Brands spend millions of dollars on advertising every year in order to catch your attention. They launch campaigns, purchase media, create content, sponsor events and search for new ways to reach audiences. Your assumption is simple: if people see your message, then they are more likely to make a behaviour change.
For decades, this was logical. Visibility was the challenge. Today visibility is no longer the challenge. Attention is. Every day consumers get thousands of messages. They have hundreds of times more content, they see almost every advertisement and have more brands than ever before. In an age in which everyone is competing for attention, just being seen is not enough.
And that’s where I believe many brands are still asking the wrong question. What is a better question than “What should I do to get more people to notice us? How do I develop something people will like to talk about?Because the truth is really simple.
As the most successful brands spend millions of dollars talking to people, while the best brands develop reasons people want to talk about them. And there is such a difference between the two.
One approach is to communicate. The other is experience. One relies on advertising. The other relies on advocacy.
The most valuable marketing asset
One of the most valuable assets any brand can build is not awareness.
It is not engagement,It is not even reach. It is advocacy.
When a customer says, “I’d like to recommend that to one of my friends, family members, or colleagues,” that is really amazing. The brand no longer speaks for itself, someone else is speaking on its behalf. And that recommendation brings with it something advertising can never fully buy: trust.
People trust recommendations from people they know more than they trust messages created by brands. That has always been true, and despite all the technology in marketing, it is true today.
So, that is why some brands grow when their competitors spend much more on advertising, and the brands’ customers become part of the marketing system. Not because they are paid to. Not because they are asked to. Because they really want to.
What I’ve learned
I’ve worked on campaigns in so many industries, audiences and goals. I’ve seen campaigns with huge budgets that generate huge engagement but disappear from public consciousness on a grand scale just weeks later.
At the same time, I’ve seen smaller initiatives really stick because people chose to talk about them long after the campaign was over.
One thing has been common: People rarely remember campaigns.
They recall experiences and they remember how a brand made them feel, And more often than not, the campaigns that generate the most meaningful conversations are not the loudest ones. They are the ones that make people feel that there is a reason to share a story, a recommendation to make, a conversation to have.
Why people share
We do believe that people are sharing products, among other things, and that is a big misconception in marketing. In reality, people share experiences , they say things that surprised them, share things that solved a problem, have discoveries, describe moments in their lives that turned out to be the most enjoyable, better, or easier ones.
When was the last time you recommended a restaurant, a hotel, a mobile app or a technology? You probably did not begin with specifications or features, You described it and said the experience. How it made you feel. Why it stood out. Why somebody else should try it. This behaviour tells us something.
Customers do not become advocates because a brand communicates well. They are advocates in the sense that a brand creates experiences that are worth communicating.
Real-world examples
Tesla — marketing without tradiational advertising
Tesla became one of the most recognisable car brands in the world and had much less traditional advertising than most of its competitors. Rather than spending so much money on media, the company benefited from something far more powerful: passionate customers.
Tesla owners frequently posted on the Internet, recommended vehicles to friends and family and rallied their own community to support their brand in large numbers. The company showed how when customers believe in a product, they become a better marketing force than advertising itself.
Airbnb — turning trust into growth
Airbnb’s growth was sped up by a referral strategy that encouraged existing users to invite new customers. And more importantly, people were not just suggesting a booking platform. They were suggesting trusted travel experiences. Airbnb created one of the most effective growth engines in the sharing economy by converting satisfied users into advocates, demonstrating how trust can be a scalable business asset.
The AI era makes advocacy more valuable
Artificial intelligence has changed content creation in an enormous way, more quickly than ever, brands can create visuals, videos, copy and campaigns. Production quality is becoming more accessible. What once required big teams and big budgets can be produced in a fraction of the time.
But AI can’t make content creation happen faster and can’t create trust at all.
It cannot force someone to recommend a product to a friend, cannot create real belief, and it is not a replacement for a good customer experience. In fact, if content is easier to create, authentic advocacy is even more valuable.
If every brand can create content, the brands that stand out will be the ones creating experiences that people genuinely want to share.
Final thought
The future of marketing may not be the brands that are making the loudest campaigns. It may be the brands that generate the strongest reasons for people to talk. As soon as a customer becomes your biggest marketer, growth is no longer driven by what a brand says about itself.
It is driven by what people say when the brand is no longer part of the conversation. And in a market where trust is increasingly difficult to earn, that might be the most powerful form of marketing.
By Firas Alkhuffash, Creative Director
