Have you Brandjacked, yet! Hurry before its too late!
Hitch your ride! The wave is coming!
Welcome to the 8th Issue of The Funnel Chemistry. It has been nothing but pure pleasure for me to create content for this newsletter and share it with you!
This email contains 1100+ words and would take 4.5 Minutes of your time!
Background
Two distinct campaigns attracted my attention this week!
The Relationchip Campaign run by Lays during the valentine’s week in which it involved other brands like Gillette, PayTM, Airtel etc., and complimented them very creatively! See the image below. Click here to download a PDF of all the images of this campaign!
The Relationchip campaign by Lays during the Valentine’s Week! The question that popped in my mind was
Why would a brand like Lays highlight another brand in their advertisement? What kind of logic is this?
Pulse Candy, a hard candy manufactured by Noida based DS Group, also mentioned brands like McDonalds, Fevicol, Netflix, Coca-Cola and many other brands on the occasion of World Compliment Day. The campaign thanked these brands for being awesome! See image below for how they thanked Fevicol! Click here to download a PDF of all the images of this campaign!
These are very cleverly designed campaigns. Both received a great deal of attention on the social media. Here are some features of both campaigns that I noticed.
Neither of the brands are in direct competition to any brands they mentioned.
Both borrowed the popular brand’s insignia such as logos, colors and other imagery and included them in the creative.
Both campaigns created a sense of good natured camaraderie. They highlighted the other brand’s qualities and values very elegantly.
While doing the above, both the brands drew attention to themselves through the creative placement of their own brand within the whole imagery!
Wait!
Aren’t all of these characteristics of Brandjacking?
Brandjacking
Bingo! That’s the answer.
These campaigns very cleverly used the concept of Brandjacking. Very simply put, it means, piggy back riding on the popularity of other brands. More formally:
Brandjacking involves assuming the online identity of another brand, company or person.
Although this definition was coined to indicate identity theft, it has slowly evolved to mean taking advantage of another brand’s popularity while drawing attention to oneself. Here is the Wikipedia’s entry on Brandjacking.
Please note that Brandjacking started as a negative phenomenon during the early days of the Internet. It was a term that was used to refer to fraudulent and unethical activity. However, over time its meaning has changed.
Here’s a sketch-note, I prepared on Brandjacking!
Click here to download a PDF version of this image!
More on Brandjacking
Brand-jacking: riding on the wave of a copycat culture
Here is an article from The Marketing Week. This is an important read to understand both the pros and cons of Brandjacking. While working with other brands could be substantially beneficial to draw attention to your own brand, overdoing it could invite serious trouble.
Copycatting Business Strategies - Brandjacking
In this article from LinkedIn, Sreekar Chintalapati, explores Brandjacking with respect to product packaging. He explains that when viewed through the lens of the Seven Degrees of Separation methodology, a brand’s packaging can be cleverly copied. This leads the consumer to believe that the products are equivalent and hence allow the copy cat product to ride on the Brand Equity of a well known brand.
How to use this knowledge?
If you are an underdog or a recently upcoming brand and need a quick ride to fame, then you can explore Brandjacking. Here are the steps to follow:
Step-1: Identify a set of brands that you want to Brandjack.
Do a bit of research. See which brands are often mentioned and which brands are aggressive in their marketing activities. You can also check out their social media activeness. Also, they shouldn’t be your direct competitors. Make a list of such brands.
Step - 2: Brainstorm how you can develop an association with the Brand
Do a little bit of brainstorming to see how you can develop an association with the brand. In the examples discussed previously the brands chose a good occasion or an event which may bring a warm feeling and a sense of camaraderie.
Step - 3: Develop creatives that mention the brand and follows it’s imagery
Remember that the mention must not blatantly imitate the brand. The messaging must be clever, indirect and the brand insignia such as logo and colors should be used only as mnemonics to invoke the popular brand’s memory
Step - 4: Check how your brand fits in
The whole objective is to draw attention using the other brand’s popularity and focus it on your brand. Otherwise it’s not Brandjacking! So, figure out how your brand’s messaging and imagery fits in. Examine how Lays and Pulse did it in all of their creatives. The links to download the creatives as PDFs are given above.
Step - 5: Execute the campaign
Plan and execute the campaign. Gently nudge and involve the other brand through mentions, tags and inviting their fans to have conversations with you on social media. All the while remember that tardy execution can draw you and your brand into a legal battle! It’s always better to avoid it.
Next Steps
Don’t just read these concepts and examples and be done with it. Please make sure that you take time to actually run a Brandjacking campaign. If you want my advise, reply to this email with your query and we can catch up!
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