brand saliency in an omnichannel ecosystem???

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The first is what is risky to do, and that is to just rely on grabbing buyer attention when the buyer is already in a channel and ready to buy. The sales environment is just typically too cluttered and distracting for attention getting activities to work – it’s like trying to shout when everyone else is shouting too, it’s hard to hear everyone unless you know what to listen for.? To succeed in any channel, you need to prepare the buyer brain before they get to the channel.? Get buyers ready so your brand is one of the ones they are looking for.? This is the key role of your marketing communications activity, build the memory structures that make the brand easily thought of (Category entry points) and easy to find (Distinctive assets).? In an omnichannel ecosystem, with more channels, this means potentially greater complexity as the Category Entry Points and Distinctive Assets most useful in one channel might be less useful in another.??

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?2. With the rise of ecommerce adaptation, what can marketeers do to build its distinctive brand assets??

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It’s always been challenging to stand out in any competitive sales environment, even when it was just a single shelf in a store.? Now we have more environments and more competitors, so the stakes are now even higher.? Never has it been so easy for a brand to go unnoticed, like a wallflower at a party. ??

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This means understanding your brand’s shopping Distinctive Assets, which are the subset of visual elements that buyers use to find the brand in competitive environments.? This can be colors, images, words, fonts, shapes or any other visual elements on packs, street signage, ATMs, store frontage that could help buyers find the brand. These assets need to be developed pre-buying so they can be put to work when the buyer is in the shopping environment. ?I will talk about these more in the latest edition of How Brands Grow Part 2.??

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At the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, we are also currently doing further R&D on which assets work better or worse in e-commerce environments, so there will be more on that in the future.???

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