Have you heard of a menswear brand called Barkers? Probably not.
I hadn’t heard of the brand before 2023. I visited Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand for a conference in December 2023, when I came across their store in George Street, Dunedin. A shirt caught my attention and the purchase at the store was Barkers’ initial entry into my clothing brand repertoire — especially after I discovered that I could purchase their items from Australia (along with the steep delivery cost).
The subsequent online purchases meant that I was offered loyalty incentives: monetary value to offset my purchases, along with extra rewards on my birthday. As I buy more items, the more offers and enticements I receive through seasonal changes, clearance sales, and events such as Black Friday and Christmas.
This tactic is not isolated to Barkers. I get emails from other clothing brands in Australia because I have purchased from them before. The fact that I had a look at an item and bailed out would even trigger an email with a message along the lines of “You have such a good taste! That cardigan is still available for your size. Please finalise your purchase before they run out!” It’s almost like touting vendors who will hound you in touristy places, the moment you show an interest.
The limit to buyer loyalty
After a while, I tuned out of the offers. I had to.
There’s a limited space in my wardrobe, and I don’t need another jacket, polo shirt, or extra pairs of shoes or chinos. This highlights to me the limit of pushing existing buyers to buy more from the brand and applies to all sorts of categories from haircare to electronic gadgets.
At one point, existing buyers simply do not have the need or capacity to buy another item from the brand. It also highlights the peril of relying on sales and discounting – as buyers can certainly stockpile during sale period and not purchase from the brand for an extended period of time.
Touch, don’t hound. Connect, don’t pursue
Despite the increasing acceptance that penetration is important to grow brands, the lingering fixation on narrow targeting persists. Perhaps this is related to a sales concept that companies should pursue their warm leads, as they are easier to ‘convert’ to sales. Whilst this might have worked (and still do) for one-on-one sales deals, the translation into marketing tactics looks very much like hounding. The ability to customise and personalise offers and communication is promoted to build relevance and warmth. It seems to have been cranked up to hound ‘warm leads’ with eDMs, social media ads, and even desktop notifications. Frequency capping is often set at a campaign or specific media level, and when you are the subject of multiple campaigns from multiple media, these frequency capping is next to useless.
Related to the point above, there are ceiling norms to category purchase. At a certain points, consumers can’t buy more of the category items. The limitation of using ROI as a success measure for marketing campaigns is this. Some may still succumb to purchasing more, but drawing from the same well will eventually drain it. When all brands do is relying on the same database of warm leads, the ROI will eventually decline and the vast majority of consumers will remain oblivious the brand exists at all.
This post may stress the same point that you have heard before, especially from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. The fact that you can personalise, customise, and pursue your leads, doesn’t mean you should always. The debate surrounding revenue chasing vs brand building often misses the point that brands also risk alienating buyers by hounding them. In a recent co-authored paper at the Institute, we also identified that asking buyers to buy more of the category is the least effective compared to other growth levers, when growing a category.
Sticking to the theme of apparels, it is thus not surprising that many clothing brands are struggling at the moment. Country Road Group recently reported a loss of A$164M — I haven’t seen any advertising for their brands on wide-reaching media, but I have certainly been constantly reminded of their Spend & Sale activities or that my Rewards dollars are expiring soon.
Coming back to Barkers, I would want them to succeed as they have finally set up their Australian site. Chasing current buyers to buy more is a less-effective strategy in the long run compared to widely advertising the brand to millions of potential buyers who need to know that the brand exists. Current and lapsed buyers will return to the brand – but they will just need to be reminded occasionally.
Postscript
There are some comments from various fronts that we should adopt bothism — building brand but also focus on short-term performance marketing, reaching widely but also putting efforts to pursue current buyers to ‘close’ the transaction.
In theory, this is achievable. In practice, it’s challenging to manage long-term unless the brand has a sizeable budget and the team has the discipline to cover both. With limited money and during budget cuts, something has got to give. The one sacrificed is usually the long-term brand building and wide-reaching efforts. Furthermore, the executions differ for both, which include the choice of media, reach and frequency, plus what needs to be communicated.
Marketers can’t get away from performance marketing through sales, promotions, and discounting – and the instinct to pursue ‘willing prey’. However, we need to instill a discipline that the aim should be to build the mental availability for long-term brand survival and growth.