While going solo is always easy and enjoyable, playing with a partner always bring more rewarding. That is why, despite the excitement that brand and business experienced on building their own website, customer has always been brought in to the game. Learning from past experiences, brands understand that customers are valuable partners that can improvement to the brands, in both products and marketing activities. For years, the couple learned to satisfy each other needs, in which some succeed and some failed.

If marriage last for better and worse, the brand/web – costumer couple had to made a big decision when social media, the third party, came in. While the costumer used social media as a toy (at least at the beginning), brand realized that the particular toy has taken the major of costumer time and attention. Not surprising, soon enough the social media sites hold the most traffic and kicked out brand’s website by large margin. Ultimately, brand needed to decide whether to incorporate the social media should be taken in or out of the relationship. Taking in the social media promised greater experience for both brand and it’s customer, yet not every couple can be successful in a game of three.

Those brands need an expert help, and therefore an Elsevier publish a journal discussing the role of web, social media, and creative customer (read: game of three) for international marketing strategy in 2012. Even though the purpose of the journal not entirely to discuss the relationship of those three, there are valuable insights on how to successfully manage the relationship.

1. Understand your core strengths (and visualization always helps).

Particularly in current specialized era, becoming everything may not be the best solution. The role of brand’s website has been reduced, but the role is not obsolete. With the presence of social media, costumers have become more creative and are willing to take the role of creators. In social media, information dissemination runs faster and cheaper. Combining those two, what brands need to do is creating the guideline for the costumer and allowing social media to effectively disperse the content. Therefore, when a brand decided to play with social media, the website should be capable to satisfy both social media and costumer’s need.

2. No more secrets

In the game of three, there is no more room for secrets. Social media, with its social power, has a bad track record of keeping secrecy. Local news could reach global audiences, which means one kick to a dog could end up CEO demotion due to social responses. In that sense, to success in the game of three, brand are expected to maintain its excellence. As a reward, the brand’s great reputation could easily be spread out, and soon enough every random customer will want to give it a try.

3. Bring the harmony to the relationship

Every customer is different and therefore they may play with different social media. The journal stated that the social media is a function of country’s technology, culture, and government. In a low-tech country, where Internet connectivity may be limited, we will find that social media that uses low data byte to thrive. Therefore, the brand should adapt to the customer by bringing a well tailored website (less picture, or low graphic animation) and use light-data social media such as twitter. Sitting back from the graph 1, brand’s has a great deal in bringing the technical aspect to the relationship, which in this case determine the wholes success of the process.

On different case, the customer may already have a preferred choice of social media, which means the brand has less leverage in determining the social media but to follow the customer. For example, customer in Brazil may prefer to use orkut while customer in China may choose QQ. In this case, the success of the brand will largely influenced by the capability of the brand to understand the consumer better and adapt to their preferences.

The last factor is the level of costumer creation power. Costumer may be willing to put more or less effort in the relationship. The more they are engaged with the brand, the more effort they are willing to give. The most common examples are the success of apple in social media and P&G on its co-creation platform. Apple has successfully engaged its brand loyalists who give them amazing and creative reviews of its products. On the other hand, P&G will have a hard time should it asks its customer to give the same review like apple. Instead, what P&G does is designing different type of engagement, and successfully creates its co-creation platform.

Finally, incorporating a social media in brand’s relationship with its customer is a big decision that the brand should made. There are many success story for those who take in social media, and also there are also many failures happened. Yet, brands could also choose to wait and develop the necessary competencies before go with social media. Remember, you can always come out when you are ready.

Link:

The journal http://www.parsproje.com/tarjome/modiriyat/323.pdf

There are many definition of marketing: communicating product values, selling goods, and some include studying consumer behaviors. Marketing has been practiced for many years, thought in every business school, and raised multibillion dollars company. Yet, business nowadays shows there is a huge gap between the company and the consumer.

Marketing 1.0

Marketing 1.0 put a lot of attention on product functionality. It guides you to answer these following question, what product should you sell, to whom should u sell it to, what price should be right, where should you sell it, and how should you communicate. And “Yes”, they are the Marketing 101 course in every business school. Outdated? Maybe. Important? Yes. Learn this material guides a potential marketer to think from both company and consumer points of view, as those are the fundamental ground in the industry.

However, new challenges arise as more players come to the market. Competitors come and offer new products to the market. “Me too” products enter the market, offering similar products with lower price. Consumer loyalty is shaken, and marketers come up with revolutionary thinking, a way to differentiate their products better.

Marketing 2.0

There is little fact to really prove who initiate this era, yet we know for sure it create a huge impact in marketing. Instead of pouring more function, pushing the distribution, and increasing the advertising budget, marketer start to insert a soul in the product. And that’s how a brand is created. A brand is not merely a label of a product or a sign of quality. A brand includes all the association that it has. For example, Dove is a soap brand. The brand stands for more than soap association, but also natural beauty, self-esteem, and women. This way, a marketer to resonate the brand soul with its consumer, thus win the competition in the market.

In Marketing 2.0, we see a huge shift in marketing role, as it becomes more people oriented, and treat a brand as if it is a living object that has distinctive personalities. Even until now, companies are working hard to build their brand, in order to survive in the competitive environment.

Despite those efforts, the markets seem to react differently. Retail industry, grows roughly 5% in Canada, while consumption volume is increasing in a higher rate. That indicates that consumer is paying less for every item purchased, which an early indication that the consumer are becoming price sensitive. Retailers are providing a cheap private brand product, stealing market share from existing premium brands. At the same time, we also realise that people are willing to pay more to support local and organic food. People buy a five dollars burger to support community movement, ditching a four dollars regular brand burger.

Marketing 3.0

People are changing. During the last couple years, how many people are looking for work-life balance, instead of position in a company? How many new career paths are designed? How many people choose to work for smaller company over big multinational company? How many people stay for more than 3 years within the same company? Those changes affect many things, including marketing.

As the generation shift, people seek different things. Our consumers seek different things. Our old consumers might care about how cool would they be, if they drink your product. The social status that represented by the brand they are wearing. But right now, consumers are well aware about their responsibility, as their action might bring a huge impact. Our consumers seek values in the products. Therefore, there is a huge gap between the company’s best effort to market their product and consumer’s expectation.

Marketing 3.0 introduce triple bottom line in marketing: functions, associations, and values. The brand values could be set with the one that most suitable with the company value and consumer value. It could start from planet protection, world hunger, sustainability, local, fair trade, etc. Many brands have practiced marketing 3.0, such as Body Shop which against animal testing and support activities to protect the environment. Brand’s value sets a vision on consumers’ mind, resonates with the deepest human insight, and helps them achieving their highest human need: self-actualization.

Marketing Future

Despite all the theory on marketing, there is a deep lesson that should be taken from those marketing evolutions. Marketing is tightly connected with people, therefore it evolve over time. Ultimately, it evolves at a faster rate now. Therefore, it is important that for a marketer to be flexible, smart, and wise in applying knowledge and strategies. A marketer is also pushed to diligently sharpen his skills. After all, we must have heard a Wiseman says, “The only constant is change”

Are you ready to shape Marketing 4.0?

Aside from the global recession, there is one thing in common that happened across the nation: ageing population. Senior population across the world is predicted more than 500 million population 2020. This mega-trend trigers major companies to shift their gear and design a strategy to win this future market.

Indonesia, the fourth largest populated country, is a developing country with typical pyramid shaped population. However, due to increasing life expectancy in Indonesia, senior population start to arise gradually. Between 2012 to 2030, 50+ year old population group is expected to increase by 84% (euromonitor data).

HiLo Approach

HiLo is one of biggest dairy Brand in Indonesia, which provide a calcium fortified milk to the market as a solution to fight osteoporosis and hidden hunger (mineral defficiencies). HiLo is well-known for it’s young, fun, and energetic spirit, since the Brand always leverage the benefit through positive emotion campaign. As HiLo Brand Manager, I am challenged to provide a better solution for senior market.

The first step is preparing an innovative new product. Several focus group discussion was held to acquire the market insights. Study literature is also used to gather information about nutrition requirements for senior market, with focus benefit on bone, joint, and total wellbeing. As part of the campaign, a TV-commercial is produced to communicate the product.

HiLo Platinum ads

HiLo Platinum TV commercial are run nationwide, targeting Indonesian senior market. The campaign get a lots of buzz in social media, and become one of the most favourite commercial over the period.  Through the campaign, HiLo address that getting older should not necessarily mean less energetic. The ad resonates with the senior market, since it communicates the target market aspiration: old outside, young from the inside. If the success is carried on, HiLo will secure its market position as the senior market is growing in the country.

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