When you have more than 30 years of industry experience, like I do, numerous examples come to mind when this Law of Division is mentioned. To illustrate this rule, I’ve chosen to return to the media universe, because I think it’s the most obvious example, and the easiest to understand.
As a starting point, I often like to mention during training sessions that it was much easier for PR and marketing professionals to develop media strategies 30 years ago, before the Internet. There were much fewer “windows of visibility”, as I like to call them. Think about throwing a huge rock into the middle of a lake and the ripples reaching every bank. With a big enough budget, this was possible. For example, major groups swore by an advertising-only approach and paid little attention to what PR agencies were doing. With an advertising budget alone, big brands could easily showcase their products everywhere by purchasing advertising space on five traditional platforms:
Television
Newspapers
Radio
Magazines
Billboards
However, the Internet completely changed the game. In addition to these five platforms (which still exist), now each of these traditional media has its online version, their own website, a mobile version and now social media (theirs and yours): YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Google. Consumers have to make choices – which we call division – between these twenty or so different platforms.
Choosing a platform to promote a product is often complex, because each of them targets a different audience. This is why customizing messages and ads for Facebook, Instagram, TV and newspapers is important. This work of marketing and public relations professionals is very complicated, because you often have to pick your battles if you don’t have the resources to be active on all these platforms.
Companies like car maker Honda have made the most of this division by creating a new brand, Acura, for its luxury vehicles. This has enabled the company to generate excellent results in two completely different markets. I encourage to you take a look at the Polestar brand, which made the decision to market itself as a stand-alone brand with its own dealerships rather than as an electric car model by Volvo.
In the beauty sector, Clarins took positive steps by creating a completely new product line, MY Clarins, which offers more natural, vegan and organic products targeting Generations Y and Z (30 and under).
I hope you enjoyed this episode, and that this PR/marketing moment stimulates your creativity.
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