By Adam Wakefield
On Friday, 30 September, senior figures within the global Kantar family spoke at Kantar Millward Brown’s Johannesburg offices on how the marketplace and consumers are changing.
Kantar Insights global CEO, Travyn Rhall, began the presentation to a packed room, noting how in today’s marketplaces, local brands are getting stronger compared to multinational brands.
“Many consumers are connecting more and more with some of the local brands and the local brands understand the culture better. There’s a real challenge for multinationals to get local and understand what is going on,” he said.
China is the most extreme example of this phenomenon, where 75% of urban market share consists of local brands, increasing to 90% in rural China. Many other parts of the world are showing the same pattern, varying according to local context.
E-commerce is one realm where local brands are performing well, with e-commerce globally expected to be over $2.247-trillion globally in 2018.
“Over 50% of people in China and the US are doing some sort of e-commerce activity. In South Africa, it is a lot lower. I think the issue in South Africa is the price of communications and perhaps some of the infrastructure,” he said.
Rhall was followed by Lee Smith, TNS global head of shopper, and Anne Rayner, TNS global head of communications research, who addressed the issue of touchpoints. Mobile is just one such touchpoint, with Rayner pointing out that consumers on average interact with their smartphone 82 times a day.
“95% of businesses acknowledge the importance of a touchpoint management system and being able to manage it in a sensible and strategic way,” Rayner said, with 7% of those business feeling they had such a system in place.
There are broadly three challenges relating to touch points at present being:
- There are so many touchpoints, each has potential to influence but not all of them do;
- Consumers expect a seamless experience regardless of where they choose to interact with a brand yet most businesses are still built in silos; and
- It is no longer clear which role is done by each touchpoint. Touchpoints are multi-tasking.
Rayner said it can no longer be assumed that when something is put in front of a consumer, it is going to be understood and used as intended.
This meant focusing on the touchpoints that are most effective for your brand, with approximately 20% of touchpoints delivering 80% of engagement.
Smith said this means “doing fewer things excellently”. Content needs to be tailored to different moment’s in a consumer’s day, and silos within organisations need to be broken so that the entire business is pointing in the same direction, towards the customer.
“Silos that we construct are often self-imposed. Some of the things are organisational, but some are actually mental. Consumers clearly do not sit in silos. They don’t sit in silos and we should not either,” Smith said.
If an entire business embraces customer centricity, the whole organisation can be KPI-ed for what is meaningful for the consumer. “That facilitates touchpoint consistency. They are able to have touchpoint management systems that deliver a consistent voice to the consumer,” she said.
Lastly, Daren Poole, global brand director, creative development at Kantar Millward Brown, spoke about the best way for advertising return on investment in a world with multiple channels.
A brand might spend a certain amount on television, and even though a consumer might be sitting in front of a TV, they are also looking at their smartphone or tablet. The reverse holds true as well.
“The answer for getting return on investment is creativity. For the same spend, creatively awarded campaigns increase a brand’s share of market 10 times more than other campaigns,” Poole said. “Some executions are 10 times more efficient at creating sales.”
Brands and ads need to ensure consumers instantly having a sense of what a brand is without thinking about it. Poole spoke about how the brain has two systems, with system one being always on, automatic, and easy, like answering the question, what is 4 x 5?
System two is what people avoid, because it is slow, represents effort, and uses blood and oxygen, like asking a person what is 16 x 19.
“What is important is how we don’t think about brands. System one is a very strong influence on how we think about brands in system two. We need to make sure that brands have that instant meaning so we influence any complicated decision. We don’t like to think about advertising,” he said.
Poole also advocated focusing more on the brand than the product, which has a much shorter lifespan, making sure a brand is represented in advertising, being consistent in execution and communication, and testing advertising.
On digital specifically, Poole said stories have enduring strength in digital, branding needs to be done from the outset and celebrate the format without being too simple or too complex.
“There are no silver bullets in delivery and great creative. If you keep it simple, consistent, there is no reason why your brand shouldn’t grow,” Poole said.