Meet Future Mum 2035

The next generation of parents will be from the much-discussed Gen Z. How will the world that they have grown up in shape their views of parenting? What societal trends will impact the choices they make when it comes to raising children? And what what are the implications for baby and toddler brands?

Midjourney’s idea of a mum in 2035

We interviewed some 16-28 year olds to find about their hopes and expectations for the future. And we dug into lots of existing reports and data sources to construct a picture of parenting in the 2030s. 

So let’s step into the future. With all the usual caveats about the foolishness of predictions and the stupidity of generalisations, we’re going to take an imaginative leap into 2035. Say hello to Future Mum 2035. Say hello to Chloe. 

1. She won’t impose labels on her child

Chloe was the most popular name in the UK for girls born in 2002 - and she hates it. Chloe wanted to choose a gender-neutral name for her baby and thought back to her first Glastonbury, aged 17, when Billie Eilish’s headline set changed her life. Like most of her generation, she sees gender and identity as fluid and has a strong aversion to imposing any kind of normative stereotypes on her child. She disappointed her mum when she refused to have a gender reveal party, and throughout her pregnancy, found the question “is it a boy or a girl’ somewhat offensive.

Implication for brands: Gendered-products and communication are likely to be even more divisive in the future. Tread carefully.

2. Chloe has postponed having kids

Chloe is 33. Which will be the average age of a first-time mum in 2035 if the upward trend that started in 1974 continues.  Already in 2022, the average is 31 (and 34 for men) and it is more common for women to have a baby in their 40s than as a teenager. 

Chloe doesn’t remember a world without YouTube. She was 10 when the London Olympics happened and had her university experience decimated by Covid. As an older parent, she has more life experience to pass on to her children and studies have suggested her children are more likely to have a stable, healthy upbringing and fewer developmental issues.

Implication for brands: Wiser older parents are more confident in their opinions and likely to reject any brand that is dogmatic, worthy or patronising.

3. She started motherhood with little money and without owning a home.

During her twenties, Chloe focused on her career as a data engineer, traveled, ticked off experiences…and found herself in debt at the age of 30. Even in 2022, 38% of 25-34 year olds are in debt and 43% spend more than they earn. But Chloe has also lived through the “lost decade” of the 2020s, with persistent high inflation, 10% interest rates and the UK once again described as the “sick person of Europe’. Like most of her friends, she doesn’t own a house and is not sure she ever will. By 2035, at current trends, the average first time buyer will be 34.

“I moved into my own place in April but I’ve had to borrow money again this month just to pay rent. I do get student finance and part housing benefit but it’s not enough to pay everything.”

— Charlotte 31, mum of Esmee (2)

Implication for brands: Savvy parents will look for value for money and opportunities to share, rent and reuse baby equipment.

4. Billie is an only child

Chloe won’t have another child, and Billie will be one of millions of only-children in the UK. The myth of the nuclear family with 2.4 children is already ancient history, and implications for parenting are profound as ‘one-and-done’ parents pour all their love, support, hopes and dreams into a single child. Just as well, because Chloe is not expecting much support from her aging Gen X parents, currently reliving their hedonistic youth in an upscale resort in Goa.

Implication for brands: First-time mums are more information-hungry and willing to invest time and effort in finding the right solutions for their child.

5. Chloe is worried about being perfect

Chloe is already worried that she won’t be a good enough mum. She has felt the pressure to be ‘perfect’ from a young age and now aspires to give Billie the perfect childhood. More than previous generations, Gen Z believe it is important to be a perfect mum, and it is not surprising that Chloe is anxious after a childhood that started with a global financial crisis, lurched through the culture wars and culminated with lockdowns in her first two years of University. In fact 79% of Gen Z mums in 2022 say they are wrestling with anxiety and more than half of children born from now will have a mother who has experienced mental illness (University of Manchester). Source: What to Expect

Implication for brands: Ensure communications don’t set normative standards that further increase pressure on parents. Embrace the wonderfully messy and emotional realities of parenting.

“While many of these children are very resilient, these children are more likely to suffer from a range of negative life outcomes, including poorer physical and mental health, lower educational attainment and reduced quality of life.”

— Dr Matthias Pierce from The University of Manchester

6. Chloe wants to be a mindful parent

Perhaps because of the greater awareness of mental health, Chloe is determined to be more emotionally connected to her child than she was to her parents. She has always tried to be mindful of the choices and relationships in her life and not just be swept along by convention and convenience. And she believes the most important thing she can do is be a mindful parent; one that understands and values their child’s autonomy and is fully present in the moments of their upbringing. 

Implication for brands: Be an ally not a teacher. More empathy, less guidelines.

“Your lifestyle is your deathstyle. I’m determined to make conscious, positive and mindful choices about my life.”

— Amy, 27

7. She will know about Billie’s health in real time

Like everyone in 2035, Chloe is obsessed with wellness monitoring and throughout her pregnancy had a constant stream of notifications on everything from skin ph, hormone levels, baby heart rate and glucose levels. 

Chloe did find it a little disconcerting to learn from Billie’s prenatal gene-scan that she was 13.7% more likely to have asthma, and her predicted life expectancy was only 87.  But that only confirmed Chloe’s intuition that she will pass on her own plant-based diet to her child. When she thinks about all that cows milk her parents fed her she shudders. How could people have thought that was OK,? she wonders, reaching for a flava bean snack.

Implication for brands: Always do the right thing with personal data. It can be helpful and charming, but also disturbing and alarming.

8. Chloe will be the first cyborg mum

Chloe taps the digital tattoo on her arm, and asks her personal AI: “show me the best plant-based foods for weaning? And she flips through the Augmented Reality display of fruits, vegetables and real-time nutritional analysis that has appeared in virtual space on her kitchen top, she uses her Neuralink to silently instruct her AI to start growing lab-veg in her home-replicator….

…OK, we’ve veered into the crazy world of future tech prediction now. Almost none of this is likely to happen. Let’s be a little more realistic…

8. Chloe embraces new media

When it comes to tech, we really never know what will fly and what won’t. We just know people will access information and experiences in ways that are convenient and rewarding. Who would have thought 20 years ago that parents would be listening to audio content at all, let alone in the form of in-depth, long form Podcasts about the intricacies of baby wellbeing.

What we can be sure of is that content will continue to beat ads in the attention game. Already in 2022, this generation spend 68% of media time online. In 2035, Chloe spends more time on her device than she does sleeping, and relies on tech to support her parenting more than the now middle-aged millennials ever did. Where Gen X parents asked Google everything and Millennials sought answers on social media, Chloe taps into the the proliferation of AIs. She still has the same concerns as previous generations about whose advice to trust, so she gravitates to trusted influencers who now present AI-versions of themselves.

One night, when Billie is crying and Chloe doesn’t know what to do, she has a conversation with the avatar of one of her favourite Threaders, RealMum. She likes the fact that she is less judgemental than the other virtual-mums and they can just have a bit of laugh together. But, still, her favourite source of help and advice is other mums. And Chloe meets up with her NCT group in Costa every Thursday just as generations before her have done.

Implication for brands: Content is king, but experimenting with new channels will provide disproportionate rewards for the brave and lucky ones.

It’s been fascinating to speculate about Chloe. The world in 2035 will be very different to today. And yet, much of it will no doubt feel familiar too. There are so many more aspects of Chloe’s life that we could explore. We’ve barely touched on parental leave, nappies, sustainability, education and so much more.

I’d love to hear what you think might be in store for our Future Mum, Chloe.

Do real people care about social purpose?

When we set up The Ninety-Niners, we were heavily influenced by Andrew Tenzer’s  Empathy Delusion and Orlando Wood’s Lemon. And then I read Can’t Sell, Won’t Sell by Steve Harrison; a book that gave us real confidence that we were onto something. I devoured it in a morning, and shared it with everyone I could.

Six months later, Steve got in touch out of the blue. I’d never met Steve. It didn’t occur to me he knew who we were. It was humbling and exciting to be asked to contribute to the new edition.

The core idea of the book, that liberal-leaning adland is embarrassed by capitalism and is assuaging its guilt by attempting to save the world, is a brilliant explanation of why our industry is so out of touch with real people.

“Our politics dictate the ads we create and distance us from our audience”

— Steve Harrison

Steve takes a savage and highly entertaining swipe at brands that tout their social purpose . For him, brands are not there to save the world and advertising has become too sanctimonious and politicised. For me, it’s not that brands can’t take a politically motivated position. It can work for some brands in some cases. It’s the fact that the position every brand takes just happens to reflect the agency and marketing departments that created it, and not the real people that brands are supposed to serve.

Imagine if a laundry detergent started advocating for retaining national identity? Or a chocolate bar campaigned against woke-culture? It would quite rightly be met with outrage. And yet the reverse has become marketing orthodoxy

Of course companies should behave ethically, treat people well, be mindful of their impact on the world and pay their taxes. But that doesn’t mean brands should go around virtue signalling as a marketing strategy. Of course our industry has to address really important issues of diversity and inclusion. We need more diverse talent providing more diverse opinions and making advertising more representative. But that seems to have been confused with the idea that we need a mono-culture of liberal sensibilities, unable to empathise with mainstream opinions, creating ads for itself.

In the book, Ant and I talk about Pampers Unicef, One Pack = One Vaccine, one of the most celebrated purpose-driven campaigns of all time. It has run for 16 years and saved the lives of 200 million babies, virtually eliminating newborn tetnus. But it was conceived as a sales promotion to combat a competitor’s ‘Buy One Get One Free’ in Boots. We figured ‘Buy One, Save a Life’ would be a compelling alternative for mums in store. The campaign has endured, not because of its social impact, but the commercial impact that came from emotionally connecting with mums, engaging retailers and selling product.

Steve argues that adland’s real purpose is to sell the products that pay the wages of everyone in the value chain. And to pay the taxes that fund schools, hospitals, green innovation and all the rest. It is a moral case for capitalism that is rather unfashionable in Shoreditch at the moment. I don’t know if Steve admires Steven Pinker, but if you want to read the case for the civilising, life-saving power of free trade, go and read Enlightenment Now.

Can’t Sell, Won’t Sell is straight onto the list of must-read books about advertising. It should be a set text for every marketing and advertising course in the world. And a wake-up call for an industry too absorbed in its own smug self-righteousness to remember why it exists.

Democratising the voice of consumers, part 1

In the most progressive organisations, getting close to consumers is everyone’s responsibility. So what can you do to make everyone as consumer-obsessed as you are? It is a matter of culture and technology. In this first post, we will talk about culture and some simple behaviours that will encourage everyone to get better at listening to the voice of the consumer.

There isn’t much marketers seem to agree on these days. But there’s one thing even the staunchest contrarian will not argue with. We should all listen to consumers. Understanding what consumers or customers feel, the challenges they face and why they make the choices they make, should be at the heart of every business. 

73% say their company is good or very good at listening to customers

Only 37% say they are good at leveraging insights across different departments

In our recent survey of CMOs and Marketing Directors, the gap between listening to customers and sharing insights was stark. It suggests that listening to consumers is still treated as a departmental responsibility, rather than a company-wide value. It is someone’s job to do the listening.

“If you really want to have a consumer-focused organisation, it cannot just be delegated to marketing”

— Julia Godin, CMO Lego

But in the most progressive businesses, getting close to consumers is everyone’s responsibility. In these businesses, the voice of consumer is everywhere and influences everything.

Broadly, it take two things to democratise the voice of the consumer like this: culture and technology. In the next post, we will dive into technology and the ongoing digital transformation of insights. But even the most sophisticated tech solution is doomed to fail without the right culture.

---

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”

— Peter Drucker

Culture is the set of values, attitudes and norms that shape the behaviour of people in an organisation.

It comes from the top but lives in the day-to-day. Many leaders are good at articulating a vision of consumer-centricity (according to our survey, 4 in 5 leaders advocate for it), but most culture is unwritten and learnt through social interactions and observation of others. Norms trump vision - or as Peter Drucker famously said, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

80% of senior marketers believe their leaders are advocates for greater customer-centricity, and willing to invest in it

We are social apes and we learn through imitation. So culture is both driven by and influences behaviour. To democratise the voice of the consumer, companies need to democratise the behaviours that help their people listen to and discuss consumers’ needs. Here are a few initiatives and approaches we have used over the years to empower everyone to get closer to consumers.

Eavesdropping

Encourage everyone to listen into customer service or sales calls. Sit at a bar and hear the conversations that happen before the drinks are ordered. If you work in a service industry, go out and serve some customers. Get out of your bubble and into the lives of real people.

Empathetic research

Any opportunity to see real consumers is great. But traditional focus groups, interviews and surveys create an artificial environment for consumers. And as many studies have suggested, people are not good at articulating what they want or why they do the things they do.

Getting closer to real consumers means taking a more empathetic approach to consumer research. One where we listen more and attempt to experience some of the same things our consumers do.

One tool we use at The Ninety-Niners is Consumer Safaris. In Consumer Safaris you spend real time with real people in the real world. Go to people’s homes, go shopping together, hang out or go for a drink. Engage in a conversation not an interview. Try to avoid analysing and questioning, and instead listen and participate. I have sat in many consumer homes with eager young brand marketers who’s first question is “so why don’t you buy my brand?!”. Not a great way to build empathy.

It is important to go into Consumer Safaris with solid understanding of who your customers are and of how your unconscious biases impact your perceptions. This kind of research is not intended to replace traditional quant and qual, or data-driven insight. But it does provide richness that you simply cannot get from a research report or from behind two-way glass.

Empathy Passport

Walk in the shoes of your consumers and experience what they experience. By taking on a persona and heading out to complete a task, participants are encouraged to see the world through the eyes of real consumers. With the right structure and facilitation, this kind of exercise can reveal so much about the challenges and compromises people face every day. At The Ninety-Niners, our half-day Empathy Passport Workshop includes role-playing real world or digital experiences and understanding how unconscious bias makes empathy hard.

Consumer collaboration

Building a go-to group of consumers for insight is not a new idea. But shifting the emphasis from research and validation, to exploration and co-creation creates more opportunities for genuine listening.

Recruiting a consumer panel can be a powerful way to quickly understand issues and get input into new innovations. These can be as simple as a start-up wine brand hosting quarterly tastings, or as sophisticated as Lego’s long term commitment to community building and creative collaboration with customers.

Less formal consumer communities can also be a great place to listen, whether it’s forums that you host, social media fan groups. or feeds on Reddit, there are many places to dip in and hear the voice of consumers.

Huel is brand with a really strong community of ‘Hueligans’. Their forum is a treasure trove of insights that impact everything from website experience to product innovation. And the marketing team are empowered to listen, respond and learn from the conversations.

Read your reviews

The first thing I do with any new client is check their reviews. A quick look through Amazon usually reveals the major benefits and barriers for consumers, expressed in their own words. Of course, scaling this up with technology and analytics is great. But simply reading what people have bothered to write about you is an easy, free and universally available tool.

Get real consumers in the room

There is nothing quite as powerful as bringing real consumers into meetings. It can be tempting to focus on recruitment of new customers, but we like to bring the most loyal customers into workshops and hear them articulate what they like and don’t like about the brand and product.

In a recent workshop with Marloe Watch Company, we heard their most loyal customers reveal the importance of the personal connection to the founders and the community of other owners. These insights helped inform a more authentic articulation of the brand closely aligned to the endeavour of the founders.

The imaginary consumer

If you can’t get real consumers, represent them in the room. Jeff Bezos famously leaves an empty chair at important meetings to represent the customer and remind everyone of the most important person in their company. A former of client of mine, a Marketing Director of a UK supermarket, would frequently judge creative work by pointing out of the office window at the council houses behind, saying “would they get that?”. Find a ritual that works for you for getting the imaginary consumer in the room.

Whether you’re a consultant, a creative, client or technologist, usually the smartest thing you can say is “what do our real consumers think?”

These are just a few practical suggestions to start empowering your people to be more consumer-centric. These behaviours can build and maintain a culture in which everyone is encouraged to listen for the voice of the consumer.

In part 2, we will look at how the digital transformation of everything is both generating more consumer data than ever and enabling progressive organisations to make sense of it at scale. And why we should all beware of tech evangelists who promise insights out of the box.

2021: Time for a fresh perspective?

It’s been a year of massive change and upheaval. It’s impacted your home and working life in ways you could never have imagined. But has it also reshaped your marketing plans for 2021?

Consumer behaviours are shifting far greater speeds than most brands. Now is the time to embrace and lean into these trends, before you get left behind. It’s time to look at your brand plans with a fresh perspective – your customers.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Reshaping life as we know it

Even with a vaccine now on the horizon, hardly any of us can imagine returning to the office 5 days a week in 2021. In fact, Deloitte has just announced it will be closing four of its UK offices and asking staff to work from home permanently. I’m sure others will follow.

It’s not just our ways of working that have changed. We have also changed the ways we live our lives. The way we shop, the way we socialise, the way we exercise, the way we view property, even the way we see doctors. More and more, technology is enabling these experiences to become virtual and consumers are seeing an on-going role from them in their lives. 

These trends are not new, but they have skyrocketed this year. According to new data from IBM for example, the pandemic has accelerated consumer’s shift toward ecommerce by five years.

And these behaviours are expected to stick. In a recent global study conducted by Salesforce, 58% of consumers said they expect to do more online shopping after the pandemic than they did before it. Also, a recent Mintel study into post-Covid life discovered that over half of consumers said they were not comfortable going back to the gym, compared to only two in ten who said they were comfortable doing so.

The Royal College of GPs predicts a 50/50 split between 'telemedicine' and face-to-face consultations in the future.

Searching for the right model

Some of the biggest winners this year were businesses that were designed around these trends and therefore were born ready for this moment. Think Zoom, Ocado, HelloFresh and Peloton. As well providing ‘at home’ products and services, they all have direct relationships with their customers, driven by the smart application of data and technology.

As of 6th Nov, Peloton’s revenues for 2020 were up 232% year on year. Their stock price has more than doubled this year.

(Source: Bloomberg)

It’s a model Nike started to mimic in 2017, with its ‘Consumer Direct Offence’ strategy. Nike decided to take more control of its distribution channels and focus on selling direct and through mobile. It has since amassed 170 million direct consumer relationships and over $16bn in DTC sales. What seemed like a bold move at the time, is paying huge dividends now. The apparel category has been hit hard this year, but despite a 38% drop in total sales during their fourth quarter, Nike's digital sales grew 75%.

It has been reported that Nike is doubling down on efforts to grow online operations in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, with plans to strengthen their own e-commerce platforms while intensifying partnerships with leading retailers such as Foot Locker and Nordstrom to drive digital sales.

Nike has developed multiple ways to engage and sell to more 170 million people, based on deep understanding of their needs and passions. For example, it’s SNKRS app (for sneakerheads) is now responsible for over 20% of its digital sales.

There are other brands who have been more responsive to the challenges people were facing and who have managed to pivot quickly to reimagine their offering to customers.  

Bulb, the energy supplier, were quick to react to the pandemic and found new ways to connect with customers and provide relevant and meaningful experiences. For example, they contacted all their prepay and pay-as-you-go members to offer them help and advice on getting top-ups done if they were self-isolating.

Bulb also conducted social listening during lockdown, proactively looking for situations where members might need help. For instance, by connecting pay-as-you-go members who might be struggling to top-up with local voluntary services.

On a much smaller scale, one of my local pubs was quick to spot an opportunity during lockdown, creating Berkhamsted Bottling Co. They cleverly repurposed their bartenders’ skills to create delicious pre-mixed cocktails that they bottled and delivered to you and your friends to share over Zoom.

The Berkhamsted Bottling Co.’s lockdown essential, the ‘Quarantiki’.

Embracing a customers’ perspective

What all of these examples have in common is their customer-centricity. They are putting their customers’ needs and motivations (vs their brand or product) at the heart of their strategy and creating products, services and solutions to serve them (increasingly at home).

To do that, they are building direct-to-consumer programmes, usually including ecommerce. As well as adding another sales channel, it provides them with valuable first party data to fuel insight, innovation and personalisation. It also enables them to control the retail experience, where they can promote and price the brand in the most optimal way.

If you are interested in or considering building your own DTC programme, then I recommend reading Si Goodall’s thoughts on ‘Fixing the first-party data gap’.

Now is the time for change

It’s not too late to adapt your plans and lean into these accelerating trends. Now is the time for brands to embrace a more customer-centric agenda and provide them with more relevant solutions and communications. 

With 2021 looming large on the horizon, I imagine many of you are putting the finishing touches to your marketing plans. If you would like a fresh perspective on your customer experience strategy, or someone to challenge and stretch your thinking, please feel free to contact us for some friendly, free advice, with no obligation. We are experts in customer acquisition, growth and retention, helping brands unlock value by being more relevant.

Fixing the first-party data gap

This is the era of data-driven marketing. But getting hold of the right data is getting harder.  With GDPR, the impending end of cookies and the walled-gardens of big marketplaces such as Amazon, many brands are looking to develop their own customer data assets. But is it worth it? And what are the options to fix the first-party data gap?

Photo by Daniel Eledut on Unsplash

91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who provide relevant offers and recommendations (Accenture).  

92% of marketers reported using personalization techniques in their marketing, yet 55% of marketers don’t feel they have sufficient customer data to implement effective personalization (Evergage). 

And since 91% of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands who provide relevant offers and recommendations (Accenture), it is unsurprising that 89% of digital businesses are investing in personalization (Forrester).

It’s easy to feel left behind if you are one of the many businesses that has not traditionally held a lot of customer data.

Here’s a simple test. 

Who are your customers? If you are thinking not of end-consumers, but other businesses, (typically retailers) who buy your products, the chances are you have a first-party data gap. 

Whether you are a FMCG brand selling in Tesco, a consumer electronics brand on Amazon, or a beauty brand selling through Boots, you face an uncomfortable truth. 

Your customers know more about your consumers than you do.  

They hold the data. They control the experience. And they are using it to develop products and services of their own that meet changing consumer needs. 

Amazon now offers 22,617 products from 111 of its own brands, more than triple the number of items it offered in June 2018, (Coresight Research and DataWeave)

Conversely, data-poor brands are missing out on deep consumer knowledge.  They cannot react in real-time and have to rely on slower, traditional methods of consumer research. They are unable to understand the different value that different consumers provide to their business, impacting media efficiency and effectiveness.

And, as more and more consumers shift to ecommerce, data-poor brands are finding it harder to compete with the continuous, personalised experiences that consumers are getting from elsewhere.

It is no wonder that so many B2B2C organisations are looking to develop direct-to-consumer propositions that will build their first-party data assets. But what kind of data? And what kind of propositions should brands consider? 

1. Behavioural data,
Typically, web analytics and clickstream data., Much of it is anonymous, which is great for understanding trends, testing propositions and optimising consumer journeys, but less good for personalisation. For that, you need behavioural data at an individual customer level, for example from email clicks, app usage or logged in web experience . But generally you will need to have a reasonable sophisticated, always on customer engagement programme in place before getting a lot of this kind of data. And its worth remembering that behavioural data can only tell you what someone did, not why, which makes it quite open to the narrator's fallacy of seeing motivation and meaning where none should be implied. 

2. Declared Data
This is the data that people volunteer, usually in exchange for something they value. At its simplest, it is email addresses captured through competitions, events or newsletter signups. Survey data can also be part of this, though usually not at sufficient scale to power personalisation programmes.  It could include loyalty propositions or the use of preference centres which explicitly ask what consumers want and like. Most interestingly, there is a growing opportunity to capture preference data through relevant digital experiences, such as chatbots, choice tools or social polls. The best of these are seamlessly integrated into the brand’s digital experience, creating engaging, brand-building moments as well as valuable data. 

IKEA have used Instagram Polls to gauge sentiment toward different products. Such polls can be useful for fast feedback though do not provide data for customer-level personalisation.

Since embarking on ‘Consumer Direct Offence’ in 2017, Nike have developed multiple ways to engage more than 170 million people and build deep understand ing of their passions and needs. Nike Running Club app tracks progress and provides virtual coaching, Nike Training Club delivers tailored home workouts plans. And SNKRS gives limited access and special products to sneakerheads, contributing around 20% of Nike Direct’s $16b in sales.

3. Transactional Data
Simply, the data from direct sales. With ecommerce sales up 19% in 2020, many brands are seeing DTC as a route to building first-party data. And whilst it is very unlikely that DTC will ever rival traditional routes to market in scale, smart brands are using niche DTC propositions to fuel a data-driven, consumer-centric strategy that touches all parts of their business. Many of these models offer something unique, such as product personalisation, multi-brand bundles or subscription services. So that in addition to data, these platforms become brand-building channels in their own right. 

Pepsi Co have recently launched new DTC propositions in the US: pantryshop.com  and snacks.com.  “The quality, fidelity and speed at which we get consumer feedback is just changed by having this direct touchpoint with the consumer,” said Gibu Thomas, Head of Ecommerce at PepsiCo.

Ben & Jerrys online store lets fans order new flavours for home delivery. It blends B2C and B2B channels, so that if you’re outside a direct delivery zone, you can still get details of how to order B&Js from Deliveroo or other partners . The site also sells  branded merchandise direct.

Summary

The first party data-gap is growing. Data-poor companies are missing out on valuable insights as well as the opportunity to personalise communications and experiences.

Brands should not expect to completely transform their businesses to DTC. Even Nike, with its all out commitment to changing the business model, still sees 68% of sales going through wholesale (though the fact that is down from 82% in 2012 is impressive).  But smart companies are already experimenting with different programmes that not only build first-party data assets but also create unique experiences to build their brand.  

Relevance is human-driven, not just data-driven

$1 trillion is at risk for companies who fail to maintain customer relevance, according to Accenture. But what does it mean to be relevant? It’s much more than just data-driven personalisation. It is a profoundly human quality and the foundation of all good communication.

Humans seek relevance in every conversation.

When we speak to another person, we look for ways to connect by making our words relevant to them.

We make it personal by scanning through what we know about an individual; what we think they like or dislike, how they responded to our terrible jokes in the past.

We engage empathy to predict how they might be feeling. We attempt to understand what they want to get out of our conversation. We adjust our tone or even change our accent to better connect.

We are sensitive to context. We know that there is a right time and place for certain conversations. We understand that context changes meaning; that the same word can be understood as a cry of joy or a scream of pain; a declaration of love or a gross insult.

We are responsive. We listen and observe others and adapt in real time. We seek shared experiences. We think about how other people will react to what we are saying.

Marketing isn’t a conversation, whatever the social media gurus tell you. Brands aren’t people. But understanding the role of relevance in human interactions helps us to build more relevant experiences for our customers. Similar rules apply; be personal, empathic, contextual and responsive.

“Create relevance, not awareness”

— Steve Jobs

We should recognise that it isn’t easy. For humans, it is automatic. For brands, it requires a transformation of old processes and investment in new capabilities.

Personalising experiences requires not only the right technology infrastructure, but the processes to test and learn about individuals. However much you spend on martech, relevancy does not come out of the box.

Being empathetic to consumers who are all different and whose needs are constantly changing, means establishing real-time research that goes beyond the ‘what’ of behavioural data to probe the ‘why’ of emotions and motivations. And realising that what a bright young thing from Shoreditch feels is unlikely to be the same as a core customer from outside of our professional media bubble.

Understanding context means designing systems that are sensitive to time and place. And that can quickly learn how everything from new channels to cultural movements will affect how a message is received. 

And being responsive requires breaking down organisational silos, often formed around products or functions, to enable a seamless flow of customer data and understanding. It is, as one client put it to me, about democratising consumer insight.

“One of the founding principles of The Ninety-Niners is to be data-driven, but customer-obsessed”

In all this scaling up of infrastructure and processes, being relevant is also about remembering the humans behind the data. People are all different. They are different to you. They are different from each other. It is by embracing these differences, down to the individual level, we can get closer to the type of relevance we experience in human interactions. It’s why one of our founding principles when launching The Ninety-Niners was to be data-driven, but customer-obsessed.

We all have examples of relevance fails from brands. Some are personalisation fails, like being retargeted by the shoes you bought last month. Some are contextual fails, like the tone-deaf emails from travel companies at the start of lockdown. In the past couple of weeks, the UK has seen a big empathy fail, with the recirculation of this 2019 ad promoting retraining in cyber security.

A failure of empathy for artists and performers led to a failure of relevance for this UK Government ad.

But the least obvious and most damaging is the attention fail. Most irrelevant communication does not result in frustration or offence. It is simply ignored. Of the 5,000+ advertising messages we see every day, we notice less than 1%.

Irrelevance is noise. And while marketers might complain about the difficulty of ‘cutting through the clutter’, it’s a clutter of our own making. Nearly half of internet users now use ad-blockers, and the top two reasons according to Global WebIndex are ‘too many ads’ and ‘irrelevant ads’.

Here is one final way we can use the humanity of relevance as a guide. If people aren’t listening, most humans stop talking. 

If your brand can’t say something relevant, don’t say anything at all.