On Our Mind

Interesting article and white paper discussing the next decade of Marketing and changes in consumer expectations, involvement, and personalization, including reference to “Just for Me” product design, per Tom Lowry of Google and “consumers now being co-creators.  They are us.  Consumers are now in Marketing.”  Enjoy!

2020 Marketing: Consumer Expects More
Premium content from Atlanta Business Chronicle – by Ken Bernhardt
Date: Friday, April 1, 2011, 6:00am EDT

The Atlanta chapter of the American Marketing Association recently convened its executive advisory board to discuss marketing in the next decade and how marketers can prepare for the changes that will be taking place. The members include 21 senior marketers from companies such as AirTran Airway, Wendy’s/Arby’s Group Inc., AT&T Inc., Chick-fil-A, The Coca-Cola Co., Cox Enterprises Inc., Engauge, Google, Kodak  and 22squared Inc.

Elizabeth L. Ward of Thought Partners Consulting was commissioned to prepare a white paper based on the insights from these senior marketing leaders, “20/20 in 2020: Toward a New Vision in Marketing.” I’ll use this column to highlight some of the key findings from this report, which is available at http://amaatlanta.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/2020/.

Three themes are described in the white paper: 1) Shifting sands in the relationship between brands and consumers, 2) the new demand for personalization, and 3) the paradigm shift in the role of marketing and the DNA of the marketing organization.

Relationship between brands and consumers: The balance of power continues to shift with consumers gaining increasing clout. Consumers expect a higher level of service and more immediate response to their demands and feedback. They expect more personalized recognition commensurate with the amount of business they do with the company and the amount of information they give. Ten years ago marketers “drove consumers to websites and pushed and pulled them to products marketers wanted them to buy.” Increasingly, marketers will need to solicit consumers’ willingness to participate and engage them in real dialogue. Relationship-building will precede or even replace the sales pitch, and companies will focus on building brand advocates. As Richard Ward, CEO of 22squared, put it, “Consumers want to be recognized and rewarded for being an active participant in the relationship with the brand.”

Rewards will become increasingly personalized, based on each customer’s past purchases and expressed interests. Going forward, marketing departments will need to recognize that consumers are co-creators and it will become less clear who reports to whom.

New demand for personalization: Consumers’ expectations for customized experiences and increased personalization will grow exponentially. Consumers are willing to share a large amount of information in return for receiving more personalized experiences, but marketers are just beginning to figure out how to use that information to deliver truly customized experiences.

Social media, mobile devices and localization are all major forces that are converging. Mobile devices will become increasingly important as the pre-eminent customizable device, conveying where you are and what you are doing at any given moment. As Tom Lowry, director of industry and technology for Google, put it, users will have higher expectations of “Just for Me” product design. He names Amazon and Netflix as examples of brands that are delivering personalized messages today.

Changing role of marketing: The skill sets needed in marketing will look dramatically different in the next decade. There will be increased accountability for marketing actions. The speed of change is increasing with “disruptions” in markets happening faster than ever. Therefore marketers will need to retool their planning and decision-making practices to enable them to move at faster speeds.

There will no longer be 12-month planning cycles. Decision-making must occur lower in the organization because there is not time to go up the decision-making ladder. Budgets and resource allocation will have to become more flexible to enable marketers to quickly respond to opportunities and respond to changing consumer needs.

Product life cycles will become shorter. Market intelligence will require new tools to keep a constant finger on the pulse of consumers. Listening to consumers will become part of everyone’s job. Marketers will need to find the right balance between precision and speed. They will need to form a closer relationship between marketing and IT. Currently there is too much data and too few insights.

Words of advice for 2020: The final section of the white paper presents the following advice for marketers:

• Pay close attention to customer experience. As products and prices are increasingly at parity, the total brand experience (and especially customer service) will become the key differentiator. As one board member put it, “customer service will become the next killer app.”

• Be real and have nothing to hide. Consumers increasingly have ways of finding out if you are cheating or faking (think “greenwashing”).

• Deliver value to customers by using the information you have gathered from them and they will give you value in return.

• Focus on the most important ways to customize, allowing customers to personalize the products/services/experiences (including method of payment, delivery, data portability, and functionality).

• Rethink organization structure and leadership values to be more responsive to the changing needs of the market.

• Test. Learn. Repeat.

All of this sounds like good advice to me. The next decade will have more changes in marketing than any previous decade. It’s a great time to be in marketing.

Bernhardt is the Taylor E. Little Jr. Professor of Marketing and Special Assistant to the Dean, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University.

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