THOUGHTS & INSIGHTS
From Globalshop, Chicago 2008
By Debbie Simms, Compass Communications
Globalshop is one of the biggest Marketing-at-Retail Expo and Conferences in the world, held in North America annually. This year’s conference in Chicago was centered on the theme: “Build your Brand”. This article summarises some of the speaker Insights into what the leading global consumer and shopper mega-trends are.
With distinct themes coming through, they were linked by the golden thread of a return to our humanity and the primacy of forging emotional connectedness.
You gotta have Heart!
Rather than the somewhat blandly generic “Build your Brand” theme, the Conference could well have been titled “Cardiac Arrest!” If there was a single thread linking almost every one of the presentations I sat in, it had to do with “Heart”. Winning Brand communication, to truly touch, has to be heart-stopping, pull on the heartstrings…speak to our heartland as human beings rather than consumers.
Head vs. Heart
In a fiercely competitive world, functional benefits will keep getting copied. The lowest price is also not by itself a very sustainable answer. Brands need to have head – rational and functional benefits - but much, much more importantly going forward, they also need to have heart. We need to make robust, compelling, meaningful emotional connections with consumers and shoppers. We are after all emotional decision makers and have sensory and emotional reactions six times faster than we do rational ones. Our everyday choices are driven far more by our feelings rather than just the facts. There are many ways to touch people emotionally… you can talk to their values, tap into those wonderful little truths we call ‘insights’ into how we can fulfill their desires or make their lives easier. You can amuse or entertain, build brand stories, or you can speak plainly right into the realities of their daily lives. (Great example of a brand with a heartbeat, visit ( HYPERLINK "http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk" http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk)
If you are in any doubt, Apple’s iPod is a great example of a brand launched into a market already swamped with 153 competitors, the difference? iPod has heart, and has become the defining brand in this market. Another brand that has successfully moved from head to heartland is Unilever’s OMO, an inspired approach that has set them apart in the Laundry category.
JP Morgan said; “A man makes a decision for 2 reasons, the good reason and the real reason”
Emotional context
We have at least three times the choice we did three years ago, with shelves groaning with options. The over-choice can result in shopper-fatigue, frustration and regret. Manufacturers and Retailers need to help shoppers mediate the selection, to reframe choice. We do not shop a category with any clue about or care for the Plannogram! We do not see the Household cleaning category as powders, chemicals and paper products. We look at those brands as helpers, tools to assist us in achieving our goal; a clean, hygienic, sparkling home for our families and to welcome our friends into. Emotional Context is critical, and a big part of what is missing in retail. This is slowly changing and POS is being very creatively used to create context and real-life connections in retail. This trend is fundamentally changing merchandising thinking and how we define retail itself. There is a US hotel chain where you can buy everything you see, and we are seeing Pop up stores that do not wait for shoppers to come to them but that go to where consumers are.
Online Oxygen
Most of the world is more electronically than personally connected! Blogs are mainstream media and it’s addictive, with socialising platforms leading the way. And the revolutionary aspect is that users are engaged not just in consuming but generating content – hence the term Generation “C”. Whilst in SA connectivity remains low, it is a powerful medium to connect with higher income groups, with user-ship growing all the time. If there is one device that will however introduce another few hundred million people to the online world it’s the phone. Google is working with 30 Technology and Mobile companies on the Project Android, a complete, open, free mobile broadband platform. There are something like 2.7 billion cell phones in use, and the predictions in ‘Trendwatch’ is that nearly 1 in 3 mobile subscribers will use a mobile broadband connection by 2012 – over 1 billion users! Almost overnight we will see connectivity explode. This will fuel the “Net-hood” phenomenon we are already seeing. Social networks going local, if not hyper-local. Neighbourhoods, Streets, Buildings, and even floors in buildings. We are poised, within just 4 or 5 years, to truly become a Global Village.
An Eco-heartbeat
With increasing globalization, automation and technology setting the pace of our lives, we are feeling our fragility. The pace of life leaves us feeling fractured, hurried and often disconnected from ourselves. What we are not disconnected from however is the common fate we share on an ailing planet that is facing multiple, unprecedented environmental crisis. A March issue of Time magazine had a fascinating article in it called: “10 ideas that are changing the world”. One of them was the notion of “Common Wealth. “ The reality that we share an uncertain and precarious future on a crowded planet that is facing unprecedented environmental crisis. Our survival as a race depends on us collaborating to truly save the world. Jeffrey Sachs calls it “the defining challenge of the 21st century”.Eco-consciousness will forge how we build and shape our environments, how we live and consume, how we relate to one another and what we see to be important. Its effect on branding will be profound. A new elite will pride themselves on re-use, renewal, recycling and restoring. How little they own rather than how much.
The joining of hearts
The notion of “Conscience Consumption” will feature large. Including environmental concerns, this trend embraces an inclusive mindset, reaching out to the disenfranchised and less fortunate - being a force for good in the world. Doing business on the basis of Fair Trade. Supporting artisanal and local community production. The emergence of brands that exist solely for Charity, like Paul Newman’s food lines in the US where 100% of the proceeds go to charity. The designer of the brand: ‘Toms shoes’ is driven to contribute to the alleviation of poverty in his native Argentina, so for every pair of children’s shoes you buy, a pair is given to a child in need in his home country.
Convenience Culture
Consider a child today? Two clicks away from anything they might ever need to know. Never having to wait for a picture to be printed, or a longed-for letter to arrive. We are living in a “snack culture”… we have an insatiable desire for instant gratification. Conveniently packaged Music, TV, games and fashion, we devour our culture in bite-size nuggets for easy eating at maximum speed. Media snacking is a way of life…. We check news, tap out emails and graze on blogs. HDTV at night is set to become a 10-course meal but there are other morsels available like using some of those “whenever” minutes on your cell. There is a new newspaper being published in Spain called “20 minutes”. They print 2.3 million copies every weekday! Forget a free newspaper that you need an hour for, 20 minutes is all readers need to get their quick news fix.
Emotional Consumption
Shoppers are savvier that ever before, about quality and relative value. Beyond the traditional and tangible 4 P’s of Marketing: Place, Price, Product and Promotion, it’s the intangibles that are growing in importance, think Perception, Performance, Peripheral and People. It should not be so much about making money as it should be about making meaning. Luxury consumers are willing to pay for added value that has meaning, but will not however pay a penny more than they personally think its worth. Most shoppers can stretch their relative affordability range, but only if the value is there. This might mean they’d be equally comfortable buying a discount T-shirt as they’d be buying an expensive designer watch. (Global Retail Design Consultancy ‘FITCH’ calls this the “No-Brow” shopper. Not hi-brow or low-brow, but comfortable with their status and in their skin) Manufacturers and retailers need to know what makes their product special and keep adding to it!
Lets get Real
The brands and stores we choose to buy from are driven by so much more than only benefits or simply location – and by more than cost or even value for money. Brands and Stores that have head, heart and guts are the ones that will win – the ones we will connect and have real relationships with. What are these brands characterized by? They are real and so much more than just brands. They are authentic, talk straight and touch us. The complexity of rushing to achieve more, acquire more, do and be more, leaves us breathless. Relationships are the truly valuable currency in our lives, and we are looking for brands and the services we use to reflect and echo this. To embody the fabric of our lives, our dreams and aspirations. To relate to our values and what we think is important. To be honest and true. To be generous and expansive…to have heart.
Some sources and further reading include:
www.compasscommunications.co.za for Presentation notes on Conference Topics such as :
The Overchoiced Life: How intuitive Retail can help / Brandjam / Humanising Brands through emotional design / Shopping, why we love it and how retailers can create the ultimate shopping experience / Branding Up, Defying the Marketing Laws of Gravity / Emotionomics / Women’s Retail Rituals and Beyond / 10 Principles to sell in the last few feet / The Supermarket of the Future
(Please email for a personal access code)
“Emotionomics: Winning hearts and minds” - Dan Hill, President of Sensory Logic
Some excerpts direct from “Trendwatch”