Sales & Marketing Study 2018

Confronting the Consumer-Driven World

A search for “best toothpaste” on YouTube generates 9,250 results. So who needs to know what “4 out of 5 dentists recommend” when you can consult with “Teeth Talk Girl,” a YouTube channel run by a registered dental hygienist that has 3,788 subscribers.

It’s not likely that Teeth Talk Girl is having much impact on the world’s toothpaste preferences. (She’s not a fan of whiteners, by the way.) But the point is clear: Any brand trying to make an impression with consumers these days has a lot of other voices with which to contend — including a whole lot of those self-same consumers, armed with simple technology that makes it as easy for them to reach a mass audience as it is for a multi-billion dollar consumer goods company.

Meanwhile, one of the world’s most important consumer goods retailers is working very hard to automate as much of the buyer-seller relationship as possible. “You’re increasingly not working with humans over there,” says Sam Gagliardi, IRI’s senior vice president of e-commerce, in reference to Amazon.com.

Buyers at some traditional retailers are focusing more on smaller brands because looking for unique products “is what’s driving the consumer back into the store,” according to RangeMe founder and chief executive officer Nicky Jackson. The online product-sourcing platform for retailers showcases more than 125,000 different suppliers, exemplifying the new competitive landscape.

As if these issues aren’t enough to send the traditional sales and marketing-driven consumer goods company into a business transformation frenzy, let’s not forget the potential of direct-to-consumer selling. “I truly believe every brand owner is going to become a retailer,” suggested industry advisor Andy Walter, a former IT and shared services leader at Procter & Gamble, at the recent Retail & Consumer Goods Analytics Summit.

Driving the Right Balance
Chief marketing officers now devote more than one-fifth of their budgets to technology, according to Gartner. More specifically, they plan to quadruple spending on analytics in the next three years, says Deloitte. In sales, mobile field tools providing access to deeper data are making retail execution a real-time activity.

Consumer goods companies are scrambling to find the tools needed to effectively react to all the changes taking place. That task, too, has become harder than it used to be, due to the explosion of new technology that’s occurred.

And it’s no longer just back-office business tools that need to be considered. Even consumer technologies — smart appliances, voice assistants, wearables — are providing new ways for product manufacturers to engage with audiences. What makes it doubly exciting is that these technologies also act as windows into consumer behavior that can be analyzed to develop even stronger engagement.

One area for the industry to consider, however, is avoiding an over-reliance on technology — for example, the way that programmatic advertising seems to have let some organizations put their marketing strategy on autopilot along with their ad campaigns.

“The tools of our craft have never been so sophisticated,” said Eric Reynolds, chief marketing officer at Clorox Co., at the IRI Growth Summit in March. “We worship at the altar of data and technology now.” But Reynolds warned against blind devotion that would let marketing “evolve into a series of transactions involving data,” with brand building being forsaken entirely. “Technology shouldn’t change what we market, but how we market,” he advised.

Put another way, the goal for brands is to “serve consumers in ways that are distinct to [the brand] and personal for each” individual, said Adam Sussman, Nike’s chief digital officer, at the recent ShopTalk conference. “Technology is most powerful when it serves people.”

Our goal with this year’s 9th annual Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Study was to examine the various ways in which companies are learning to do that.

Enjoy.

--Peter Breen, Editor-in-Chief