With 195 countries and 6,500 languages around the world, the challenge is daunting, as brands seek new methods and motivators to connect and engage with audiences through social, mobile, experiential, digital advertising and e-commerce channels.
The CMO Council teamed with Fresh Squeezed Ideas to explore the cultural connection to brand attraction. The report underscores the theme of a new book, ‘Reincarnation: The Death and Rebirth of Marketing’, authored by Fresh Squeezed Ideas’ president, John McGarr. In his new book, he notes that today’s most successful brands must build strong bonds with current and future consumers by:
According to McGarr, the critical need is to understand, make sense of and track how culture defines and alters the context in which the brand exists over time. Culture is always ebbing and flowing and therefore, the value attributed to certain goods and services will change as well.
Marketers must accurately situate their brands within a cultural, consumer and competitive context. Using a brand ecology model, there are endless possibilities to create new communications, new strategies and new marketing interventions by tapping into the power of a culturally informed brand strategy in a structured way.
The CMO Council report notes that brand attraction is harder to achieve than brand recognition. “Brand attraction is unconscious – people are inexplicably attracted to brands that reflect their values.” Based on this definition of brand attraction, the CMO Council interviewed a select group of members to find out how they view their brand ethos, relevancy and following, as well as to what degree this is creating differentiation and distinction in the market.
“Around the globe, we see that consumers are becoming omni-cultural, and geographical boundaries don’t necessarily divide them. They are not defined by where they were born or where they live. Rather, their passions unite them with like-minded people around the world,” notes Ram Krishnan, chief customer officer for PepsiCo. “Consumers have become very engaged and are no longer passive. They want to have a two-way conversation with brands, and they often even dictate what that conversation should be. Whether it is on social media or within the consumer relationship, the challenge for us is to aggregate that entire customer data into one place, so that we can get a better picture of what consumers expect.”
“Because of the nature of our brand, some of the cultural icons that we have used are Olympic athletes that convey a global sense of everybody coming together and focusing on the same thing for a period of time,” says Diane Salmon, senior director of loyalty and offers at Visa. “People tend to feel positively about this kind of human effort and that is one of the reasons we value that positioning as much as we do.”
When it comes to anticipating customers’ needs, J&J is able to do some predictive marketing and create micro-moments for the brands. For example, it knows that interaction with babies is very important and have underscored that with health research in its communications to ensure moms understand that it is important.
“Touch, smell, hearing, seeing and tasting are all very important, so we translate that into our messaging for the brand, so that we remain relevant to moms and give them information that is helpful for their babies’ development,” notes Alfie Ang, head of digital analytics in Asia. “Overall, we’re seeing that consumers want much more personalised information, so we need to be able to balance that level of personalization while also making sure that we aren’t overloading them with content.”
For those looking to assess their level of cultural connectivity, the CMO Council executive brief – available today – provides a self-assessment tool to see where they might lead or lag in this important strategic area of focus. The strategic brief can be accessed here.
