By Bob Wheatley

Photo credit: Sharon Dominik

Forever and a day I’ve seen this concept play out in various categories from beverages to food, travel services to floor care and cleaning products, that 80% of your profits can routinely come from 20% of your customers who constitute the most engaged, heavy users in your business. Call them your best fans.

Yet routinely we focus our efforts, strategies and spending on casting a broad net. We try to be appealing to everyone because we keep telling ourselves that our brand and business not only deserves high household penetration, but “we can’t ignore the volume opportunities.” To be sure, but the 20% that’s mainlining your brand and paying attention to your messaging with a little help and “enabling” can become a more productive core of real-world ambassadors. People who can help spread the word effectively to those who are not as fully invested and who don’t buy as often.

Take cheese and pet food for example. Cheese is one of the most popular food categories in supermarkets. We like cheese, so it’s a big volume business. Yet a closer look reveals that consumers who are more emotionally engaged and devoted to cooking represent a “heavy user” profile that purchases more cheese products, more often and in many cases will go for higher priced items when they feel the value proposition is credible. So paying closer attention to this group of emotionally charged ‘kitchen commanders’ can yield incremental benefits in talk value and word of mouth, once they’re fully embraced, recognized and rewarded by the brands they love.

Or in pet food: a dynamic audience combination we refer to as indulgers and doters consists of a high percentage of higher income households who treat their animals like family members — and will even go as far as cutting back on some of their own discretionary purchases in order to keep Fido in tip top shape by feeding him a super-premium pet food diet. Industry statistics show this group continues to fuel an incredible growth track record in the emerging natural and organic segment – even though the tough economy has weighed in heavily in many segments to compel “trading down” behaviors.

Your call to action…

Think of it this way, your PR communications ROI outcomes will improve when communicating with an audience that’s really, genuinely paying attention. Those who have emotional, personal lifestyle connections to a brand are listening — first at the category level. A brand that works over time to mine relevance with this audience has the opportunity to build a unique relationship and bond. Conversely broad awareness tactics can perform as a “reminder mechanism” for the larger audience segments out there who may buy less often but who have ties to the franchise through their habit behaviors.

1. Consider for a moment the opportunities from investing more fully in courting your heavy users. What would you do differently? What efforts might you undertake to help create a community around these groups and empower them to interact with each other – especially important for home chefs and pet parents who want to share tips, ideas, experiences and insights with each other.

2. What rewards and recognition can you offer to your most devoted followers that surprise and delight – and thus are often the triggers to generating strong, credible and organic word-of-mouth communication.

3. What sponsored experiences can you create and deliver that bring your brand as close as possible to your best fans and allow them to interact with you and each other. In food this could include unique culinary experiences that reward your best customers with an opportunity to learn from the food heroes they respect like celebrity chefs. For pets it could be local dog park events and contests that allow pet parents to engage in shared experiences with their animal and with each other.

But wait there’s more…

Today, excellent blogger and thought leader Sonia Simone has an interesting post at Copyblogger that talks about the personal side of the Pareto Principle and how it impacts you and what you do. Her observations:

“…Which means that 20% of your customers provide 80% of your revenue. 20% of the time you spend behind your computer provides 80% of your best work. And 20% of that great meal you had last night provided 80% of the pleasure. (It was the chocolate mousse cake, wasn’t it?)

Because of the Pareto Principle, there’s always a “20%” you should be spending your time on. And in just about every discipline, it’s known as the fundamentals.”

Have you sat down to think about your day, your activities and to reflect on this idea – that 20% of your efforts will produce 80% of the great results and accomplishments you’re looking for? So what do the fundamentals look like for you? Maybe it’s a good idea to start by putting more energy and investment into courting your biggest fans…

Bob Wheatley

Remember Bill Clinton’s distillation of his Presidential campaign bid to one singular message platform: It’s the economy, stupid. Similarly the onion surrounding social media success for brands and business can be peeled back to reveal one central and over-arching truth – it’s the content that drives the attraction value, fan-base growth and conversation.

Never before in the history of brand marketing and PR have we been in such a position to build credible relationships, real ones, with those we wish to communicate with.

Image c/o Getty Images

Throwing messaging baseballs

Yet so many in the communications business these days seem hell-bent on continuing to push self-serving messaging AT people in every media pathway. Why? Because we’re so used to sitting down and defining what we want to “convince” audiences of about our brand. We labor greatly to define key messages and then look at every vehicle out there as a vessel for delivering the message payload, be it paid, earned or owned media. We throw messaging baseballs at people expecting them to step up and catch them.

Oops they dropped the ball

But more often than not, consumers drop the ball, walk away from home plate and simply ignore the spinning missive at it passes by. They don’t want to play the game that way. Social media is by its very definition an “accrual” proposition. Your Facebook page or Twitter account begins with an audience of zero. Unlike every medium that’s come before it where access to a given media property brought you a specific audience size and type. In the new world of owned media, you start at the beginning. With nothing.

Building the fan base

Aggregating an audience is an outcome of great content, conversation and meaningful offers. The authenticity and value of that content is related directly to its relevance to the consumer’s lifestyle interests. Thus brands must find a path to “hook-up” with consumers based on what THEY care about, not the other way around.

1. For the food brand it might be enabling a recipe sharing community or bringing consumers into contact with their kitchen heroes like chefs.

2. For a beverage brand it could be enabling unique social experiences and providing ways for fans to share their impressions and ideas with each other.

3. For a fashion brand it might involve helping fashion-forward people to share their ideas and insights on what to wear for different occasions, from beach to ballroom.

Eyes wide open

This whole process gets a lot clearer when brands employ consumer insight research to better understand the lifestyle interests and needs of their core consumers. Then ask themselves: what can the brand do to facilitate, enable or create opportunities to experience and share those things?

Building better brand relationships

Content that’s meaningful, valuable, interesting and entertaining is the path to establishing a community of engaged fans. Here are a few practical hints for doing it right.

• Multi-media is the way to go. Facebook’s share functionality only works when multi-media contact is used – podcasts and videos for instance.

• Ask questions. Interactivity occurs when we purposefully invite our community into the conversation, seeking their views, ideas and opinions.

• Use emotional terms and words. We are not fact-based, analytical decision making machines. We are expectation creation machines and thus frame our brand relationships based on feelings more than facts. Are you using emotive words?

• Responsiveness. The “get back to me” bar is considerably higher in the digital era. Consumers want and expect quick responses to their questions. Speed matters and being responsive is part of the assessment of how well your brand performs in the social media space.

• Conversation. Like-minded individuals congregate together in specific communities because of their shared interests. Are you helping enable their ability to talk with one another?

• Surprise and delight. Reward your fans with special offers and values they won’t get elsewhere. Recognize your most faithful followers with special status and access to unique content or other VIP experiences.

Social media is working well when its done right. Enough so that some sizable brands are upping their social media investments. Kellogg just announced they’re tripling their social media budget in the year ahead.

What do you think?

Hovering above the technology “feature” weeds…

By Robert Wheatley

Wow, last week was “Apple Land in America,” with all of the online and mainstream media conversation around iPad. Marketing sites did comparisons of buzz-metrics between Jobs and President Obama’s State of the Union message, with Apple winning on most scorecards. Apple continues to blaze new trails, even in their deft handling of the sales message.

Brands look at the Apple phenomenon with envy. Wouldn’t we all want our brands to glow with similar outsized levels of consumer devotion and enthusiasm? Truckloads of breathless media attention and positive coverage oozing out of every channel we can dream up?

There’s a very simple yet dramatically important aspect to Apple’s behavior that bears mention. So much of the time in marketing and PR we’re focused on the essence of the new feature and benefit. We sit down in a conference room to review in every detail the various achievements the R&D department has wrought in discovering new recipes, technologies or bringing measurable improvements to an existing product.

And so communications follows this path to creatively move the “what’s new news” through various media channels. On the other hand, Apple religiously and routinely focuses its communication from a slightly different angle: the consumer first and itself second.

Sure the product messaging is there, but the twist is vital, important and matters to achieving a better outcome. The overview tour of iPad is conducted from the user experience point of view. It’s about you first and how the product answers the need, rather than me first and my wizardry.

What’s missing?

The lesson here all too often is about remembering to put the consumer in the driver seat on messaging. Framing the new product in terms of the consumer’s real need and then connecting to your solution’s deft handling of same. Steve Jobs talked about iPad in the user context. How the product makes common tasks like Web browsing and book reading more engaging and interesting.

Simply said: consumer first, me second. The shift is important because relevant messaging trumps the easy-to-fall-into trap of specsmanship. Consumer self-interests govern our willingness to engage and listen. Apple smartly knows this and frames the message in this way.

Consider a new food product that comes to the table answering first how it solves a preparation dilemma cooks would immediately recognize.

Or maybe a household appliance that springs from real-world concerns expressed by time-stressed homemakers.

So often in the consumer electronics world its about increased lines of resolution or connectivity improvements and expressed as such. Apple understands the specs and technology advances aren’t nearly as compelling as the experience itself.

What do you think?

Images can evoke memories and feelings

By Robert Wheatley

In the marketing communications business we’re called upon to help brands build relationships with current users and attract new ones. Clients retain agencies like ours to do this with skill and result. Hence it requires us to understand the difference between effective communication and anything that’s less than that.

What we’ve learned in the age of consumer control is that relevance precedes engagement. Push oriented messaging generally is brands talking about themselves, usually focused on features and benefits. So its important to understand how personal relevance can add power to brand communication. Thus, we work doubly hard to understand consumer interests and needs. It is within our awareness of consumer lifestyle passions that we find ways to build powerful communication.

An example of this thinking at work:

At its core, brand story telling involves some form and combination of words and pictures. These tools are at the center of the emotional relationships people acquire with the brands they care about. Here’s what I mean:

This image was taken during the holiday break looking out the living room window of our weekend home in southwest Michigan. It snowed 15 inches in a 24-hour period and the result was a pristine winter wonderland. Serene, beautiful isn’t it? The poor photography notwithstanding, there’s a visual story this image brings to life in varying degrees for people who attach their own associations and experiences with it.

It’s hard to convey exactly how I feel about this image because there’s so much meaning attached to it that transcends just the picture itself. For me our place in Michigan is a vital retreat that refreshes and revitalizes my attitude and spirit. It’s a transcendent environment that lifts me out of the pressures of agency life and in restorative manner, serves to remind me of what’s important about family, nature and quiet contemplation.

There are three levels of interaction we can associate with the brand communications we come into contact with:

Positive recognition – what we see and hear gains meaning and value based on our current experiences and connection to satisfactory outcomes.

Warm memories – an added layer of value when the communication triggers positive memories and associations that look backward through our life experiences and help us relive those important moments.

Personal relevance – when the communication is fully engaging our happiness, sense of pride, confidence and wellbeing.

We (consumers) are expectation creation machines much more than we are rational processors of facts, figures and analytical arguments. Powerful communication occurs when these associations are brought to life. So it stands to reason the more you know the human you’re trying to reach, the greater the opportunity to build stories in a manner that draws them in.

Too often we think engagement is laddering up the facts of our product features and benefits. Rather it is the associations and values, feelings we have in the presence of brands that gives the brand relationship its substance and longevity.

We are on a relentless quest to build emotional connections that mine the human capacity to shirt-list the brands we care about. Ironically, the ones we care the most about are the ones we feel good about — those that offer an expectation of happiness when we’re in their presence.

What do you think?

By: Carrie Becker

Image c/o Flickr Thomas Hawk

Too often we hear stories of brands ignoring new technology and communications tools because they can’t grasp the ROI (or, more often, they don’t want to hear consumers complain!). Then in some unforeseen chain of events the brand must quickly engage the tools to overcome a communications crisis (e.g. Twitter response by new moms’ to poorly positioned Motrin advertising). Fortunately, I have a positive story that may help uncover the benefits of a two-way conversation with your customers.

My husband and I are beer drinkers (which makes it even more rewarding that Wheatley & Timmons handles communication strategy for the Modelo Brewing Group portfolio). Last night, I was winding down my weekend with a beer from a craft beer brewer, Dogfish Head. I’ve had their beer on a number of occasions and always found the same reliable, quality and taste.

Unfortunately, when I just wanted to savor one more sip of the relaxing weekend, my beer had other plans. Something was off and the taste replicated more grape juice flavors than the caramel and vanilla taste I had hoped for.

With a bit of frustration at 8:52pm (cst) I tweeted out “agh! my dogfish head palo santo tastes like grape juice WTF…I’ve had corked wine but don’t know what to call this beer.”

Within three minutes, one of my followers, Matthew Horbund (@mmWine), a wine consultant and blogger, responded that I should ask professional beer writer Ashley Routson (@TheBeerWench) what may be wrong.

Now, I do follow Dogfish Head on Twitter (@dogfishheadbeer) but at this point in the night I didn’t think anyone would be there to solve my problem so I just left it alone (*note to self: in the future, just send a tweet to Dogfish Head. THEY LISTEN!).

By 6:03am, I received a tweet from @dogfishheadbeer, “Not good – can you DM me an email address? Our QC folks would love to get some details from you (bottle data, etc).” From that point, I was quickly put in touch with quality control and was able to offer them the data on the bottle. I was then put in touch with a local rep who picked up the bottle from my house and made a visit to the wine and spirits store where we purchased the bottle.

As a consumer and also a brand strategist, there were a few things that ran through my head throughout this experience:

First, after I drank the off tasting beverage:
I was completely surprised that I was having a poor experience with Dogfish Head, a brewery I trust to always put out quality product. It made me consider that perhaps quality control had slacked. Could I trust my next beer selection with them?

Then, after receiving the first tweet and following rapid correspondence from DogFish Head:
I was completely geeked-out by the amazing commitment the company had to their product and their customers. They used listening tools to seek out what customers are saying. They LISTENED then used the opportunity to make a situation better. Plus, this did not take much additional effort by the customer (me). They sought the information and ran with the response.

This for me is a perfect case of when a company is truly LISTENING and showing commitment to their product and their customers.

Are there any other brands that you feel are good ‘Listeners’?

If you are interested in some additional insight in how to better connect with your consumers, I’d love the opportunity to chat. I love chatting about wine, food and building consumer relationships. Email me: cbecker@wheatleytimmons.com or find me on Twitter: twitter.com/CarrieBecker7

Never underestimate the need for equity-building efforts

By Robert Wheatley

I love my car. It’s a 2003 Mercedes G 500. If you’ve seen one it’s a retro looking angular box on wheels. Mercedes version of a Hummer-esque off roader gussied up with amenities (best auto sound system I’ve ever had). It’s a truck and drives like one but I really enjoy it. In my advanced age I prefer using Kiehl’s skin care products because they work and I like the story behind the brand. At the end of a rough day (I have plenty of those) I re-orient with a cold Corona beer (yes they’re a client but I liked the product before hand). The vacation-in-a-bottle beach thing is a mental aspiration.

As a passionate home cook I have standards about what I will use. It’s Barilla pasta or I’m not making the recipe. If you put a bag of Cheetos in front of me, it’s gone. Same with Blue Diamond Smokehouse almonds – can’t live without ‘em. My dentist was forever lecturing me about my teeth. He persuaded me to get a Sonic Care toothbrush. Wow, what a difference in the check-ups. I’m sold. I’m a pet fanatic, and have been my entire life. And I’m brand loyal — I have a Newfoundland dog, here he is.

His name is Goliath – appropriate don’t you think, given he weighs 170 pounds? I have been a Newf fan for 15 years. Best dog breed on the planet. I could talk for hours about them. My soup is Campbell’s, and my tissue is Kleenex . My computer is an Apple and I’ve been a diehard for over 20 years. Honestly the Apple reflects my non-conforming outlook on life and career devotion to a creative business. I appreciate design esthetics so Apple gets major props for that.

Sure the economy has created trade-offs for my family and me. We do less of some things like travel. We’ve cut way back on home improvements. We’re not replacing things that are getting a little shop worn. But brands that matter still do and they’re not falling off the menu. Why? Because so much of how we define ourselves is expressed in our likes and interests, and brands play a real big role there.

A recent Harris Interactive Equi-Trend study suggests that in the current economic hurricane, as Warren Buffet describes it, we tighten our grip around brands we enjoy. Marketing Daily ran a piece about the study. Says Harris: “Brand equity does not lose potency when money is tight.” Interestingly comfort foods and staples got the highest brand equity scores – Hershey’s, Crayola, even Arm & Hammer baking soda. In categories like airlines, Southwest got high marks. It was Sony in electronics and Grey Goose in spirits.

The prevailing view is that brand loyalty goes out the window with the budget bath water in a recession. NOT SO. It is entirely conditional. Loyalty’s core essence is grounded in value to the user. Wes brown, an analyst with Iceology in LA says people tend to stick with what they know and while a cheaper alternative may exist, they are hesitant to risk failure from something they don’t know as well.

So for any organization considering cutbacks and diminished investments in brand building, think twice. And for those who in a state of panic reach for steep price reductions, be careful lest you dilute your equity. Remember that people love their brands and investments in building those relationships are not playing fast and loose with available assets. If anything its vital to your future. Brands that plow ahead in the storm, by far and away, come out healthier than their conservative brethren.

I’m “gripping,” are you? What do you think?

Coming FTC rules pose challenge to social media marketing

By Robert Wheatley

New rules are in the works that could alter the legal landscape for agencies and clients in how they handle blogger outreach and use of third party experts and celebrities as spokespeople.

I wrote an article on this that was published today at Marketing Daily. You can read it here.

Behind all this are several note-able and well-publicized events including the fake blogging scandal involving Walmart and their PR firm, Edelman along with the accusations involving lack of transparency on the part of Whole Foods’ CEO. These events and others have prompted the FTC to consider adjusting their Guides in order to better assure transparency.

This includes disclosure when blogger are paid to promote a brand, are given free products or some other consideration. The same thinking is also extended to media interviews involving outside third-party spokespeople. The FTC’s concern there is if a viewer or listener will understand the spokesperson is being paid.

So agencies are adopting new procedures and policies that will reflect the need for clarity in the relationships between brands and various forms of media.

What’s so bad about transparency?

In today’s wired world where everything can be known or discovered and both brands and businesses live in glass houses, we’re all used to routinely finding out who’s operating behind the curtain. For the most part, the curtain stays open.

I don’t think consumers are surprised to know that celebrities are often paid to promote products they’re interested in. And in those instances when bloggers have been paid and acknowledge that in their posts, I think we find the revelation honest and refreshing.

So let’s embrace the new age of transparency and not worry about the disclosure. It’s a good thing. That said agencies must be sure their policies are in line with FTC requirements to avoid legal run-ins with the Federal policy.

What do you think?

Restaurant brands on hunt for fresh territory…

By Robert Wheatley

If ever there was a subject relevant to brands today, elasticity has to be in the top 10 as businesses work overtime to uncover new markets, segments and business opportunities while consumers remain choosy and conservative in their spending habits.

The question marketers must ask themselves – how far can you go from the center of what your brand stands for? Is there a place along the path of stretching where a brand’s core equity is diluted? How do you decide where fresh business opportunities can be cultivated without risking your franchise in the process?

USA Today has an interesting story by Bruce Horovitz that chronicles the wide array of menu moves by top restaurant chain brands to attract new customers. You start to see a sort of food form encroachment begin to develop as brands add new products, adjust mainstays and expand menus to lure in more diners.

KFC goes grilling
Pizza Hut rolls pasta
McDonald’s pours espresso drinks
Boston Market tries crispy chicken
Arby’s re-casts beef sandwiches as burgers
Dominos hits subs and pasta-filled bread bowls

Horovitz wonders aloud, “could sushi at Taco Bell be next?

Marketers may agree what distinguishes brands from one another is their category leadership and distinctiveness in the restaurant trade with a particular menu item as Starbucks is to gourmet coffee. McDonald’s believes they can be effective in this space because the brand pioneer Starbucks has sufficiently elevated the espresso experience. The democratization of gourmet coffee arrives at a moment where broad market tastes have expanded far enough to embrace the richer espresso brew.

This is tricky territory. The annals of marketing are filled with attempts by brands to expand their markets that have eventually led to various forms of implosion. Once thought to be the grand experiment in the automobile industry, Saturn – a new kind of car company – makes the error of trying to trade up from its core competency as an inexpensive entry level auto brand and thus dilutes what made it famous in the first place.

Owning the reference standard for your category…

Al and Laura Ries excellent book, “War in the Boardroom” reminds us of the fundamentals of successful positioning and the goal to own key words or a concept in the consumers mind.

Energy drink = Red Bull
Driving machine = BMW
Heavy motorcycle = Harley
Search = Google
Books = Amazon
Never loses suction = Dyson
Athletic shoe = Nike

When brands in the name of innovation move too far afield of what thy stand for, the consumer gets confused, the core equity is diluted, the brand becomes less meaningful to its devoted fans.

Navigating the call for stretch…

The starting point in this conversation begins with asking this question: what do you stand for? And within that conversation remaining clear that all things to all people is a proven recipe for trouble. The consumer world today appreciates expertise, craftsmanship and uniqueness more than they desire predictability and uniformity.

Short-term gains should never be bought by mortgaging the legacy of a strong brand. So in this conversation less will always be more. Stretches must be handled with care and once on that path great discipline will be required to steer around further moves that go beyond the arena you own in the consumer’s mind. If your path remains emotionally relevant to your core competency then consumers are more likely to accept your ability to deliver well in the new business you’re entering.

The second level of assessment has to do with credibility and believability in terms of what you do best. Will the consumer accept your playing in a new segment naturally? If it feels forced or you’re treading into waters owned by another that gives question to your adjacent category competence, it may be best to forgo the potential balance sheet pluses in favor of longer term franchise building.

The preeminent goal for all successful brands – being highly differentiated. Will your plans support that objective or detract from it over time?

What’s your view on stretching?

Talking to consumers like a friend opens the dialogue

By Robert Wheatley

Seth Godin had a terrific post today. It begins with the premise that most marketing is aimed at recruiting new customers — thus the object of a brand’s obsession is very often going to be a stranger. He compares this to the paradigm of friendship where openness to an exchange of ideas is organic. Strangers are harder to talk to and convince of anything than a friend – whom you have motivation to listen to.

Let’s expand on this idea to describe a basis for effective brand communication strategy…

What are the characteristics of a good friendship? Perhaps mutual respect and affection are evident. When you interact with a friend you listen. Intently. You are patient. You care about their aspirations and concerns. You look for ways to be helpful. You give before you get. There’s a bond there that operates in parallel with some measure of compatibility – like-mindedness that serves to energize and put forward momentum into the relationship. Compatibility by the way usually arises from shared interests.

More often than not, business and marketing plans treat consumers as objects to sell to. The communication is built on a presumed clinical exchange – I make a great product and use my marketing plan to inoculate you with reasons why it is better than the other options, then you believe me and buy my stuff – and so the great cycle of consuming life continues. But now for the most part consumers have learned the tricks of the trade and remain systemically skeptical of push-style messages of self-proclaimed benefits, preferring mostly to ignore them.

So what are the fundamental underpinnings of effective communication in today’s wired and transparent world? How do you create the kind of communication that results in brand preference leading to a sale?

Talk and walk like a friend…

Sounds simple enough but to actually do this has tremendous implications for how you go to market, how you view the customer relationship in your operations and certainly in your communication – both content and channel.

Here’s the short form recipe for brand/consumer friendship:

To create and foment compatibility you must understand the personal interests and passions of your target consumer.

You need to identify ways your brand can help enable and facilitate those passions that can breed connective tissue between the consumer’s lifestyle and your brand – we call this finding your brand’s Higher Purpose.

Start a conversation. This has implications for use of social media platforms. It impacts the manner and tone of your messaging. It invites openness, feedback and discourse.

What about the experience the consumer has with your business and brand, is it friendly, is it fair and based on acknowledging the shared goals of a friendship?

There has to be genuine care for your consumer’s welfare – you can’t fake it. You give to get. Reciprocity is at the core of how a brand earns a place in the consumer’s life.

General Mills Mines Relevance

By Robert Wheatley

When marketers work to identify a higher purpose and thereby imbue their brand with greater meaning, a whole new world of opportunity unfolds to develop that ever-elusive relationship with consumers. The challenge: finding the sweet spot of relevance to the lifestyle concerns and passions of your best customers. Here’s an example of great thinking at work from our friends at General Mills.

My three and six-year old daughters like books. Every night the ritual at bedside involves two or three titles told with great flourish by my wife, Kristen or me. We routinely replenish the bookrack with new titles, given their daily appetite for stories. Equally we feel this is a good thing as parents to do and remain hopeful the devotion to reading will create a life-long interest in books.

Please note the importance of the children’s welfare to parents and doing things actively to support their development!!

Cheerios. Yes its cereal, and also finger food for the very young. Both daughters eat it dry as a snack. So Cheerios is in the consideration set for our kids. The goal of General Mills is to sell me more Cheerios, more often and over a longer period of time. Sure Cheerios can re-fresh their proposition with flavor and form line extensions. But this happens quite a lot in food land so while we take note of it, this is not working to dial up our general attitude towards the brand.

But wait!!!

Cheerios launches a contest to search out and identify new potential authors for children’s titles via a literacy program called “Spoonfuls of Stories.” Further the brand distributes 35 million paperback editions of selected books inside cereal boxes. Enter the parallel cause related layer – Cheerios to date has also donated $3 million to a nonprofit called First Book that provides books to low-income families.

Cheerios now intersects with my behavior as a parent to read to my kids on a daily basis. This act is important to me. The brand’s behavior aligns with mine in an area quite separate from diet but resting squarely in the zone of relevance. Now we have something powerful that ties the brand relationship together.

This is precisely what we mean by “higher purpose.” Engagement and the opportunity for a relationship must begin with the consumer granting permission. And this access is an outcome of brands that enable and support the keen aspirations of their users. This takes the brand relationship past commerce and into dialogue. Telling me about the natural ingredients in a cereal is one thing, but helping me with a key-parenting goal is entirely another. This is the intent of our own proprietary Trailblazer planning model – to uncover insights that help brands rise above “selling” and into mattering.

Bravo Cheerios….