Approaching the start of 2022 — a year many remain hopeful will hearken a massive comeback for travel — experts say they're keeping a few things in mind as they build out their marketing plans for the year.
While speaking during "Meet 2022 Marketing Goals with Balance and Integrity" webinar hosted by Reuters Events, Emmakate Young, director of brand strategy, global sponsorships and Olympics/Paralympics for Delta Air Lines, said her advice for brands both new and old is to keep it simple when trying to reach consumers.
"At a huge brand that's over 95 years old with 75,000 people, we have to constantly focus and keep everybody focused on: What is our brand? What is the simplest form of our brand? What is the bull's-eye, and continue to remind people who it is we're talking to," she said.
Young said the next step beyond that is defining clear parameters on what you can and can't accomplish.
"Do you have enough resources to build all of that content you're planning for?" she asked. "Those are the conversations we have every week to constantly optimize and see if we can pull this off."
Ellie Doty, who recently stepped down from the role of chief marketing officer for Burger King, said one of the chief tasks heading into next year will be balancing marketing's roles in driving long-term brand value and short-term sales goals. Those two don't always go perfectly hand in hand.
"Sometimes you can do things that can actually drive a pretty good outcome in the short term that cause you a lot of problems in the future, and you'll regret you did that," she said.
She cited print coupons as something that could be potentially dangerous in brand building.
"Not to villainize print coupons. I know they have a time and a place, and Burger King certainly uses tons and tons of print coupons, but it's really hard to balance that with long-term brand health and the perception that engagement gives the guests about the type of brand they're engaging with," she said. "So striking the balance in planning between what you do to achieve overnight success and how that builds your brand over the longer period of time I would that for me is one of the biggest challenges."
Young said the work of finding that balance is a "constant recalibration." At the same time, she said it's important not to start thinking that sales and marketing are at odds with each other.
"Sometimes marketing is more supportive of sales and those short-term performance metrics, versus other times they're more supportive of brand building and long-term brand affinity," she said.
Doty said one solution to this problem is to look at every part of a marketing campaign through both lenses, because if the two goals are siloed, organizations will suffer.
"So anytime that you find yourself saying, 'Well, this is my bucket of money, my resources and my people that are going to drive my brand over the long term, and this is my bucket of money, resources and plans for short term,' it doesn't really work like that," she said. "Because actually, every single dime you're spending, every single thing you're doing is saying something about your brand. It's building it, or it's denigrating it. So I'm a big believer in always advocate and planning that every activity is a brand activity and every activity as a sales-driving activity. So there needs to be a connection between the two."
Young said it's also important to maintain integrity in marketing plans for 2022, which amounts to being honest with both external and internal groups.
"Sometimes it's having the integrity to tell people what they don't want to hear or educating folks in business units that perhaps aren't as close to marketing and saying 'Thank you for this idea, but it's not going to work for these reasons because the math doesn't add up,'" she said. "So I think there's also a piece of that integrity of our cohort as experts to say, 'Well, this is what's going to actually happen if we proceed with this idea that you have coming out of your unit.'"