Sales & Marketing Study 2018: Consumer Engagement

Peter Breen
6/13/2018

Something to Talk About

There’s a simple reason why voice assistance became an immediate sensation with consumers, according to Joel Warady, chief sales & marketing officer for Enjoy Life Foods: “We’ve had a voice for 5,000 years.”

Adoption of “conversational commerce” is expected to be swift, with online researcher comScore, Inc. expecting 50% of all searches to be conducted via voice by 2020. There already are 50 million voice-first devices in the market; 19% of Amazon Echo owners have used their device to make a purchase, comScore says.

What’s more, 85% of consumer interaction with companies will be conducted without human involvement by 2020, according to Gartner. That means CGs need to quickly find new ways to make themselves heard — literally as well as figuratively.

“If there isn’t a voice strategy in place for 2019, you should feel very uncomfortable,” advises Warady. “Start with something small [now] because it will be a vital part of the overall strategy.”

“Assistance is the new battleground for growth,” said Ted Souder, retail head of industry for Google, during the Path to Purchase Summit last March. The digital giant is still trying to figure out “what voice search results look like” and “what voice ad units look like,” he said. Heaven help brand marketers when they do.

19% of Amazon Echo owners have used their device to make a purchase.

Talking Shop
Tackling this trend adds two more critical items to the digital transformation punch list at consumer goods companies. The first is to adopt voice as a direct-communication vehicle, something that at least a few marketers feel has positive benefits.

“Voice is a powerful way to elevate the brand experience in everyday life,” said Mark Berinato, vice president of experience design at Panera Bread, which last year put together a cross-functional team of designers, IT personnel and product managers to start working on a strategic plan.

Replacing those clunky, text-based chatbots on brand websites is one obvious move. (Vendors like Voysis, profiled on page 45, have emerged to help CGs do that.) Scores of brands also have created skills for Amazon’s Alexa, currently more to test and learn than to achieve any specific objectives.

Beiersdorf’s Eucerin brand recently launched a skill that lets consumers answer questions to determine the product best suited for their particular needs. Product information cards detailing the ultimate recommendation are sent to the consumer’s smartphone for reference when a purchase is made. (Skills currently can’t accommodate transactions.)

While it gets most of the hype (in part due to some recent incidents of miscommunication), Amazon currently only has a small share of the voice assistant market because most activity occurs through smartphones, says Ethan Goodman, senior vice president of shopper experience at The Mars Agency, which helped Eucerin build the skill. But for obvious reasons, it is a leader in shopping-related activity.

Mars also recently created a “Bottle Genius” skill that helped shoppers in a New York liquor store find the right whiskey. Shoppers talked to an Echo device attached to a custom-built, illuminated shelf that lit up to identify the recommendations.

The recent “Bottle Genius” campaign talked whiskey shoppers at a New York City liquor store through the selection process.

The Shelfless Digital Shelf
The other vital “to do” item for CGs is figuring out how to work through third-party personal-assistant services like Alexa, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana or Apple’s Siri — all of which operate independently, and some of which might have competitive strategies in mind: Alexa only recommends Amazon’s own products when queried about diapers, baby wipes or batteries, according to reports.

“You need to be the No. 1 result right now” or you’re probably out of luck, says Goodman. Alexa typically uses the current Amazon Choice item for the product category, he notes, so optimizing product pages on Amazon.com can help.

Looking ahead, it likely won’t be long before voice assistance moves beyond technology devices and becomes embedded in standard home appliances (and homes themselves), apparel and other everyday items.

“We know that new voice technology may not have high penetration with our entire shopper base,” Rob Ciaffaglione, Beiersdorf’s team leader for shopper and customer marketing, told Shopper Marketing. “We believe that, over time, voice is the future.”

To read the rest of the 2018 Consumer Goods Sales & Marketing Study, click on the links below:

To download a PDF of the full report, click on the attachment below.

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