Creative Integration - The New Clutter Breaking Mantra

With ever increasing proliferation of media alternatives and a consumer with a baby's attention span, it is becoming harder to break through the clutter and make your brand stand out. How do you deliver your brand message in this noisy media environment? The key is to create impact through the brand campaign.

In the present scenario, there are two ways to create impact and force your brand message down the consumer's throat -

• Hijack the available media opportunities during a campaign period so that wherever the consumer goes, your brand follows.
• Negotiate creative integrations within the media content linking your brand message with the content.

First option is a costly approach. If a marketer has huge budget at the disposal, that would be a feasible strategy. For example, Vodaphone hijacked the IPL-2 with its Zoozoo Ads. So if you have the money, make yourself present all across that the consumer cannot escape the brand message. Of course, you have to make sure that your message is cool enough not to irritate consumers by forcing them down their throat.

Second option is more practical, particularly for brands without huge media budget. The trick is to identify hot media properties poised to create impact and associate with them by negotiating value additions in the form of creative integration with the main content. The idea is to align a brand and its message in all possible ways around high voltage media properties. Creative integration could be in form of Aston bands, Squeeze-backs, break bumpers, and many more depending on the creative prowess of a marketer and the advertising agency is and the negotiating power of the marketer. But there is a caveat with this approach. The marketer will have to get deeply involved with the media property owner and negotiate the best possible creative integration leveraging relationships. This approach cannot be left at the mercy of media agency guys, who are more inclined to negotiate uniform deal for all their clients instead of specifically working for a particular client.

Creative integration, if used creatively, can be the new clutter breaking mantra for brands.