Posts tagged "e-commerce"

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Everipe Stands on a Moment of Extraordinary Relevance

June 12th, 2020 Posted by brand marketing, brand messaging, brand strategy, change, CMO, Consumer insight, Emerging brands, Emotional relevance, Growth, Insight 0 comments on “Everipe Stands on a Moment of Extraordinary Relevance”

Right for the times we are in and when it truly matters

Perhaps the single most important emotional revelation coming out of the pandemic and surrounding events is the complete loss of control experienced by people, now buffeted by an unseen disease and historic events. The conditions have taken charge of our everyday lives, challenged our cultural norms, and affected our behaviors and personal priorities. 

We now have overwhelming evidence that people want to reassert control in their lives in meaningful ways. In our recent article, Health is the New Wealth, we started a discussion around the one thing consumers can actively participate in controlling that helps correct the imbalance and uncertainty they’re experiencing: health and wellbeing matters. 

The pandemic amplifies the health and wellness issue exponentially as people work to protect themselves by investing in their immunity thresholds through better eating and healthy living. This has influenced the purchase patterns and brand preferences for millions and ushered in an era of incredible innovation brought by entrepreneurs who, right and left, are reinventing legacy categories and creating new ones with better ingredients while serving a higher purpose to boot. Every so often we come across a new brand that has relevance written all over it because it so squarely hits the touchpoints of what matters to people now.

Everipe lands at precisely the right moment with precisely the right solution

The pandemic has locked families into homebound consumption occasions and a need for healthy beverages that are pantry ready and convenient. Imagine this: a shelf-stable, super-food smoothie developed using freeze-drying tech to perfectly preserve real fruit ingredients. Freeze-drying removes moisture while also concentrating the flavor profile. 

Then add super-food ingredients to enhance nutritional density. Make it easy to do – just add water, juice or dairy and some ice to a blender. Make it at an affordable price point. And oh by the way, eliminate the hassle of building a homemade smoothie from scratch while fresh fruit ingredients go from ripe to fuzzy in a matter of days. 

Everipe is right for the moment we’re in. We interviewed founding partner Kerry Roberts to learn how the company is handling the pandemic and what they see in the future ahead. Here’s our Q&A with Kerry and some related observations from Emergent.

1.   In the last 60 days much has changed for emerging food and beverage brands. How has the pandemic impacted your business and what changes have you made in how you go-to-market?

Kerry Roberts: “These last couple of months have managed to pull the rug of ‘business normal’ out from under us as company leaders, parents, and partners.

Everipe, is a direct-to-consumer, shelf-stable superfood line of good-for-you smoothies. We suddenly found ourselves relevant for these functional benefits overnight, and for reasons we never could have crafted in a strategy deck. We were incredibly lucky to have planned a launch with Amazon in March that was expedited with Amazon’s emerging business team given the need for nutritious (easy to ship) pantry foods – and so we have seen that channel immediately exceed our expectations. At the same time, we’re seeking out additional E-commerce channels with launches in past weeks on Zulily, Walmart.com and we’re temporarily pausing any plans to pursue brick and mortar.”

Emergent: Ready-to-drink smoothies have been around for a while, but many of them are higher in sugar and the taste isn’t quite on a par with fresh-blended versions. Making smoothies from scratch is time consuming, like baking a daily cake. Frozen fruit ingredients can be expensive and there’s only so much room in the freezer to start anyway. 

Everipe hits so many appropriate buttons from great taste to convenience to nutrition delivery to satisfying at a friendly price – you just know this is going to catch fire. My oldest daughter, who is a smoothie fanatic, loves them. The innovation here is timed, positioned and packaged correctly. 

2.   What specific changes have you implemented in your sales and marketing strategies?

Kerry Roberts: “Consumers in the early stages of quarantine were shopping under duress and it was important to recognize that they were not wired for aisle-browsing discovery of new brands and their messaging. 

As we thought about consumer motivations and how they had shifted on-a-dime in our category from things like energy and weight management to home delivery and shelf-stability, we immediately adjusted our messaging.

Instead we focused on pantry storage, clean ingredients and free delivery – which sound functional at face value, however they all ladder up at present, to safety.

Tactically, in addition to seeking out expanded e-commerce distribution, we’re also leaning aggressively in on our own direct-to-consumer channel, offering a deep trial discount and tripling our digital Ad spend to introduce a captive audience to Everipe.” 

Emergent: Right here you are witnessing the one great lesson that feeds trial and development of a new brand: put the consumer first at all times. Listen carefully to what they are saying, how they are behaving. Be cognizant of the environmental conditions they find themselves in. Work to understand the nuances of what they care about and plan backwards from there.

Relevance and resonance are the twin engines of growth in food and beverage businesses. You can’t have either without an acute understanding of what drives consumer behavior. 

The “if you build it they will come” approach just won’t work. Everipe understands the consumer comes first. Period.

3.   How do you think investors are reacting to the COVID-19 situation and how does that impact their interest in brands like yours?  

Kerry Roberts: “Everipe has not taken on funding as yet and as we think about the coming months, we’re conscious that dollars may tighten as Venture Capitalists and funds work to support their own portfolios through a recession. 

That said, I feel this year presents an incredible opportunity for founders to create a story around how they navigated these challenging times – how quickly they pivoted, how strategic they reacted, and how they set their brand up to weather what may become a lengthy recovery. 

With no shortage of incredible product ideas, I think investors look to invest in founders as potential teammates. While this may not be an easy time to champion an emerging brand, the chance for founders to showcase your character and intellect is probably as poignant as it’s ever going to be (at least I hope this is as tough as it gets!)”

Emergent: We are reminded once again that it is the strength and skill sets of founding partners and creators that imbues brands with “difference.” It is rare that you find a CPG experienced marketer like Kerry Roberts at the controls of building a new brand like Everipe. More often than not founders don’t hail from the marketing discipline. Yet, how a new brand is packaged and presented can have enormous impact on scale and staying power. 

Knowing your skill sets and capabilities can help owners identify the blind spots – and brand building can be one of them. This is why Emergent is a resource for emerging brands. Consumers are emotional creatures. They do not make analytical, fact-based decisions concerning the brands they care about. 

We know that both the stories and the words used to convey the value proposition are of great importance in creating a strong brand right out of the gate. It’s a highly specialized area of expertise not always “owned” by the owners.

Kerry’s presence at Everipe gives them a significant advantage, because she understands the emotional fabric and character of what a brand consists of and how vital it is these days to design it with higher purpose and deeper meaning.

4.   How will the economic uncertainty and lifestyle impacts of the pandemic influence consumer priorities and behaviors?

Kerry Roberts: “I reflect on the spotlight placed right now on wellness, particularly immunity – and health as the only currency that really matters and I am hopeful that the connection between how we fuel our bodies, and how we feel, (and heal), becomes more appreciated. 

At the same time, I worry that in a recession, consumers may not have the resources to invest in healthier options. As a startup with lean margins we understand this friction. I hope that the leadership for making truly clean foods more accessible continues to extend to, and include, big CPG businesses who have the resources to make those changes.”

Emergent: As we’ve said, “Health is indeed the New Wealth.” The pandemic and related events have made the home a more important safe zone; making and consuming food at home more desired; and investing in our health and wellbeing a top priority. There is no greater calling now for the food and beverage industry to acknowledge this will not be achieved through incrementalism in formulation adjustments, but in reinvention of legacy brands to answer the desire for higher quality, shorter ingredient decks and improved nutritionals. 

Six years ago we reported on the seismic move in food and beverage preferences to fresh, locally sourced, higher quality food and beverage choices as people fully connected the dots between what they ingest and the quality of their lives. This single event has created a shift in consumption patterns, food and foodservice retail strategies, and changed the very definition of what better-for-you eating is about. The pandemic has only heightened the shift.

Better-for-You is what the consumer cares about. It is what they want. A panicked blip in sales of boxed mac and cheese should not be interpreted as a lasting return to highly processed food consumption. 

If we indeed care about the health and wellbeing of our users, we owe it to them to advance the creation of healthier products and new food and beverage experiences like Everipe.

5.   What advice can you offer to the founders and investors of new emerging brands that will help assure their continued growth? 

Kerry Roberts: “I wish there was a pandemic playbook! If I might offer any advice it would be: 

  • To think carefully about any aggressive plans for rapid expansion and instead to first ensure that existing partners and channels are well cared for, and cash is managed. 
  • To double down on listening to and serving your consumer, employees and partners. Your most efficient marketing efforts right now may just lie in how you listen to and treat people.
  • To get comfortable with the discomfort of not having a crystal-clear road map. Exercising mental muscles for making the best decisions with available information, while the ground shifts underneath you, will position us all well as an uncertain future unfolds.”

Emergent: Following the true north and optimal strategic game plan in these uncertain times requires that new and emerging businesses pay close attention to consumers – and continuously dial how the brand and business behaves to serve their needs. What people want now is greater control over their lives and to invest in their own health and wellness. This is the path.

To the extent the brand lives in service of improving customer wellbeing, the opportunity for continued growth is achievable. The brand’s role here is as expert guide and coach on the consumer’s life journey. That principle should sit at the foundation of business decisions, marketing messaging and how the offer is presented to all stakeholders. 

Too often we see a form of brand narcissism unfold when the business celebrates itself and is in love with its formulation first, over its relevance to fulfilling consumer needs. Business is now built on reciprocity and that requires a less self-centered operating philosophy. 

Everipe is on a journey itself

As much as we speak about the consumer journey to fulfillment, meaning and purpose, so too Everipe is on a path to revolutionizing the smoothie and healthy beverage category. It will not be easy. Nothing of any real value ever is. Kerry’s comments are evidence of a remarkable sense of self and values that operates as guardrails for their decisions and provide a litmus test for their judgments.

We see great opportunity ahead. When food retail distribution re-emerges as a channel for their growth, we believe the evolving center store will become more of a curated location for higher quality, healthier choices. Everipe will likely be a star in that environment.

If your brand and business is on the hunt for fresh ideas, and improved brand storytelling, we’d love to talk with you.

Editorial note: Emergent would like to express our deepest appreciation to Kerry Roberts for participating in this story and helping to inspire and educate other brands now trailblazing a new healthier frontier in food and beverage.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Your Brand’s Higher Purpose Right Now is Health and Wellness

April 4th, 2020 Posted by brand messaging, brand strategy, branded content, CMO, consumer behavior, Consumer insight, Content Marketing, Emotional relevance, food retail strategy, grocery e-commerce, Healthy lifestyle, Healthy Living, Higher Purpose, Insight, Supermarket strategy 0 comments on “Your Brand’s Higher Purpose Right Now is Health and Wellness”

This is the moment to help consumers adopt a healthy lifestyle

COVID 19 has changed everything for consumers, who are now looking for ways to get back in control of their lives amidst unprecedented uncertainty. Food, beverage and lifestyle brands and retailers have an enormous opportunity to step into this need right now and help consumers do the one thing that can help protect themselves and their families from the advance of the pandemic: take control of their health and wellness.

  • Strong immune systems are supported by optimal health and wellness and can be of benefit to everyone no matter their age. While the world operates uncontrollably around everyone, the ability of people to acquire healthier eating habits and experience other activities that will enhance their wellbeing, is within their grasp.

We have growing evidence that brands are becoming more relevant (important) than public institutions as a source of help and inspiration in these trying times. If you are considering where to place your bets on messaging and communications strategy, supporting health and wellness is your new calling.

Emergence of higher purpose strategy

For years now we have continued to publish routinely on the shifts in public sentiment and behavior that merit brand’s adopting a higher purpose to govern their decisions, operations and marketing. The pandemic serves as a catalyst for making this strategic endeavor a fundamental part of sound marketing best practices. The days of self-promotion and strict transactional thinking about brand building are over. More enlightened brand support is required, especially in view of the transformational change brought on by COVID-19.

Brands need a relevant, useful, valued voice right now, one that helps inspire people to adopt the changes that will help benefit their own health. This is the strategic path to establishing your brand’s higher purpose.  Content creation here can vastly improve the traction and engagement levels of brand communication in any relevant category, from better-for-you beverages to pet food.

The role of the higher purpose brand in health and wellness

The role of your brand in this important mission is as credible guide and advisor on the path to enhanced health and wellbeing. The instruments to deploy include:

  • Healthier eating, preparations and menus
  • Enhanced exercise and wellness regimens
  • Improved sleep, relaxation and physical renewal
  • Stress reduction and emotional management
  • Family engagement, learning and relationship development
  • Integration of pet lifestyle in all of the above
  • E-commerce shopping tips and guidance to navigate dietary and wellness objectives

Stated simply, the best path is a holistic one that recognizes the integration of physical, emotional and spiritual needs – fundamental to enriching the lives of your customers and making a difference in how they successfully address the upheaval they’re experiencing.

Deployment of third-party voices

Key to activation is the use of outside third-party voices to help tell your story. Whether they are ‘real consumer brand fans’ who want to be of help to those around them, or experts in these subject matters areas from nutrition to culinary guidance.

Restaurant businesses are not faring well, and your efforts here could provide a new voice and relevance to chefs at a time when they need other channels of opportunity. Believe me, they want to help, too.

This is not the time to go dark

Ample evidence exists that brands who continue to invest, who continue to actively engage their consumers, come out ahead in sales growth and market share positions during tough economic times. Consumers remain open to receiving marketing messages from brands, especially those that have their best interests at heart.

However, the character of the message becomes ever more important and why the health and wellness platform for communications is directionally significant. Helping people get back in control of their lives is an important call to action. You have an opportunity here to earn their trust and their attention.

How Emergent can help you

  1. We can help you shape strategy around a higher purpose mission, tailored to the unique characteristics of your brand, business and consumer.
  2. We can build a compelling messaging platform that provides guidance to all external and internal communications efforts.
  3. We can help you identify and secure the right outside voices to help build trust and validate what you want people to know and believe.
  4. We can help you create content and execute outreach in earned, owned, paid and social channels of communication.

Let us know your questions and challenges. We’re happy to help in any way we can.

After all, we’re all in this together.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Stark reality of rapid change mandates marketing shift

March 24th, 2020 Posted by brand marketing, brand strategy, consumer behavior, Consumer insight, e-commerce, Higher Purpose, Marketing Strategy, Supermarket strategy 0 comments on “Stark reality of rapid change mandates marketing shift”

Guidance as new voice required in the face of cultural upheaval

Whatever the marketing plan looked like four months ago, it’s changing now in the face of a new reality and shifts in consumer attitude. Here we will chart the conditions and explain an enlightened approach.

So you understand what sits underneath the shifts:

Awhile back when we were engaged in the home safety products category, we had access to reams of quantitative and qualitative research to help us understand what the barriers were to purchase of potentially lifesaving products. The primary hill climb can be summed up in six words: “It will never happen to me.” Home fires, carbon monoxide incidents and other similar close-to-home threats happen to “other people,” consumers believed. This complacency could only be disrupted when confronted with real people stories of loss and tragedy.

The self-assessment people made was, never in my backyard. Now that sentiment has broadly shifted.

The unfolding events around us all has created a new reality. The change can be summed again in a statement, only modified as “it CAN happen to me.” We are witnessing the emergence of primal fear, anxiety nourished with uncertainty, multiplied by the speed of change going on and accelerated by public policy moves in an effort to flatten the curve of pandemic impact.

People believe they are truly vulnerable, while news reports of continued escalation in COVID-19 cases operates as confirmation of that view.

What does this mean to you? There is a rapidly increasing need for emotional support and preparedness. If you’re wondering whether or not consumers are paying attention to your behaviors and communication, a new research report suggests they are closely watching your moves.

  • Gfk research has been tracking the changes and in a recent report said that 73 percent of consumers say how companies react and handle the unfolding crisis will have an impact on future purchase decisions. No surprise, 85 percent of Gfk respondents indicated the virus is impacting their shopping behaviors, presaging a significant, and likely lasting, migration to e-commerce channels.

Primary call to action: consumers are looking for “a brand I can trust to guide me.” Thus, it’s time to step back and take a hard look at what initiatives and outreach in your current efforts are specifically addressing the need for trust creation.

Trust and safety are paramount

  • How are you expressing and addressing empathy and support for the lifestyle upheaval and anxiety people are experiencing?
  • Can you help people answer and manage the emergence of ‘family cabin fever’ conditions in the home?
  • Can you provide lifestyle encouragement, advice and ideas to help home-bound families continue healthy living regimens and behaviors?
  • Of note here, the more ‘unexpected’ it is from you in the areas to try to be helpful in, the more unselfish and trustworthy you appear.
  • Time to enable and encourage community conversation of shared experiences and events in your social channels. People need a place to engage and share.
  • Reveal details of your ingredient safety and testing standards in product creation. In fact, generally there has never been a better time than now to be transparent about everything.
  • What are your manufacturing hygiene protocols and safety procedures?
  • For emerging brands, communicate your supply chain integrity and ability to continue the regular flow of products to distribution. If there are limitations in this area, explain them openly and honestly.
  • For food retailers, your customers are going to hit exhaustion with home meal preparation 24/7. How can you amp up your prepared meal solutions business to bring some welcome relief for home chef monotony syndrome?

Engagement likely to be at an all-time high

With fewer distractions and a feast of extra time on their hands, people will be more open to engagement and have the bandwidth to pay attention. Content creation strategies can help fill the void. That said, it’s important to observe the rules of being helpful and useful over product promotion hype.

In 2008 and 09 when the economy tanked, a great lesson was served to businesses everywhere. Companies that continued to invest and communicate experienced share gains over rivals who answered the soft economic conditions by going into a fiscal fetal position.

You have the chance now to be seen and heard. What you say will impact perceptions of your ability to be trusted and of value to consumers’ rapidly changing lives.

If you need help navigating in this time of great change, please let us know.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Coronavirus Call to Action for CPG and Retail

March 13th, 2020 Posted by Agency Services, CMO, consumer behavior, e-commerce, Emotional relevance, food retail strategy, Human behavior, Insight, Retail brand building, Social media, Supermarket strategy, Validation 1 comment on “Coronavirus Call to Action for CPG and Retail”

Your next moves to retain trust and reputation

Right now, your consumers are worried, bewildered, concerned and uncertain about what shoes might drop next. They are being sent home from the office, schools are shutting, sports and entertainment events are gone, Spring break vacations are upended, and the future impacts of the pandemic are hard to predict.

We know you equally have concerns and are working hard to address any uncertainties. We’re with you and know your heart is in the right place.

This is a significant moment on the continuum where brand trust and reputation can be secured or injured. What you do next will matter, and it’s important to note that communication may be one of the most important assets at your disposal.

  • Honest, transparent messaging breeds trust and feeds patience, while silence will fuel uncertainty and dilute confidence.

Number one: communicate early and often

This is not the time to be quiet. If you make or sell a consumable product, especially food, beverages or pet food, people are worried about what comes next. Here’s what they want to know, right now.

For CPG

  1. Is there anything going on in your supply chain that will negatively impact the availability of your products? You may not have all the answers but it’s better to communicate current status than to stay silent. What you don’t know you state as such.
  2. What’s happening in your manufacturing, whether that be your own facilities or co-packers, with respect to employee activity, plant hygiene, and mitigation plans should people be sent home?
  3. What are your standards, methods, procedures on maintaining vigilance over ingredient integrity and safety, and testing for same through the product creation process?
  4. How can they get your products and services online? We know that feels like a ‘water is wet’ type question but it’s important and should be addressed in these conditions.

For retailers

  1. Are you able you keep customers apprised of out-of-stocks and shelf replenishment schedules?
  2. Can your pharmacy experts set aside scheduled time for by-phone consultations or online Q&A’s?
  3. Are you signaling home delivery wait times when capacity is stretched?
  4. What are your food handling an on-premise hygiene policies and procedures to help avoid any contamination?

The message matters

Your voice in this moment will impact the outcome. It’s important to avoid corporate speak, industry jargon and complex, “inside baseball” forms of messaging that only an employee can unravel.

A human, approachable voice including information that is presented with clarity and transparency will resonate with those you wish to reach. People routinely ignore dense, complex, analytical-style messages. Simple is better.

This is not the time for grand standing, self-promotional and brand-anthem style outreach that attempts to pass over the reality of what’s happening. Instead, empathy and care for the health and wellbeing of your users should ring through everything you release or post.

Next steps

  • Publish updates and trust-enhancing content at your web site and in your social channels on a weekly basis. More often if you have new news to share.
  • Keep it simple and straightforward.
  • Encourage dialogue and conversation at your social sites to invite questions from fans and followers.
  • As the situation changes, keep your stakeholders informed.
  • Be generous of spirit and look for “surprise and delight” opportunities and stories for users and channel customers. Celebrate helpfulness, acts of kindness, and ‘we’re all in this together’ kinds of inspirational unity.

Navigation leads to reputation

Your efforts to be accessible, approachable and honest here will lead to respect and confidence among the stakeholders that matter to the future of your business. Both internal and external audiences will benefit greatly from your efforts to keep them apprised of what’s going on.

As always should you need help navigating these uncharted waters, we’re here to support you with guidance, messaging, copy, media and anything else you might need.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

Friends of the Future Delivers On Its Premise

September 23rd, 2019 Posted by Agency Services, CMO, Digital marketing, digital tools, e-commerce, food retail strategy, grocery e-commerce, Supermarket strategy 0 comments on “Friends of the Future Delivers On Its Premise”

The hot ticket networking experience at Groceryshop

In a food industry now preoccupied with algorithms and digital platforms, it’s remarkable when reminded that personal, human connections still inform the beginning of most successful business relationships.

Nowhere was that shown in greater relief than on Monday night at the recent Groceryshop convention. An “A” list of food retail executives gathered at the sold-out Friends of the Future reception to network with key industry players – many of whom are working feverishly to help solve the transformational changes now unfolding in the food and beverage world.

  • Groceryshop has firmly established itself as the leading food industry conference centered on the digital race to answer upheaval in how families select and shop for food. No surprise much of the conference agenda in 2019 showcased emerging technologies in e-commerce, food delivery, digital marketing, supply chain management and robotics.

Yet the Friends event served as a potent reminder that business, whether between advisers and suppliers in the food business, or with consumers themselves, is driven by the high-touch resonance of conversations between people.

“Friends is exactly that, an opportunity to truly connect on a personal level and get better acquainted. It’s in the moment when we talk and look each other in the eye that we find common ground, mutual interest, and most of all trust,” said Bill Kies, President of Kies Consulting and executive producer of the Friends of the Future event.

In its second season, Friends of the Future promised an informal atmosphere of exceptional food and beverage as grist to facilitate relationship building between food retail business leaders and decision makers. No other agenda except sharing experiences and ideas.

The event’s top sponsors including Accenture, Nielsen, Inmar and Shipt, helped press the call to action, with 250 executives gathering at The Venetian’s Yardbird restaurant, closed down to accommodate the crowd. Nearly 40 food retail companies were represented, evidence of an industry in transition while facing the rise of e-commerce challenges and new competition from the ascending restaurant food delivery business. Other event sponsors included Planalytics, ShopperKit, Label Insight, FlyBuy and the Food Marketing Institute.

“It was an amazing evening,” Kies reported, “friendships were initiated, and solutions explored among retailers looking to navigate an increasingly complex business environment.” Kies promised a return for Goceryshop in 2020 with an added dimension: the event will expand to include CPG food executives alongside the legacy list of food retail leaders.

For more information contact Bill Kies – [email protected]

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to our blog.

Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, the healthy living agency. Emergent provides integrated brand strategy, communications and insight solutions to national food, beverage, home and lifestyle companies. Emergent’s unique and proprietary transformation and growth focus helps organizations navigate, engage and leverage consumers’ desire for higher quality, healthier product or service experiences that mirror their desire for higher quality lifestyles. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

You are now selling sand in the desert…

February 22nd, 2019 Posted by brand marketing, Brand preference, brand strategy, consumer behavior, Consumer insight, e-commerce, Healthy lifestyle, Higher Purpose, shopper behavior, storytelling 0 comments on “You are now selling sand in the desert…”

Navigating the Impact of Infinite Choice

If ever there were a time when sound, informed strategy mattered to the success and outcomes of food, beverage and lifestyle marketing this would be it. Like it or not we’ve entered the era of nearly infinite consumer choices in a media environment of almost countless channels. This requires a new marketing formula.

Thinking at scale today takes on a completely different meaning when consumers are presented with so many options within a click to buy environment. Thus, how should you design for success when you’re ultimately selling sand in the desert? We will answer that question here.

Left to its natural course, food marketing tends to gravitate towards the vanilla middle – an effort to appeal to the broadest possible audience – and in working to address everyone, you end up mattering to no one. When the options are legion this can quickly turn marketing and communication investments into a moonshot without navigation – the hit (or more often miss) driven by luck more than intention.

At various times we’ve written about the importance of putting consumers at the center of strategic planning. Now, we further qualify that statement by saying – in order for a strategic marketing plan to be measurably effective, putting consumers at the center of planning is table stakes. And determining who that consumer is will require even tougher decisions to prune and refocus the definition of the cohort you wish to serve. Why? Because the 80/20 rule is in full force as the vast majority of volume and profit will come from a smaller segment of committed advocates – assuming you’ve planned for relevance to a community of potential believers.

This is the most compelling argument ever for – different

Let’s start with a foundational understanding that the brand must be perceived as special, unique, useful and valuable before there’s any shot at being memorable. No one has the time or mental bandwidth any longer to assess the vast array of options in any given product category. So how do you resolve the reality of inexhaustible choice?

You must start with the intended core user and work backwards. Seth Godin made a cogent observation in his recent book “This is Marketing” when he described the effort behind what may be the most powerful TV commercial ever made – Apple’s “1984” spot for the launch of the Macintosh. The spot aired during the most watched American sports program on earth, the Super Bowl. The majority of viewers would not have understood or probably cared about what Apple was trying to convey in its dark Orwellian mini-movie.

The lesson: it didn’t have to register with everyone to be successful. Godin observed the spot only needed to touch a million savvy creators and early adopters who picked up that Apple was up to something revolutionary. The rest of the viewers didn’t matter, and indeed the rest is history given Apple’s ascent to brand superstardom. Whatever the brand, the audience of committed advocates will always remain relatively small.

It is with the small and devoted cohort where effort and outreach needs to be directed. And those investments should come from a concerted endeavor to push hard at the edges of what’s unique and different in your brand proposition. Here’s the question we often evaluate with clients: how can positioning, audience, product formulation, and the character of the brand, be dialed sufficiently to the right or left so that we’re able to create a new category – one that our client can own?

Who is it for and why?

To dial in your position successfully you then have to know who it’s for and why. It follows if you want to have meaningful relationships with consumers, then imbue your brand with greater meaning. But for whom?

That’s a big question that requires some rigor to answer correctly. Who is going to quickly respond and be drawn like a magnet to your product proposition? Once defined, all eyes and energy must be directed to fully understanding their hopes, dreams, needs and aspirations. Your marketing strategy is then fine-tuned to align with that insight, opening the door for the brand to become an enabler of their wants and needs – in a voice that’s relevant to them – becoming a reflection of their wants and how they’d like the world to perceive their beliefs and priorities.

This is important because purchases now are largely symbolic representations of what people want others to know about what they believe in and think.

The hard truth about marketing

Of note, we’re doing business in an environment overflowing with self-assured claims, assertions and hype. Here’s the difficult pill to swallow: people don’t believe any of it. The counterintuitive basis of effective marketing today is to not look, talk and walk like marketing.

That said, there is a reflexive habit in strategic planning to navel gaze. To focus on the craft of what’s been created, formulated or built. Here at Emergent we totally understand that spirit and where it comes from, after all most brands are justifiably proud of the considerable effort they invest in technology, quality and improvement. But this also sets the table for potential marketing disconnect.

You are not selling a food or beverage

In the same vein as pet food is sold to humans and not to dogs or cats, it isn’t the product that people are buying. What you are actually marketing are feelings, connection, desire, happiness and status. Not stuff, not items, not things in boxes or bags. Not chips or salsa or soup. People are buying a feeling and expression of their status and belief system.

So then, what’s the path to creating a marketing plan with this insight embedded all the way through? It will require all of the hands on the marketing tiller to be empathetic anthropologists of what the biggest brand fans are about.

Here are some areas to focus on strategically:

  • What your audience wants, not what you want to tell them
  • What they believe
  • What they need
  • What they aspire to
  • What story would emotionally resonate with them

The more you invest in seeking to understand, the more likely you are to land on the big idea (one that immediately influences the behavior of the business) and create a voice for the brand that is engaging and is shared. When you seek to improve the lives of your best customers, you earn permission for a relationship with them and the marketing you create comes across less like a transactional maneuver.

If you think this way, it will flow downstream to impact how the business operates. We already know that what the brand does is more powerful than what it says, so there’s an opportunity built into the recipe for authenticity.

Brand trust continues to decline, so the game plan must be to build it, earn it, cultivate it. The reason transparency has ascended to ever higher importance is precisely because people don’t accept anything on face value. Claims and assertions are exactly that. When you verify, validate and reveal the product creation story by letting consumers all the way in, it fosters belief and trust.

10 components of successful marketing  –

  1. You must push for positioning that’s truly unique, different and helps create a new category
  2. Refocus and narrow your audience definition to the smaller community of ardent fans
  3. Devote your insight research to this audience and discover how the brand sits in service of their lifestyle needs
  4. Become an enabler of their wants and desires
  5. Recognize you’re not selling a product but an emotional connection
  6. Activate brand experiences because behaviors speak louder than words
  7. Know that being relevant is more important than being superior
  8. Authentic storytelling to this audience is the path to engagement
  9. Trust is everything…you must earn it
  10. Transparency is the precursor to creating trust

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Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, the healthy living agency. Emergent provides integrated brand strategy, communications and insight solutions to national food, beverage, home and lifestyle companies. Emergent’s unique and proprietary transformation and growth focus helps organizations navigate, engage and leverage consumers’ desire for higher quality, healthier product or service experiences that mirror their desire for higher quality lifestyles. For more information, contact [email protected] and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.

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