The New Experience Imperative

It’s a new world full of new consumers that need and want to be served in new and different ways. Success — and sustainable competitive advantage — will be achieved by developing both a high degree of consumer intimacy and the ability to respond when, where and how consumers want. CGT’s publisher Albert Guffanti sits down with Mark Osborn, Global Lead Consumer Products Industry Marketing with SAP (www.sap.com), to discuss this new landscape of opportunity for today’s consumer products marketers.

What’s changed in the consumer marketplace that’s causing marketers to re-assess their role and the opportunity for marketing?
Osborn: Power has shifted in recent years from retailers to consumers. Today, consumers are ever more connected, mobile and social. Around the world new consumers are coming online and connecting at rates that show no signs of slowing. Consumers are using that connectivity to their advantage to research products, find best values and capitalize on convenience. The opportunity to learn from today’s consumer connectivity and social interactions combined with emerging opportunities to leverage even more consumer information from wearable tech, sensor data and the Internet of things is creating for marketers both a huge challenge and a huge opportunity — the challenge to develop a deeper understanding of consumer needs and preferences and the opportunity to use that information to reach, engage and serve consumers directly.   

How does this power shift translate into new marketing approaches?
Osborn: Because consumers can access information — and even buy — from anyone, anywhere, anytime, today’s consumer products marketers can no longer reach and influence consumers solely on their own. Leveraging a deeper understanding of consumer behavior to discover who they are, where they go, what they like and when they buy gives marketers the opportunity to identify, invest in and influence new online content, social media and e-commerce channels that they do not own or manage directly. In this environment, there is a new collaborative and cooperative marketing value chain emerging in which competitive advantage is derived from a marketer’s ability to balance internally owned marketing competencies and expertise with a managed ecosystem of supporting enablers such as agencies, creative and partners to deliver on the consumer experience imperative — reaching, engaging and serving consumers by providing consistent, relevant and compelling experiences tailored to increasingly refined segments across physical and virtual channels.

Does the opportunity for the CMO change in this new environment?
Osborn: The ability to engage with consumers directly is creating substantial new opportunities for consumer products marketers in general, and the CMO specifically, to become more strategic. Because of the data, information and insights now available to marketers, marketing strategies and tactics are also increasingly measurable and accountable. Through direct consumer interactions, marketers are now finally in a position to begin to measure marketing’s true contribution to revenue, volume and profitability. They are transforming the perception of marketing from a cost into an investment driving strategies for long-term growth by helping consumer products companies identify and engage consumers in new ways and in new markets globally.