A counter-intuitive strategy that drives brand growth and engagement

Successful businesses sell great products. Or do they?

For the last zillion years, we’ve believed that business exists to improve people’s lives by: selling them a (hopefully) useful, necessary well-made item, while generating profitable returns to shareholders and investors. Thus, business growth spins on product superiority and continually improving features and formulas, while marketing puts a spotlight on these attributes to drive the virtuous cycle of commerce and earnings. That is, unless people stop reacting reflexively.

Having a great product is table stakes now, so what’s next?

The world has shifted dramatically though and the path to business growth and consumer engagement has changed. Today, a brand is not a thing, it’s a promise people align with, believe in and invest of themselves. Twenty first century brands are Purpose-driven. As such, there’s a deeper reason brands exist beyond transactions and financial returns.

Said another way, value creation looks a lot different. It is now based on:

• Wants not needs
• Feelings not facts
• Beliefs not features
• Purpose before profit

Guidance, coaching, insight and inspiration have become a feast of value for those with a passion for what you’re selling. Ironically, it’s when the focus moves from commerce to lifestyle enablement that trust breaks out and brand relationships form.

The Gestalt of Glossier

Glossier is a company all about beauty – that just happens to sell cosmetics, not the other way around. This is an organization since inception that understood the premise of helpful guide as a vessel for creating legions of devoted followers.

What Glossier is to beauty…

• Yeti coolers is to outdoor lifestyle
• Plum Organics is to parenting
• Under Armor is to athletic passion
• Seventh Generation is to protecting the environment
• Blue Apron is to culinary inspiration
• Whole Foods is to health and wellness
• Organic Valley is to family farming

Glossier exists to celebrate beauty insights and ideas from their unique point of view. By putting the consumer’s desires and passions first and seeing the relationship as a dominant characteristic driving their decisions, Glossier hits hard on relevance and shared values. They understand the point about wants, feelings and belief.

Products are not an end in themselves. Rather, they sit in service of the users’ self-image and lifestyle interests. Glossier is a coaching organization that celebrates beauty and facilitates a community of like-minded believers.

The company does not try to be all things to all people. Even its product lines evoke a philosophy about make-up – less is more. The brand’s content channels are created by staffers mostly – who pull the curtain back to reveal their personal, real-world interests and solutions. Customers are encouraged to submit images and video of uses and ideas. Engagement is built around answering questions and enabling testimonials and feedback.

Commerce and transactional thinking are not driving the business bus at Glossier.

The outcome is prophetic. The brand has achieved a cult-like following of fans that help create routine ‘sold-out’ conditions when new items are launched. You might wonder if Glossier is spending big bucks in traditional ad channels to drive eyeballs to their platform? No. They don’t need to.

Can food brands secure a devoted following?

Food and beverage are high involvement categories that cater to a culinary and health/wellness centered lifestyle. Like beauty, creativity in the kitchen is a thing and source of personal passion and self-esteem.

Food companies can adopt the behaviors of a ‘non commerce’ commerce organization. Food is an emotional and culturally-informed business. It connects dots to health, wellness, creativity, family, relationships, social experience, romance and lifestyle.

Just as cosmetics are applied to skin and food and beverages are consumed – both are highly personal parts of living as we know it. Consumers have come to believe that the quality of what they eat will directly impact the quality of their lives. Food is not just fuel, it is a path to some of life’s most treasured experiences.

This is rich territory for mining deeper meaning, creating Purpose beyond product and enabling culinary passions. But to do so means the organization has to see itself not as an earnings machine, rather an enabler celebrating the love affair people have with food.

Bernadette Jiwa of The Story of Telling said it best: “A brand story is no longer like the top coat of gloss paint applied at the last moment to make the surface shinier and more immediately attractive. It’s the undercoat that often nobody sees, but which allows the brand to endure…” – base material integrity if you will.

Business is built from the inside out. Substance now rules over assertions of value. By deciding to serve the very human interests of consumers first, the goals of commerce can be fulfilled.

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Marketing investments can make a difference…

At the very beginning, the Genesis moment if you will, entrepreneurs nearly always are translating a personal belief and passion into something new and potentially exciting in the food and beverage marketplace.

• EPIC – meat-based, hand held protein bars.

• Bare Bones Broth Company – culinary quality bone broth.

• Suja – cold-pressed nutrient dense juices.

• GIVN – premium bottled water your conscience will feel good about.

• EVOL – higher quality sustainably sourced frozen meals.

And (justifiably) so, these companies invest an incredible amount of energy and effort in bringing the product to life: sourcing suppliers, makers, packaging, distribution and scouring for retail customers who will take a chance on you.

Their goals are often to improve the health and wellbeing of people, raise the bar on quality and change (improve) the food system in the process. There’s a worthwhile and worthy pursuit. Heartfelt. Making the world a better place. Giving back. Elevating the game. Disrupting categories. Creating new ones. Thus, a vision in motion.

In the beginning with some exceptions, company resources are limited, and every dollar counts. Prioritization sets in and the first consideration is getting the quality and the mission embedded into the product. Like anything initially lacking scale, the ingredient, production and distribution costs will invariably be higher.

We also know there’s ample evidence of high failure rate on new product introductions and businesses that either gain some initial traction and flame out or never quite scale and live on in under-achieving anonymity in limited distribution.

Despite this truth, we find marketing at times takes a back seat, or no seat on this go-to-market bus. The general view might be, “if you build it (exceptionally well), they will come.” Or the more specific, “great products always find a market.” It’s naturally alluring, right, because it’s just so much better than the status quo…plus the deeper belief or mission system adds value. All true, but…

X-Factor: Marketing and the human being

Human beings are remarkable creatures. People are not analytical decision-making machines, and for the most part operate on emotional cues. We call this “heart over head.” Consumers are bombarded and buried in marketplace noise. Our multi-tasking, multi-channeled digital and distracted lives require some respected credible guidance and filtering in order to get our brains around what to pay attention to – and what matters.

Strong marketing firms are keepers of consumer insight.

Great marketing vs. just serviceable will always involve more than just a toolbox of outreach tools.

Communications tactics without strategy and embedded consumer insight is like shouting your story from a mountaintop where the only real recipients are big horned sheep.

A strong marketing partner will offer brands the following:

1. Insight into consumer behaviors, motivations, passions, concerns and needs that inform everything from packaging to web site to outbound and inbound marketing content.

2. Knowledge and expertise in branding, brand positioning – and mapping the strategic story you’re about to tell in an environment where gaining attention is more difficult than ever, despite the ready availability of social, digital channels.

3. Seasoned experience in navigating the dynamics of the buyer environment, retailer needs and how best to package an intangible – which can be a significant hill to climb for a newcomer selling assertions of future success.

4. Informed design and messaging for web, sales and trade communications assets that removes the guesswork in how the concept is presented to both business and consumer audiences.

5. Contacts and relationships in the industry and with influencers who can help break down barriers and resistance to distribution hurdles, equity investment interest and consumer engagement.

6. An informed sounding board for product development ideas, formulation moves, packaging adjustments and early innovation bets.

The beneficial outcomes:

• Better results, minimizing misfires and speed to gaining account placement.
• Removing risk in how to best package and present the brand story.
• Generating media visibility at a time when steady, ongoing awareness is hard to come by after the first salvo of newcomer attention.

A great partner understands the grist of what you are trying to do right down to the atoms and electrons level. When every dollar is precious, is there added value in making marketing investments early?

Even if engagement is limited to strategic planning at the onset, there’s more to be gained in getting it right the first time; it will help accelerate the trajectory of business development.

In short, better to put marketing in the plan and on the priority list upfront rather than see it as a downstream consequence of ‘required support’ once the business is percolating.

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Quality and craftsmanship has a new form of expression

Fairfield, New Jersey-based Schuman Cheese, a market share leader in the U.S. Italian cheese business, recently announced the cheese industry’s first product trust mark – True Cheese®. It is intended to provide validation and verification that products bearing the seal are true, real and correctly labeled.

Full disclosure: We represent Schuman and played a role in developing this program.

The backstory here is important: The Italian cheese category in the U.S. has been rife with adulterated and mislabeled products for decades. Operating behind a curtain, economically motivated food fraud has existed primarily because more profit can be extracted by diluting (and then misrepresenting) the quality of ingredients. This practice is followed by some less principled players despite the fact the entire process is illegal. What’s labeled “Parmesan cheese” in some cases just isn’t.

It is indeed a rare thing when a leading company jumps into this arena to address a well-established form of misbehavior. Schuman is an exceptionally principled organization run by a passionate CEO in Neal Schuman, who sees the existence of adulteration as a bona fide blight on quality perceptions of the category they lead.

There’s a new sheriff in town: the mindful consumer

So yes, True Cheese represents a verification of products displaying the mark that, indeed, they are correctly made, using the right ingredients and properly labeled – validated by an outside third party testing organization (Covance Food Solutions).

That said there’s another very important story at work here…

Millennial consumers, 90 million strong, are exercising their strength and numbers in new and interesting ways in the food industry. They are helping usher in a new era in food brand marketing shaped by different perceptions and values, and driven by new behaviors in purchase motivation.

For decades food brands went to market believing taste, price and convenience messages were the only real motivating purchase drivers. A comprehensive consumer study announced earlier this year by Deloitte and the Food Marketing Institute, documented for the first time considerations such as safety, transparency, social impact and health and wellness are taking the lead in food purchases.

Numerous ethnographic studies released over the last three years by The Hartman Group, show a seismic shift in the population across all age and economic segments, towards preference for higher quality, responsibly made and authentic food experiences.

This is the age of the mindful consumer. They look just as hard at a company’s beliefs and visibility to their supply chain, as they do to label integrity, and sustainability claims. They are quite capable of quickly separating self-reverential statements of taste superiority from legitimate proof points of what goes into the product and how its produced (having something quite important to do with aforementioned quality expectations).

So now, True Cheese becomes a new way to step into a more reasoned and “mindful” conversation about quality and craftsmanship. Proof the product was made with the right ingredients. Proof it is actually Parmesan and not a cheap imitator. Moreover, it’s a gateway to conveying the quality of the milk used, as well as the practices and standards followed at the dairy farm, and a commitment to integrity and tradition in cheese making.

Served up in a manner both relevant to and appropriate for a consumer who is actually interested, engaged and cares about these very things.

What’s at stake here is trust, the most important and occasionally overlooked often under-played component of achieving brand traction and growth. This is especially important in an era when consumers are in complete control of any brand relationship.

Achieving trust is not easy when reports of integrity violations hit the headlines routinely in nearly every aspect of life. People want to believe. They also want to know WHY they should believe.

Thus, a trust mark isn’t merely about assurance, it is also about how to separate and elevate a brand by verifying the story that sits underneath its creation.

Products from one brand to the next may follow similar processes and approaches to how things are made. Technology superiority is both hard to achieve and nearly impossible to sustain. But brand integrity and communication are own-able – in part because it is a mirror held up closely to the values and beliefs of the organization that espouses it.

The world is hungry for this kind of reassurance. True Cheese helps usher in a new conversation.

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We are witnessing the emergence of a new digitally informed consumer, a more thoughtful and intentional human who puts real reflection into their purchase decisions.

1. They contemplate perceived impacts on health, the environment and social responsibility.
2. And the influence of their actions, decisions on family, the community and the world around them.
3. They look for value added attributes (purposeful mission) from brands and weigh if there’s alignment with their own principles and beliefs.
4. Their purchase decisions are largely symbolic; visible evidence of what they want the world to perceive of them and their lifestyle choices.
5. They want to make considered and more informed choices of the products they buy.

This experienced, media savvy cohort is rapidly becoming a diploma-carrying Master of Media Consumption – able to filter and discern useful content from masked selling. The availability of deep troves of information to anyone anywhere has resulted in agile, media-shrewd screen searchers who quickly curate what’s important to them – simultaneously discarding anything deemed as brand hype or veiled persuasion. Consumers are either found or lost based on the relevance of your communication to them.

For food and lifestyle marketers, the dilemma is crystal clear: it’s no longer enough to push the product-centric message out there. Even using social platforms and pay-per-click tactics to identify and confront consumers with a brand message based on their digital behaviors.

Whatever stack of SaaS tools might be bolted together in an effort to aggregate eyeballs and access media channels, the same challenge exists: the conscious and conscientious consumer’s frequent use of the ‘skip’ button. The consumer is in complete control.

Brand-as-Mentor Communication

Our study of this consumer has revealed an interesting need that brands can fulfill. Consumers have a recurring, ongoing requirement for guidance, encouragement and insight. This is what the best brands do – they counsel, advise and recommend.

• Brands in this mode can create communities of like-minded people for the purpose of sharing stories and ideas.
• Education can be offered on subjects of intrinsic interest to customers, helping enhance their ability to improve and more fully engage their passions.
• Experiences and events can be created that bring their interests to life.

Where does this leave the marketer? We think in a perfect position to assume the role of coach and valued advisor. The question begging an answer: how can brands offer useful guidance on the consumer’s journey?

Yes, this is a job for content marketing!

“Content marketing is the only marketing left,” said Seth Godin. His assessment is a telling reflection of the relentless migration from selling to helping, from persuading to listening and serving.

• It should be noted, this consumer who works routinely to get behind the corporate velvet rope and understand the details of ingredients, sourcing, integrity and company purpose, is attracted to brands that are a reflecting pool of their lifestyle preferences.

This should be qualified: content is not long-form product advertising or some facsimile of it. It is grounded in relevance and respect for the consumer’s concerns. Content marketing is a form of infotainment and reporting that engages based on the audience’s interests, more so than pushing product features.

There are clear challenges and barriers to doing it right because marketing and content priorities can occasionally fight with each other. How, you ask?

Emergent as Brand Mixologist

What happens when you attempt to put informing and educating in the same glass as pushing transactions? Minneapolis firm Clarity Cloverdale Fury recently described this scenario as an incendiary clash of agendas.

It’s a delicate balance: the blend and mix of communication in service of the company’s efforts to grow business while also acting in support of the consumer’s best interests and needs. Proportions matter. Tone and words are important. Subject is critical. Relevance is a litmus test for meaning.

Emergent employs a message map and insight-based personas system to help blend the brand into consumer relevant conversation. We have learned from experience this provides the right mix, teeing up the opportunity for mentorship while putting the brand in league with consumer lifestyle needs. We are strategic engagement and content marketing mixologists.

The challenging questions food, beverage and lifestyle brand marketers should answer: How can a brand communications platform be developed around a role of mentor and guide? What kind of content can be created that puts the brand in the position of educating and advising consumers on their relevant lifestyle interests that intersect with the business category?

Done right, and you can step beyond the ‘skip’ button and into the role of trusted ally.

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