All Signs Point to the Consumer
I’ve adapted this visual framework (courtesy of David Armano) to capture a very simple, yet important point about the role technology plays in the world of CPG marketing. When you boil it all down, technology is really nothing more than a means to an end to driving richer (and more profitable) consumer relationships.
Throughout the past several decades, business automation, processing power, analytical software, the internet and social media have all introduced disruptions to how CPG marketers achieve their goals. For example, instead of relying on gut instinct or store audits to infer consumption trends, gobs of store-level data is available for analysis and interpretation. Similarly, rather than simply pushing media announcing a great new product out through a few national broadcast TV channels, marketers are now tapping into social networks to do the heavy lifting for them.
In both examples, technology is helping to augment, even supplant, how a marketer can do his or her job. But it doesn’t replace the ultimate, and very necessary, objective of developing better insight and wrapping ourselves around the consumer. So at the end of the day, each new advancement in technology helps marketers to become more consumer-centric - which is ultimately a good thing for everyone.
