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Brand strategy for 2011: Marketing trends.

 

BRAND STATIONS
& CONNECTIONS


Oct. 2010:
This latest marketing trends review to inspire your brand strategy for 2011.

Forget the service, think of interaction! Act constantly all round the brand.

This marketing trend lies at the convergence of three of the 10 trends not to be missed – RECOGNIZED, RESPECTED AND REWARDED, ALTERNATIVES, HAVE IT NOW - and targets listed in  Marketing trends for 2011: ”restore consumer confidence”, “reinstate the osmosis between the brand and product”.

The role of the brand has changed its support for the product and its sales.
The extreme volatility of the consumer makes that it is not any longer enough for the brand to be and to appear.

 It derives its existence from what it does for consumers: regular acts of branding that will make it useful in this sphere of activity of the consumer.
The strategic plan of the brand looks like a subway map with its main stations, its connections, its intermediate stations. A fact may be reflected in your  brand strategy 2011.

 

THE BRAND IN A PERMANENT MOVEMENT OF SUCCESSIVE INTERACTIONS
adding pleasure, surprise and pedagogy to their usefulness.

A basic movement, bound to the dense fog created by the vastness and availability of the offer resulting from globalization. Motion accelerated by a new distrust in consumption and its actors.

Hence the significant increase, for example, branding acts in non-market spheres: their usefulness, their generosity more easily hide the underlying interests.
Thinking in particular of street marketing operations - rest areas, charging batteries or connection Wifi areas - of events like music concerts, games, mobile phone applications ...


INTERACTIONS WILL BE A MIX BETWEEN SERVICES AND DIFFERENT RELATIONAL ACTS.
The services provide a consistency, a recurrence.
Relational actions allow catching the consumer where he is in his personal springs and in its various daily activities.
Events and promotions encourage the acting out of the consumer at the key moment when the relation in brand is established.

Product availability is the condition for success, which explains for example the proliferation of vending machines in key locations. Even for luxury cosmetic products, used to practice the "exclusives".


WE DEVELOP TWO EXAMPLES, that of airline companies, that of the retail chains, illustrated by IKEA, the furniture manufacturer, worldwide distributor:
Actors fallen in the globalization before others.
The wealth of the acquired experience can serve as a model: it shines in the whole circle of influence of the brand on the consumer.

These are strategies enveloping the consumer: the brand emits signals successively throughout its sphere of influence like a lighthouse. All the brands, even smallest and most local can find ideas in their size there, if only one!

Airlines.



Recruiting by offering an experience.
The brand stores have inspired Southwest Airlines to open a coffee shop in New York to to become known and recognize.
Permanent or short-lived specialized web sites to segment the offer according to targets and operations.

Time for a summer to introduce the A380 at a small price to customers of one of the busiest routes of Air France.
Attract the "influencers" of young people and well-to-do by offering free airline tickets to go to a rock festival (Virgin).

Customize the offer.
The competition makes grant always more advantages and personal privileges.                                                       
The new communications still facilitate the access: the tag downloaded on iPhone as boarding pass or borders avoiding the tail to the persons without luggage.                                                                              
For it must compensate the tendency to lengthen the security procedures at the airport.

In shops, the equivalent is: information kiosks, guide of purchase / advice on telephone, tag on product photographed to reach information, etc. …

 



Create and lead a community.
By feeding the community regularly with new proposals, the brand will come to be preferred not for it - often trivialized - product but for all the benefits that surround it.

The product becomes multiple (see trend "Multi Level" in our 10 trends-not-to-be-missed), which may make it more unique.

Since acts  IN-Flight, proposals to open OUT to a much larger community in which everyone can participate at times (Virgin): fans of the brand take care to recruit naturally for this one.
Animate the community is both give ME the facilities to communicate with her, and give to the OTHERS those to communicate with me.
.
Express the spirit citizen in personal benefits.
Answers to general questions are a necessity, but it is essential to propose practical solutions as useful as desirable providing a personal benefit: immediate actions and rewarding for the brand and the individual are those of an ecology smiling, friendly, source of pleasure.

Car sharing organized by Virgin, or its bags made with used seat covers of plane.



Retail chains (example illustrated by IKEA).


 

 

Interactions follow a pattern in a circle: place a "warning signal" available to the consumer whenever he potentially enters the sphere of the brand.
The sum of the requests form a mesh that reinforces the "dependency" of the person at the store: the customer is taking habits which he can no longer happen.

 





To the brand to be essential to the birth of need
Relay catalog by acts preparatory to purchase that lead ‘inevitably” to its realization.
For example, the augmented reality application that allows you to view a piece of equipment projected.

An application available elsewhere for glasses and makeup (clothes tomorrow?).
An American hairdresser imagined a pre-consultation with Skype.


Facilitate access to the store.
The opportunity to attract prospects  -or particular target - by specific advantages:
reserved parking, welcome gift, guide of course...

Put the fun, ease and board in a place designed around objectives strictly merchants.
Animation, events, surprises which would not deny a Disney park.
The ephemeral sometimes reinforces the desirability.

Information, advice, aid choices are provided by a seller only where buying cannot do without him (the kitchen). Moreover, simple tools or automated.
Distributors go further: call boxes counselor, guide on wines on iPhone, tag read on product with iPhone and opening information, test areas...

Facilitate the exit of the store.
After payment systems fast, easy retrieval of the goods is the object of attention with Chronodrive (Auchan), or trailer bike IKEA.
The focus is now on transport economic and ecological home: loan or rental of bicycles, trucks, or car sharing IKEA.
In Nashville, United States, a ModerNash is responsible for making purchases ordered by customers to transport and make them available in his own store.





Maintain the relationship
The presence of the brand - on my road-  with rest areas in the subway stations or the shopping malls.

A set of services always available to help projects, installation of products.


Resale of second-hand objects on Fnac and IKEA websites.
An idea to connect with the operations of repurchase / recycling of used contents at Auchan, Origins, Kiehl's. We do not waste any more!


Conclusion

The screening and sophistication of interactions show how the old concept of "customer service" is now outdated.
To go towards the customer, to answer his demand for customization, and to add add fun and friendly atmosphere make all the difference.


Interactions all round the brand.
 



A 360°view: the brand is active and available at virtually any moment for each consumer in all its activities.
Acting connected to the product and to the desires of consumers beyond the product.

A network that relies on fans of the brand to recruit new followers thanks to solutions ad hoc. With such stakes, make go up the various categories to the fans.

The trend-strategy annual report delivers clear recommendations, illustrated by examples and pictures, immediately actionable for all brands.

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