Does Topicality Strengthen A Brand's Symbolic Strength?

The current trend is for brands to link themselves to the Rio Olympics and to the ongoing paralympics to achieve their corporate or brand objectives. The list of brands doing Olympics specific communication runs from IndusInd Bank (the bank supports 18 Indian para-athletes as part of its CSR program, IndusInd for Sport), Yuvraj Singh's apparel brand YWC, Cinthol Deodorants, Dove. Other brands trying to link themselves more broadly to sport and the Championship narrative include Savlon, Edelweiss, Tata Salt and JSW. The assumption is that being part of a topical theme that engages consumers will give the brand extra mileage by way of garnering consumer attention (a very scarce resource), consumer liking/affinity and even some longer term associations of specific attributes. Is this indeed so? Are these outcomes likely? Is topicality an effective strategy for enhancing a brand's symbolic strength?

If we consider an event such as the Olympics/Paralympics, the collective imagination and emotions are anchored on specific symbolic elements such as specific athletes/sports people, specific events and narratives. The over-arching narrative of the event is the Championship Narrative - the story of what it takes to become a champion. Usually the championship narrative is constructed from a few traits or qualities - talent, stamina, grit, determination, focus, perseverance, resilience, demonstrated at a heroic level.

The Indian brands listed above, currently attempting to build associations with the Olympics via topical story-telling are all tapping into the Championship narrative in slightly different ways. However, their story-telling style in terms of film aesthetics and cinematography are just minor variations of the established template of the Championship narrative in film. This naturally leads to audience memory issues - how does the audience differentially link a story with the specific brand telling that story and remember that? And if the audience faces memory issues of linking brand name to message to story, then objectives can hardly be met - in terms of growing brand attention, affinity, trust and underlining or adding attributes to the brand.

For achieving brand objectives, what is required is not a slice of the championship narrative with a sign-off of the brand name but an original way to connect the brand's DNA or core attributes to the Championship narrative. And these need to be the core attributes that sit at the heart of the brand's DNA, not peripheral attributes or distant associations. The thought that makes the connection between the two unrelated elements, viz the brand and the Olympics should be a well-understood and accepted cultural code or shared belief. If the communication planning and creative development process makes this happen, it is assured of success in meeting brand objectives. Otherwise, the team might as well save money and effort and not waste them.

The most successful marketing campaign linked to the Olympics is P&G's "Thank You Mom". And its success is precisely due to identifying a core brand attribute and encoding it with the Championship narrative. P&G's core business target group are mothers as they are the buyers of most consumer products for the home. And it is mothers who take on a lot of the hard work of raising champions. The Thank You Mom campaign celebrates the mothers of the Olympic Champions by showcasing the heroic role they play. The campaign was first launched at the London Olympics in 2012, continued to the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2013 and has now been extended to the Rio Olympics in 2016 as well. It was a fully orchestrated 360 degree campaign. Much information is available on the case study on the web for those interested to learn from it. P&G shows how topicality ought to be leveraged to strengthen brand's symbolic strength. None of our brand's efforts comes anywhere close.