How we can help you get closer to the consumer!

The consumer is probably the most important word in ‘Consumer Product Goods’ or CPG companies and it has never been more true than today. As consumer goods companies try to drive growth in emerging markets or maintain market share in mature markets, the most important task that they have at hand is ‘Consumer engagement’ – it is both a challenge and an opportunity to ensure their survival. The brand equity that CPG companies are used to, is becoming less and less influential, especially with the newer generation of consumers.

As these consumer dynamics evolve, the way we make our purchase decisions are changing. The factors that are more important to us vary widely which means that engaging with consumers in their voice is even more critical. Hence it is no surprise that every single consumer goods company, in fact, every customer-centric organisation, is trying to get closer to the consumer. We all are trying to get to know our consumers better, get our products or services in front of the right consumer at the right time at the right place and to top it all, try to do this all of the time – No mean task!

I have seen many strategies being applied to achieve this – Social media engagement, Consumer insight-driven targeting, AI-powered consumer engagement, beautifully designed digital marketing, neighbourhood pop-up stores, in-store marketing and many more. All of these are great techniques and the innovations are getting more and more sophisticated by the day.

However, the progression of these capabilities is not directly proportional to the impact it is having on consumer engagement. In fact, due to the advancements in technology, you and 1000s of your competitors are trying to engage with consumers in every way imaginable, making it very crowded and confusing for consumers.

I recently realised how many companies were trying to target me when I received over 100 GDPR e-mails – asking for my permission to use my data. A large majority of them I did not wish to engage with and this included a myriad of marketing agencies, a lot of them probably working for you. However, this does not mean that I would not like to have the exact offer I want when I want it and at the price, I am willing to pay – of course, I do, but who doesn’t?

So what do you do, I do not profess to know all the answers but I would like to share another approach which we are using successfully to help our clients and which may work for you too.

Okay, so let’s think about this a bit differently. Imagine that on a page you have the workflow that describes how your products get to your consumer. At the bottom of the page is you, creating some of the best products in the world and at the top of the page is your consumer. This consumer is getting your product after it has gone through many hops across your supply chain through the hands of your partners, their partners, their partners’ partners and ultimately the retailers with whom the consumers deal on a daily basis.

In my experience, the consumer goods industry has spent the better part of the last 30 years perfecting this distribution model and I believe has the best know-how of how it works. I do not mean logistics, I am sure DHL, FedEx and many others would claim to be the best at that and they probably are.

However, a consumer goods supply chain involves many different players from distributors, sub-distributors, stockists, carry forward agents, small retailers, large retailers, independent retailers, logistics companies and many more. It’s a complex model of how this trade works. Now multiply this model by the number of countries you operate in and in some cases this may also change based on the category you are in e.g. Ice creams.

This complex model is what most CPG companies have been managing for many years, building networks and strong trade relationships.  CPG companies hence have a level of control in this that they do not yet have in targeted consumer marketing. That relationship string was always held by the retailers who talk to the consumers daily.

We believe that you need to leverage these retailers and your trade partners far better to reach your consumers. Now I accept that the large supermarkets of the world will not want to give that control to you – I agree that you probably won’t be able to influence Walmart or Tesco of the world to hand you over this relationship.

However, I do not believe that this should be something you should be overly worried about as most of your growth is coming from emerging markets where traditional trade is far bigger than modern trade. Even in developed markets, the shift to convenience is helping to drive growth. In both of these channels, you can and must influence. In the UK influencing 40,000 traditional trade retailers is a far manageable challenge that influences 50 million of us consumers.

We are already achieving this with our ‘Retail Marketplace platform – Distiman’ by getting brands a step closer to their consumers. We believe our tech can help you achieve this in any market.

So how can we help you achieve this? Here are three approaches that some of our clients have done over the last 12 months