How Messaging Drives Brand Recall in Media Buying Campaigns
A key goal of media buying is building brand awareness and recall. Brand recall means remembering a product or service when it’s time to act. For example, if you’ve seen repeated ads for utility rebates on your social feed, you may recall that brand later when you’re ready to lower your bills.
What triggers recall is often positive experiences, trusted recommendations, and consistent messaging. Research shows it can take up to 18 ad exposures in two weeks for a brand to stick in memory. Strong messaging—delivered often, in the right channels—is what turns awareness into action.
How brand recall reflects your media buying and advertising strategy will differ based on your priorities and an understanding of your customers. For a media plan to be effective, it is not only where you place the media but also how you target and customize the message to fit your audience’s needs. Messaging will drive brand recall when there’s momentum toward taking action.
Top 5 Things To Know When Creating Targeted Messaging For Your Media Buys:
1. Intent:
What intent is your media addressing? When looking at your customer, what is it that is going to drive them to your product or service?
2. Media Demographics:
Content consumption varies based on demographics. Using a short video effectively will depend on the content, age, and medium of the target audience viewing it. Millennials’ appeal to video is undeniable. However, having grown up in the video era, they are quick to identify stock footage from original videos. They are therefore more resistant to paying attention to a stock video. In contrast, videos created in partnership with influencers will be far more effective, as they are perceived as genuine experiences. In general, highlighting the benefits of watching the video, such as a special offer, discount, or other services, will encourage the user to watch and take action.
3. Media Ethnography:
Awareness of media diversity is a critical driver of consumption in diverse communities. A 2019 Bloomberg report showed that African Americans are 20% more likely than the total population to say they will “pay extra for a product that is consistent with the image I want to convey.” In this report, we’ve gathered data from more than 20 reputable sources on how diversity affects marketing effectiveness and media placement.
4. Media Proximity:
How close is the consumer in proximity to the product or service? At our agency, we develop strategies that, in specific cases, prioritize budgets and messaging based on proximity by creating geographically fenced areas both in digital and physical mediums. Within these areas, we deliver customized messaging targeted to persons in the vicinity of the advertised product or service.
5. Media Relevance:
Each advertising medium is active in a different way to appeal to diverse audiences. While a billboard is just a billboard, the messaging on that billboard may be more relevant to a diverse audience than the advertisement’s creation. The relevance to foot traffic may be different from that of transit. While you won’t always please everyone, it is essential to base those decisions on your measurable priorities to determine how effective your existing message is in achieving the ROI that your advertising should yield.
Brand recall is a primary goal when developing media buying campaigns, and success requires effective messaging. By creating compelling messaging that resonates with your target consumers, the likelihood that they will see and remember your brand increases. At Los Angeles-based multicultural marketing and advertising agency, Wicked Bionic, we offer media buying strategies and campaigns for large organizations and government agencies targeting diverse audience engagement.
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About the Author
Dana C. Arnett, Founder and CEO of Wicked Bionic, spent 30 years in the entertainment business before starting the agency in 2015. The Los Angeles-based multicultural communications and advertising agency works with government and private-sector clients on strategic marketing and engaging media campaigns. Dana has always loved learning from other cultures, and that curiosity became the foundation for how Wicked Bionic approaches culturally responsive marketing – building authentic connections between organizations and the communities they serve.
