How Can You Build A Brand Build Without Advertising?

Very often we come across such clients who want to build their brand without allocating any marketing budget for advertising and marketing.

Also, then there are brands that have just grown without spending much on advertising – like Krispy Kreme, Facebook and GoPro – but these are rare exceptions to the general rule and they have been successful for its innovative and excellent products and services.

But is it really possible to build a brand without advertising or marketing? I guess theoretically the answer would be yes. Whereas, PR and word of mouth will also need a lot of time to achieve what you would have achieved otherwise through advertising.

And often the client/brand does not realize that when he says advertising, he means traditional advertising, and excludes all the newly introduced digital platforms and social media, and some of those who adopt mainstream advertising have big pockets and some of the biggest spenders in this domain. However, it is a proven fact that remains the same advertising – particularly traditional advertising – is still the most useful weapon to achieve the desired marketing results.

Now imagine that you are launching a luxury brand. While it’s important that the advertising communication in the domain should reach out to the potential customer, it’s as or even more important that those who cannot afford it should be exposed to the advertisement, as well. Because one of the biggest reason why people choose luxury brands is to flaunt it, and for that others too need to know that such a brand even exists and know it’s real worth in the market. To achieve this, digital advertising targeted exclusively to the target audience alone will not work, but traditional advertising will also deliver huge results.

Another point to be noted is that when a customer sees an advertisement, especially on television, it gives them trust and confidence in the brand. Some of the leading national daily countered it by telling the clients and regular readers that it is far more cost effective to run their ads in print mediums than on TV as newspapers have far more reach, which was indeed true. However I would like to believe that the clients profited by Advertising on TV. Though the reach may have been lower, a TV advertisement lends the brand more stature and also it reaches to the right target group if advertised at the right time on the right channel.

To simply put this, we are still quite far away from seeing the best of advertising, especially in India where most of the brands are under-branded and under-advertised. If you don’t have sufficient funds, and would like to build the brand without advertising much, remember the wise words of Bruce Barton, “In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times, you have to.”

So, take it as our word of advice or suggestion if you are all set to build a brand without advertising. Don’t.