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By Makshoodh Meerasaibu
We live in a rapidly-transforming hyper-connected world. These transitional times have created a fiercely competitive global marketplace which is equally exciting and challenging, especially for us marketers.
The digital universe has given us unprecedented opportunities to connect and interact with consumers in ways that were not possible ever before. Affording us a ring side view of consumers’ perceptions of the different facets of our brands, it allows us to continually shape them to elicit the desired emotional responses.
This, as we would all agree, is however easier said than done. While we all understand the need to analyse, plan and manage consumer perceptions and emotions, we are often driven by the pressures of everyday life. Meeting deadlines and targets, responding to competitor activity and clearing operational hurdles seem to take up more of our attention.
In a rush to deliver on our performance indicators, we seem to have become ever-more myopic. Short-term goals are achieved through ad hoc efforts. Kneejerk reactions to changing market realities have led to insights into emotions and perceptions being moved out of the picture.
The primary task of managing our brands with the aim of creating lasting emotional bonds between products and consumers tends to get overlooked. We attempt to create emotional connections, however short-lived, only through great pieces of communications. Commonly devoid of insights into consumers’ lives, they end up being just functionally appealing and fail to engage the consumer emotionally.
I must note that we do occasionally come across certain brilliant pieces of marketing communications that make you feel strongly about the brand being showcased. A closer look will reveal how they are driven by insights and have taken a longer term approach to building a lasting bond with consumers.
As marketers, we have always been known for our flair to breathe life into seemingly-mundane objects that are cherished by generations. For our innate understating of how individuals and society functions. For our propensity to take risks and chart new courses. I must confess that we seem to have lost that Midas touch to a great extent. And this seems to stem from the fact that we have shifted our focus from the consumer to the communication.
This has become even more heightened in today’s dynamic, global marketplace where ground realities continue to change drastically, at a rapid pace. Consumers’ lifestyles are evolving constantly and so is their need for and affinity towards products and services. Brands that once prided on ruling their category get wiped out by revolutionary, new lines of products. Fads of yore return to become all the rage now.
The only way for us marketers to help brands succeed in these conditions is to stay in touch with consumers and base all brand activity around insights drawn from their daily lives.
The silver lining in this seemingly gloomy situation is that we are surrounded by insights into consumer behaviour. It is not something that we draw from research and analytical reports alone. Little nuggets of valuable information can be gathered from every interaction, be it observing consumers at a point of purchase or consumption or analysing their reactions on social media platforms. We just need to learn to tune out the ambient noise and pay closer attention to the things happening around us.
For instance, we noticed that there was a steady rise in the popularity of coffee, especially amongst younger consumers. While Sri Lanka has always been, and continues to be, a tea drinking nation, these young urbanites seemed to view coffee as a hipper beverage. The growing number of coffee houses with their enticing environs played a significant role in shaping this image. We couldn’t let this affect Lipton, one of the world’s biggest tea brands from Unilever. We take great pride in the Sri Lankan roots of the brand and in Sir Thomas Lipton’s pioneering efforts in taking the brand to the world.
During our interactions with and observations of these budding coffee connoisseurs, we found that there was more to the rising appeal of coffee than the attributes of the beverage alone. The setting in which it was being consumed seemed to give it an added fun vibe. We sought to bring this youthful zing to Lipton tea.
We understood that this couldn’t be done through a communications campaign alone. Hence we created the Lipton Tea Rooms – fun, youthful spaces for consumers to ‘hangout’ within someone of the country’s celebrated events. Stepping in to take a break from the hustle and bustle of the events, consumers relished the great food and refreshing Lipton tea that was on offer while enjoying one of many live performance or simply catching up with friends.
Presenting Lipton Tea in a whole new light to these younger consumers, Lipton Tea Rooms gave us the opportunity to offer them an immersive brand experience. While thousands joined us on the ground, we were able to reach out to over four million consumers through digital media platforms. Thus taking the time to understand the reasons behind changing consumer behaviour helped us build greater love for Lipton Tea.
There are countless such instances where brand teams have paid close attention to market conditions and repositioned their brands to suit changing consumer behaviour, thereby helping it stay relevant and continue to be loved.
While this might seem like the obvious thing for any brand to do, we don’t always seem to be doing so. In our rush to deliver results, and deliver them fast, we miss out on noticing the changes happening around us. And even when we do, we often do not want to question the relevance of our current plans in light of these changes.
With systems and mindsets actively discouraging risk taking, we have become comfortable with doing what has worked for us in the past. Given the stigma around failure, especially when working with major league brands, we do not want to challenge the status quo and chart new courses. However, this leaves us exposed to the risk of becoming obsolete, as demonstrated erstwhile tech giants who failed to take notice of the disconnect between their products and changing consumer lifestyle patterns.
In order to turn this around, we need to draw inspiration from the world of tech startups, where the entire system is designed to encourage budding entrepreneurs to fail, fail fast and learn from their failures. It also impresses upon them the need to seek deeper insights to create business ideas that better resonate with the consumer.
We too need to work towards creating a similar ecosystem which encourages us marketers to defy traditional beliefs and make bold moves when shaping the future of brands. While we seem to be doing so with our creative product, we need to become more imaginative in how we deliver it.
We need to focus on how we could leverage technology to enhance the quality of every element of our work, from identifying insights to getting products to consumers. We need to encourage all our partners too to become more strategic in their thinking so they may help us get here. Such an ecosystem will allow us to go beyond managing for short term results and better shape the destiny of our brands. We will finally be able to stop following market trends and lead the market into newer realms.
As we grapple with the nuances of the ongoing digital transformation, I strongly believe that we are uniquely poised to shape a new era in brand management. An era where brands and their custodians like us will be able to leverage emerging mediums to better connect with our audiences, rekindle their emotions and build bonds and brand love. Together, let’s redefine the art of brand management.
[Makshoodh Meerasaibu is the Marketing Director for Home Care, Foods & Refreshments and Pureit at Unilever Sri Lanka. Beginning his career at Unilever as a Brand Manager, Makshoodh has since then held senior management positions across marketing, retail sales, and customer marketing, including a regional marketing operations role in the South Asia region. He holds a MBA from the Cardiff Metropolitan University, and has wide experience across consumer goods (FMCG), consumer durables, and advertising and leisure industries.]
