Breaking through is not always easy in the digital world, but there is opportunity to grow brands by leaning into the power of collaboration and creativity. This approach really can build connections both internally within a company and externally with consumers.
“As marketers, creativity is our super power and that is always going to be the foundation,” said Arjoon Bose, chief marketing and digital officer at the Bel Groupe, at the Brand Innovators first event in Paris last week.
For BackMarket, an 11 year-old French-based global company that sells refurbished electronics, the creativity lies in educating consumers about the dark side of technology consumption. It’s not good for the environment to upgrade as often as we’ve been trained to and BackMarket wants to normalize the behavior of buying used, as people do with cars.
“We’re really trying to link up to the awareness of fast fashion as a problem by branding this problem fast tech,” said Joy Howard, CMO of BackMarket, who has also led marketing for Patagonia, Converse and Lyft.
The brand has been creative in their out-of-home efforts, running billboards with two side-by-side photos of the same people in front of a glacier in Switzerland, taken 10 years apart on different iPhone models. The quality of the photos are not that different but the glacier is practically gone in the second photo, visually illustrating the impact of fast tech on the environment. The ads were placed near Apple stores with the tag line, “How many upgrades do we have left?”
Just as BackMarket taps into the contemporary value to live more sustainably to build connections with consumers, Accor hotels leans into the consumer insight that people want deeper, more meaningful experiences to connect with customers.
Stuart Wareman, global SVP experience, events & sponsorship at Accor, said that as a travel brand, they are tapping into audience passions, which can look different across 47 hotel brands. “It’s everything from ultra-eco to ultra-lux. We have to look at various different passion items all around the world,” he said. “We sell experiences that are at the heart of these passions.”
The hotel offers members a series of what they call “limitless experiences” so they can exchange their points for more than just a hotel room. They get “access to events, access to money-can’t-buy experiences.”
Olga Kostina, marketing manager – international excellence at Suntory Global Spirits, focuses on building connections within her organization to help bring connections with consumers. She works as a kind of marketing consultant across the organization to bring marketing, sales, media and field teams together in one room to talk and establish business processes.
“We need to bring people on board and make sure that whatever strategies we create are based on consumer insights and that they’re actionable,” explained Kostina. “This is where the sales team comes in, and says, I think this is the best way for this customer and the field team comes in and says, we noticed that in bars, this is the trend at the moment.”
L’Oreal is leaning into technology by offering many new innovations in AI and tech to help consumers personalize their beauty experience and find the right products for them. These tools can recognize the daily fluctuations of a consumer’s skin to make recommendations. But at the same time, it is key for the brand to ensure the experience is positive in order to build connection with the end user.
“More than 50 percent of users prefer experience over price,” said Beyza Kapu, global ecom, tech and data analytics director at L’Oreal. “If you are not delivering a good experience, then you are not just losing sales, you are losing trust.”
Trust is table stakes in the era of AI. Heritage brands are better positioned for trust, but must protect trust by maintaining connection.
“Consumers are bombarded by a number of images and claims that may be AI-generated content and then they are confused,” said Edwin Taborda, global chief consumer & market intelligence officer at L’Oreal Consumer. “They don’t know who to believe and what to believe. When you’re a legacy brand, you somehow have the credential of trust and believability… It’s the way you connect with the consumer.”
