With brands today having so many routes to market and so many media channels to consider, the art of good communications is not about the matrix of complexity but the succinctness of simplicity.
We recently commissioned market research looking at brand leadership – and specifically at the qualities that consumers look for in brands. We focused the context on how organisations present themselves in news and the media, because that’s our area of interest.
What emerged from the data is consumers know what good looks like and they have a clear idea in their mind what the attributes of brand leaders are. It’s not something that’s really defined by the brand agency or the company itself. Most consumers know themselves that qualities they look for in leader brands and the attributes that impress. And these qualities work across different sectors. As always, the last word is usually with the consumer and certainly, from our research, the viewpoint was clear.
From the new data, the attributes that really matter are the human ones. Sometimes companies think that scale and weight matter. Even with thought leadership, there’s often an implicit assumption that a weightiness to the intellect is what matters. Our research suggests otherwise: big brands that can show more engaging, human characteristics — and convey genuine personality — often are more likely to be viewed as leaders in their sector or category.
Our new research was a re-run of an original study on leadership which we worked on back in 2014. Almost a decade later – and after a pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis – we thought it would be interesting to explore whether consumer views on brand leadership had changed much. There was evidence of some pretty significant change in the new data. In terms of the style of communication there seemed to be a heavier focus on authenticity and trust. Trust certainly featured more than it did back in 2014.
Elephant will be running some Zoom sessions and discussions on the new insight report in March. To book in to join a session, do drop us a line.
