Being clear on a brand’s WHY and HOW
How to define brand relevance
Timeless relevance is the brand’s north star (it is the WHY)
Timeless relevance is the brand’s heart and soul, it remains constant. It’s Cadbury’s relentless focus on ‘generosity’, it’s Nike’s 30 years of ‘Just Do It’ and Oreos’ passion for bringing parents and children together.
Timeless relevance determines the functional and emotional value that the brand delivers, and guides what innovations, communications, activations and partnerships the brand should invest in, and how these will make a difference to consumers and shoppers’ lives.
Timely relevance is the contemporary execution of the brand (it is the HOW)
Timely relevance ensures that the brand remains relevant over time despite shifts in society, culture, and the competitive set. It’s how brands such as Nike adapt to incorporate representation of different sports and cohorts, and how Cadbury used their generosity to respond to a global pandemic.
Brands that don’t adapt to cultural shifts, won’t remain relevant. Brands need to respond to:
emerging cohorts, needs and occasions
social and environmental changes
technological advances
the cost of living and hyperinflation
health and well-being concerns
competitive threats
The latest TikTok trends are not the same as brand relevance, and while they might provide the framing context in which you can choose to express your timeless relevance, but they do not provide the substance on how to be relevant.
Timely relevance must be based on what personally matters to the people that you’re trying to reach (not broader big-picture, global or societal matters). The ability to identify personally relevant insights are at the heart of this.
“What’s changed, over the decades, has been the rise of individualism and the fragmentation of culture (thanks to the explosion of TV and social media channels). Nowadays, what matters to you, doesn’t matter to me. This has led to the emergence of tribes and the importance of self-expression.”
At Pepsi, the Mountain Dew team wanted to identify relevant sustainability messages for the Mountain Dew consumer. What personally mattered to consumers of Mountain Dew, (a popular soft drink in the USA), was preventing trash in local and regional places of natural beauty rather than saving the planet at large, which felt too distant. This resonated far more deeply with the Mountain Dew core target, typically males from the South, who live in the moment, who are deeply connected to nature, but may not have the opportunity to travel outside of their state.
“Someone in the Pacific Islands will care about rising sea levels, as they can see and feel the direct threat, but if you’re several hundred miles away from the sea, you won’t prioritise global warming in the same way. You are more likely to care about the things that you can see, which in small-town rural America is litter & pollution of your local environment.”
Timeless relevance and timely relevance work hand in hand
Ensuring that there is a strong connection between the timeless (why) and the timely (how)
Brands can lose their way if they lose sight of their ‘why’ and simply chase culture.
“There’s a whole world of things that you could do and should do, but it’s tempting to jump on the bandwagon of cultural hot topics. This should be avoided.”
Pepsi - Where timeless and timely relevance became disconnected
Pepsi juxta-positions itself against Coca Cola’s comfortable, nostalgic, familiar positioning as the on-trend, next-generation, better-tasting cola. In recent years, it became so focused on the ‘now’, and buying timely relevance, for social issues (such as the much-cited Kendall Jenner racial protest ad), that people could no longer understand what Pepsi stood for. The team needed to re-invest in the heart and soul of the brand (the timeless relevance) and become more selective about the initiatives to support. This has most recently manifested itself in the refocus on taste and enjoyment through actors as cultural ambassadors. The brand still uses actors, musicians & cultural themes and speaks for social causes, recently championing black-owned restaurants to stand for racial equality and opportunities.
Nike - Where ‘Just Do It’s’ timeless and timely relevance have remained consistently connected
Nike consistently connects the timeless (motivating people to participate in sport and achieve their personal bests) through the Just Do It campaign, and through investment in technical product innovation to fuel performance. The Nike Just Do It campaign was first conceived in 1988, based on the mantra that you should do what it takes to win. The first ad featured an octogenarian, Walt Stack who would run 17 miles a day, come what may. This creative idea has successfully spanned 3 decades, representing different sports, and athletes, from Michael Jordan, to Agassi vs. Sampras to international women’s football teams, all demonstrating the grit it takes to be a successful athlete.
Cadbury - Connecting the timeless and the timely elements of generosity in the wake of the pandemic
With a long history in community giving dating back to 1935, the brand anchors its timeless relevance in the idea of generosity. This connection between the generosity of giving, receiving and enjoying chocolate and the glass and a half of milk is what sets the brand apart from others.
The Covid pandemic severely impacted the Indian population. The Indian Cadbury team used deep cultural insights to link Cadbury’s timeless generosity with a timely expression of the brand. This was hugely successful in reach and impact, because, like the Mountain Dew initiative, it was highly relatable.
“During the pandemic it became apparent that the middle classes were hugely dependent on maids, chauffeurs, cooks, and security staff. They were a hidden network which kept the country running, yet which had been taken for granted for years”.
New pack innovation replaced the Cadbury branding with ‘Thank you’ in different languages for people to gift to their workers. Cadbury made a contribution from the sale of each of these bars to health insurance for these ‘daily wagers’, to show appreciation of those who had previously gone unnoticed.
“This was timeless relevance as it related to giving and gifting and the generosity of Cadbury. It was timely as it was about the post covid moment. It highlighted that the social class gulf had always existed, and that those people who had been sitting the shadows all of the time, were the ones keeping people’s lives running.”
In a second initiative from Cadbury, the brand recognised those small businesses which had been impacted by the lockdowns. Cadbury empowered people to ‘advertise’ their local stores, including Cadbury’s heartland, the Kirana stores, India’s equivalent to a corner shop. Using a combination of AI and geo-location, Cadbury enabled the spread of generosity at scale, by repurposing its marketing spend to be ‘not just a Cadbury ad’, and included ads from other businesses.
“Diwali of 2021 was first big Diwali holiday after the pandemic wave, although unlike other Diwali festivals, people were only able to celebrate in small family units. People wanted to know how to help shopkeepers, who had struggled to keep their shutters up. Using Bollywood’s Shah Rukh Khan people were empowered to use AI to create an advert for their shopkeeper to share on social media. This was a timely way to express the core purpose of the brand, generosity. It was one of the most forwarded Diwali greetings on WhatsApp, and benefited both local traders and the Cadbury brand.”
Keeping brands relevant in a crisis
Crises such as hyperinflation or cost of living increases should not create knee jerk reactions from brands. Marketing should use price pack architecture, and downsizing to remain at a price that consumers can afford.
Reframing value
However, focusing purely on promotional wars only leads to short-term wins. Brands that focus on promotion alone, lose profitability and can’t invest in brand building, innovation, renovation and sustainability. Focusing on consumers who only buy on promotion misdirects attention to those who don’t value the brand.
“The win is in justifying and defending your brand with claims that justify the price premium. Using behavioural sciences, you can re-frame value and celebrate the functional and emotional value that your brand and category brings. This is particularly relevant for branded chocolate in a cost-of-living crisis!
Our Spanish Suchard’s Team reminded people that Suchard brings people together over Christmas and holidays. They dramatised this through an emotional campaign about the Grandma dying and the family spending their first Christmas together without her. They remembered her as they re-enacted a long-standing family tradition of sharing Suchard chocolate. We reminded people that the brand brings connection to others, elevating its status in their minds.”
Nespresso is able to retain its value by reframing its competitive set. It is not competing with instant coffee or even premium coffees, but out of home coffee occasions. As people become more sensitive to out of home spend, the at home Nespresso coffee can still continue to be an everyday indulgence.
Similarly, Philadelphia has a broad competitive set which includes spreads, cheeses, meals, eating out, or getting a takeaway from a deli. This differentiates it from other cheeses for sale in the supermarket aisle.
How to stay relevant and be authentic
As a LGBTQ+ spokesperson, Nick shared his view on how brands can authentically represent different communities. Brands should reflect diversity but in a measured way that retains what the brand stands for, i.e., the timeless relevance of the brand, and to commit to representing and supporting consistently across years.
“As a gay man, I notice every execution that has gay couples. However, in the search for representation, many brand initiatives and activations can become overwhelmingly try hard, and lack authenticity.
If you want to represent different communities, you need to have a good story, and you need to deliver it consistently over time. You can’t just stop and make it a one-off; that’s not authentic. Not every advert has to have the gay couple, or a mixed-race couple with a baby. You can use different representations across different parts of the mix.
First and foremost, the brand should communicate what the brand is about, and the storyline and casting should be in support of that. McCain got this just right for me. Their timeless relevance centres around food which brings joy and conversation to everyday meal times. The ad I saw in the UK depicted family love, silliness and coming together over food. It just happened to have gay people in it, but that wasn’t the main story, you wouldn’t necessarily have noticed them.”
Mondelèz heroes a number of causes, perhaps the most visible being Oreo’s support of the LGBTQ+ community. At its core the brand’s timeless relevance is about bringing kids and parents together, and that means all kids and all parents. Oreo supports the LGBTQ+ community through a parent-child lens, and is very proud of its year long relationship with Pflag, an association which supports parents and families of LGBTQ+ people. The brand also has a proud record of supporting Pride with campaigns and limited-edition Rainbow Oreos.
Lacta, a chocolate brand in Greece and Brazil, whose timeless relevance has focused on love stories and chocolate, and has won multiple awards at Cannes Lions, responded to the rise in domestic violence against women in 2021 to create communications about what love was not. The clichéd love story starts off idyllically, but the coercive control and violence that ensues encourages people to act before it’s too late. Lacta has long-standing partnerships with NGOs against domestic violence and supporting gender rights and equality.
“Lacta’s equity built up over time and not out of the blue. It was represented in a multi-year journey, centred on love.
If your brand’s core message is meaningful, long-standing and unique to your brand, then representation can become part of the message, but the timely element reflecting different community and causes should not overwhelm the timeless brand truths.
Oreo has got this just right; the brand is fundamentally about a strong parent-child relationship.”
How has brand relevance changed over time?
Timeless relevance has always been important as the focus of brand building and marketing. Timely relevance has also always been in play, but the difference in the speed of cultural change and cultural conversation means that marketeers need to be acutely attuned, as the timely relevance context changes quickly. Brands are also under more scrutiny than ever before.
“The microscope that brands are under is more intense – this is good for accountability and avoiding things like ‘greenwashing’, as people can look up ESG performance, but it can also make marketers nervous to act or take a stand on issues.
There will always be haters and you’ll always offend people by accident. However, if brands stay true to their timeless relevance and act with integrity, consistency and purpose across timely brand executions, then supporters will eventually win through.”
Ultimately having a laser sharp focus on brand relevance is a business’s bread and butter. Mondelèz’s delivery of +19.4% organic net revenue growth in Q1 2023 is testament to this.
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