Niche brands need niche marketing, but mass brands still need mass marketing

That is the conclusion in Nigel Hollis’s recent blog. Whilst he accepts that brands like lowermybills.com and even Ben Sherman can profit from niche marketing, he contends that major brands such as P&G, Kraft and HP need to use mass (i.e. TV) advertising. His main point being that new media channels simply do not reach enough people on their own.

One of the interesting factors that Nigel highlights is the different standards of success and failure that different channels are currently being held to. A YouTube upload that is viewed 100,000 times is usually considered a success. By contrast “NBC’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip or [CBS’s]  Smith, which was the first cancellation of the fall TV season, are branded as failures even though they generated nearly 10 million viewers a week and are supported by advertising.” he says.

Nigel is certainly not a refusenik when it comes to new media, and highlights that one of the problems with conventional mass media is its declining value for money, which he considers to be a bigger issue than its declining reach.

Nigel also highlights the slide below from SlideShare which both highlights the current dominance of TV and the extent to which new media have arrived on the scene.

For non-UK readers ITV and C4 are the largest two UK TV channels that carry advertising (the BBC does not carry advertising).

Comments

[EC]

Mass brands could use niche marketing to promote their niche products as well to build the mass branding..

[Ray Poynter]

Hi Martin, I think your observation supports the main point. If a product is for mass consumption, then mass media needs to be a major plank of its communication strategy. However, for niche brands, or niche products from major brands, niche communications may be the optimal route.

The topic of early adopters is, perhaps, even more interesting. I find them to be a double-edged sword. Sucessful innovations tend to be used by early adopters first, but most products used by early adopters never become sucessful. Most digital early adopters had Apple Newstons, Psions, and many other PDAs which were doomed to failure. By contrast, the Apple iPod was shunned by many new adopters because it was technically an inferior product (in terms of functions per dollar). I tend to view early adopters as necessary but not sufficient.

[martin Silcock]

Hmm doesn't it depend on what your marketing objectives are and how new the product is you are marketing?

Say a mobile phone manufacturer integrates a GPS turn-by-turn navigation feature into its devices. Should this be mass marketed or should they find niche users and early adopters and market in a more focused way?

Nokia and Sony Ericsson are major brands, but maybe also needs to think small when the market is small...but will grow?

Martin