Community has stolen a brand space
Irish people once found meaning and fulfilment in brands. A BMW could tell others that you were successful and you would knowingly nod at other BMW drivers feeling part of an elite group. Only 8% of people believe that ‘nowadays status comes from having well known brands’.
People can no longer afford to buy into status brands. Rather they are flocking back to local, intimate communities in search of meaning and fulfilment. They are being drawn to micro groups because macro groups, the government, the banks and the church have let them down. Essentially they are searching for trust. By acting local and intimate your brand can get to a point of trust more quickly and earn peoples loyalty. Call us to find out more.
A NEW SOCIAL ORDER
When will the recession be over…? We often hear this question being debated. Perhaps a smarter question for marketers to start thinking is ‘ what will your consumer want as the recession evolves?’
A consumer with new behaviours and priorities is evolving- we call them the New Normal
Old values and the New Normal are not natural bedfellows.
The context in Ireland is different to anywhere else .
This recession is largely centred around how we feel, it is largely emotional. It is now estimated that Irish households have access to 95 bn in deposits but we are not spending it. We do not feel like spending it. We lack trust and we prefer to keep it until uncertainty lifts.
It is therefore necessary for marketers to understand how to shift the resilient consumer mindset. Not all categories are in decline.
A New Social order exists as consumers change their priorities. Impatience, the prevalent Celtic Tiger mode has been replaced by fear. That is the real problem. Brands need to catch up and play a new role to help them. Brands were always built around emotions. They now more than ever need to remember this.
We are seeing increases in spend and commitment to sectors such as communication, training and savings/debt reduction. Consumers such as females are putting their family first so spending less on themselves and need to justify their treats.
Consumers are now claiming, according to our survey, justaskmccp, that self respect and warm relationships with others are more important to them. Consumers have moved down the
The who, what, why, where and how that impacted consumers and brands this week
Who?
Wayne Rooney this week became the latest celebrity endorser to find himself dropped (or at least temporarily sidelined) as Coca Cola pulled the plug on a campaign featuring the Manchester Utd striker amidst allegations surrounding his private life.
As sports stars, celebrities and politicians increasingly have their professional lives merged with their private lives how can brands negotiate this maze to implement successful endorsement strategies?
What?
Findings of a health and lifestyle survey carried out on behalf of Kellogg’s released this week reveal that 36 per cent of men and 8 per cent of women claim they do not need to adopt a regime to look good.
In a time when awareness of many of the key health issues (particularly obesity) are affecting both men and women is at an all time high how can brands overcome the head in the sand attitude of many Irish consumers in order to get them to engage with health and lifestyle products?
Why?
The steepest drop in Irish consumer sentiment for four and a half years occurred in September as people continued to grow more concerned about the broad economic outlook, the expected hit to household spending power in the forthcoming Budget, the increased cost of the bank bailout and Ireland’s withdrawal from the bond market.
The question which we pose to you is how can your brand show that it is there to help consumers manage their painful adjustments in the wake of such drastic cuts to household budgets?
Where?
Carat’s Consumer Connection System (CCS), an annual survey of 11,000 people,
Kings Fund, Cavendish Square, London was the venue for WARC’s conference on “The Future of Advertising Research 2010” yesterday. The conference is a great initiative as it is an acknowledgement that while the media and communications channel environment is evolving rapidly and the way in which we are advertising is changing, our methods of researching insights and ideas before campaigns as well as tracking their impact afterward, has been slow to match this evolution. Brands need to better understand who their consumer is, what drives them, what matters when making purchase decisions (and in what context) and ultimately get smarter insights around key areas.
MCCP were in attendance to hear a variety of speakers from those working in Brand’s marketing departments, to those from research companies, to representatives of social networking platforms. While the day covered a myriad of perspectives on the challenges for advertising research, there were 4 things we thought were really interesting.
1. Kathy Dykeman from Facebook talked measuring the impact of earned media rather than bought media. In a world where brands can use people as their communications channel, as they become fans of a brand or a campaign on-line, we need to look at how we measure the impact that social network activity has for our brands. Earning media rather than paying for it does not mean it is cheap. It requires a lot of investment in strategic planning and idea generation to make sure you earn the right for your idea to be endorsed and spread
Geolocation has promised much but can soon start delivering
Much discussion has surrounded the use of geolocation technology in the marketing sphere for some time now. In Ireland, many brands have expressed an interest in the technology and its associated platforms but thus far opted to watch developments eagerly from the sidelines. You will have also observed that the conference circuit has been stuffed full of eager brand managers listening to digital gurus speak on their experience and thoughts of this emerging marketing sphere. However, extremely strong growth in mobile web access, coupled with industry predictions that such web access will outstrip that of desktop access by 2014 means that time has come for many brands to take the plunge. Rather than waiting for others to take the first step, much can be learned through trial and error within this field for a relatively small price.
Take for example the case of the NBA basketball team the New Jersey Nets who recently experimented through a partnership with geolocation platform Gowalla in delivering a social media campaign. This campaign utilized Gowalla’s virtual item platform to distribute 250 pairs of virtual tickets in targeted locations around NYC (sports bars, outdoor parks, gyms) for April 12th’s New Jersey Nets v. Charlotte Bobcats basketball game. Users that found these virtual tickets were able to redeem the item for real tickets on the night of the game. The campaign was a success simply because without the use of any ATL media it helped bring a new demographic to the New Jersey Nets, helped fill seats
First Time Parent Market – A Chance for trusted brands to provide baby comfort?
As a recent first time mother, I was bemused by the decisions and array of choices that face the first time parent in kitting out their new bundle. Daunted enough by the prospect of becoming a parent, they then have to contend with shopping very unfamiliar categories (and brand names) such as Baby Equipment, Accessories and Food.
Little did I know that a visit to the buggy shop (or in parent language ‘travel system provider’) would be akin to car shopping….each brand mark with its own distinct personality ….and very much positioned within its own sector….’economy, mid class or luxury’ . And in reality, for some, the brand choice is based on what status symbol it might convey about you as parent. For example in the US, Jeep car manufacturer has very successfully extended its brand into the stroller category, meeting Mum’s need to have safety and security for her kids but also to live a little of the ‘Jeep lifestyle’… ‘off road prowess’.
Faced with a myriad of choices, first time parents are looking for beacons to guide them through these unchartered categories. Is there more opportunity for the familiar trusted brands that these parents have grown up with (food, cars, toiletries brands etc) to stretch into these ‘first time parent’ categories to meet the fundamental needs of the first time parent….a need for reassurance, trust, validation and the familiar?
Twittersourcing – a new way of discovering insight
George Hook and I shared a micro blogging conversation on Twitter about three weeks ago.
Last week, Oliver Kay, a football journalist from the Times commented on an opinion I gave him regarding the World Cup.
Last weekend, Shane Hegarthy, Arts Editor for the Irish Times, asked me my advice about a music festival.
The accessibility which Twitter has provided to actors, football players, journalists and TV personalities is one of the many reasons why I have become a huge fan of Twitter. It is not just the micro conversations and accessibility I enjoy though, they have made it really easy for me to like Twitter in general. Being from a generation with a relatively short attention span, 140 character micro blogs is just about the right amount of information especially when you only have the time for a quick browse.
But what really impresses me about Twitter and something which I am very excited about in terms of how we will understand consumers in the future is the ability to crowd source news, views and reactions from people in real time. When I want to find out news instantly, I am increasingly using Twitter over Google to get news in real time. Recently, I crowd sourced England’s World Cup squad (it broke on Twitter before Sky Sports), why the French team went on strike at the World Cup and it is how I discovered why my train was recently delayed on Irish Rail and just how long it was going to be. Mark
The individual is dead. Long live the collective.
One only has to look at pop culture over the last twenty years to see how we as a race have treated the idea of a singular mind. For ten years, Federation captains in Star Trek battled The Borg to foil their attempts to integrate humans into their collective, be as one with millions of others. The last decade has seen a TV show place members of the public into a house for the Summer, where psychotic individualism is encouraged, and where singular thinking, and the conflict it results in, entertain us…or at least used to.
Now, Big Brother, and its breed of mutant Freud Id complexes, meets its maker on the close of the current series, and Trekkies everywhere know it’s inevitable that the Borg will win out eventually. Resistance is, after all, futile.
There are numerous examples of the collective mind gathering momentum at all levels of Irish society. Take the number of community based initiatives being launched and adopted by the masses. Street Feast, for example, is a new activity that celebrates community and encourages people all around the country to hold street parties. Community gardens are developing all around Dublin with the aim of bringing communities together with the shared goal of making the city greener. The success of Dublin’s shared bike scheme indicates that even ownership is taking a collective shift.
In Post Celtic Tiger Ireland, it is the collective mind we are embracing more and more. Empowerment for the consumer no longer lies in being able to
Planners need to step up
Has Strategic Planning a new role to play in post recession or early recovery marketing and communication…
Agency world as is client world is in a state of flux or even turmoil depending which way you look at the world.
The future of agencies is probably the bigger question really. Do we need a horse drawn carriage analogy seems to jump to mind…
Agencies I believe need to get back to fundamentals not necessarily add wings and fancy bits to make them work better. They need to focus on developing brand ideas that can generate business and brand advantage.
Here are a few thoughts on the role of strategic planning…
Poor strategic planning that produces generic insights and what I call tick the box planning is probably costly and should be ‘removed’ from the process.
There are a lot of smart people who is engage in this form of planning. They talk the talk but don’t unearth meaning or significance.
There are some good thinkers and people in agencies who can talk the talk but in essence there are not a lot of people who offer substance in the way of generating game changing ideas for businesses. Those who do need to be treasured.
As budgets have receded and consumers buying process is more complex and we have on going media fragmentation, planners need to be more collaborative in that they need to be bringing clients and the experienced idea generators together including consumer understanding and leading the process of translating it to business generating ideas for the brand.
Better to highlight a virtue than defend a vice?
I recently read Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander. The name of the book struck me in the shop. “Why?” I thought. “It is not exactly a crazy book title.”
But I soon realised, there was something else about the title, which was unique. When was the last time I sat down and read something, which was about what people enjoyed and liked? I actually couldn’t remember. I read a lot of research reports and newspapers, I hear rants from consumers and TV personalities which usually focuses on problems and negative perceptions, which generally show the unhappiness of consumers with everything such as…
“People are angry with the banks”, “Consumers are cutting back across all categories”, “Value for money bla bla bla Aldi.” (Source: Much of Irish Market research)
There is nothing wrong with this as such, it demonstrates that it must be true. These are truths, they are trends, but what seems to be the biggest stumbling block at the moment, is that consumers, marketers and advertising folk are obsessed with focusing on stuff Irish people don’t like and not enough on what Irish people like. Is this not where real insight lies? This is presenting huge problems for communications campaigns.
For example, very often brands try to tackle issues such as the fact that consumers think they are expensive, with the communication’s objective focusing on changing that perception. The brand then tells customers they are great value for money rather than focusing on what makes them great value.
Would we not be better