12 crucial insights for FMCG marketers

Clive Humby and Kantar shared some fascinating perceptions at the IPM/Hive sponsored Great Loyalty Debate earlier in October. They have a significant bearing on FMCG and grocery businesses in the near future.

1. Loyalty is not about customers being loyal to your brand. It is more about you/your brand being loyal to them.

2. 60% and rising of grocery sales are on price promotion; this is double what it was five or so years ago.

3. This is nuts and can only end in tears – all supermarkets have loyalty cards and are in trouble.

4. Consumers’ geo-location is increasingly important.

5. People’s mobile interaction behaviour is based on their passions and what they care about.

6. Along an axis of Attitude-Drivers-Behaviour-Transactions-Profit, influencing people’s behaviour is more about understanding motivations than segmentation.

7. How you say ‘thank you’ is the critical moment of truth – give people what they want not what you want.

8. Loyalty is the wrong attitude. Relevance and being relevant is the right attitude.

9. Brand and Retailer must work together to understand peoples motivations. Understanding customer motivations is key to unlocking the next value growth curve.

10. ‘Big data’ is not a panacea (even if you can interpret it). It’s the ‘tiny data’ coming out of it that’s useful.

11. Social media is rewriting the rules to get messages to land and be relevant to people’s passions.

12. If CRM is ‘customer relationship management’ then replace ‘relationship’ with ‘relevance’.

The ubiquitous pain for FMCG brands selling through intermediary trade customers is not knowing which individual consumer has bought what, unless you pay DunnHumby and Aimia a lot of money, and then you don’t necessarily get data on individuals.

For 2 decades there are 2 tools that have been used to deliver MRC for non-FMCG clients, 1) direct communication with a consumer and 2) a secure easy method to gain transactional behavioural data interpretation.

In the past this was not easily possible for FMCG. FMCG brands need ‘smart data’ that provides useful information that ’makes sense’. The trick is providing the behavioural currency between your brand and the people buying it to deliver a thank you strategy that is relevant.

And the Databank you should grow is a sustainable marketing platform and a balance sheet asset that increase corporate value and should delight your shareholders.