You don’t need to roll the dice on chasing attention…

The legendary Peter Drucker said, “business has only two functions, marketing and innovation, and everything else is just costs.” His bucket of cold-water reality statement is based on a profound understanding: even superior products can fail to gain traction in the marketplace, where strong brands built on a foundation of compelling strategic differentiation can beat everything else. However, perception doesn’t lead reality by very far, so the relative strength and power of the product innovation remains a critical component of sustainable business growth. Yet still his point well taken, but often missed.

• Thus why Emergent is a hybrid integration of brand strategy guidance and creative brand storytelling, because both must be in harmony for business results to manifest. A poorly positioned and undifferentiated brand does not improve when the media spotlight is turned on and amplifies those weaknesses.

• Our perspective and experience having launched hundreds of brands, new categories and products helps shorten the distance between investment and bankable results. Yet all too often, businesses get stuck in rinse and repeat performances that essentially handcuff the “marketing” outcomes to marching in step with prevailing category conditions (good or bad).

Far too many organizations view marketing as “the department down the hall,” and don’t give it the priority and resource allocation it so richly deserves. Perhaps this is a holdover of old business school traditions about the importance of finance and operations. Yet we have mountains of evidence that marketing/brand led businesses will outperform everything else. You can’t “balance sheet control” your way to marketplace success.

Equally important though not to conflate this perspective with big attention chasing ad campaigns and media spend overreach that depresses profits while serving up some marquis brand-ertainment. Pepsi just recently released a Gladiator-themed commercial to coincide with the return of football season, stuffed with A-list stars including Megan-thee-Stallion and Travis Kelce. It’s big budget blast used to chase awareness. Is this strategy at play? No, it’s tactics at play, albeit a well-financed and cinematic version. Of note, retailers may appreciate the spend regardless of whether or not the brand itself is sufficiently separated and elevated from all choices it competes with. However, most businesses will need to be more strategic to succeed.

The goal of sound strategy is differentiation. Said another way, an effort to gain monopoly-like status in a crowded field. Businesses faced with a lot of similar competition can struggle to deliver profits because` of market forces that inevitably push pricing towards the top of the competitive agenda.

A better path

Marketing in its purest form is always led by strategy, and optimal strategy is centered on how to separate and elevate a business from the competition, such that it creates its own distinct category by offering something consumers can only get from you.

Peter Theil in his excellent book, “Zero to One” helps us understand the relative power of successfully positioned brands in his description of challenges posed by sameness and similarity in a category. “In 2012, when the average airfare each way was $178, the airlines made only 37 cents per passenger trip. Compare them to Google, which creates less value but captures far more. Google brought in $50 billion in 2012 (versus $160 billion for the airlines), but it kept 21% of those revenues as profits—more than 100 times the airline industry’s profit margin that year. Google makes so much money that it’s now worth three times more than every U.S. airline combined. The airlines compete with each other, but Google stands alone.”

• Different business model you say, but the principle is clear: the more you seek to operate as a market of one and not many, the more control you have over your destiny.

The business end of marketing well played

Entirely too much emphasis is placed on expensive ad campaigns as a poster child of marketing best practices. The war is often won in the trenches and chasing high media investment awareness is an expensive, profit draining gambit many brands would be foolish to pursue.

Well-positioned brands that are imbued with deeper meaning and mission can attract legions of ambassadors, enthusiasts and believers who join the brand community and then turn around and talk about it. This is the 80/20 rule writ large (most of your sales and profits come from a smaller segment of devoted customers) and the most powerful and credible channel of communication because it is trusted and not dependent on mega-sized paid media spending.

Combine this with a solid retail marketing plan and you’ve got your hands on the levers of push and pull that can drive profitable results. Let’s take a closer look at example elements of strong retail support that can secure sales traction for a well-positioned brand.

Retailer support concepts

1. Strengthening retailer relationships

• Personalized engagement through dedicated account handlers to build stronger relationships and ensure retailers feel valued and supported.

• Ongoing communication to keep retail customers in the loop about new products, promotions, and company news using tools such as e-newsletters, webinars, and retailer townhalls with executive presentations.

2. Tailored marketing support

• Co-branded marketing materials, including in-store displays, brochures, and social media content.

• Localized marketing outreach designed for resonance with the specific demographics and preferences of a retailer’s customer base.

• Providing training on digital marketing techniques, such as social media marketing and online advertising, to help retailers more effectively reach a broader audience.

3. Comprehensive training

• Developing training programs for store sales staff, focused on your brand narrative and differentiated story. This can be delivered through online modules, in-person workshops and webinars.

• More targeted lifestyle education in meaningful areas like nutrition and wellness, helping store staff become trusted customer advisors — to enhance retailer reputation as knowledgeable and caring.

• Sales training to help staff improve their customer service and engagement skills.

4. Exclusive promotions and incentives

• Building exclusive promotions around special discounts, bundle offers, or limited-edition products to help drive traffic and sales.

• Retailer loyalty programs that reward partnership and performance, such as rebates, free product samples, or marketing support funds.

• Partnering with retailers on in-store events such as seminars, product demonstrations and experiences to engage customers and increase brand visibility.

5. Feedback and ongoing Improvement

• Creating retailer advisory councils to gather ongoing feedback and insights so you can better understand their needs and challenges.

• Conducting regular surveys and feedback sessions to monitor the effectiveness marketing activity and identify areas for improvement.

6. Leveraging community and cause campaigns

• Supporting local cause events and charities that retailers are already involved in to strengthen community ties and brand loyalty; or partner with retailers to build original cause marketing campaigns that resonate with their customer base.

Why does this matter?

Getting as close as possible to your customer at the point of decision is never a bad idea. The moment of truth at shelf can be significant as consumers navigate choice and think about their priorities and spend.

Yes, it’s an eco-system that helps people understand and “feel something” about your brand BEFORE they go to the store. However, what happens at retail should also be carefully designed and not left with other brands to usurp.

Integration of the two is your strongest play: a highly differentiated brand with a great story to tell, matched with strong retail partnerships and support to close the loop. In a way this explains why Emergent exists and what we aim to deliver. Separately, these tools don’t perform as well. Planned and integrated, it forms a strong cohesive foundation on which to build a lasting, profitable business.

Can you see it?

If this approach stimulates questions about how it can apply to your unique brand challenges, us the link below to ask questions and open a dialogue that should prove insightful and useful for your planning.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Welcome to dangers of the Replacement Economy

Dear readers,

Our last post, “Your Brand’s Soul is the Engine of Competitive Advantage”was happily the most popular Emerging Trends Report’s article we’ve published in more than a decade of covering marketing, emerging trends and communications best practices. Perhaps the topic resonated because it is such a lynchpin to sustainable business growth, yet so often a neglected and under-developed foundation within the strategic brand-building toolkit.

Today, we continue that story by turning the page to speak to retail brands about an enormous shift in the retail landscape that creates tension, subtraction and balance sheet challenges. Much of our narrative hangs on a rethinking of how retail businesses should strategically curate their operations. This insight entails a liberal dose of soul surrounding the heart of how retailers create and deploy the shopping environment and fulfill their retail brand mission.

What’s also at stake here for CPG brands is a tangible concern. These retail houses of distribution can help you synergistically tell your story or they may end up being complicit in furthering commoditization conditions that every business wrestles with every day. Thus, it’s vital we take this up as an extension of what we started on the merits of brand soul investment.

A change in the retail universe that prompts re-evaluation, re-stage and new strategy

What happens when literally everything you consume can be had (or replaced) efficiently and cost-effectively without ever visiting a store? The historic retail paradigm of location, convenience, assortment and price dilutes alongside the ease and economy of the endless, digital shelf.

If we’re being painfully honest, I think we can agree the ever-widening, transformational impact of this business challenge is not surprising since so many retail channels demonstrate a woeful absence of sufficient surprise and delight.

You can usually assess what a retailer’s business model and strategy consists of just by observing how people behave when they enter. Are they happy, hovering, lingering and investigating? Or are they in a hurry to find whatever is on their list and get out. For the most part, you will see people moving quickly and with purpose to hit their needs and leave. That’s not just “pressed for time” happening – it’s also due to an absence of magic, emotion, joy and adventure (dare we say authentic soul) once inside the front door.

Let’s start with what people really want

Consumers look to brands and retailers to provide ideas, inspiration and solutions about how to live better and achieve their dreams. They yearn for deeper meaning while residing in a world that’s losing its grip on purpose and values. This is far beyond just the array of products you shelve. Yet most retailers believe they are in the stocking and selling business.

What’s more, for the most coveted consumers who are highly active in a consumption domain, these ‘heavy users’ are highly likely to fuss over and chase very high standards of experience and meaning-seeking. Are they being properly served?

Shoppers who are highly involved brand fans and self-identified experts can be found in many product and lifestyle categories, including:

Food

Wine

Pets

Dating

Travel

Outdoor

Cars

Fashion

Cosmetics

But what do they really get when shopping a retail footprint? The typical store environment is in danger of becoming a well-lit inventory “warehouse” – one that serves as a category specific shelfing farm only to facilitate quick selection and fast transactions. Take note, this sounds eerily close to a misguided and losing chase of e-commerce strengths.

• We wonder, does a focus on omni-channel strategy in some way create an excuse for allowing the brick-and-mortar shopping experience to wallow in mediocrity because more curated online buying options are being served?

Too often, conventional retail is designed to stock, display inventory and transact sales. What if instead you created an experience so enjoyable and rewarding that people wanted to stay, explore and engage?

When anything and everything can be had at a click, the concept of sustainable retail strategy needs a refreshed higher purpose in response. The future of retail in today’s commodified transactional environment will hinge on infusing the shopping environment with –

Meaning

Mission

Socializing

Adventure

Discovery

Leisure

Belonging

In honest self-assessment, does your retail experience offer functional access to an inventory of products arrayed in aisles and cases, or are you working to build a small universe that transports people to a new place, time, scene, memory and experience?

Movie makers are masters of carrying us to an immersive experience. Borrowing a chapter from the art and craft of movie-making – can you design “dream districts” through creating and orchestrating a scene:

• Williams Sonoma as a Napa Valley kitchen with winery culinary experience esthetic
• Bass Pro Shop as an homage to outdoor lifestyle imagery at every turn
• Trader Joe’s manifests their “scours the earth” promise for unique food experiences
• Kiehl’s as an old-time apothecary shoppe
• Eataly as an Italian farmers market
• Costco, “It costs us a lot of money to look this cheap” – for purposeful warehouse-ness

The big question organizations need to decide up front is whether they want to pursue incremental tweaks to their brand experience that are copyable, nonproprietary, and unsustainable. Or do they have the confidence to swing for the fences and pursue a game-changing innovation maneuver?

Please know the brand equity and purpose process is never finished. Instead, it requires constant upkeep, evaluation, and vigilance to maintain and manage, lest it fall out of sync with changing cultural conditions which is increasingly epidemic as shopping behavior evolves around us.

Retail presents a living, breathing opportunity for storytelling in a space

If the business mindset is preoccupied with traffic, velocity and transactions, you may end up passing right by the humanity that’s walking the aisles. People innately resonate to art, creativity, emotion, visuals, imagery and sense of place.

A retail environment can be constructed to serve as a canvas for story. The living, breathing embodiment of an experience they will remember and seek out. When does a grocery store become a haven of culinary adventure? Can a pet store celebrate the endearing bond and collaborative life with four-legged family members? Is it possible for a restaurant to serve more than a menu and become a salon of social discourse and food learning?

Or we can relax while believing a popular offer of ”buy one get one” for a bag of chips constitutes sustainable volume advantage and call it a day?

Designing a story is the starting place

When you focus on the person you wish to serve and use that as a guidepost, relevant creative ideas and options begin to flow. Story platforms can help inform your thinking about the experience you wish to create inside your front door.

“Welcome to the world of manifested dreams…” says Karma and Luck Las Vegas

My wife Kristen is a spiritual person. She happens to love jewelry that is grounded in a deeper purpose and mission. Kristen recently discovered her retail muse on a trip to Las Vegas. Karma and Luck describes itself as a “partner on the journey to lead a more meaningful life.” She characterized the store shopping experience as a trip to Bali, immersive and Zen-like.

They don’t just sell jewelry, they offer a story and promise of higher value well beyond the attractively designed yet affordable bracelets, necklaces and other pieces – all of which have carefully curated narratives attached to them that store sales staff generously share with guests. When she selected items for purchase, her knowledgeable guide took her to the center of the store and placed the products inside a Sound Bowl where a brief ceremony “cleansed the jewelry of any negative energy” while imbuing her purchase with – yes, Karma and Luck. This was not a transactional retail environment.

Her visit was a transformational shopping adventure. No surprise, she is retelling this story to all of her friends, while helping me understand this is now her go-to for gifts. Start with the story, think more deeply about the customer you wish to serve and go from there. Importantly, the Karma store design, ambiance, music, scent, and elegant product packaging serves as mechanisms to reinforce their authentic higher purpose.

To start, here are eight story themes relate-able to the human journey:

1. Interest in belonging to a community of like-minded people with shared values
2. Deep need to love and be loved
3. Desire for greater meaning, purpose and sense of mission
4. ​Drive to nurture, enjoy and protect family life ​
5. Pursuit of fun, laughter, adventure and entertainment
6. ​Requirement for affirmation and validation of status, wealth, and prestige ​
7. Love and appreciation of art, esthetics, great design and beauty
8. Intention to lead healthy, fulfilling, enjoyable, long lives

Do you see the possibilities of story strategy underneath your retail experience? We can help you design a powerful narrative that takes your brand miles ahead of simply being an inventory stocking depot. Use the link below to start an informal conversation about your brand’s future.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Our online questionnaire can help you avoid gaps and misfires

In a recent study conducted by our insight research partner Brand Experience Group (BXG), an analysis of sustainability strategies among UK-based grocery retailers revealed the top three banners were leaving more than $9.5 billion in sales on the table. This is revenue they could have earned if the right strategies had been fully implemented to meet shopper expectations on clearly communicated sustainability policies and performance.

The incredible irony: every single one of the food retailers has some form of sustainability program or messaging in place. All of them are underperforming because the programs are either not fully built out, ineffectively communicated to stakeholder audiences or both.

• The same business case with similar outcome metrics has been calculated in CPG food and beverage categories. What’s going on here?

A significant percentage (55%) of your customer base right now, today as you read this, cares deeply about the sustainability bona fides of the brands and businesses they prefer. The banners that step ahead of the competition to correctly leverage sustainability commitments will win in sales and share gains.

There is a clear, proven business case for an optimal strategic game plan on sustainability.

• The operative words here are “correctly and fully.”

Half measures, absence of key baseline assessments and mitigation targets plus anemic communications are often the root cause of subpar outcomes. Collectively these diluted tools operate to marginalize performance on what will be an important 2022 strategy to elevate your business results.

Think of it this way: if you don’t get this right, other enlightened brands will ultimately gain competitive marketplace advantage at your expense.

What should you do now?

We recommend investing 6 minutes of your time to take our online Sustainability Readiness questionnaire. There’s no cost. The questionnaire covers four key areas of potential readiness practices. It has a readiness scoring mechanism underneath to help quantify current conditions. When you click submit, our team analyses the answers and produces an outcomes scoring report. The meeting we have with you to review the scores and discuss implications is also complimentary – and often described as “enlightening.”

We will make topline recommendations for improvements; an integrated approach that can create and deliver the right sustainability strategies. That said, it is entirely up to you whether we move ahead to dive more deeply into customized solutions or leave you with new readiness intelligence on your business.

What will happen when you take the questionnaire?

Discovery

• Organizations that have already completed the questionnaire report it’s elevated their awareness and understanding of the key best-practice components in a sustainability program.

Clarity

• We have found brands thought they were doing the right things – but learned of deficits and gaps in their current efforts and communications programs.

Readiness

• In every case we’ve found that readiness can be improved in key areas that are critical to success, to generating business from the investments and avoiding greenwashing – which is a vulnerability.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your business is. Sustainability is a key component of brand value no matter if your company is Fortune 50 or just starting out.

You will find the questionnaire outcomes meeting to be informative, educational and eye opening. It requires no investment on your end except completing the questionnaire with honest reflection on what you’re currently doing. The questions involve simple yes or no answers. We provide comment boxes if you’d like to add any texture.

Top performing sustainability strategy isn’t just a nice-to-have. The BXG study has confirmed the business case. Without optimal programming you may be leaving significant sales on the table while also ceding marketplace advantage to brands that are ahead of the readiness curve.

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Use the link below to take the questionnaire. You’ll find it interesting and the outcomes discussion helpful to planning.

Our Sustainability Solution team

Here’s the team that created the questionnaire and the Brand Sustainability Solution program – the first integrated answer to improved sustainability business performance:

Emergent – Chicago-based marketing communications company with strategic brand guidance and creative skills to build a multi-faceted outreach program that persuasively conveys your sustainability story to key stakeholders.

Brand Experience Group – London-based consumer insight research company to help determine what your core customers believe about sustainability practices, what initiatives matter most to them and establish the KPIs that measure business performance from your sustainability investments.

Informed Sustainability Consulting – Seattle-based consultants build the baseline with science-based carbon footprint assessment and Lifecycle Analysis to determine exactly where your production and supply chain are on sustainability performance. ISC also helps you set climate mitigation targets and identify sustainability improvement opportunities.

Click here for the Sustainability Readiness questionnaire.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Food retail dream team brings shoppers some “wow!”

The world does not need another conventional grocery store. There are plenty of them offering similar, somewhat rote and unremarkable shopping experiences and product assortments. One to another they defy uniqueness and differentiation. Food retail legend Bob Mariano and his long-time partner Don Fitzgerald teamed with DOM Capital Group owner Jay Owen to reinvent the Chicago food retail landscape. Again.

The food retailing industry has long admired Bob Mariano’s penchant for innovation when his namesake Mariano’s chain emerged in 2010 as a refreshingly-elevated concept in the Chicago area grocery game. Mariano, who described his new retail banner as “the first time I’ve had the opportunity in my career to invent a retail concept from a blank sheet of paper,” deftly integrated foodservice experiences with a decided heavy lean into an improved fresh and perishable food assortment and tasting station-oriented shopping experience.

After selling the Roundy’s parent company in 2015 to Kroger, Bob Mariano departed the Chicago retail scene for a while, apparently to go think creatively about where the food retail innovation ball should roll next.

Now Dom’s Kitchen & Market arrives in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood as a 17,800 square foot, tightly edited and curated deep dive into food adventure. It is shopping as entertainment with a big helping of culinary inspiration and a side order of education for erstwhile home chefs. “For the most part grocery shopping is functional and stock-up driven,” said CEO Don Fitzgerald, “Our new concept is built around what we can do to deliver food discovery, experiences, culinary exploration and maybe learning a thing or two for people who love food.”

Dom’s is first and foremost a food destination. As you walk in, guests see a hybrid of multi-faceted food service options featuring top quality menus ranging from “The Stackup” for elevated sandwiches, “The Hearth” if you feel like outsourcing cooking chores for dinner and “Gohan” to sample Asian specialties like Yuzu Salmon and Katsu Sando. Nearby is “The Plant Butcher” station for creative salads and yes, butchering veggies to customer specs.

“We are not a replacement for traditional grocery,” Fitzgerald reports. “Our core shopper is really someone who has a passion for food, who is interested in taste experiences, wants to explore new cuisines, learn and has high standards about the quality of the ingredients they use.” He said he expects people will come to Dom’s for a quality sandwich and sip a glass of their favorite wine, all while ordering paper towels and dishwasher soap from Amazon on their phone.

“You’re coming to Dom’s for lunch or picking up dinner. You are doing your perishable shopping here for high quality produce, bakery and meat. We also expect to serve events and occasions like an anniversary, job promotion, graduation, birthday with wine and cheese or a Bonci pizza,” says Fitzgerald.

The center store is a curated assortment of higher-quality packaged foods, some of them hyper local as evidenced by plans to feature endcap displays of new and emerging food brands born at The Hatchery, Chicago’s food incubator and laboratory for aspiring entrepreneurs.

On opening day a power aisle end cap featured Dom’s specialty coffee. It was a fan of the cards toward their plans to develop a deeper offering in private label products that will build the Dom’s brand, thus helping the company more fully express its core culinary mission.

Think big

If history is any indicator, the Dom’s executive team has no small plans and will be working to add new locations around the city and eventually beyond Chicago. “Dom’s is very much a neighborhood concept, a smaller retail footprint where the decisions we make about what’s on shelf are extremely important,” said Fitzgerald. “While we have a template certainly, each Dom’s location will be a mirror of the community where it resides, and the assortment decisions will reflect what we think shoppers in the trading area will want.”

Fitzgerald says they eschew the typical food retail business model dependent on large cap CPG promotional spending. “We won’t be relying heavily on price promotions to deliver volume. That’s not our business. Our goal is to earn loyalty based on the strength of our unique shopping experience.” That shopping experience is best represented in “The Chef’s Table”, a presentation area where visiting celebrity chefs will come to conduct classes on menu ideas and food preparation techniques. “We just had a session on how to properly cook a steak and I learned I’ve been doing it wrong my entire life,” he said. “Teaching will be core to our concept.”

For that matter meat is yet another example of stepping up a notch. Dom’s is sourcing its fresh meat from the same supplier that serves Gibson’s restaurant, one of Chicago’s most respected and beloved steakhouses.

Safety first

Dom’s is the first EcoLab Science Certified food retailer in the state of Illinois. EcoLab is servicing Dom’s with training, sanitation materials and best practices guidance. Dom’s will be audited for compliance to EcoLab’s industry-leading standards of cleanliness. “We want to be the safest, healthiest place to shop and embed that commitment in our culture from day one,” said Fitzgerald.

“When our shoppers leave here, we hope they say, ‘Wow. That was special. That was fun. This was worth my time,’” he said.

If opening week crowds are any measure, people are resonating to Dom’s food shopping-as-entertainment concept, a truly unique addition to the Chicago area’s food retailing landscape.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Keys to successful customer journey mapping

What is the biggest marketing challenge facing food, beverage and lifestyle brands? Creating improvements to brand strategy that will deliver more impact and measurable outcomes from limited resources. Here we’ll talk about an important tool that can help remove risk and uncertainty from your marketing plan and spending decisions while optimizing effectiveness.

What do you ultimately need to deliver sustainable business growth? Consumers who love and appreciate your brand. Trustworthiness is harder to achieve than meets the eye. Relevance and higher value can only be secured when the consumer sees your brand as “mattering” to them on a deeper level than product functionality.

Embedding strategic insight and drawing the brand as close to your customer base as possible requires a disciplined approach. The plan strategy must assure that at every key point on their journey to purchase and later hopefully to evangelism, there’s connection with the right experience, the right message that mirrors their pain point, needs and aspirations.

This outcome is made possible by placing consumers at the center of your strategic planning process. To do this effectively and with clarity, Customer Journey Mapping is the best tool to hold the consumer priority feet to the relevance fire. We’re going to walk you through best practices in journey mapping, an incredibly exciting and important exercise that will bring greater resonance to every aspect of your brand strategy.

Ultimately it will inform more impactful and compelling brand communication and lead consumers to a trusted and closer relationship, for the very reason your interaction with them will resonate at each stage on their path to purchase.

The customer journey map process helps you address the following:

• Engage your customers in your brand message
• Believe your brand claims
• Appreciate your brand purpose
• Trust your brand
• Buy your brand with confidence
• Advocate for your brand

Successfully joining your customer on their journey requires you to think like they do. It will entail empathy, understanding and appreciation of their needs and concerns. The map brings this insight to life. Without it you’re really flying blind.

Your first objective always is to add value to their lives

Simply stated, to:

• Help them
• Educate and coach them
• Demonstrate you are showing up for them
• Empathize with their needs
• Fulfill your promises

Here’s the Emergent three-step recipe for an optimal Customer Journey Map

Step One – Persona understanding and Insight

As we’ve conveyed previously, consumer purchase behaviors are 100 percent driven by trying to avoid making a bad decision. Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman at Ogilvy & Mather, so accurately describes it, “a one percent chance of nightmare dwarfs a 99 percent chance of a five percent gain.” Accurately understanding and characterizing the consumer’s needs, pain points and “risk” related concerns begins with Persona creation.

Here we identify the key segments of your customer base from early adopters to heavy and occasional users to those motivated more by values or social issues such as sustainability. Within each cohort we take a deep dive on lifestyle, interests, needs, passions.

When fully built out the personas should address these six key questions:

1. What are the triggers (need/want) that kick off the purchase journey?
2. What are the pain points and practical needs they wish to solve?
3. What cultural and societal influences are at play?
4. Given purchases are largely symbolic signaling now, what symbols of relevance do they look for?
5. What are the emotional levers that impact their perceptions and actions?
6. What media do they consume and where?

To do this at an optimal level we operate like anthropologists who observe, investigate and study to know their interests and behaviors.

Step Two – Moments of truth on the path to purchase

The map segments their journey from discovery to purchase, digesting each step along the way so you can articulate what they think, feel and do. Armed with this understanding you’re able to design communications that meet the appropriate moment, thus assuring your brand remains relevant, engaging and helpful.

Here are the seven journey map components

• Discovery

Steps taken to identify the brand/product choices available for consideration based on consumers’ needs and alignment symbolically with how they see themselves and their values.

• Exploration

Within a shortlist of candidate brands the consumer is acquiring more information on features, benefits and lifestyle associations. Most of this occurs online in social channels, web sites and media platforms.

• Comparison

The shortlist alternatives are compared for plus and minus assessments of risk and ability to successfully answer the pain point or desire.

• Trust check to verify

Consumers look for recommendations and reviews from peers and credible experts or influencers. Their goal is to reduce risk by validating the claims made by a brand on results, ease of use and effectiveness. Social channel proof (testimonial) is a key component in achieving this trust.

• Purchase

The ease, convenience and absence of friction in the purchase process will influence perceptions of satisfaction and fulfillment of your promise.

• Experience

Everything that can be done to assure an optimal user experience is delivered to assure the outcome matches the perceived value proposition.

• Evangelize

Assuming all the previous steps have matched with their needs, the “discovery” aspects of a well-done brand experience will help initiate advocacy, word-of-mouth and sharing of experiences via word-of-mouth and the users’ social channels.

At each step the map is populated with an assessment of what consumers in the moment think, feel and do. This information is used to inform communications and messaging. The right words, at the right time, in the right place.

Step Three – translation to messaging and media plan

Armed now with a full understanding of your customers’ thinking, emotional needs and behaviors at each moment on their purchase journey, you’re in a position to serve up communication and content relevant to their needs as it evolves from need triggers all the way to potential ambassadorship.

Given the mapping focus comes back to what the consumer is thinking, feeling and doing at each step, you’re able to tailor messaging for whichever moment of truth they are in. By virtue of this added relevance, your brand can operate as a guide and empathetic coach at each phase, providing useful information while resolving issues that contribute to perceptions of risk or making a bad decision.

Media selection can be optimized to deliver the right kind of content; from social proof to purchase support and reassurance on issues they care about most. The tool should match the need. This creates greater marketer confidence –understanding what’s going on along the path and knowing which message to deliver. Important to outcomes because the plan now is free from hunches and assumptions about what to convey, when and where.

Mapping the Moments = Momentum

The customer journey map brings added rigor and discipline to the planning process, infuses consumer relevance throughout their journey and acts as guide to message and media based on audience behaviors and preferences.

The consumer recognizes your understanding of them amplified by the usefulness and value of what you’re able to tell them. In the year ahead, brand strategy improvements will be needed to step past the significant behavioral changes and attitude shifts authored on by the pandemic. The Journey Map is the way to get there.

If you think the Journey Map process might be right for you, and you’re interested in help and support, use this link to ask questions about what’s best for you.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

So much has changed during the last few months.

Like many we talk to you might be wondering:

• “Does my current marketing plan still hold up given everything?”
• “Am I missing something here that could be the difference-maker?”
• “I’d love to get some fresh eyes on this, but where?”

Every brand in the food, beverage and lifestyle space is going to encounter barriers to growth and unforeseen disconnects in brand communication.

We are focused entirely on helping you leap over these impediments and challenges. We do this by applying our unique ability to weave innovative strategic guidance together with insight driven communications.

The result is transformational acceleration of your business results.

We know it’s difficult to let someone new in the door before fully trusting the players involved. That’s why we’re happy to take on projects that serve as a commitment-free test drive of our work.

You might need fresh thinking on:

• Transformational strategic guidance and brand refresh
• Building a compelling messaging platform to optimize your brand storytelling
• Creating optimal social channel content and credible earned media attention
• Producing the ultimate video-based story to differentiate your brand and business

Let us know if you are open to a conversation about your next win. We can bring a fresh perspective to a challenging problem or address a specific new product or category creation need.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.