Brands warned about risks of aligning with social causes
Brands need to understand their audiences before aligning with a social cause, warned Eleven PR and TBWA Sydney’s creative director Russ Tucker at yesterday’s CommsCon.
“You really need to know your consumer before you jump into it. Brands that have been burnt – where it has gone wrong – it’s because they haven’t road tested it on their audience or they haven’t had enough conversations with different parts of their business, I’m talking about outside of the marketing, CMO bubble, it’s actually people on the ground,” he said.
Tucker and Millikin speaking at yesterday’s CommsCon in Sydney
“It’s almost a bit like when brands didn’t have a social media presence, you kind of just don’t trust them as much.” and “people may trust a brand less if it now doesn’t show an opinion.”
Twaddle. That’s what people are told, not what they necessarily believe. The ad industry insists it seems, on treating people like sheep.
So ” Brands need to understand their audiences before aligning with a social cause,” no shit Russ.Followed by the icing on the cake when you said ANZ was taking a risk by sponsoring the Mardi Gras… What is this 1983? Just when you think the story bottomed out..