How to use strategy correctly for over-the-top success and growth

The word “strategy” frequently shows up in marketing plans, yet all too often actual strategy is missing in action, misapplied or simply misunderstood. Here we will clear the air on building the right strategic foundation. It is the difference maker in creating successful business outcomes.

Ultimately you want to build the brand standard that other companies benchmark against.

• The brand consumers talk about
• The known innovator
• The one referenced in best practice case studies

Note: we’ve created a one-page summary of Emergent examples of strategy in action you can view or download at the end of this article.

In the absence of a strong strategic platform, a business will inevitably drift. Due to this constant state of uncertainty, all marketing “bets” will be consistently hedged. Competition is fierce and in the absence of real strategy companies are often relegated to tactics consisting of endless rounds of episodic cost reductions and various kinds of profit sapping price promotion.

Frankly it’s all too common…

Many businesses

• End up contending with positioning confusion
• Struggle to stand out resulting in higher levels of media spend
• Realize uninspiring profit margins
• Users don’t really care about the brand proposition that much
• Hence switching on deal is rampant as adjacent brands are seen as interchangeable

What is sound strategy?

Strategy describes what you do differently. It is instruction and a guide on separating and elevating your business in a new category you create while authoring new rules to govern.

Sound strategy –

1. Enables bravery
2. Commands an emotional response
3. Delivers clarity and passion
4. Because it is grounded in a sense of conviction
5. Focuses on where you are going and especially why
6. Provides evidence of how you are different
7. Informs every action you take

Higher purpose and mission are ultimately a path to differentiation

Forever and a day we’ve been advocates of deeper brand meaning, values and purpose, for the very reason it is a solid path to improved strategy. After all, what is business but a system designed to deliver value. To increase the value you collect, you increase the value you give. A unique value, such that consumers aren’t getting it from anyone else.

Our job at Emergent, as strategic guide and coach, is to help you define what that “why” is while pushing the edges of differentiation outward. Strategy is creating “different” because your systemic enemy is sameness.

Myth #1: Strategy is never about being better than X

You don’t compete.

You don’t compare.

You don’t define your bona fides against the other guy’s offering.

You’re not pursuing the same customers with a similar product and a similar story, a recipe for declining profit over time due to ever-present commoditization. As we’ve said, sound strategy is creating difference. Better isn’t different. Better is the same, “but we try harder.” This is not a sustainable path and is a slippery slope to similarity. Instead, your goal is to provide value that “competing brands” don’t.

Myth #2: Sound strategy is complicated, sophisticated and data driven

Strategy is NOT a cold-blooded scientific download.

Some believe the path to improved strategy is served through dense technical analysis in an attempt to “manufacture” rightness. Great strategy is steeped in meaning, passion and conviction. This is the fuel that pushes great brands to go further, harder, deeper and braver than others. Their goal to always over-deliver on their promises.

Myth #3: Strategy is actually improved marketing communication

A tendency in our field is to conflate strategy with messages, tag lines and ads. Strategy isn’t a message, rather it’s guidance and statement of what the business does and why.  Communicating a similar offering more creatively isn’t a lasting proposition and forces media spending levels upward to maintain baseline awareness of same.

“Different with a strong why” is naturally alluring and attracting. A great strategic platform inspires meaning, belief, membership and advocacy. In the end it is a blueprint for how the business operates top to bottom – springing from your “why” – founded in deeper meaning and differentiation. This will help you better define the right product mix and inform a compelling brand narrative.

Charts and graphs can’t replace imagination

Strong strategic ideas are more like life in general, rewarding boldness and distinctive concepts over reductive reasoning. Here’s a connect the dots moment: ultimately, people are the consumers of your strategic concept. Just remember people are irrational. Decisions are never made based on consideration of analytical, fact-based arguments.

That’s why you want to go with the strategy that gets your heart racing. It will impact what you do, how you organize the business and inform communication that engages and inspires others to join you on the adventure. If it just seems “sensible” it’s probably wrong.

You are looking for the unique value only you can deliver.

We’ve assembled Emergent examples of strategy in action in a one-page summary available for you to view or download from here.

If you believe it’s time for fresh strategic thinking, use this link to ask questions or open an exploratory conversation. It is an important discussion to have and one that ultimately can help transform your business.

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

Novel protein likely to leap ahead of other emerging food tech…

It is time for the food and beverage industry to pay closer attention to an emerging food tech category that is highly likely to change the course of how food is created. It arrives at a time when our current food system is increasingly critiqued as an actor in the climate impact drama.

• At the end of this article, download our Emerging Companies to Watch list in this exciting evolutionary story.

The next great disruption in food creation

We are about to witness a wholesale transformation of where our food comes from and how it is produced – the first major sea change of its kind in 10,000 years since animals and plants were first domesticated. What’s at stake? No less than our planet’s health, impacted by decades of obscured mistreatment from an industrial food system that contributes roughly 24% of climate warming greenhouse gases – more than all types of fossil fuel powered transportation combined. For many this is a jolting discovery.

Dawn of the low carbon food system

Advances in bioengineering have served to refine a centuries old technology we know as fermentation. A familiar process used in some form for a millennium to brew beer, craft wine and create cheese and yogurt. This evolved tech is employing uniquely programmed microbes (micro) instead of animals (macro) to create high quality, healthy, great tasting proteins like meat, eggs and dairy.

The tech leap for food lovers: these new proteins are bioidentical to the animal version. That means virtually indistinguishable in taste and eating experience, while eliminating things people don’t want such as cholesterol, lactose and antibiotics. Moreover, they come to us at a fraction of the environmental emissions impact of livestock farming and its drastic over-consumption of limited water and land resources.

Precision fermentation may also work to leap over some of the shortcomings in plant-based products that retain a higher taste hill to climb because the proteins are not identical to what they’re trying to replicate. Their recipe goal is to mimic and simulate the flavor and mouthfeel of animal versions. They strive to do this by using plant-based ingredients and other food science wizardry to recreate textures, chew, even the bloody juice of a burger patty. The plant-based industry currently chases consumers who believe the eating experience may be close but is just not a full analog of what they expect from the meat and dairy products they crave.

Consumers are changing

Most of us grew up with deeply engrained, idealized and nostalgic beliefs about food. In its most authentic and revered form, it is always sourced from the soil or raised in a verdant pasture. For eons we’ve paid homage to an impression that real, nutritious food is an outcome of things we harvest on a family farm, delivered with as little adulteration as possible.

Moreover, in the past food science was often viewed skeptically as a precursor to over-processing and manipulating food ingredients – or creating not-in-nature versions of same in the laboratory. This reached its apex in the reduced calorie and fat wars of the 1990s where food science made addition by subtraction infamous via food engineering – sugar and fat removed and replaced with other artificial ingredients as glorified in the fat-free cake and donut craze.

Sense of urgency flipping the paradigm

The historic friction between science and nature is evolving now as consumers become aware of the relationship between industrial food production and climate change, its impact on scarce resources, the link to animal welfare issues and looming food scarcity challenges as world population accelerates.

People are coming around to see science as part of the solution, not a menace to be avoided. In a recent study by The Hartman Group on the future potential of precision fermentation technology, they describe the tech as a powerful advancement. Due in part to its familiarity with consumers, more so than cellular meat technologies that require a sophisticated and somewhat complicated explanation of how it works.

• Familiarity is important to adoption and trial because it feels less risky to people who are systemically driven to avoid risk in their food purchase decisions.

According to Hartman, millennials’ (born between 1981 and 1996) openness to the idea may comprise the ideal core “early adopter” audience for precision fermentation food products.

• 67% of millennials now believe science and technology may offer the best hope to address climate change.

• 62% agree science and tech innovations can help make food more sustainable.

• 62% believe foods made this way would be healthier.

In short, they believe this new approach to food creation may transcend the limitations and excesses of the current food system. In fact, Hartman states 84% of this cohort say they would be likely to purchase precision fermentation made products, and half would be willing to pay more for them.

Part of the comfort level (easier to grasp) consumers have with fermentation is its legacy use in beer, wine and cheesemaking. Additionally precision fermentation is already in our lives, used for decades to make insulin, vitamins, and the enzyme rennet that causes dairy milk to coagulate and separate into curds for cheesemaking.

The path to market for precision fermentation

Hartman’s research revealed that 50% of consumers are already looking for products that prioritize sustainability and animal welfare in how they’re created. Further when asked about what will influence their preferences and willingness to try these new foods, safety (60%) and taste (59%) scored almost equally as top priorities followed by healthy (53%).

The study showed the top three environmental benefits they expect from this emerging food category:

1. Reducing greenhouse gas – 38%
2. Minimizing other forms of pollution – 37%
3. Merchandized in sustainable packaging – 29%

Size of the prize

Hartman forecasts a potential market of 132 million consumers by 2027, with millennials most likely to replace all or most of current products with new precision fermentation versions.

The adoption curve follows a familiar path for new premium CPG food and beverage categories:

15% are ready to go

11% will be easily convinced

14% will be convinced with clear benefits

This falls in line with existing research and numerous case studies that confirm in any emerging premium CPG food business, approximately 14% of the addressable market will be early adopters – those less concerned with risk and more drawn to being first-in to try new products. Breaching the chasm between early adoption and mainstream acceptance is the marketing challenge of the ages and requires a carefully formulated strategy of validation, verification, channel management and calibrated expansion aimed at reaching the right audience segment at the right time in the right place.

Overly ambitious extensions too early into the wrong channels, retail locations or foodservice environments can set the business up for retrenchment when audiences less enthralled with the deep sustainability story and for whom price is king, may not be ready to push aside their habitual choices. Perceived risk is a hurdle that needs to be flattened.

Emergent marketing guidance

What will be required to nurture these new brands to fame and fortune? Education, education, education and more education.

How is it made?

Will it be safe to eat?

Will it taste good?

How is it better for the environment?

Will it be healthier for me?

Is it affordable relative to the product it will replace?

What about allergens?

The narrative should be built around what Hartman calls the “intersection of good for me and good for the planet.”

Food is an emotional category – we eat with our eyes, we respond to perceived deliciousness because we crave great taste experiences. We are drawn to the familiar. Thus, the language that’s used, the narrative story that’s created should avoid descriptions that are founded in scientific and technical lingo.

The experiences of respected voices in the culinary world, the outcome reports in social media from early adopters all coalesce to provide an eco-system of credible proof of satisfaction and value. This is NOT the time for old-school CPG claims and ad tropes that glorify self-promotion of features. This is your opportunity to employ new strategies founded in generating trust, belief and a heavy lean on values and deeper meaning.

• Your story focus is the consumer and their journey, and how these new products will help support planet health as well as personal wellbeing.

This may well be the most exciting adventure to arise in the food industry since homogenous audiences and mass media created a gigantic market for packaged food and beverage in the 1950s. Importantly, it also offers a viable solution to the planet crisis we’re in and a path to correct an unsustainable food system in a manner that will also help solve how we will affordably feed 10 billion souls by 2050.

If you’re interested in launching a conversation about strategies to nurture, grow and set these new brands up for success, use this link to start an informal conversation with us. If you’re interested in our take on the brands to watch and collaborate with as this story unfolds, use this link to download our Emerging Brands to Watch list.

New website illuminates the changes and solutions ahead

The number of Americans who are passionate or concerned about sustainable choices in the food products they buy is rising. Rapidly. At the same time media are galvanizing around stories that report on the climate impacts from agriculture. These two conditions will fast-track the pace of change in consumer sustainability preferences and demands.

• We are headed towards a tipping point when recognition of the role our food system plays in environmental impacts will prompt mandates for public policy changes, food production improvements and more sustainable brand choices.

The time is now to prepare for sustainability readiness as media, influence and culture shifts coalesce to push consumer sentiment forward to tangible behavior changes. We believe this will substantially impact your business strategies in the coming decade.

Two converging issues: carbon footprint visibility and supply chain realities

Supply chain emissions are, on average, 11.4 times higher than operational emissions.

The growing corporate uptake on ESG performance measurement started with ‘low hanging fruit’ evaluations of operational emissions (Scope 1). Then advanced to confront energy use (Scope 2). However, supply chain lifecycle analysis (Scope 3) will unearth the most salient and vital conditions that impact an organization’s true carbon footprint – and thus inform the most meaningful mitigation progress targets. You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you are!

Industrial animal agriculture derived environmental impacts will become visible. In the food business, this is likely to influence brand and retailer decisions about your supply chain partners.

The food system reality check(mate)

Here’s relevant data that helps us understand why the significant cultural shifts are here.

• Agriculture generally is responsible for anywhere from 24 to 30 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, more than all transportation systems combined.

• According to the United Nations, 14.5 percent of those emissions can be attributed to meat production. The impacts of raising livestock for food are far reaching – from ruminant animals producing methane to land degradation, loss of biodiversity and over-consumption of limited freshwater resources.

• Forty percent of the world’s available land is currently used for food production and of that, nearly 75 percent of it is dedicated to livestock farming. Rainforest conversion to livestock production is occurring at a shocking rate of an acre per second.

• Today more than half of Americans think livestock production contributes to global warming “at least a little.” Only one in four believe beef contributes “a lot.” And those numbers decline slightly for dairy production.

• However, awareness of these impacts is expanding and media attention on sustainability deficits and emissions in the food system are gaining momentum.

• Currently 67 percent of Americans eat meat daily or a few times a week. Yet nearly every study we see points to growing consumer interest in adding more alternative proteins and plant-based foods to their diet. The reasons for these dietary modifications are swinging from health to environmental concerns.

• The barriers to alternative protein adoption are price compared to legacy options, and taste compromise. Those two issues can be resolved by manufacturers through innovation, formulation improvement and cost reduction. As awareness of environmental impacts grows, adoption of new food sustainable categories will rapidly expand alongside it.

• Studies suggest a shift to alternative protein sources could reduce emissions by 92 percent compared to raising livestock for food while reducing land use by up to 95 percent.

• The United Nations warns we are running out of time before climate impacts and global warming exceed our ability to reverse it. At risk is the southern half of the earth and potential permanent loss of farmland rendered unsuitable for growing crops.

What does all of this mean to your business?

The time to get ahead of sustainability readiness best practices is here and now. Performance in this critical area creates important levers of competitive marketplace advantage. Why? Consumers are demanding sustainable choices. How this transition is handled strategically will have implications for future growth and brand relevance.

What brands and businesses need: guidance on sustainability readiness practices and support to level up improved strategies all the way through to the marketplace.

Today we announce brandsustainabilitysolution.com. Your online destination for information, thought leadership and support services to help meet and exceed consumers’ sustainability expectations in food, beverage and related retail categories.

• We invite you to explore and learn more about the Brand Sustainability Solution™ platform. There, you can sign-up for our free Sustainable Business Update™ and access our free sustainability readiness self-assessment questionnaire that will provide a quick snapshot of where your business is today on the readiness path.

What’s at stake? The future of your business, brand relevance and the planet itself.

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

Trust in advertising report spotlights the true path to consumer engagement…

Is it possible what your brand stands for will be more important than the product you make?

Yes. Read on.

Nielsen’s latest Global Trust in Advertising Report confirms a cultural sea change has taken place. The comprehensive survey advances new guidance that brands and retailers should reconsider their traditional single-minded devotion to product-centric communications strategies. The report signals emergence of a different roadmap to credibly and effectively secure consumer attention. A more enlightened path that is paved with higher purpose, mission and values ahead of glossy product features and benefits.

The rise of interest in more human-centric values reflects consumers’ need for trust in a marketing environment they believe lacks credibility and validation.

Don’t underestimate the importance of cultivating trust to brand communication effectiveness

For five years, Emergent has tracked the steady decline in brand and corporate trust alongside the parallel rise in why businesses must put the consumer and their requirement for trusted relationships at the center of strategic planning. Is this a feature in your marketing plan?

• A recent sustainability trends report published by Mintel concluded one of the greatest barriers businesses face in getting credit for sustainability readiness is the consumer’s dramatic shortage of trust in their claims of performance. People find it harder to believe assertions made by companies on their commitment to sustainability standards and mitigation policies. (Hence the need for credible validation).

Nielsen’s study verified that consumers are placing greater importance on values, beliefs, inspiration, deeper meaning, humor and family. According to Cathy Heeley, Nielsen Media Analytics Lead, “People are much more interested in how a brand is going to help the world, not just what benefits a product has to offer. Consumers are looking at what brand values actually mean, what they stand for and their practical application.” Actions always speak louder and more believably than words alone.

Leaders across the globe should be asking: how do we propel and harness the power of our brand as a force for purpose that creates deeper meaning and societal benefit?

• Brands should declare a clear point of view and create inclusive spaces of belonging.
• They should also provide an opportunity for people to make a difference, while securing the greatest opportunity to generate impactful meaning in the world.
• This commitment acts to galvanize both users and employees.
• Now more than ever, leaders and decision-makers should cultivate a workforce while serving consumers in a way that requires the brand to stand for more than just profit.

The oldest millennials are entering their 40s, while Gen Z is carving its own unique space in the working population. The traditional hierarchical structures – two-week vacation policies and in-office incentives that are linked to growth – are no longer motivating enough to join an organization. The new generation of workers values higher purpose before profit.

Why are brand mission and values rising in importance to people?

Cultural change sits at the foundation of how these changes manifest and how consumers think – an important consideration when deciding how best to frame marketing strategy and communications effectiveness.

We are witnessing a cultural evolution. It first started in the early aughts following 9/11 when the disruptive shock to the nation caused people to re-evaluate their priorities and focus on relationships, family and values over other lifestyle and career considerations. Simultaneously control in the brand-to-consumer relationship was shifting entirely away from companies.

The Internet served as a fantastic enabler of consumer awareness and learning that also exposed the weaknesses of conspicuous consumption.

Dawn of the relationship economy

Underneath these cultural moves came a transformational change in the brand to consumer relationship, now taking on the characteristics of what we treasure in our human relationships – trust, meaning, reciprocity, values, investment, care and consideration for others.

Simply said, people want to be part of something greater than themselves. The search for deeper meaning was fully underway and with it came the initial priority placed on health and wellness and how choices will impact their quality of life.

Brands today must act as guide, coach, trusted advisor and enabler to consumers on their life journey. Yet more often than not, we find marketing strategies still anchored in self-promotion of product feature to benefit, embedding the brand communication with a systemic disconnect due to the weakness in consumer relevance.

The next evolution coming in 2022 – societal change and sustainability

Meanwhile trust in government as a catalyst for societal change has also diminished. Consumers now believe that companies are in a unique and better position – and have an inherent responsibility – to enact positive societal improvement.

Chief among these concerns is the hyper-focus on sustainability that has morphed into more specific questions about how companies source materials, ingredients and how they operate in a way that mitigates carbon footprint rather than contributing to the emerging chaos of climate change.

What should you do?

1. First and foremost, refine and optimize your brand’s higher purpose platform. Profit is not a purpose. A human relevant and meaningful purpose is a purpose. This isn’t a call for philanthropy. Instead, it is about anchoring the business in a mission reflected through how the entire organization operates that is centered on the consumer and the changing world around us.
2. Insight research will be required to better understand the specific details of what your best users care about, what areas of sustainable performance matter most, what needs they prioritize on their life journey and what barriers stand in the way of their success and achievement.
3. Operationalize your policies, sourcing, behaviors, standards and commitments to achieve alignment with your stated mission and your commitments to sustainability readiness.
4. Reconsider the entire brand message map to optimize the focus on your consumers’ needs, their desires, how you can help and support them, ahead of a linear trip into feature/benefit selling. The product message can be woven into the narrative. But it should be crafted within the coaching and guidance paradigm rather than straight self-promotion.
5. Bring social channel strategies into clear alignment with this strategic approach. Social is exactly that – an area for users to share experiences, ideas, concerns and success stories. Too often we find social treated as a monologue of outbound product selling rather than a community founded on conversation. Your social content platform should be built around engagement not just selling. This is harder to do than it appears.
6. Looking ahead, recognize the significance and importance of cultural change and the related dynamics of consumer attitude shifts that will be reflected in behavior changes. Things are evolving at a faster pace now and staying on top of this is vital. There is no such thing as resting on your laurels.

Evolution. Change. Transformation. Speed and Humanity should all be held close.

What do you think 2022 will bring in changes and shifts to strategy? Use this link to share your views. We will publish the observations and comments in an upcoming post on 2022 marketing best practices, as envisioned by you, our valued readers.

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

Company beliefs and behaviors impact business strategy

Your entire organization comprises the marketing platform now. Your higher purpose, mission and belief systems will impact your company’s marketplace behaviors and status. Operations, supply chain policies, manufacturing and employee commitments influence how consumers and stakeholders perceive your brands and resonate to your business.

Marketing is no longer a department. The entire enterprise is integral in the strategic game plan to get and keep a customer. It is time for leadership teams to acknowledge this insight and take the strategic planning silos down in the interest of improving the organization’s growth and advancement plans.

Still a department?

An objective assessment of many CPG and food retail businesses would conclude that marketing operates as a department, likely down the hall from sales and human resources. This compartmentalized organizational structure has been cast in stone for eons. It came to be in the command-and-control era of business management. That condition, however, has changed forever. In the age of consumer control, it is vital that customer-centricity reigns as the operating philosophy governing how companies organize for success.

• Our challenge to you – it is time to reconsider how the business is assembled when you know your thinking and planning will be influenced by how the customer is prioritized (or not) in the hierarchy of business operations and policies.

Traditionally, marketing has owned responsibility for interpreting consumer insights, developing brand communications strategies and product promotion intended to sell more product to consumers. Marketing was usually seen as the alchemy of awareness and persuasion linked to driving the sales funnel from consideration to purchase among increasingly elusive users.

• Consider this: now, literally every aspect of how a company behaves, makes decisions, its belief systems and values, how operations unfold – literally everything from the factory floor on up has a role to play in the organization’s ability to get and keep a customer.

If this is true, then every discipline within your company is involved to greater or lesser extent in the activity of marketing, whether it’s acknowledged or not.

Attracting and retaining customers will happen in direct proportion to the organization’s ability to operate fully in service of customer needs and wants. If your company ultimately exists to get and keep customers then increasingly this requires not only a single-minded focus on user aspiration, but also a robust frame for corporate citizenship in an increasingly issue-driven business environment.

Sustainability is a generational-level challenge that will influence every aspect of how you plan and succeed as a business

How well employee practices, operations, supply chain, manufacturing, and policies drive ESG and carbon footprint commitments is integral to successful marketing outcomes.

The marketing mission, therefore, isn’t just refining communications strategies focused on showcasing products and services, the entire proposition must embrace how the organization best operates in service of people and the greater good.

Higher Purpose is not a marketing program

Your company is a living, breathing entity. It is no longer just a machine designed to generate and sell products at a profit. It exists to be influential in your customers lives and to make a difference in addressing some of the most challenging conditions ever faced by humanity.

Your company’s mission, beliefs, values and purpose fly above the legacy goal of generating shareholder returns. When purpose and mission are viewed in this context, it contributes to a revelation that the entire enterprise informs how your offering is perceived. It impacts how consumers interact with your brands, what your narrative is and how you contribute in tangible ways not only to their lives but also the planet’s welfare.

A purpose-led organization will operate with greater clarity and intention. The mission acts like an anchor of deeper meaning where employees and customers alike join the business as advocates and believers, not just participants in a transactional process.

Getting and keeping the customer

For decades, the food and beverage business was largely driven by taste, price and convenience.

• The technology to enhance and deliver taste and eating experience is refined and is now table stakes.

• Price is a relative term that moves up and down in relation to a sense of economic prosperity or uncertainty.

• Convenience has been flipped on its head as e-commerce facilitates friction-free shopping and culinary culture holds sway over 1970’s box and can food culture.

• Consumers care more now about values, transparency, health and wellness, supply chain commitments, animal welfare, sustainability practices, empathy, unselfishness and employee treatment.

Attraction and engagement depends now on the company’s ability to participate as a positive force in their lives and society. To market itself successfully all corners of the organization should operate like a well-tuned symphony that authors credibility and trust.

So marketing is not a department. It is the nerve system of the organization constructed to operate in service of customer aspirations and goals. This will make strategic planning a team exercise to identify barriers to productive growth and remove them. In its place is a flatter organization that empowers team members who contribute to helping the entire enterprise meet its mission obligations and build relevance.

HERE is a link to download our two-page summary of what Emergent is and does. We encourage you to take a look and let us know if you are interested in exploring a fresh perspective on how your organization and brand can optimize its growth strategies. We can help you craft and tell an improved story.

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

Time to banish the old marketing playbook

Remember the good old days of command and control, interruption-style marketing and business development strategies? Consumers were viewed as “targets” to be persuaded through repetition and subtle manipulation of their emotions or pocketbook sensibilities.

Vestiges of this way of thinking remain handcuffed to far too many brands that continue pushing feature, benefit and price messages at consumers in both digital and analog channels. Thus, why engagement is increasingly hard to secure. Consumers have become serial avoiders of self-promotional brand outreach as a result. No one likes to be “sold.”

It’s time to stop, reconsider and move on to build more human-centric brands.

Think for a minute about the people you care about in your life. Your family, friends and colleagues. Those closest to you enjoy a special position of value and affection. You’re concerned about their welfare and wellbeing. You make time for them, cherish them and invest in their progress. In short, you care. You express love in words and deeds. You listen. You help. You support and respect them. Moreover, you don’t see those relationships as merely transactional.

Now think about your business behaviors and how customers are viewed and treated. Is it the same? You say well, we’re in business to sell our products. To be sure, but maybe the goal of share and volume glory follows a different path now. One that is built on a model of reciprocity that looks more and more like the valued relationships we have in real life.

Not ‘data points’, they’re human beings

What are the five things your customers want from you?

1. Inspiration
2. Advice
3. Guidance
4. Education
5. Entertainment

We have moved from a product focus to content. Are you optimizing the brand communications arsenal for help over hype? Here are three observations that should be considered in developing human-led brand communication.

Utility over cleverness

This may be the toughest consideration of all when viewed through the lens of ad creative traditions. It has been the province of creatives in the agency game to be focused on translating a key product selling proposition into the artful headline or theme. The theory: engagement is achieved through artistic wordsmithing. An artful turn of phrase or catchy tagline is prized as an achievement on the road to being “intrusive” and therefore noticed in the vast sea of message overload.

Times have changed and while great copy is going to be a key driver of engagement, the character and content of the communication is better served through its usefulness rather than pure cleverness alone. Attention is hard to secure. The path to gaining consumer participation is better aided by providing relevant value. That means the message moves closer to serving the consumer’s role as hero of the brand story, in a narrative that is helpful and educational more than self-promotional. It’s about them not us.

Someone is better than everyone

The definition of sound strategy is making tough choices. When the intent is to be all things to all people, the outcome is mattering to no one. It is better to focus on someone rather than everyone. To do that requires sacrifice. It means you select an audience cohort closest to the center of your most ardent user base. Then zero in on what they want and care about. Prune the rest.

In our own experience this played out to great effect when former client Sargento cheese agreed to focus on a consumer segment called The Food Adventurer. This audience of cheese lovers and heavy users care deeply about the quality of ingredients they use. They love to cook, pay attention to culinary media. They are routinely engaged on topics and content that help advance their skills in the kitchen and culinary creativity. By focusing here, Sargento created an opportunity to matter to an engaged audience of food fans, rather than speaking to everyone  (usually defined as moms with kids) across the expanse of the commodity cheese marketplace.

Make a choice, narrow the focus to those who care and are therefore listening.

Inspirational beats transactional

There is a great temptation to assume if you aren’t hitting hard on the product features and benefits, then you’re not selling effectively. But the world has changed. Gaining attention isn’t a math problem of calculating media channels to frequency of message distribution. If the relationship economy is respected, then you understand that winning permission for a conversation depends on following a different set of rules.

• Your brand voice is built around empathy and care for the passions, interests and concerns of your best customers. You understand that the role of the brand in this relationship is one of guide and coach. Your goal to help them overcome the barriers to their success and fulfillment.

Your brand becomes a source of encouragement and education. Sargento helps the home cook deliver on their passion for creativity in the kitchen. Boom – now we’re talking. Literally. Now we’re actually communicating rather than monologuing. The brand stops barking at people and begins to engage in their community and lifestyle in a useful, valuable way.

When you speak to those in your orbit that you care about, are you selling to them? Pushing self-serving messages at them? No instead you are genuinely listening and helping.

The enlightened brand building of our era begins with injecting humanity into the marketing plan by making consumers the center of it and deciding to earn a relationship based on valuable-ness.

The last word: “Every brand is now a B-corp” – Ana Andjelic, The Sociology of Business

We are in the midst of another evolutionary shift. Consumers care deeply about your values, mission and actions to address social issues like climate impact and sustainability. They care about the impact their buying decision has on the world around them. They have connected the dots between their purchases and a consequence. They want to identify and act on more sustainable choices.

You can help them do that. But be aware that substance and authenticity matter here. Your own sustainability readiness house needs to be in order before invoking solidarity with consumers on these concerns. Sustainability can’t be a message construct floating independently from policies and standards that address the company’s carbon footprint and impact on the environment. There should be clearly expressed targets and actions steps to mitigate those challenges.

Embracing sustainability is yet another way to put the brand “in league” with consumers on a culture imperative issue they care about and expect brands to be part of the solution.

All of this coalesces around one key point: when brands understand that customer relationships these days operate a lot like the kind we have with people we care about, then you understand how the brand should behave and engage in that setting. More empathy, guidance and coaching than promoting. It’s time for the more human brand.

If this guidance strikes a chord as you look towards strategic planning in the year ahead, then let’s start an informal conversation about your concerns and needs. Use this link and let’s talk.

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