Strategies for a new consumer age
Caroline Foster Kenny, chief client officer, global, MEC, looks at how brands will have to deal with a new level of consumer engagement when the market has returned to its pre-downturn level.
In late 2009, MEC asked a number of commentators, both from within and outside WPP, to share their thoughts on the effects that major global forces, most particularly the financial crisis, were having on consumer behaviour. Named Strategies for a new consumer age a collection of essays and videos has been created and when put together they show how consumers around the world might behave post-recession, and how brand-owners could best capitalise on this.
In this particular essay, Caroline Foster Kenny, chief client officer, global, MEC looks at ‘Maintaining Control in an Age of Engagement’. All the essays and videos are available in their entirety from http://www.mecglobal.com/strategies-for-a-new-consumer-age.
It’s been a tough time to be brave
When the economic crisis hit, many in the media industry were surprised by the speed and level at which advertising budgets were cut. Brand-owners rapidly felt compelled to react defensively with short-term thinking governing budget-setting and -allocation. While we are now seeing some sectors beginning to recover and budgets stabilising, it seems likely that it will be several years before we see them back at pre-recessionary levels.
We are all aware of the many studies that link aggressive spending during a recession to greater market share when crises pass; but what has made this downturn unusual is the general unwillingness to even mention this. While we may try to get brand-owners to take greater risks, taking those risks means dealing in areas that are less proven. Very few – neither client nor agency – are acting bravely right now; the ‘who dares wins’ approach of previous times has been replaced by ‘heads down’, ‘best quality for lowest cost’ and the ‘safest bet’.
Undoubtedly we will all take more risks as things improve; in fact, this is unavoidable given the irreversible migration into digital media. But this means that agencies are going to need to provide a lot more proof of the benefits and return of moving that money.
The challenge of engagement with scale
One of the more positive outcomes of the recession has been the increased level of engagement that consumers have sought from brands; during hard times, people more than ever want brands that feel as if they have come to help and add value.
But as a recovery becomes real, brands are likely to be left with a legacy of more fickle and demanding consumers. While cost-cutting and short-term thinking have been the name of the game, people have grown used to demanding more from companies and switching brands at the drop of a hat (while brands have sought greater value from their suppliers and partners). This heightened desire for value is unlikely to go away.
Fortunately, the downturn has also coincided with an apparent shift in brands’ perspectives on how they should relate to their consumers. Even in a time when brand-owners have been focused as never before on cutting costs, they have also been keen to develop strategies to better engage their audience. This is not as a result of the downturn, but interestingly it does not appear to have been hampered by it.
While embracing social media as a tool for engaging consumers represents a big shift for many brands (and for some agencies), as a niche activity this is relatively easy to achieve: get the content right, and you’ll quickly involve an audience. The real challenge now facing brands is engagement with scale.
With the recession intensifying the swing towards digital communication, we have to find ways to recreate the reach offered by broadcast media, combining its breadth with the high level of engagement it also offers. We cannot rely only on search and display, which is the relatively ‘traditional’ use of digital that is being used at the moment. Many brands have been dabbling in social media engagement, with competitions and promotions, for example; but building scale relies on content with a broad appeal, owned and shared by the brand, with a brand idea at its heart that is strong enough to withstand life within the free-for-all of the social web.
With a number of clients now placing more than half of their communication activity online – money that will not return to traditional communication – it’s clear that the digital space is no longer seen as experimentation. Accordingly, we must constantly improve our understanding of how online brand communication influences consumer attitudes and behaviour, particularly if we are to optimally plan the strategic roles for different digital marketing tactics.
The sad truth is that some social media case studies that are touted as exemplary by agencies fall short of matching client expectations, because they are (understandably) judged on their relative effectiveness compared to TV campaigns. This should not be ignored by agencies – this is not an issue of ‘re-educating’ brand-owners. Rather, we urgently need a clearer picture of what success in the digital space looks like, in particular incorporating new measures for the success of social media activity.
Part of the measure for the success of brand communication within the social web should be its social relevance: judging it on its ability to create relationships between ‘willing’ consumers, and between brand and consumer. Planning the activity that achieves such social relevance relies on well-researched consumer insight – properly understanding consumer needs and the role for the brand in fulfilling those needs. In a time when we have greater access to data than ever, there is no excuse for not properly organising that information so that we can fully understand our target audiences and their relationships with brands and their communication.
Involve, not devolve
Like engagement, for some time there has been a lot of conversation about the shift towards consumers shaping brands; but it seems that only now are many of us starting to consider what that actually means. Co-creation should come of age in the near future. But we should be clear that this will not mean handing over control to the consumer; brands must retain firm hold of the reins. There is a difference between what you want the brand to be, and what the consumer thinks they’d like: they should decide how they want to engage with the brand, tell us where they want to go, then we decide if and how to get there.
While consumers are increasingly used to a dialogue with brands that can involve them in both the design and communication process, we should not ignore the role for brands to positively influence people’s lives in return. This still requires that we listen to consumers and understand their unsatisfied needs so that we can develop ideas with those in mind; but people will always need brands that surprise and delight them, and we cannot do that if we merely meet expectations with literal responses to consumer desires. Now and in the future, creativity and direction must ultimately come from the brand, whether in partnership with its consumers or not.