Podcast Summary
Building a brand and focusing on performance go hand in hand: Integrating marketing, data, and consumer insights for exceptional brand experiences that drive revenue growth
According to the speaker, building a brand and focusing on performance are not separate entities but rather complementary aspects of consumer experience. The speaker, who leads the consumer experience and growth team at Colgate-Palmolive, emphasizes the importance of putting the consumer at the center of everything and considering all touchpoints, from initial consideration to actual product experience, to build and enhance brands. By integrating traditional marketing elements with revenue growth management, insights, data, and advanced analytics, the team aims to create a more exceptional consumer experience that drives brand building.
Balancing performance and brand building for larger corporations: Larger corporations need to prioritize both consumer-centricity and financial considerations while maintaining a strong brand position, collaborating with legal and finance teams to navigate challenges and create meaningful brand experiences.
Every touchpoint in marketing for a brand, big or small, should prioritize both performance and brand building. For larger corporations, it's essential to balance consumer-centricity with financial and legal considerations. This doesn't mean they're not brand-obsessed, but rather that they need to be thoughtful about maintaining a strong position as they grow. The extra layers that come with larger corporations can sometimes slow down decision-making, but working collaboratively with legal and finance teams can help navigate these challenges and protect the brand in the social media age. Ultimately, the goal is to create meaningful brand experiences while delivering profitability and ensuring the livelihoods of employees across multiple markets.
Staying competitive as an established brand: Established brands can leverage their scale and brand loyalty, but also need to recognize and adapt to areas where smaller brands may be more agile. Owning your space, understanding responsibilities, growing the category, delivering exceptional brand experience, and staying open to innovation are keys to success.
For large companies looking to remain competitive and build strong brands in today's rapidly changing business landscape, it's essential to own your unique strengths and play to them. Leveraging the scale and brand loyalty that comes with being an established brand can provide advantages that smaller disruptors may not have. However, it's also important to recognize and adapt to areas where smaller brands may be more agile. Owning your space, understanding your responsibilities as the incumbent brand, and helping grow the category are all crucial components of success. Additionally, delivering an exceptional brand experience, backed by the efficacy and science of your products, is a powerful way to build consumer trust and loyalty. Ultimately, it's about finding the right balance between staying true to your brand identity and being open to innovation.
Understanding Consumers' Needs for Effective Resource Allocation: Brands should prioritize consumer understanding to allocate resources between brand awareness and performance campaigns effectively.
Successful brands put the consumer at the core of their business, no matter if they sell strollers or sneakers. Janelle Tavis, the North American head of Bugaboo, a Dutch-based parenting solutions brand, emphasized this point. With her background at Nike, she saw firsthand the importance of consumer focus. Bugaboo caters to new parents and is known for its high-performance and innovative strollers. The brand's design and innovation teams are based in the Netherlands, while Tavis manages the US and Canadian business. Tavis highlighted that luxury strollers, like Bugaboo, are essential for urban parents who need robust machines. Regarding the balance between performance and brand, Tavis suggested that brands should first understand their consumers' needs and identify gaps. Based on Bugaboo's experience, the company had strong brand awareness in Europe but low awareness in the US, despite impressive growth in recent years. Tavis concluded that understanding the consumer's perspective and addressing their needs effectively is crucial for determining where to allocate resources between brand awareness and performance campaigns.
Understanding consumer experiences and psychographics for effective marketing: Identify a specific consumer muse and tailor messaging to their unique demographic, interests, and needs for effective engagement and resonance, ultimately driving brand loyalty and growth.
Creating effective marketing strategies requires putting the consumer at the core of your brand messaging. This means understanding their unique experiences, challenges, and psychographics to create emotional storytelling and high-quality content that resonates with them. Brands like Bugaboo have successfully implemented this approach by targeting specific consumer segments, such as first-time parents, in the spaces where they are most active, like social media. However, it can be challenging for brands, especially those with larger consumer bases, to create enough content for all segments at an affordable cost. To overcome this, it's essential to identify a specific consumer muse and tailor messaging to their unique demographic, interests, and needs. By doing so, brands can effectively engage and resonate with their audience, ultimately driving brand loyalty and growth.
Understanding Consumers is Key to Effective Branding: Effective branding requires deep consumer understanding, emotional connection, and clear communication of message.
Understanding your consumer deeply is crucial for great branding. This was a consensus among the previous guests, including Carrie, Jill, and Gary. They emphasized the importance of emotional storytelling, connecting products to consumers, and ensuring alignment among teams on the definition of success. Carrie added that despite the diversity of consumers, their drivers are often similar, and relevance is key to stopping the scroll and capturing their attention. Kate Lamberton, who was about to join the conversation, also focuses on consumer insights and the need for a unified metric of success. In essence, effective branding requires a deep understanding of your audience, emotional connection, and clear communication of your message.
Misleading Marketing Metrics: Beyond Simplistic Reach: Marketers should focus on understanding media's impact on consumer behavior instead of relying on misleading metrics like reach. Bridging the gap requires smarter brand measurement solutions.
While marketing students today are inquisitive and critical of marketing trends, they lack practical frameworks to understand the changing media landscape. Reach, a commonly used metric, is a prime example of garbage data that can mislead marketers. Instead, it's essential to focus on understanding media and how it impacts consumer behavior. The interaction between various factors, such as reach and brand, determines the outcome. Students, especially finance majors, need to be able to apply brand measurements in a meaningful way. A company like Verra, which offers smarter brand measurement solutions, can help bridge this gap. Overall, it's crucial to move beyond simplistic metrics and focus on the complex interplay of various marketing factors.
Connecting Performance and Brand: Use a bridging metric to link brand equity to financial performance, focusing on familiarity, regard, and uniqueness. Segment effectively based on information processing style for relevant marketing messages at scale.
Performance and brand are interconnected and should not be viewed in isolation. The use of a bridging metric that connects brand equity to financial performance is essential for both parties to be accountable and effective. This metric can be broken down into familiarity, regard, and uniqueness, which can be influenced by performance actions. Additionally, understanding the segmentation criteria that matters most, specifically the information processing style, can help in creating relevant and effective marketing messages at scale. The struggle with relevance at scale is real, but by focusing on the appropriate level of segmentation, we can create messages that resonate with our audience, regardless of the platform they are using.
Tailoring marketing to consumers' processing styles: Adapt marketing strategies to reach consumers in different processing styles for effective messaging at scale
Understanding consumers' processing styles and tailoring marketing accordingly can help businesses deliver more effective messages at scale. The speaker, Gary, shared his personal experience of being mislabeled by Amazon due to his unusual purchasing behavior. Although he doesn't have children, he frequently throws baby showers and is drawn to humor in marketing materials, even if they're for baby products. However, when he's in an analytical mindset, such as when buying toothpaste, he values efficacy statistics. Gary emphasized the importance of recognizing these different processing styles and adapting marketing strategies to match them. In his consulting work, he analyzes the entire consumer journey to identify these styles and tailor messaging accordingly. However, he warned against getting too caught up in the details and assuming that one approach will work for everyone. The cost of creative efforts and hours spent on detailed targeting must be worth the potential impact on the business. Overall, the key takeaway is that businesses must be flexible and adaptive in their marketing strategies to effectively reach consumers at different moments in their processing styles.
