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Why marketers need to think ‘Human to Human’ rather than ‘Brand to Consumer’
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2020 & 2021: the years where digital kept us connected – not just internationally, but at regional and even very local levels. For many businesses, digital was the saviour, ensuring business could continue – even grow.

Yet, while it may have initially seemed important for retailers to digitise their brand strategy, ploughing efforts into everything from social media to website tools, so the brand would translate in a completely digital world, the fact is that people have realised more than ever the value of human interaction. How easy has it been, therefore, to remain truly connected to the people your brand speaks to?

A brand is not just what you do through your marketing tactics. It’s a feeling it stirs, an experience it creates, and a story it tells. While there are many amazing things brands can do in the digital world, to be a real success, brands need the human element to sit at the heart of their digital brand strategy, as Neelam Kharay, Chief of Staff – GTM, Acoustic, explores…

The new marketing playbook

It’s safe to say that 2020 was a year like no other, and 2021 certainly has not reverted back to the ‘old normal’. In fact, the age of COVID-19 has upended the marketing playbook, challenging conceived truths and redefining the rules. Whilst digital strategies were accelerated across all industries during the start of the pandemic as a matter of business survival, customer expectations have changed. Forget the slick digital journey and the ability to deliver exactly what a consumer wants, when they want it – that is now a given. Instead, customers expect their relationship to matter to you; and they expect your brand to stand for great values they can resonate with.

While delivering on these experiences requires organisations to place technology and data at the core of their marketing delivery, to sharpen their decision-making and drive greater relevance in their customer interactions to build stronger, more relevant connections, they also require something more. They require the ability to engender trust – and that, in itself demands authenticity, integrity, and humanity.

So how do brands become human?

Building human engagement 

We must remember that our target consumers are not just defined by demographics or psychographics — they’re defined by their intent, and by countless other indiscernible or unquantifiable factors. In essence, our prospective customers — just like us — are more than what meets the eye. Brands must ensure they’re both representative, and fully aware and understanding, of the most important issues and key drivers influencing all consumers’ behaviours.

By building teams that are as diverse as your customers, and by ‘stepping into the shoes’ of your customers as often as possible, brands can help account for their many perspectives and needs, bringing a more authentic voice to all marketing communications and content.

Indeed, authenticity is critical when it comes to forming connections between brands and consumers. With 86% of consumers reporting that authenticity is a deciding factor when determining which brands to support, the more authentic you are in your communications, the greater the sense of transparency and trust you will engender with them, which will lead to loyalty.

C-suite agenda

During the pandemic, marketing was elevated within the C-suite as the voice of the consumer. Without understanding the zeitgeist of the marketplace, in good times and bad, the C-suite cannot adjust to the threats and opportunities at hand and successfully navigate the future.

One of the new ‘rules’ of post-COVID marketing is, therefore, C-level engagement. In order to be authentic in your communications as a marketer, you need a deep understanding of who your brand is: what its values are; what its tone and voice are; who its key customers are – all of which are of paramount importance to other functional leaders.

From there, you can craft authentic communications that accurately reflect your brand personality while uncovering the pain points of your target audience. Everything from style to word choice to the visual elements you include are part of what gives a brand personality, and should be carefully crafted and honed in order to connect with your target customer(s). Moreover, developing a personality that responds to how customers are feeling and acting in the moment, and is authentically reflective of that across every touchpoint a customer has with your brand, is key to developing trust.

Consider, for example, how a company like Bombas has made improving the lives of people facing housing insecurity a key element of its brand ethos and product strategy, or how Old Navy has made all clothing styles accessible to people of all shapes and sizes with no change in price. During the pandemic, the British Heart Foundation also demonstrated empathy by offering COVID-secure collection of donations normally dropped off at collection points, for those who perhaps didn’t want to, or couldn’t, leave their homes. These are brand personalities with an authentic vision and a clarity of purpose behind them to which consumers can align their own values.

Conclusion

Ultimately, becoming ‘more human’ starts with being human and therefore having a point of view; a tone; a look and feel. In essence, in today’s climate, marketers need to think ‘human-to-human’ instead of ‘brand-to-consumer’.

Brand loyalty being tested by supply chain issues
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Cancelled orders and lengthy delays because of the supply chain crisis are testing British consumers’ brand loyalty like never before, with 85% of young shoppers saying they would rather switch labels than wait for their favourites to arrive.

The surprising findings show just how seriously the supply chain bottleneck is affecting peoples’ buying habits, with 91% of consumers in the UK worried that the problems are here to stay.

The research, carried out by Oracle, shows that 77% of respondents have felt the supply pinch, which has been blamed on the impact of Covid and post-Brexit adjustments.

Feelings of frustration and anxiety are common place with 74% of people saying that future delays could cause them to cut ties with their favourite brands permanently.

But consumers’ faith in technology to help iron out kinks in the supply chain is strong, with 70% saying they would be more willing to buy from a brand they knew used artificial intelligence to manage their supply chain.

“Businesses need to be able to provide a consistent and transparent service to customers or risk losing them, with some consumers willing to sacrifice the product quality for the ease of delivery”, said Emma Sutton, chief customer officer, EMEA Consulting, Business Transformation, Oracle. “Supply-chains are global but the technology is available to manage them from anywhere in the world, predicting disruption in order to get ahead of it, and keeping customers updated in real-time.”

34% of CMOs ‘don’t trust’ their marketing data
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Over a third of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) don’t trust their marketing data, rising to 41% among their data analyst colleagues – posing a challenge for the C-suite charged with driving marketing results.

That’s according to research from leading marketing data analytics platform Adverity. What’s more, there is a growing divide between data analysts and marketers when it comes to trusting their data.

Yet, the very same divide deepens at the leadership level—with 51% of Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) & Chief Data Officers (CDOs) lacking trust in the data compared to 34% of CMOs.

The new “Marketing Analytics State of Play 2022: Challenges and Priorities” research commissioned by Adverity surveyed 964 marketers and data analysts across the U.S., U.K., and Germany, identifying the key strategic challenges faced by marketers and data analysts as well as their priorities for 2022.

For businesses, such a trust divide that becomes greater the more senior you go should cause significant alarm. Teams are failing to communicate mistrust, which results in key strategic decisions regarding spending, budget allocation, and campaign optimization being made without accuracy or confidence, potentially resulting in huge amounts of the marketing budget being misused or ultimately wasted.

One of the most likely causes of the distrust in marketing data and the number one challenge cited by both marketers and data analysts (42%) is the time being wasted manually wrangling data. At the C-level, this jumps to 54%.

“Modern marketing can’t afford to wait three weeks for someone to sift through a spreadsheet. By manually wrangling data, businesses not only open themselves up to human error and inefficiency but also commit themselves to a reactive strategy,” said Harriet Durnford-Smith, CMO at Adverity. “Those who cannot keep up with the evolution or aren’t willing to embrace the new ways of working will ultimately be left behind. Moving away from manually wrangling data is the first step to becoming a data-driven business.”

As marketing spend continues to recover to pre-pandemic levels and marketers are challenged to demonstrate the Return on Investment (ROI) of their campaigns, being able to demonstrate the business impact of marketing is imperative. However, 38% of data and marketing professionals state the inability to measure ROI on marketing spend is one of their biggest challenges. Combined with a lack of trust in the data, this can cause significant problems for businesses.

Looking forward to 2022, 65% of marketers and data analysts state that audience-building and targeting along with personalized content delivery is their most important strategic focus. This is unsurprising given concerns around third-party cookie deprecation and the increasing strictness of privacy laws. Content in the future is likely to have to work harder for businesses to gain access to customers’ zero and first-party data. Creating a tailored and transparent value proposition is an essential strategy for achieving this.

However, businesses need to also invest in their campaign reporting capabilities. Respondents that already have strong campaign reporting are three times more likely to be strong at audience-building and targeting and delivering personalized content/customer experiences.

Shockingly, businesses that already have strong campaign reporting are also three times more likely to invest in it than businesses that said they need to improve. Meaning that the divide between those who are garnering greater insights from their reports and those who are not is only widening.

How to bridge the sales and marketing alignment gap – once and for all
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By John Cheney, CEO of cloud-based CRM vendor, Workbooks

Alignment between sales and marketing should be a priority for any business leader looking to generate growth. Of course, experience tells us it’s easier said than done. Their destination may be the same, but often sales and marketing teams have been at odds when it comes to getting there, relying on different approaches, using different success metrics and speaking different languages.

And yet, sales and marketing alignment is not new to the agenda. So why is it still so difficult to achieve? According to Gartner, less than half of organisations (49 per cent) have a common lead definition that was developed and agreed upon by sales and marketing teams together – more than one-third fewer organisations than expected. At Workbooks, we put this alignment gap down to three things:

    1. A lack of communication
    2. A lack of insight into each team’s customer interactions
    3. Disparate and disconnected technologies

The business impact of these can be very costly. Lack of coordination between sales and marketing is not only a cause of frustration for employees; according to a study by LinkedIn, it wastes an estimated $1 trillion annually in the United States alone. Even for those organisations whose sales and marketing teams appear to operate harmoniously, it’s enough to make you question: “How could we be doing more?”

It starts with you

The first step to achieving greater alignment between sales and marketing functions is to recognise the importance of doing so – and prioritise it for your business. Ensure an open dialogue between the two departments, where you can discuss the important questions: Are sales and marketing goals truly aligned? Are teams communicating as well and as often as they should? Does each function really know how the other is communicating with prospects and customers? Have you agreed common definitions – for example, what is a qualified lead (you might be surprised to hear two very different answers!)? Could teams work collaboratively – and more productively – using shared tools? Ultimately, what financial impact could a better alignment of sales and marketing functions have on the organisation?

Most businesses that probe a little deeper in this way conclude that there is room for improvement. The question then becomes: “How can we make it happen?”

Share goals, performance targets and metrics

Much of the frustration we hear from sales professionals when discussing marketing relate to two things: insufficient focus on revenue generation and unviable or unqualified leads. Marketers, on the other hand, often feel that salespeople do not show enough interest in – or acknowledgement of – long-term brand building, that they are not following up on leads provided, and not providing feedback on why leads may be qualified out.

Spend time at the outset communicating the importance of short-term revenue growth and long-term brand development, and ensure both teams are clear on what the sales and marketing process looks like. Then put in place KPIs that measure both teams on their contribution. Shared goals and KPIs should always be centred around the pipeline and revenue; this will go a long way towards bridging the alignment gap, with both teams agreed on the metrics they will be measured against.

Enable with technology

By 2025, 75% of the highest growth companies in the world will deploy a revenue operations (RevOps) model, according to Gartner; a move away from siloed and linear sales enablement functions towards revenue enablement activities that support all customer-facing roles and connect every single part of the business.

This level of alignment will take time, effort, and commitment across the organisation – it is not something that can be achieved overnight. Technology can, however, make the transition faster, simpler, and more effective. It can also help ensure these changes stick. Specifically, CRM systems can provide a single source of truth, centred around the customer. Using these systems provides access to features such as dashboards and reports where sales professionals and marketers can easily see the sales pipeline and track performance and conversions at each stage of the buyer journey, allocate tasks between departments, and make required changes to marketing and sales campaigns that are visible to all.

Crucially, a CRM system is both a result and a prerequisite of successful sales and marketing alignment; it requires everyone to have agreed a common language, set mutual KPIs, and showed a willingness to work together. But business leaders and their CRM providers must also keep in mind why sales and marketing alignment has yet to be achieved, and these reasons can differ from business to business. Look for a technology provider that wants to understand these nuances, get under the skin of your business, and agree clear business outcomes based on your objectives, to ensure maximum return.

Level up in 2022 with these online courses for marketing professionals
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Our selection of online courses tailored specifically for the Marketing sector will enable you to both learn new skills and improve existing ones – sign up today! These are specially-curated online courses designed to help you and your team improve expertise and learn new things. The Sales & Marketing and Management, Leadership & Business Operations online learning bundles, provide you with over 100 courses, which cover all areas of both professional and personal development:
  • Converting Leads into Sales Certification
  • Creating a Marketing Plan Certification
  • Closing Techniques Certification
  • Cold Calling Certification
  • SEO for Business Certification
  • GDPR in The Workplace Certification
  • Project Management Foundation (Small Projects) Certification
  • Project Preparation Certification
  • LinkedIn for Business Certification
  • Vlogging Certification
  • Customer Retention Certification
  • Negotiation Skills Certification
  • Networking for Sales Professionals Certification
  • Online Reputation Management Certification
  • PR Certification
  • Presentation Skills Certification
And many more! Find out more and purchase your course online here. For just £99 (usually £149), you can share the courses with your colleagues over a 12-month period. Additionally, there are a variety of bundles available on all spectrums;
  • Personal & Professional Development
  • Healthcare
  • Sports & Personal Development
  • Human Resources
  • Customer Services
  • Health & Safety
  • Education & Social Care Skills
  • Sales & Marketing
  • IT & Personal Development
Book your courses today and come out of this stronger and more skilled!

Loss of accurate social media advertising data a strain on MarTech
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Loss of accurate social media advertising data, thanks to iOS updates, had biggest effect on MarTech industry this year

That’s according to a study undertaken by the team behind global affiliate platform www.Awin.com, in which 250 senior marketers and business owners from medium or large MarTech companies were asked for their opinions on 2021 so far.

Overall, 81% of those asked said that they had been affected by iOS14 or the above updates around the tracking of their social media advertising campaigns over the last year. The “opt-out” privacy feature installed in the iOS14 update reduced advertisers’ ability to personalise and re-target their social campaigns.

One of the most prominent recent talking points was the effect of the iOS15 update on the industry, despite only launching just over a month ago in September 2021. 73% of the senior marketers involved in the study agreed they had noticed mail open rates ‘severely inflated’ thanks to the update. The update allows users to turn on ‘protect mail activity’, whereby Apple will automatically load images and CSS, making it appear as if the email has been opened.

Over half (55%) of the marketers who had noticed an inflation in mail open rates claimed that they have abandoned the measuring metric altogether in favour of ‘click-through rates’ and ‘conversions’. 28% of senior marketers also claimed they had switched to a subscription model off the back of the software release, stating that customer retention was the ‘only way’ to get the information they required.

As well as the effects that developments have had on the industry so far in 2021, senior marketers were also asked their thoughts on what 2022 might have to offer.

Some of the most common trends that were highlighted were found to be:

Immersive VR: 65% of senior marketers predicted this as a trend for 2022

There are already a few apps that let consumers see how an item may look in their house, for example, or apps that allow users to scan the internet for deals on their favourite pair of shoes using just one photo.

Chatbots will be able to handle more complex matters: 22% of senior marketers predicted this as a trend for 2022

It’s likely that by next year, users could see chatbots trusted with payments, become entirely voice driven and improve on emotional intelligence, to name just a few suggestions from senior marketers.

Chatbots may be able to analyse the pattern of every interaction in order to keep customers engaged and improve response capabilities.

Increasing demand for Marketing Architect roles: 15% of senior marketers predicted this as a trend for 2022

Although slow to gain acceptance among some firms, the number of Marketing Architect roles are set to rise with the demand from companies increasing in an attempt to steer the way in some of the above trends for example.

Kevin Edwards, Global Client Strategy Director at www.Awin.com, said: “2022 will be the year when marketers have to decide what measurement metrics are important to them. With third-party cookies on the way out and the tech giants making it increasingly difficult to measure campaign success, MarTech businesses who can offer data light and privacy-centric solutions will find themselves increasingly in favour.

“Introducing immersive VR and increasing chatbot intelligence will require huge investments from companies if they’re looking to get ahead of the trend. However, they are a clear signal of how brands are increasingly focusing on customer experience above all else”.

Sam Higgins, Chief Marketing Officer at Prezzybox also commented on the effects the iOS changes have had on the business “Analysing the paid social platform, we can see that the iOS changes have had a negative impact on the conversions being tracked in the Facebook advertising platform.

“Looking at data from 14th September – 25th October 2021 and comparing this to the same date range in 2019 (2020 is different due to lockdown), we are seeing a 75% drop in website purchases being recorded in the platform whilst budget remained the same.

“Obviously, this has resulted in a huge increase in the cost / website purchase, making us re-analyse our paid social strategy. Moving forwards, we are tracking paid social within Google Analytics as this gives us a much more accurate representation of how paid social campaigns are performing.”

Brands urged to cash in on ‘social commerce’
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B2C ecommerce leaders are fast-tracking social commerce initiatives, but fewer than 30% are prioritising the full customer journey.

The “Cashing In on Social Commerce”  Forrester Opportunity Snapshot study highlights the challenges experienced by early adopters in the social commerce spaces who aim to fast-track revenue expansion efforts and improve overall customer care via social channels.

Social commerce, which encourages the discovery and purchase of products via social media channels, is expected to grow at a 31.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2020 and 2027, the global social commerce market is estimated to grow to $604.5 billion by 2027, according to Research and Markets.

According to the study findings, fewer than 30% of social commerce leaders are prioritising customer engagement, failing to cultivate and nurture customer relationships throughout the social purchase journey, and putting their long-term social commerce growth at risk. This data point underscores how, even as brands are beginning to prioritise social commerce and experience immediate returns, many still have a long way to go in terms of successfully managing the full social purchase journey. Without proper attention to CX, ecommerce leaders risk falling behind in an overly competitive market.

“Consumer demand has forced businesses to pivot online, and we have seen a significant uptick in the number of B2C businesses embracing social commerce,” said Mark Zablan, CEO, Emplifi. “We believe the study confirms much of our internal findings: B2C brands are racing to embrace social media as the means to conduct business from discovery to engagement, and now to shopping, service, and customer care. Social commerce is the new conduit to great CX.”

More than 80% of the social commerce leaders surveyed confirmed they are investing in two or more social shops, with more than a third currently using four or more social shop platforms. Not only are social commerce leaders adopting social shops at a swift pace, 86% of the survey participants expect — or have already achieved — a return on their social commerce investment within a one-year time period.

“Social commerce leaders are seeing major gains but are also becoming increasingly aware of the need to bridge the gap between building brand presence among a growing audience, and then convert that audience into loyal, engaged long term customers,” said Zablan. “The most effective, and efficient, way to do this, and accelerate social commerce efforts, is to utilise best-in-class CX tools with integrated social capabilities. By sharpening their toolset, especially when it comes to customer care and holistic social commerce reporting, brands will get the competitive edge they need in this rapidly growing social commerce market.”

Among the study’s key findings:

  •   B2C goals and strategies not optimally aligned: While goals are documented and understood, the report shows only 26% of teams are aligned on how to reach next-generation consumers across social shops.
  •   Conversational AI basic capabilities are well adopted:  Bot technology that provides basic communication and engagement is heavily used by the brands surveyed, but eight out of ten survey respondents report they are looking to invest further in more sophisticated conversational AI capabilities in order to conduct advanced transactions using virtual bots.
  •   Livestream video shopping shifting beyond early stages:  Of the brands surveyed, 70% plan to invest in personalised and group/friend video shopping capabilities, as well as one-to-many influencer events over video.
  •   Scaling up customer care and service is critical to social commerce and CX.  While the report highlights revenue as the ultimate outcome, over 40% of responses indicate that customer care, service and assistance are critical for social commerce and improve overall CX.

While an astounding 50% of the brands surveyed for the report have realised measurable revenue gains or expect incremental cross-channel revenue, the data shows the most successful social commerce efforts go beyond the immediate purchase to focus on the full customer experience.

To read the full study findings, download: “Cashing In On Social Commerce.

Fearless Adventures seeks next gen digital entrepreneurs
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North West-based Fearless Adventures has launched a multimillion-pound fund and novel with the aim of growing the next generation of direct-to-consumer startups in the UK.

Started by a trio of the country’s brightest young entrepreneurs, David Newns, Dominic McGregor (pictured) and Charlie Yates, Fearless Adventures offers their partner entrepreneurs three areas of support: funding, marketing services and talent.

The founders believe this is the key to fast growth and more successful exits further down the line but isn’t currently offered under one roof elsewhere.

Three entrepreneur-led companies are on board already, benefitting from not only the funding but also Fearless Adventures’ best-in-class centralised team of digital marketers, data experts, and talent specialists. The company aims to close up to 10 investments as soon as the end of 2021.

In time for launch, it has already lured top talent from the Hut Group, Social Chain and Mojo Mortgages to provide topflight expertise on everything from SEO to PPC, and business intelligence to data analytics. To serve its portfolio, Fearless Adventures is based in a new high-tech workspace in Manchester, where its partners can also take advantage to work alongside their internal team.

The fast pace of partner onboarding and talent acquisition is characteristic of the Fearless Adventures’ founders – who have started, scaled and sold a clutch of nine-figure businesses of their own. Newns found and sold two companies for £158m within eight years by the time he was 33, taking a seat at the top level of FTSE30 company Imperial Brands in the process, as Group Science and Innovation Director.

McGregor co-founded and sold Social Chain. He dropped out of university to become the company’s COO and grew it to over 700 employees on four continents by the time he was 28, eventually leading it to a public listing. And Yates has advised on the sales of over £1bn of owner-managed disposals, using his exceptional e-commerce and retail expertise to advise businesses on how to maximise their equity and value.

David Newns, founder and managing partner of Fearless Adventures, said: “We want founders and startups that we partner with to reach the world-leading heights that we did with our own businesses. So we asked ourselves: ‘What support do we wish we had access to when we started?’. It was clear there was a real gap for an offer that helped passionate entrepreneurs, not only raise capital but get a high quality, ready-made support system to help their startups thrive.”

Dominic McGregor, founder and managing partner, said: “Having been through the highs and lows of growing successful businesses, we have experienced almost every problem associated with scaling companies. And we’re passionate about putting that expertise to great use with our partner companies that have already demonstrated a successful market fit, are profitable and are led by talented entrepreneurs who are as ambitious for growth as we are.”

Charlie Yates, founder and managing partner, said: “Our key principle is ensuring we have complete alignment with our partner companies and investors. We structure our investments so that we are uniquely incentivised to help deliver as much value to the founders and their companies as possible”.

In addition, the team plans to develop and launch an apprenticeship program, The Fearless Academy. With a strong commitment to diversity, it will offer young, ambitious talent, training opportunities in marketing to equip individuals with the tools and skills for career progression.

UK marketers ‘stuck in the past’
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Almost a quarter (23%) of UK marketers say their approach to digital marketing and delivering digital experiences is stuck in the past.

That’s according to new research from Optimizely, which also found that the majority of marketers (61%) don’t believe their teams are progressive or willing to try new techniques when it comes to digital experiences.

The Culture of Experimentation report, based on a survey of 200 UK in-house marketing executives, assistants and managers, reveals that 27% of UK marketing teams take a fixed approach to delivering digital experiences, with a further one in ten having no digital experience strategy in place at all.

The report also reveals the extent to which marketers are using experimentation to drive continuous improvement for the customer experience. One in five (22%) marketers say they use experimentation all the time and around half (47%) say digital experimentation plays a key role in their marketing strategy. However, when asked about how experimentation is implemented by their marketing teams, around two in five (37%) admit to taking an ad-hoc, unstructured approach.

Looking at the overarching goals of marketers, the top drivers for focusing on digital experience strategies are linked to overall business success: increasing market share, changing brand perceptions and creating a more customer-centric business.

According to Kirsten Allegri Williams, CMO of Optimizely, more needs to be done to formalise and streamline the use of techniques like experimentation to help them achieve these ambitions.

“Marketing teams are under pressure to stand out from their peers, but current strategies aren’t set to deliver against their ambitions to increase market share and change brand perceptions. Embedded into the marketing strategy, continuous experimentation can drive informed, data-driven decisions that will create stand-out digital customer experiences.”

Setting the bar as a trusted brand
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By Cyrus Gilbert-Rolfe, CRO, EVRYTHNG

The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry is a tough one. Highly competitive, crowded, and frequently driven by price. Now producers are being put under even greater pressure, as consumers increasingly only want to buy from brands that they feel align with their own values.

With people becoming more aware of what they are putting into their bodies the focus on health issues is intensifying, coupled with sustainability and inclusivity being taken more seriously (particularly by millennials and Gen Z). This means that brands that want to retain, or even gain, a share of the market need to be seen visibly contributing to these causes.

Consumers are increasingly holding brands to account, wanting more information than can be delivered on a label or billboard. Businesses must now be able to show that their products have been sourced, produced, even transported, in a safe and sustainable way – along every step of the supply chain.

These demands for data are too important to ignore, with 99% of consumers saying that transparency is important in fresh food products, and 75% of consumers stating they would switch to brands offering more complete information[1].

With the addition of regulators requiring enhanced transparency and accuracy around Environmental Social and Governance (ESG), it’s more important than ever that companies seek to establish a reputation of trust.

True transparency

It’s no longer enough to simply state that a product is Fairtrade/organic/non-GMO. Consumers want to see the proof of this. They want evidence that a brand is treating its workers fairly and behaving in an ethical and safe manner – and this expectation extends across the entire supply chain. As younger generations gain more buying power this demand for rich information will increase, and brands need to adapt to this market now.

So far, gaining this full visibility across the whole supply chain has been difficult, with data being disparate and inconsistent across suppliers. However, with the ability to mass serialise products, digitally print unique identities onto goods on a mass scale is becoming more affordable. Coupled with the computing power and cloud capacity to share, process and store these massive amounts of data from each product, true end to end visibility is within reach.

This stands to revolutionise the CPG industry – enabling consumers and businesses to access all the information around a product’s life cycle by simply scanning a code – delivering true end to end visibility for the first time. It also provides businesses with both the challenge and opportunity of finally being able to meet customer expectations of transparency. Consumers will expect it, and it will be up to businesses to ensure they deliver it – or risk losing market share to those that do. Done successfully, this provides a chance to build trust, even generate loyalty, across a customer base that can be engaged with both pre and post purchase on an ongoing basis.

Maximising engagement to build trust

Up until now opportunities to directly engage with consumers across the CPG market have been limited due to the lack of product registrations in this arena. Product digital identity stands to change all that, as consumers are able to scan a code pre-purchase – giving a line of communication to potential purchasers, and further opportunities to engage post purchase – all with the aim of encouraging repeat or further purchases from the same brand.

Of course, this all depends on the consumer liking what they see when they access that information. As the market matures there is no doubt that there will be an increasing expectation of richer data and superior levels of transparency and authenticity.

Changing the game on product recalls

The benefits of this new technology go beyond meeting consumer demands for information on how a product is produced. It will also make a significant difference to the tricky area of product recalls.

No matter how focused a company is on safety, recalls are commonplace. How this is managed can have a significant impact on a brand’s reputation and the trust its customers place in it. In the CPG arena recalls are frequently done via in-store posters, social media, and email. There is very little opportunity for direct-to-consumer engagement, purely because the nature of the market means that product registration is rare (for example, a consumer would not register a bottle of shampoo, or a tin of beans).

As well as enabling companies to maximise both pre and post purchase engagement, it will also provide a direct channel to issue safety alerts should the need arise. Managing crisis points in this way will go even further in protecting, if not building, that all important consumer trust.

Plan now for the consumer of the future

There is no doubt in my mind that product digital identities are the future. In addition to meeting the ever-growing demands for data from the consumer, it also plays into the ESG movement by providing information on product life cycle, highlighting opportunities to enhance sustainability.

Businesses must start to plan now for the consumer of the future and consider how they will meet customer expectations but also maximise the potential opportunities and establish themselves as a trusted brand. This means:

  • Starting to gather information across the entire product and consumer journey
  • Unifying data from supplier, internal, and consumer facing applications around a unique and cloud enabled product identity
  • Enabling each point of contact with the product to read and write contextually relevant data
  • Let customers know. Highlighting the fact that they are fully transparent, and that consumers can easily access the product life cycle and a full suite of information about its origins
  • The industry as a whole must work together to fully embed this new technology so that everyone can benefit.

It is essential that businesses start taking these steps sooner rather than later and use the plentiful opportunities that end to end visibility and product digital identities offer in order to build a reputation as a trusted brand – ensuring that they are the ones that consumers are switching to, not from.

[1] Response Media Survey & Food Marketing Institute