What the changing consumer landscape means for brands

 

Check out how you can make the most of it

 

The world of consumerism is changing. With a dynamic mix of brands, clients and marketing savvy consumers all driving for ‘the latest’, agencies must adapt the way they communicate with their audiences.

Using audience insights to connect and stay relevant

Ultimately, brands are valued by how people perceive and engage with them. The modern consumer is no-longer blindingly brand loyal. Brands must earn their consumers by staying agile in the way they communicate, creating opportunities for significant contact and being ready for continuous change.

So, what defines the modern consumer? Cue the generation game. X, Y (Millennials) and Z (Gen Z) are the key players. Each come with their own generational stereotypes, but it’s important for companies to acknowledge diversity and avoid pigeon-holing the youth market into a generation. Targeting everyone under one bracket will not get results. And this is where audience insights come into play.

Our work is fundamentally lead by segmenting audiences and working out what’s relevant to them, creating new brand opportunities through insights that are sustainable, value-led, and that resonate with people and their evolving needs.

We’re spoilt for choice of what and how we consume content – meaning it’s vital that we offer a tailored experience to more specific audiences and shape them for each platform. Consumers expect this.

Engaging diverse audiences with tailored content

Standing out in a saturated market is a challenge, but not impossible.

Brands today want to connect with people to form long-lasting, loyal relationships – but earning this takes time, consistency and understanding. People are sensitive of how they spend their time and money and if a brand focuses more on selling, rather than speaking to them personally – they’ll quickly lose interest.

Take Vodafone. It needed a fresh, energetic internal launch for its new youth mobile network, VOXI. Their internal audience was incredibly diverse – made up of both a youthful and mature audience – proving a challenge to engage with on a peer-to-peer level.

Using data-driven insights to personalise content, we created a vibrant identity for VOXI, delivering a multi-channel campaign with an impactful rollout across all social media channels, real-life brand experiences and digital platforms.

All content was tailored to target both the youth and mature audiences, ensuring all our communications were inclusive and on-brand, and making sure they felt a part of the launch. To gain maximum engagement with the youth audience, bespoke calls to action and KPIs were developed, including VOXI Pods and a digital photo-sharing platform.

Our VOXI campaign not only educated and inspired the Vodafone colleagues, it spoke to them directly, gaining both a 100% sign-up rate and a 100% engagement rate. The campaign came from a place of authenticity and truthfulness, cultivating a loyal relationship between audience and brand – rather than one based on a constant state of selling.

Creating an experience with influencer marketing

Earning consumer’s loyalty and trust is everything. Data may provide us with in-depth insights, but it’s key not to lose our human approach.

It’s not just about creating one-off experiences, but a customer journey built on lasting relationships. We approach our audiences through creative storytelling, using insights and imagination to build a foundation of trust, that unites every individual on a shared mission.

Delivering 11x higher ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing, influencer marketing has fast become an integral part of a brand’s marketing mission. We saw an explosion in brand influencer marketing in 2017, with 39% of brands set to increase their spending in 2018. The newly-defined ‘word of mouth’ allows brands to connect with active audiences by appearing relatable and authentic.

Tapping into the influencer market in 2017, MINI Financial Services (FS) ran its first social media campaign, ‘#KeystoFreedom’. The purpose of the campaign was to raise awareness of MINI FS as an affordable-yet-desirable finance option for millennial consumers.

MINI FS worked with influencers whose brand values and target demographic reflected theirs. All content was led by the influencer – not the brand – staying authentic in communication and instilling a level of trust in the audience.

With 43% of millennials ranking authenticity as a key driver when consuming social media, each influencer was given a MINI Cooper to assist them in creating content for posts. By ‘living in the brand’, they effectively communicated the quality of the product and used their own audience insights to post at the most suitable times.

This was a great exercise in cultivating brand awareness for MINI FS. The highest levels of engagement came from the 26-36 age bracket, showing that the target audience responded in the desired way.

Staying ahead of the curve

Consumers want to stay connected and up-to-date with today’s emerging trends. With access to almost anything at the touch of button, they want it all and they want it now.

But that’s not an excuse to cut corners. With an array of communication channels, it’s important to locate the right one for your brand. Trust and authenticity is everything to the consumer. Creating a personalised and honest approach, and delivering a message that resonates with your audience, should always be the number one focus.

For more information head to We Are Vista.