Brand Strategy: Whoever Has The Best Data Wins.

We've all heard by now that companies are using artificial intelligence to streamline the way they do business, but an influx of more intimately personal data has opened doors to even greater brand benefits.

This year, a number of companies made use of impossibly detailed personal information. Not just age, name or location, but details gathered from saliva samples and body tracking sensors.

Biometric information, for example, like your genomic profile, has become more easily accessible.  This due to the increased efficiency and falling costs of the technology involved in obtaining it. This has given brands in various categories, from luxury fashion to fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG,) the opportunity to use biometric information to both add value to their product and strengthen their marketing messages.

Today’s savvy consumers only consider brands that demonstrate that they understand and care about “me”.’ And what better way to do that than build bespoke products and campaigns for each customer?

BESPOKE PRODUCTS
In September, Nike launched its Advanced Apparel Exploration 1.0 capsule collection, a line of clothing based on the personal data of several athletes. The sportswear brand used sensors to track how the athletes’ bodies reacted to different environments, measuring heat, sweat and airflow in various urban settings – from the subway to the office to a club – and converted the data into body maps.

The entire collection was formed around these data insights – so every item was constructed to provide extra ventilation or coverage in the areas it was needed. Using biometric data, the brand aims to design clothing with extra value for the wearer.

Other companies have taken it a step further, personalising their products to each customer’s genetic makeup. Fitness platform Lose It! partnered with startup Helix to use genomic information to create diet plans tailored to people’s genetic profiles. And wine delivery platform Vinome followed a similar system to offer personalised wine selections.

As well as using personal data to aid product development, companies are also using genetic testing to ramp up their marketing. These campaigns and product developments could not have happened without significant technological advances. And as startups continue to innovate, even more meaningful data will become available.

New York’s Loomia, for example, is developing technology that will allow people to track the way they wear their clothes and sell that data to brands. To this end, Loomia has created a smart clothing ecosystem that can track when clothes are being worn, what setting they’re being worn in and what other clothes they’re being paired with.

Loomia’s smart fabrics collect and store environmental data specific to individual pieces of clothing, like what temperature it was outside when someone wore it. When it comes to market, people will be able to trade this data with brands for rewards – giving apparel brands a unique opportunity to track how their products are used. As startups like Loomia continue to develop new forms of data, brands will be able to strengthen their creative offering with insights that were unheard of until now.

Though these are early examples, they point to a future where companies infuse their offerings with intricate data gathered from both products and customers. For brands and marketers, customer data is like oxygen — nobody survives very long without it. Used intelligently, this data will help shape campaigns, inspire new products, build loyalty, and drive business strategy.

Welcome to the future.

Brand Strategy: Politics And Purpose

Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner advert was a car wreck, but its social conscience insight was sound. That insight is that lifestyles are the central focus of brands today.  Ergo, politics and lifestyles can no longer be treated separately. 

So, what’s a brand to do in an increasingly polarising world?  Stay neutral and risk becoming irrelevant or wade into the debate and risk a backlash? 

Nowhere is this division more evident than in the US, under Donald Trump’s presidency. Just a sniff of partisanship could rouse pitch-fork-wielding masses, as numerous brands have discovered. Also, any brand hoping to lay low until better times arrive will be waiting a long time for three reasons. The first is social media, which is amplifying people’s fears and entrenching their beliefs. The second is the lack of accountability among those in power and the third is rising inequality across the world.

The fact that brands are more comfortable getting active politically today is an extension of a larger trend to use morality as marketing. Brands today are taking that to another level, tapping into our sense of what’s right and wrong.

By advocating for causes and incorporating them into their business models, brands allow consumers to vote with their wallets on the kind of world they want to support. These feel-good purchases of self-expression have earned a catchy name: cause-sumption.

These are admittedly heavy subjects for a soap brand or sportswear label to contend with. But those that have spent the past decade differentiating themselves through purpose and cultural relevance can’t go back to saying: ‘It’s all about the product.’ So, what can they do?

Increasingly there is a responsibility to make a social stand on the things that your consumer base cares about. The brands that got to grips with the new political lifestyle vocabulary most successfully were those that picked specific social issues – as opposed to overtly political ones – tied to their stated purpose.

None of this guarantees an easy ride, but an honest position that reinforces a brand’s purpose can be very profitable. In the first ten years of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, from 2004-2014, sales reportedly grew from $2.5 billion to $4 billion, and the award-winning “Evolution” ad spot earned an estimated $150 million worth of media time.

Ultimately, the pros of cause-sumption marketing often outweigh the cons, making for memorable brand messages that connect well with consumers. And the revenue speaks for itself.

THE BIG PICTURE

Without a doubt, a brand that takes a political stance risks irritating consumers who disagree. But it’s also an opportunity to stand up for values that are consistent with the brand’s messaging, earning further respect from consumers who are increasingly looking to vote with their wallets.

Just remember - if you don’t stand for something, you stand for nothing. Brands should, therefore, be politically active to the extent that doing so is consistent with their values, messaging, and worldview. The key is knowing when to speak up and when to stay silent - and there is a fine line between political activism that feels meaningful versus selfish.

Once you determine why consumers and employees feel an affinity for your brand, it will become clear whether or not that affinity is relevant to the political issue at hand.

Brand Strategy: Radical Transparency

Consumers are more suspicious of companies than ever. Edelman’s 2017 Trust Barometer found that faith in the big four institutions – government, the media, business and NGOs – is at an all-time low. And to make matters worse for brands, a slew of startups are embracing transparency and creating new expectation levels that companies of all sizes will soon have to match – or risk their relevance.

Setting expectations

Online apparel retailer Everlane is the poster child for the radical transparency movement. Since launching in 2010, the brand has displayed a breakdown of costs for each item on its website. This includes things like materials, hardware, labour, duties and transport. It is an approach that has earned the fashion brand an army of socially conscious and style-savvy followers.

But over the past year, this transparent way of working has spread to just about every sector imaginable. Cosmetics startup Beauty Pie, for example, gives people a price breakdown of the factory costs for each product it sells. Insurance startup Lemonade publishes statistics on the revenue it’s generating, the number of policies sold and the average monthly charges.

Emerging companies in the financial industry – one of the sectors most distrusted by consumers – are also putting transparency at the heart of their operations. New US bank Aspiration gives customers an insight into the impact of their purchases by scoring companies based on how they treat their staff and the planet. The bank also rates companies against their closest competitors so customers can easily see which brands best reflect their own personal values. 

Similarly, Clarity Money is an app that analyses users’ spending to recommend better deals and even negotiate lower subscription fees for them – forcing companies to be clear and upfront about their pricing strategies.

Who do you trust?

With startups redefining what it means to be honest and open, brands will soon face increased pressure to meet these new expectation benchmarks and highlight their own transparency credentials. For example, research conducted by J. Walter Thompson, London, found that transparency is one of the key ingredients in earning people’s trust (along with honesty, integrity and reliability). And according to research by Label Insight, 39% of people would switch to a new brand if it offered complete transparency and 73% would pay more for such products.

The message is clear: transparency is moving from a ‘nice-to-have’ option that helps startups create differentiation and into a need-to-have asset that all companies must consider. Today, being open and honest is an effective way of building trust. Tomorrow, it will be an essential means of boosting your bottom line.