The Long Tail
As the long tail of the pandemic and winter still remain with us so does sticking to the strategy to try and get us to our end goals – staying home, keeping your distance and washing your hands. However, awful the pandemic has been, and there is no doubt it has been devastating for many in terms of health and wealth, it has given us a real life lesson of having to stick to the long term plan to achieve the long term goal.
At Antelope we believe in long term strategy. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t up for agile thinking and moving feasts but it means we believe we need a long term goal in sight. Spending time planning what you want your brand to be, what your positioning in your market is, what makes up your USP and who are your audiences are crucial things in a brand journey and to abandon them by the glimmer of hope elsewhere is like following the end of rainbow for the crock of gold.
Some parts of the process of getting to that end goal are boring and laborious – like building your audience base, creating and extending your distribution platforms or taking customers from trial to advocacy - yet are all part of the journey that if missed will leave your brand vulnerable later down the line.
This doesn’t mean there won’t be U turns on the way, or changes in direction and like any journey, traffic jams and diversions to other routes, but ultimately it is about reaching your end goal.
It amazes us how often brands lose their way. Their vision from day one somehow gets blindsided by the dead ends, or a short cut looks more promising. And occasionally this short cut is just that – a piece of innovation or a great idea that reduces time and money to help move your brand from x to y, but so many times it is more cutting corners.
PR and communications is often referred to as having a long tail for a reason. It isn’t as impactful as a great advertising campaign that can go viral, get everyone talking and change hearts and minds overnight. It isn’t as personalised as direct marketing tailored to an individual’s shopping habits and landing directly into their inbox. And it isn’t as interactive as socials where you can reach out for likes and shares. However, what great PR and communications can do is really embed the why of why a customer should choose your brand, the what of what it really stands for, its brand DNA and the how of how it is different from its competitors. However, to embed takes time and to have longevity means sticking to the long game.
Photo courtesy of unsplash.com/by David Bruyndonck