Brands and Consumers: Marriage of a Tap Dance

Decades ago, under the traditional slate, marketing and branding was done through intrusive communication approach, of repetitive advertising which was judged to be the process of achieving consumer mind-recall. This strategy was deduced from Harold Lasswel’s Hypodemic Needle Theory, which postulates that the consumer is a sitting duck, and that the media has all the power to influence the consumer’s decisions, so anyone who controls the media, controls the mind of the consumer… Brands deployed this strategy through advertising weighting of frequency and reach (share-of-voice). The process was assumed that whoever spends more, achieves voice dominance, better mind-recall, and consumer mind-share at points-of-purchase. The communication was horizontal, the consumer was left at the back of the fence watching everything thrown at him. Brands used search light to look for the consumer, deploying Above-the-line (ATL), Below-the-Line (BTL), Direct Marketing (DM), Over-the-Counter Exchanges (Coupons); that is because the consumer was placed at the rear end of the ladder of the marketing mix.