Brand Focused Appeal

If your reputation in your market is sufficiently strong, you can consider communications content which focuses just on the name. In such cases your name, reputation or the set of values your brand image conveys is enough by itself to get your message across. On another page (Branding) we used the example of Mercedes Benz’s ‘Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz’ campaign. In a suite of TV ads, the company has a range of people – from all kinds of backgrounds – singing snatches of the well known song. Not a word about the features of the car, nothing about the famous Mercedes engineering, no safety message, nothing! The name says it all.
Here’s another example – this full page ad runs in national magazines and costs many thousands of dollars per insertion, and it’s an ad which does not actually say anything, or does it? The idea is that it says everything!

Perhaps it does say everything, more than a description of the features, the quality, the materials, the prestige, the comparisons with competitors. Everything you need to know is in the name. For this kind of appeal to work, you need to be confident, even arrogant, and you have to have the wherewithal to back it up – otherwise you look foolish!

However, it is important to note that you don’t have to be a household name to do this. Artefact is a household name, but only in our own house, so far! In your niche market, or in your local area, you can do this too if your standing is such as to justify it. Brand appeal is really saying buy this product on the strength of the reputation of the vendor – you can’t go wrong! It takes time to earn the right to make that sort of appeal