Marketing

In a consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry struggling to keep up with a rapidly changing marketplace, today’s food, beverage, and personal care brands are all vying for an edge — anything that’ll give them a leg up on the competition and a foot in the door with an ever-elusive consumer.

While there may be no end in sight to the insurgent brands invasion, signs of hope are on the horizon for the large, established consumer goods companies that have been battling insurgents in the war for growth.

This is an industry-leading effort to create cohesive guidelines for brand safety across fraud, malware, and content adjacencies, giving marketers the tools needed for safer deployment of digital advertising, and helping brands and agencies devote less time and effort to detect, report, address, and avoid brand safety risks—and more to your core remits of performance and brand building.

Have you turned on the TV today? What about the radio? You’ve probably used an app on your smartphone. Maybe you bought ingredients for dinner at the store or purchased a new bottle of shampoo online.  All of these activities are simple, everyday actions. But in today’s vast, interconnected and, frequently, digital world, they’re also valuable data points.

While organic growth is crucial to a company’s survival, many executives underestimate its value. In past research, we found that fewer than 30 percent of businesses systematically scan for and evaluate new growth opportunities. The reasons for this vary from reliance on cost-cutting efforts to difficulty overcoming short-term pressures.

After delivering my take on what is requires to revitalise a brand, one of my audience asked, where should a retailer invest? In refurbishing existing, older stores, or in marketing to reach new customers? Of course, ideally one would do both, but if you do not keep your existing customers happy their defection may undermine your growth prospects anyway.  by Nigel Hollis

The years since I left the Silicon Valley to lead a company (Geoscape) providing data, analytics, research and technology have taught me quite a few lessons. My initial focus was international — Latin America especially but also Europe and Asia — and in the early 2000’s we began to put all our energy into developing data analytics and technology platforms to facilitate use and action based on relevant data and techniques to help companies navigate the American cultural terrain. In the beginning I felt resistance on the part of marketers to embrace these analytic techniques yet over a period of time many companies embraced the approach, leading to hundreds of fruitful business relationships across industries.  By Cesar Melgoza – Founder & CEO of Geoscape

Various studies find that there is a consistent relationship between share of voice this year and market share change next year. The more a brand spends compared to its market share, the more likely it is to grow over time. But within a category some brands will fail to obey the general relationship and it is important to understand why.  by Nigel Hollis

For most us, our digital devices are always at the ready, and many are synced with one another so we can use our devices interchangeably as we navigate work, entertainment and communication.

At the end of 2017, Adobe published a report showing that almost two-thirds (62 percent) of marketers planned to take all their programmatic media buying in-house by 2022, with the remaining 38 percent planning to take some elements of programmatic under direct control in the same period. A 2018 ANA report showed a similar effect from in-housing. The ANA’s “The Continued Rise of the In-house Agency” report, which replicated and updated similar studies from 2013 and 2008, found that the number of advertisers with in-house agencies has grown substantially, standing today at 78 percent of brands, compared to 58 percent five years ago and just 42 percent a decade back. Sixty-five percent of advertisers said that the in-house agency workload had grown “substantially” in the past year.

Earlier this month, a widely publicized feud broke out between two well-known beauty influencers, Tati Westbrook and her protege James Charles. Bypassing the rather complex details, the debacle ensued after Charles posted an Instagram ad for SugarBearHair vitamins, a direct competitor of Westbrook’s Halo Beauty vitamins.

Last week I was in Monterrey, Mexico, invited to speak at the internal marketing conference of packaged goods company Sigma. First up on the agenda was Jonah Berger, professor at Wharton Business School and author of the book ‘Contagious’, who, not surprisingly, was talking about the power of word of mouth. He delivered a great presentation, but I had to question some of his assertions.  by Nigel Hollis

Having been away from the game for a little over a year, I watch with morbid curiosity as the ad agency business continues its downward slide.  The latest? The RFP recently issued by General Mills.  GM, like many clients, are going away from agency-of-record relationships. Now, the big CPG wants to buy its creative ala carte.  Creative tapas, if you will.  By Patrick Scullin

Modern consumers expect brands to have a solid purpose that reflects their own values. They look for brands to be transparent in their beliefs and behavior, and they want to see them having an impact, says Dirk Herbert, chief strategy officer-U.S. at Dentsu Aegis Network. Gravity, agency of record for the Just BARE brand, is part of the Dentsu Aegis Network.

The true prize of modern marketing is delivering experiences that are both world class to the consumer and deliver value to the business. Personalization is a crucial weapon in the marketer’s arsenal to achieve that goal. That’s how businesses can deliver tailored recommendations, content, offers, and experiences, across all channels and devices, along the entire customer journey.
 

In the drive to build cred and radiate authenticity, making sure that your materials are fully bilingual is certainly near the top of every aspiring crossover brand’s checklist. To those on the outside trying to get in, speaking Spanish seems like an indispensable element of effective Hispanic marketing.  by Sarah Liddle is Vice President, Sales, at MRI-Simmons.

Influencer marketing is one of the most hyped marketing strategies today. However, in a world that rises and falls on public opinion, at the speed of digital, there are dangers in an influencer strategy. We can look to James Charles and The Jolly Green Giant for lessons on how to navigate this new opportunity.  by Anne Hunter – Executive Vice President, Strategy & Growth / Kantar

Brands are marketing in a multiverse. Have you seen Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse? Spoiler alert: Due to a malfunctioning particle accelerator, Spidey meets multiple Spider-People from across alternate dimensions. One of his many challenges is trying to send these other Spider-People home.

Inspired by the rise of brands that are seeking to connect with what’s happening in the real world and weigh in on what their audiences are talking about, the study asks two important questions: How should we define culture from a consumer’s point of view? How do consumers think about culture in relation to the brand they interact with?

According to the 2019 edition of Kantar’s Brand Footprint report, there are 17 global fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands that are chosen by consumers more than one billion times a year, and 14 local FMCG brands that are in this exclusive ‘billionaire club’.