Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World

CHAPTER 11Digital Brand Storytelling

Mohanbir Sawhney

In the digital world, consumers are inundated with brand content. With so many brands competing for attention, content that consumers don’t find useful or timely is dismissed immediately as noise and easily tuned out. Cutting through the clutter to capture mind and heart share is a very real and pressing challenge for brand marketers today.

And yet, some brand voices are rising above the crowd. Consider the “#LikeAGirl” campaign from Always, the feminine hygiene personal care brand owned by Procter & Gamble (P&G). Instead of talking about its product, Always focused on the negative perceptions associated with what it means to run, throw, or do anything “like a girl.” By challenging this stereotype in a multichannel campaign, Always struck a powerful emotional chord with girls and parents worldwide.

The inspiration for this campaign came from research conducted by Always, which found that when girls reach puberty they typically experience a significant drop in self-confidence.¹ Always’s response was a cause-related ad campaign that sought to “rewrite the rules” of puberty and bolster the self-confidence of teenage girls. The Always campaign video was one of the top viral ads of 2014, with 54 million views on YouTube alone—and that was before it was shown to the Super Bowl audience.²

The success of the Always campaign illustrates the power of digital media to create a conversation between brands and consumers, as well as among ...