In marketing and communications, time plus experience combine to help provide hard evidence of what works extraordinarily well vs. what constitutes the far more frequent base hit rather than home run outcome.
More has changed in the marketing world over the last two years than the previous 50. The traditional marketing rulebook is sooo cooked. The path to growth is a different journey. Yet, remarkably, many organizations are still tethered to an outmoded view that marketing operates as a distinct unit or practice within the business to lure customers to the brand and store.
Well, that phrase couldn’t be more true when it comes to the number of times I’ve observed clients make new customer acquisition the priority and strategic center for brand marketing campaigns.
There’s a natural allure and nearly reflexive assumption embedded in marketing-think that recruiting new followers and believers to a brand is the first order of business. Reach new customers and then sell more product, right?
Well, at the risk of making a heretical statement from an agency executive, I say no.
Since the Industrial Revolution, bigger has been viewed as better in the food and beverage business.
Bigger usually suggests more powerful – more capable of dictating the behaviors within a product category plus an ability to unleash a torrent of assets that work to overwhelm smaller competitors. In marketing, the common denominator in media strategy – even in the era of fractured and splintered audiences – is the lure of cobbling together scale. The motivation for scale might be the sheer balance-sheet magnetism of dramatic market projections driven from a belief that “all things to all people” is still a workable business model.
This is our fifth and final installment of Emergent’s “2015 Emerging Food Trend Forecast” series covering the top four food and beverage industry mega-trends for this year and implications for brand marketing and communications.
Consumers are not targets, they are people to build relationships with.
Brands must become more human. Now what…?
By Bob Wheatley
I apologize. This post is a bit soapbox-ish. Can you feel the exhorting wind up? Well. Here goes…
There’s a saying: old habits die hard(er). For some businesses that’s a godsend as consumers come back again and again, if for no other reason than the intractable benefits of habit. It’s also true in default marketing behaviors, but these days with decidedly more frustrating results.
It’s harder than ever to market to consumers. The typical “build a positioning platform, message test and run it out there through every relevant channel” is harder to make stick. Why? Consumers work overtime to avoid contact with attempts at persuasion or anything that resembles it.