From mass media to digital. Not only direct marketing products, but also consumer goods that have traditionally centered campaigns around mass media are accelerating their shift toward digital advertising and social media-driven campaigns.
Meanwhile, building brand fans—a new challenge that began in some areas 5-6 years ago—is becoming increasingly crucial for corporate marketing. Cultivating fans through social media and owned community platforms is gaining importance.
Effectively leveraging both "advertising" and "fan-building" using digital within the overall marketing strategy will be a major challenge going forward.
However, when actually planning and executing these two approaches in an integrated manner, there are surprisingly subtle differences that are easy to overlook. Before diving into the work, here are three key points worth keeping in mind:
1. The methods of communication are fundamentally different
The first hurdle is likely the "wall of similar yet distinct approaches." Unconsciously assuming that since both involve "communication," they must be similar, companies end up planning fan-building initiatives with an advertising mindset, leading to disappointing results.
Having experienced both, I now realize that the planning methods honed in advertising and the communication required to build a fanbase are fundamentally different.
The biggest difference is that when building fans using digital tools, you must constantly consider "how the other person will react" while creating your strategy. Reactions come back immediately through posts and comments, and to build a fanbase, you need to respond carefully to these reactions.
Of course, advertising also requires checking whether "this message or expression might harm or offend anyone." However, fan-building initiatives go further, encompassing concerns like "will people who only read the article title (and there are indeed more of them) misunderstand and send inquiries?" To constantly keep these things in mind, you must have a very concrete understanding of who your readers are.
Furthermore, meticulous attention is required to how the "manner" of information delivery appears to the recipient. When using advertising for information dissemination, the sender often focuses solely on "communicating the information they want to convey," frequently neglecting to properly assess whether the recipient truly wants that information (in terms of timing or content).
When you view the recipient not as an individual but merely as "one consumer in the marketing landscape," your approach can become somewhat careless. If you want your information and content to turn people into fans—that is, to change the feelings and awareness of individuals and then prompt them to take actions favorable to your brand—you must acknowledge their existence and interact with respect, just as you would in real-world human relationships.
Those who have experience building brand fans through owned media and social media likely possess this intuition, accumulated unconsciously over time.
2.The way KPIs are understood is different
When the desired goal changes, the logic for measuring results naturally changes too.
In advertising, the conversion concept is often funnel-shaped, envisioning a journey from awareness to consideration to purchase. In contrast, when building brand fans, challenges frequently involve metrics like "frequency of brand contact" or "spontaneous engagement with the brand."
The most crucial factor is the degree of loyalty to the brand. However, rather than measuring this solely through quantitative behavioral data like "purchasing actions," a new approach is emerging: regularly checking brand awareness and continuously gauging true loyalty – the genuine affection and desire to engage with the brand that each individual feels.
Like advertising, building fans involves specific goals: driving traffic to product information, increasing brand favorability by X%, or boosting sales. However, unlike advertising, which quantitatively funnels customers from top to bottom, building fans requires the brand to consistently engage with each individual as a person. Paying meticulous attention to every single word in an email, every piece of text in a website announcement, and every form of expression is a very mundane and labor-intensive task.
Moreover, even highly loyal customers don't constantly think about a specific brand throughout their busy lives. There are periods when they're preoccupied or simply stop paying attention to the brand. Nevertheless, striving to understand these customer circumstances and sincerely responding to their feelings ultimately builds a strong customer base.
3."Advertising people" and "fan-building people." There's a gap born from their respective rules of thumb.
When you talk about building brand fans to people with advertising backgrounds, you often get reactions like, "How does that actually drive sales?" or "Sure, books say fan-building is important now, but there aren't any real success stories, right?"
Compared to the reach of advertising, the number of people targeted by fan-building is smaller. Moreover, implementing fan-building initiatives requires year-round effort, unlike time-limited advertising campaigns, making it labor-intensive. Viewed against advertising, it can seem very inefficient.
Conversely, once companies seriously commit to building a fan base, they often become skeptical of traditional advertising tactics and start distancing themselves from them. They realize that merely chasing volume will never lead to truly understanding their customers. They conclude that marketing cannot evolve without this shift in perspective—a crucial insight.
How can we prevent this naturally emerging gap between the two approaches from widening? Should we chase short-term numerical targets or focus our efforts on building medium-to-long-term relationships?
The answer likely lies not in either extreme, but in "clearly defining how to use both approaches within the overall marketing strategy, tailored to the specific challenges of each business."
Advertising alone can disseminate information but struggles to build connectivity. Conversely, fan-building excels at nurturing connectivity with existing customers but lacks the reach to connect with those unfamiliar with the brand.
Creating an environment where the advertising team and the fan-building team can constantly communicate, reporting their respective goals and outcomes from their daily work to each other. I believe significant rewards lie in not shying away from the steady effort required to truly understand each other's differences firsthand.
To evolve marketing, I believe one crucial key is to constantly be aware of the "differences" that arise unnoticed amid digitalization.
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