Driving relevance back to a 40 year-old brand

Tiyale Hayes, EVP of Insights and Multiplatform Analytics at BET, delves into reinvigorating a legacy brand. Aligning with core human insights is key to reaching a broad audience, but it's equally important to deliver value to your specific target market. This balancing act is exactly what drove BET to rewrite its brand strategy, ensuring its continued relevance for the next 40 years. Today, Tiyale discusses driving relevance back to a 40-year-old brand.

About the speaker

Tiyale Hayes

BET

Tiyale Hayes is EVP of Insights and Multiplatform Analytics at BET

Part 1 Driving relevance back to a 40 year-old brand
Part 2Positioning your brand for the Black consumer audience

Show Notes

01:28

Tiyales journey into the media industry

Tiyale started in packaged goods, working at J&J and P&G before entering the media industry. Over the past seven years at BET, he's transitioned from leading the insights group to marketing, and he now oversees all insights and multi-platform analytics across the portfolio.
03:57

Understanding consumer behavior across categories

Consumers make decisions across categories based on similar underlying principles. Acknowledging these commonalities allows marketers to adopt a more sophisticated and relevant approach to targeting and engaging with consumers.
06:19

Balancing specific targeting with broad human insights in brand marketing

Clear insights and targets are crucial during the design phase. However, successful go-to-market strategies must consider broader human insights to resonate with a wider audience.
08:57

Catering to a broad audience and delivering value to a specific target market

The key is finding relevance with a broader audience while simultaneously overdelivering on your offer to your specific target. Through this, marketers create a system that allows consumers to self-select into the brand and feel super-served, leading to repeat purchases.
11:50

Positioning a brand relevantly within culture

True cultural relevance goes beyond superficial tactics. Marketing efforts must align with the values and beliefs of the target audience, avoiding clichés and performative gestures in favor of thoughtful strategies that address the target audiences needs and experiences.
16:14

Aligning brand values with products, programming, and campaigns

BET used its core values of Black love, joy, power, and pride to guide strategic initiatives. This included launching BET+ for Black storytelling, creating "Twenties" for LGBT representation, and introducing "Black Canvas" to bring beauty and pride to Black neighborhoods through murals.

Quotes

"For as much as we spend a lot of time solving for the nuances inside of the category, what we often miss are the similarities that are common across them." - Tiyale Hayles
"During new product innovation, a clear insight and target are essential. But when launching, be thoughtful about what is that human insight that that target aligns with that you can then bring others along on that journey." - Tiyale Hayles
"We've been able to create a system that allows us to help people feel like they self-select or are invited into the brand, but then they're also super-served once they consume, and that's what drives a repeat cycle." - Tiyale Hayles
"That balance of ensuring that the brand can represent and speak out and super-serve at home when they're using it, that's where marketers go from great campaigns to having great impact on consumers." - Tiyale Hayles
"For a brand to become relevant in culture, it must attach to the values and the belief systems of the target audience. And if it can be attached to those values, and to that belief system, then the brand has a way in." - Tiyale Hayles