brandcentric blog

Hard to believe, but it’s been a year plus since I launched the brandcentric blog.  Many lessons learned about the art and science of blogging (mostly positive), and still a lot more to discover.

On the content front, this has been a fantastic opportunity to refine my focus in this bold, new era of CPG marketing.  A few of the more meaningful themes from the past year include:

• The expanding share-of-wallet that digital media has claimed from traditional media vehicles.  CPG was slow to adopt, but quick to catch up to (and potentially surpass) other industries.
• The coming-of-age of social media and marketing for CPG brands.  Word-of-mouth makes a lot of sense for considered purchases, even in the world of fast-moving consumer goods.
• Leveraging applied math and modeling techniques to achieve superior merchandising strategies.  The data is available, the science is mature and business-user applications are available through a browser.
• The relentless pursuit of developing, nurturing and monetizing direct-to-consumer relationships.  Alice.com was unexpected, but is exciting to watch.

As I look forward to 2010, a few early focus areas bubble to the top:

• Shopper centricity.   This will be huge across several fronts, including in-store marketing, trade planning, and broader merchandising strategic planning.   Retailers are ready to unleash the data and shopper segmentation, and manufacturers need to step up to the plate.  Collaborative planning has made a comeback.
• Pricing.  Commodity and ingredient cost volatility is expected to rear its ugly head once again.  The focus on promoted shelf price is more important than ever, especially when considering issues like gap to private label and the incredibly elusive consumer.  Expect manufacturers to funnel more marketing dollars to price as a strategic marketing lever.
• Digital integration.  Will this be the year that digital media and marketing shifts from a “center of excellence” service to a brand-driven strategic capability?  For some brands not quite yet, but for others absolutely.

There are many more themes that are percolating.  I’d love to hear what’s on your mind as you look forward to the coming year.

This is a clever little application that I can actually see providing value to busy families on the go.  A recent writeup references an iPhone app and BlackBerry app are also available for added convenience.  This quote from the Charmin brand manager pretty much sums up the strategy for sitorsquat.com:

“Our goal is to connect Charmin with innovative conversations and solutions as a brand that understands the importance of bringing the best bathroom experience to consumers, even when they’re away from home,” says Jacques Hagopian, brand manager for Charmin.

Excellent!

If buzz is what Mars was looking for, then mission accomplished with their Twitter integration on skittles.com.  Social media meets a CPG brand in a really creative, mass-market way.

It will be interesting to see how many other CPG brands discover twitter in the coming weeks and months.  Moves like this will hopefully help Twitter back into a business model for advertisers looking to engage consumers in a new and authentic way.

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.

At an industry conference last year I saw a fantastic live keynote presentation on buzz marketing from Steve Knox, CEO of P&G’s Tremor division.  Steve’s keynote highlighted the emergence (and critical importance) of word-of-mouth marketing in the CPG sector, and how brand franchises are benefiting from a groundswell of loyal consumers who behave as self-appointed ambassadors.

These “connectors”, as Steve calls them, form the fabric of word-of-mouth and social media in general.  These are the folks that tend to be early adopters (but not always), have distributed groups of friends and acquaintances, and just generally like to be heard.  The key message that Tremor has for brand marketers is to identify these connectors and nurture real relationships with them.   From there, good things will happen. Sounds easy to do, but there is clearly a lot more to it than that.

But once you do identify the right group of connectors, how do you forge meaningful relationships?  Bring them into the product development process.  Let them have a real say on which line extensions, flavors, colors, varieties and form-factors are on the roadmap.  Let them be the first on their blocks (and in their social networks) to try a product pre-launch.  Allow them to critique advertising.  Communicate with these folks often and early, and they will pay you back many times over.

One of the key take aways that Steve shared with the audience has stuck with me.  It was something to the effect of: “Don’t confuse word-of-mouth marketing with the internet.  The internet can be an enabler to this discipline, but is not a requirement.”  Great advice from someone who is clearly deep in the trenches.

On an interesting side note, it’s important to recognize that Tremor serves not just P&G’s portfolio brands, but also brands from non-competitive CPG organizations.  The Tremor business website highlights customers from Hershey’s, Del Monte, Ford, Kellogg’s and more.  Good news travels fast.