Lauren Mendelson discusses “Umbrella Branding” January 7, 2010
Posted by Mark Blei in : Staff posts, cute animals , trackbackMy name is Lauren Mendelson and I’ve been at DL for nearly 2 years, working out of the New York City office as a research analyst.
I recently conducted an analysis for a car manufacturer, who was trying to market four new vehicles at once. The goal of this campaign was quite lofty: the car manufacturer wanted to increase awareness of these four new cars as well as to increase intent to buy the models.
This type of online campaign is known as an “Umbrella Branding” marketing strategy. The key to these types of campaigns (according to Millward Brown’s March 2008 POV) is to have a consistent and clear brand identity across the various components. With Umbrella campaigns, when many models or brands are being advertised, research illustrates that only a few brands benefit and others get ignored.
This was the case with this campaign: while the creatives were synergistic and had a similar look and feel, not only to each other, but to offline advertising as well, some models received more attention than others. In this case, a luxury sedan and a minivan were more memorable and favorable than either the SUV or the coupe being advertised.
Additionally, this campaign differed from their past advertising in that it focused on multiple vehicles, which accordingly had different targets, different demographic variables, and different psychographic compositions. By trying to appeal to so many groups, this campaign did not resonate with their main target as well as past campaigns have, which were centered on only one type of vehicle.
Umbrella campaigns are similar to co-branded campaigns in that they often cause the viewer confusion. Often times at Dynamic Logic, we see that co-branding or Umbrella campaigns can have a negative effect; in this case, the creatives did not cause respondents to react in a negative way, but at the same time, the campaign did fall short of achieving all of its goals. With these types of campaigns, it is necessary for each car model to have its own moment of clarity, its own moment to shine.
It will be interesting to see how this car manufacturer decides to advertise their new suite of products. Will they continue to have ads that have a barrage of vehicles, or will they only feature one model at a time? I guess we will have to wait and see!
When not conducting research, I enjoy photography, traveling, and spending time with my new puppy.
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