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Welcome to Stagwell Marketing Cloud x The Harris Poll monthly brand report.
Every month, we take brand data from the Stagwell Marketing Cloud’s Harris Brand Platform, a real-time brand management software tool, and highlight the brands you should have on your radar.
Let’s dive in:
Do award-winning brand campaigns move the needle when it comes to making a real brand impact? Or are they just industry acknowledgments of a marketing job well done?
This past spring, Ad Age awarded Hilton with a Creativity Award for the year’s “best rebrand.” Their global campaign, spanning platforms and featuring a viral 10-minute TikTok featuring hotel heiress Paris Hilton and a myriad of TikTok’s favorite creators in in hilarious rental-gone-wrong scenarios, differentiated Hilton hotels from both rivaling hotel chains and services like Airbnb and VRBO.
Through funny commercials targeting the expectations vs. reality of renting an Airbnb to booking adjoining rooms with your kids only to find out that the hotel took the term “adjoining” very loosely, Hilton’s campaign “It Matters Where You Stay” emphasized the benefits of staying at a Hilton.
And not only did it win the admiration of those in the industry, Harris Brand Platform data showed that their campaign had a major impact on Hilton’s brand equity and sales conversion funnel. Time for the data…
“Hilton’s campaign made it easy for consumers to understand their brand’s value proposition. “It Matters Where You Stay” shows how Hilton’s customer-centered care makes vacations less stressful and more delightful. After its July launch, US adults were significantly more likely to ascribe the following emotional attributes to the Hilton brand: “good value” (+2.3), “dependable” (+1.9), “trustworthy” (+1.7), “fun” (+1.7), “customer centric” (+1.4), and “practical” (+1.3).”
Mapping Hilton’s overall brand equity (Figure 1) from the beginning of 2022 through the end of May 2023, we see a significant lift in equity starting from the rebrand launch (July 25th, 2022). Even months after the rebrand launched, Hilton’s brand equity remains elevated throughout the tracked period. Brand equity measures the value that consumers see in a brand at a particular moment in time. It is an average of four components – brand familiarity, perceived quality, purchase consideration, and perceived momentum.
Brand equity measures the value that consumers see in a brand at a particular moment in time. It is an average of four components – brand familiarity, perceived quality, purchase consideration, and perceived momentum.
We see similar growth in Hilton’s sales conversion funnel (Figure 2) from pre (1/1/22-7/24/22) to post (7/25/22-5/31/23) rebrand. Four of five phases of the conversion funnel increased post-rebrand: awareness (+1.5), familiarity (+2.4), trial (+2.6), and usage (+2.7). This signals that consumers more often reported booking with Hilton after the rebrand.”
The Harris team summed it up in their case study: “This Campaign is an excellent example of how a strategic rebrand can build brand value. The campaign grabbed consumers’ attention with a new approach to travel advertising that focused on the stay experience, not the destination. Their humorous scenes depicting what can go wrong on vacation increased consumers’ trust in and positive associations with the Hilton brand.”
Read the rest of the Hilton case study here.
Over the last few years, Tinder has worked to help protect its LGBTQ+ users through a variety of investments in their health and safety.
Last summer, they teamed up with the Human Rights Campaign during Pride Month to raise awareness and find participants for ADVANCE Study, a study run by blood centers, the FDA, and the LGBTQ+ community to push for an end to the FDA’s three-month deferral policy for men who have sex with men and want to donate blood.
Have Tinder’s investments in the causes important to their LGBTQ+ users translated to increased movement throughout the sales conversion funnel?
The study aimed to end this discriminatory ban, instituted at the peak of the HIV/AIDS crisis in 1985—and it succeeded. Just this past May, the FDA made changes to their policy.
And in the summer of 2019, Tinder launched a feature to help LGBTQ+ users stay alert if they are in countries where same-sex relationships or acts are illegal.
But have these actions been seen as corporate lip service from the LGBTQ+ community? Or have Tinder’s investments in the causes important to these users translated to increased movement throughout the sales conversion funnel?
Let’s see what Catherine Ake, Content Stragetist over at Harris Brand Platform, found when she dug into the data.
“From the chart above, we see that Tinder’s sales funnel among LGBTQ adults (blue) is wider across each phase of the conversion process than Tinder’s funnel among overall US adults (red). LGBTQ individuals especially outpace the general population in familiarity (+15.2) with Tinder and trial (+6.9) of the app. However, the two funnels’ numbers level out when we proceed to regular usage (+1.8) of and recommendation (+0.7) of Tinder.
Using Harris Brand Platform, we also examined the emotional attributes that consumers attribute to the Tinder brand. Interestingly, LGBTQ adults who are familiar with Tinder are significantly more likely to say that Tinder is “fun” (+8.2), “good value” (+10.9), “hip” (+10.0), and “simple” (+6.1), reflecting some of the value that LGBTQ individuals see in using the app.”
With Tinder’s 50+ gender options and nine possible sexualities for users to choose from when registering for the platform, the dating app has secured loyalty from LGBTQ+ users.
Up next Tinder is working to secure the loyalty of fickle Gen Z. Melissa Hobley, Tinder’s Global CMO, spoke to Insider at Cannes about how they’re “obsessively thinking about how [they’re] going to reach Gen Z.”
Among the tactics? “We’re investing more in the platforms and the people that are reaching Gen Z.” They’re doubling down on TikTok and YouTube while also trying to determine new brands to collaborate with and putting increased spend into influencer partnerships.
Read the rest of the Tinder case study here.
What if I told you only 2.8% of popular music was produced by women?
Women make up 49.7% of the world, and 30% of the artists on 2022’s Billboard Hot 100 Year-End Chart are women. So how are only 2.8% of those songs produced by women?
Bose launched its Turn the Dial campaign to highlight this gap and work towards closing it in this past March.
Bose partnered with She Is The Music, a non-profit dedicated to increasing the number of women in music, to create a board of high-level women music executives that will help usher in the next generation of female and non-binary producers. Producers can submit their work for review to the board quarterly with the hopes of sharing it with the world.
“Despite progress made within the industry, there is still more work to be done to combat lack of representation in music producers,” said H.E.R. in a statement. “It’s an effort that will require collaboration from industry partners and allies like Bose, and together, we can use this platform to help and inspire the next generation of producers.”
So did this campaign make an impact for Bose’s brand equity?
The Harris Brand Platform did some digging to find out. Let’s see what they have to say.
“Bose’s purpose-driven marketing campaign appears to have resonated with female consumers. According to Harris Brand Platform data, Bose’s brand equity among women significantly increased from Q4 2022 to Q1 2023.
Among female adults, Bose experienced increases across all components of brand equity (+6.5) from Q4 2022 to Q1 2023: familiarity (+7.6), quality (+5.5), consideration (+9.3), and momentum (+3.4). In contrast, Bose’s brand equity among male adults either remained relatively constant or decreased over this same time span: brand equity (-1.6), familiarity (-0.1), quality (-0.2), consideration (+1.5), and momentum (-7.6).
Among female adults, Bose experienced increases across all components of brand equity from Q4 2022 to Q1 2023.
Among female consumers, Bose’s sales conversion funnel also widened across each phase of the customer acquisition journey from Q4 to Q1. The greatest increases were seen in brand familiarity (+7.6) and trial (+7.0). This signals that female consumers were more willing to try Bose products in early 2023 than they had been at the end of 2022.”
There is a place for thoughtful purpose-driven marketing, and Bose’s Turn the Dial campaign is a great example of that.
An intentional mix of beautiful advertising, real action, and a future commitment gave Bose a leg up with female consumers after the launch.
