Hyper-consumption falls as new era of meaning and purpose takes hold

By Robert Wheatley

We are sitting at the threshold of a new epoch in brand marketing and communication. One where old voices tempting consumers to look for the thrill in upward mobility and finding the joy in toys is being replaced by a soulful search for things more meaningful, more substantive.

Now more than ever there is a need to align your brand with a new set of consumer-driven values, to chart a different course with a refreshed voice and message, more in sync with this seminal shift in consumer attitudes. Are you ready? Read on…

The economic “thwack” on the side of the head…

Leave it to one of the worst economic disasters America has seen to finally bring some closure on the continual debate between judging one’s life by the things you buy vs. the “softer values” of contentment, happiness and belonging. Hyper- consumption may well be the biggest casualty befalling strategies for marketing and business as the economy searches for a new path to growth.

While the cauldron of behavior change continues to boil…

Sure enough the pocketbook difficulties (owing more but having less) faced by consumers here and around the world remain bitingly fresh. According to a recent report published in Food Business magazine, consumer spending at restaurants declined 2.2% in 2009 from the previous year. While that may not sound like much it is nevertheless quite remarkable. The data just released by the Economic Research Service of the US department of Agriculture indicated it was the first year-to-year decline reported since 1949, and the largest single drop in the restaurant business since the height of the Great Depression in 1938.

Today Mintel research reveals that beverage alcohol sales were off by 4.9% in the on-premise channel (restaurants, bars and clubs) over the same period. As we cut back in restaurant visits, we’re moving our adult beverage consumption to the home front, up 1.2 % over the same period and over 21% since 2004.

Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?

In a Forbes magazine report showcasing a new consumer attitude study from ad agency Euro RSCG , we find that saving rather than splurging is preferred now by 87% of Americans. And that 79% of us have way more respect for people who live relatively simple, debt-free lives than we do the bling-centric luxury lifestyle folk. Says Forbes: “Robin Leach has been sucker punched by Ed Begley Jr.”

Having possessions for their own sake and a sense of a life well lived are being separated from each other. Eight in 10, according to the study, believe that society has become too shallow, focusing on things that don’t matter. In a way you might say the “hyper-consumerist” life didn’t pan out the way consumers thought it would.

So what does this mean?

The data helps us see a new picture emerge:

• 80% of consumers are now shopping more carefully and mindfully.

• 54% are paying attention to the environmental and social impact of the products and brands they buy.

• 57% believe that cause participation matters.

More is less today about accumulation of goods. Instead our focus is on community, simplicity, a sense of purpose and belonging.

Successful brands in the digital age grow because they’re learning to align themselves as enablers, facilitators and supporters of consumer lifestyle interests and concerns. So, too, the message in brand communications and PR must adjust to acknowledge the desire for greater meaning, for personal growth, giving back and cause involvement – living simpler and less cluttered lives.

How can your band and product portfolio help consumers live a more satisfying life? And help them realize their desire for greater meaning? For belonging and sense of community?

What say you?

Connections to key lifestyle interests invoke openness to engagement

By Robert Wheatley

“The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” — George Bernard Shaw

Business growth opportunities abound for brands that fully understand the conditions and events that set in motion openness to communication – as in “I’m listening.” Much of the time consumers are not. The presence of brand communication at any given moment is not nearly as important as the audience’s willingness to pay attention. That may feel a bit like saying water is wet. But hear us out: lifestyle interests and events drive the readiness to listen. There’s an optimal time and place when consumers will be primed to engage.

Our point: brand communication gains a whole lot more traction when it occurs in tandem with relevant consumer behavior than it does randomly. Yet all too often, brand outreach is showered broadly as a form of messaging rain, timed to coincide with retail distribution or promotion period considerations more so than consumer lifestyle connection. In effect, brands remain ever hopeful that consumers will simply collide with the message storm or will be magically lured into engagement through its ubiquity, entertainment value or sheer novelty.

Lifestyle events prime the pump of openness…

Brand communication and PR strategies anchored to a foundation of real insight about the consumer’s relevant lifestyle concerns and passions will help crack open the door to hyper-targeted communication that conveys the right thing at the right time to the right person.

Getting Alignment With Target Audience Interests

Here’s a living example — Nesties – as defined by market research firm OTX and on-line retailer The Knot – are a unique segment of 25 to 32 year old female consumers. They represent the low hanging fruit for an array of household and lifestyle products. When these women become engaged to be married it triggers a period of three to five years devoted to wedding planning, new household creation and starting a family. These events in turn motivate an array of purchases.

It is the events and changing conditions in their lives that activate a behavioral response. Collectively Nesties are long-range “planners” who feel they have primary responsibility in setting up their new households and take responsibility for decorating, cooking, social activities, household chores, caring for children and pets.

This group shows evidence of predictable purchase behavior. And offers brands an audience already receptive to establishing a relationship that could continue beyond these formative years. So investments should be made in carefully crafted dialogue focused on this unique tribe — and grounded in positioning the brand as helpful and involved with her changing lifestyle needs, concerns and aspirations. This will lead to business growth.

Finding The Optimal Moment

Strategic timing and location of communication can also yield added engagement value. Meaning if it occurs when a person is actively doing something germane. A simple example of this is what we call leveraging a food brand’s kitchen footprint or in effect building its “share-of-countertop.” There is increased receptivity to brand messaging when the delivery timing coincides with related consumer’s behavior – in this case when working in the kitchen space. An obvious starter is to provide useful meal ideas, entertaining suggestions, tabletop recommendations, recipe preparation hints and serving suggestion guidance. It is an optimal environment for having a conversation — because the consumer is naturally open to it and their brain is switched on to the subject matter.

Nailing The Best Message

Messaging gains power when it is configured around the consumer’s lifestyle interests. Finding this sweet spot of alignment is what we call identifying a brand’s Higher Purpose. When the brand positions itself as an enabler, facilitator and supporter of a consumer’s personal passion, you’re able to forge powerful outreach tactics from this base. Consider the strategic possibilities that could fall out of sharpening your focus on consumer groups devoted to specific lifestyle interests such as fashion, travel, music, art, pet care, food enjoyment, cooking, child rearing, fitness, sports, home decorating or improvement, self-improvement, gardening, outdoor recreation, entertainment, entertaining, relationships and socializing. We could go on. The point is: the days of the hard sell, transactional style relationship are over and that form of messaging is out the window with it. So you want the consumer to understand some of the unique functional benefits in your product. Ok. And the path to getting their ears switched on springs from your willingness to be generous and unselfish — and thus play a role in their passions. It’s a richer, deeper and more personal relationship you want to construct.

The end result will be increased brand relevance, preference and sales.

Brands are fast becoming media publishers and producers

By Robert Wheatley

Is your brand ready to be its own TV channel? Magazine publisher? Is there a Chief Editorial Officer position looming on the horizon inside your organization? The answer could be yes.

We have entered the era of content marketing. Inbound rather than outbound communication strategies that serve to build Web traffic, remove barriers to purchase, activate brand ambassadors and support community building – all with a shelf life that has remarkable staying power. This shift will inevitably require optimization of brand communications strategies between the three primary platforms of Owned, Earned and Paid media. Of these, more and more momentum is surfacing around Owned Media. Here we discuss its role and value in the marketing mix.

What does your Owned Media plan look like?

We’re on a fast track now to define best practices in content creation for various forms of brand created media — videos, Webcasts, podcasts, blogs, e-zines, e-books and presentations. Not long ago brands worked with their PR counsel primarily to get product massages telegraphed through various editorial channels. While the world of “earned media” will continue to be a relevant and important mode of outreach — albeit along a refined path that assigns increasing priority to bloggers — ”owned media” is rapidly emerging as an important foundation vehicle for acquiring, building and retaining customer relationships. Now is the time to construct your own editorial and programming calendars that chart topics and story telling in a frame your audience will find useful in their daily lives.

Owned Media helps build trust, familiarity and mutual respect…

At the recent Pet Food Forum in Chicago, a conference of leading pet food brands and their minders, I presented the case for brand building that follows a new trail built around identifying a brand’s Higher Purpose – an effort to drive relevancy by aligning the brand value proposition closely with consumer (in this case pet parent) lifestyle needs and passions. Part of the presentation was dedicated to the over-arching requirement for trust-creation and how important social media will be to install the building blocks of confidence, familiarity, respect and comfort that must exist between brand and consumer. Interestingly the entire Higher Purpose proposition seeds and cultivates fertile ground for ongoing content creation that is by definition more meaningful to consumers – because its designed around their needs, interests and concerns.

Equally important, engaging content lies at the base of aggregating an audience in social media platforms. If you do this skillfully, brands earn permission for a relationship. And that includes becoming a resource for news, information, entertainment and education.

Essentially we’re talking about how you can exponentially increase your brand’s worth and engagement value by delivering content that is instructive and helpful to those trying to make decisions about what products to buy.

Says social media expert and author Brian Solis:

“Our road to the future begins with understanding that attention is finite and is increasingly thinning. It is now our responsibility to connect purpose and value directly with individuals where, when, and how their attention is focused. We must help ourselves by introducing relevance, discoverability, and share-ability into the mix. Empowering consumers to view the most material information and in turn, make advantageous decisions is now a critical priority and will determine our stature not only in online societies, but also in the markets where we hope to thrive and excel. We are either part of the information gathering and decision-making cycles or we are absent from them. Where we rank once connected is established by our understanding of people and the information they seek combined with our mastery of the networks, tools, and services they use to communicate. And, through the creation of compelling media, we earn the presence, awareness and ultimately the influence we deserve.”

A great example of this at work is Whole Foods and their Secret Ingredient video blog that is aimed at helping home cooks learn new recipes, cooking techniques, ingredient pairings and other useful advice. It sits in the middle of a growing catalog of video material that spans the waterfront of visits to a dairy farm or other tutorials that surround the increasingly popular topic of “where your food comes from.” It informs, entertains, rewards while burnishing the brand as a knowledge broker on subjects their shoppers care about.

Taking responsibility for consumer interaction…

In a way, owned media offers brands a plausible shot to take responsibility for engineering consumer engagement in communications. Ads can be ignored. PR, while intrusive, still requires that messaging pass through an independent filter – one that will certainly be credible. But in the end may not fully expose the audience to all of the relevant information. Editing is editing.

“Content focused on selling rather than helping is doomed.” Jay Baer, Convince & Convert

Thus Owned Media allows brands to create and build communication that is delivered in tact to consumers. Of course this creates enormous pressure on relevancy and unselfishness — you cannot do this well if your primary motivation is simply to thrust a selling message in front of someone. This never works. But with a proper nod to relevance, value and sensitivity the door is wide open to put enriched multi-media content squarely in the mix of social media engagement.

We live in exciting times. The PR business has now acquired an added role to combine and synthesize editorial outreach with content creation. The end result is a rich treasure trove of meaningful communication that can hit consumer lifestyle interests squarely on the nose – assuming, of course, that you know what those interests are.

Just think of the possibilities for brand to live in a place that matters and has meaning to the lives of those they wish to sell to –

• Cooking tips for the passionate kitchen commander

• Destination hints and experiences for the inveterate traveler

• Style immersions for the creative fashionistas

• Parenting advice for the focused purposeful mom

• Edgy ideas for the budding home decorator

• Shared stories of adventure for the outdoor enthusiast

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May 13, 2010

   

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….

By Robert Wheatley

Can happiness build a better brand?

Granted it feels a little wishful and maybe even goofy to say happiness can be linked to business success, but hang in with me, and you’ll see how this pays out.

You have to love the story of Zappos. In less than a decade it’s gone from idea to around $1 billion in sales. Not bad. You’ve probably encountered the hall-talk and legend of extraordinary customer service and devotion to culture which grounds most word-of-mouth about this Internet e-tailer.

After browsing through some of the Tweets at Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh’s Twitter page, I discovered a link to a podcast from a recent presentation he made at a conference in Austin, Texas. It’s worth a listen. The talk goes on for a while… it remains engaging due in part to Tony’s affable, informal story-telling style. And helpful because of the insight he conveys around the “magic” ingredients that have helped propel Zappos from shoe seller to multi-category storefront.

His presentation hits a crescendo near the end when he moves beyond storytelling to advising, translating the powerful Zappos experience into some specific and focused direction that can benefit other businesses and brands. So here it is without further set-up:

Happiness

That’s right. Businesses and brands can find a path to success through a happiness strategy. Hang with me here before you conclude this is going to be psychobabble. The infrastructure that supports extraordinary service at Zappos, the investments made there to enhance the service experience and outcomes involves clear dollar and cents decisions and allocation of assets.

But underneath you can see the point emerge: it is their single-minded focus on culture and hiring the right people to fit within that world, that helps create traction with consumers. In relating this success to other businesses, Hsieh says that in the end happiness lies at the core of engagement, brand building, and business success. In customer interactions, employee attitude, longevity, turnover and, the feelings consumers have towards his brand.

He confesses to having studied happiness carefully and the triggers that bring it to life. Not surprisingly he relays that research studies consistently confirm that happiness sought-after and thought to flow through better jobs, relationships and money prove fleeting. In the end, it turns out human beings have a structural need to be a part of something larger than themselves.

Bingo: The Higher Purpose

As if he had been quoting chapter and verse out of the Wheatley & Timmons belief system about brand development, he talks about the compelling need for businesses and individuals to define a mission and higher purpose that transcends the daily balance sheet concerns of commerce.

Brand relevance springs from forging connections to a consumer’s lifestyle aspirations, desires and wants. What kind of vision, community and purpose can we craft for our brands that achieves higher purpose, meaning and therefore systemically delivers the recipe for happiness with those we wish to sell to (happy = satisfied = loyal = potential heavy user = brand ambassador)?

We all crave happiness as human beings. It is a fundamental driver in our lives. The notion of higher purpose and mission is linked to this sense and certainly fits strategically with how brands can earn a valued place in the lives of their best users. Hsieh says he’s been able to move the path in his organization for employees from job to career and then on to calling. And within the concept of calling he’s unlocked a reservoir of happiness internally that translates externally into the grist that authenticates the stories of incredible service experience.

For brands, a higher purpose becomes an enabler of relationship with core users. The unselfish acts of a brand that are intended to help facilitate lifestyle passions is a powerful vehicle to differentiate and elevate the entire strategic conversation about go-to-market strategy. Appropriate we think in the age of consumer control. Makes me happy.

What do you think?

By Robert Wheatley

Word of mouth begins with those inclined to recommend

Are you talking to the influencers who can drive business in your category? Especially the message multipliers who can be enlisted as brand ambassadors and are useful in driving trial of new products and services? Are you purposefully targeting those who sway others, or really just attempting to carpet bomb enough consumers with your messaging in the hopes that no one will escape the barrage?

The effectiveness of your spending can be multiplied ten-fold if you make an effort to better understand the role of influence and how to reach those who in turn reach others. You may agree that word of mouth retains the highest degree of credibility for consumers about what products to buy, so the question remains, are you going after those at the headwaters of WOM?

Just who are they?

In marketing communications there are two paths to follow: the shotgun model that recommends broad-based communication across multiple platforms intended to engage a wide audience. And then the rifle shot, aimed more precisely at a smaller audience of engaged individuals and influencers capable of becoming ambassadors and advocates for brand messaging.

In order for listeners to listen, they must be open to the medium and the message. And in today’s environment of ultimate consumer control over the timing, method and outcomes of engagement, there’s simply no place for messaging that is “pushed at” audiences who are not paying attention. The question we’re considering here: Can we harness the power of influential consumers to multiply the impact of our outreach campaigns?

Yes.

According to WOM research firm Keller Fay Group, there are 30 million people in the US alone who are measurably more likely than average to 1) seek out information; 2) share ideas; and 3) make recommendations to others. Certainly the anything-you-want-to-know-anytime aspects of the Internet has democratized access to information, but not everyone is built to influence and lead.

Those who fit this description, according to Keller Fay are:

Three times as likely as the rest of the population to spread word of mouth

Engage in social networks that are almost twice as large as those of other people

Are active seekers of information from an array of sources to supply their need to know