Global CPG Brands: Lessons And Opportunities

Mark Di SommaJanuary 12, 20154 min

It wasn’t that long ago that competition took place between products, and the criteria for choice between rivals was customer benefits. Product vs product. Today, for globally scaled brands, the competition is really between the reach and co-ordination of different configurations of value chains, and the criteria for choice for customers is the quality of the experiences delivered as a result.

It’s fascinating to see how this is playing out and how brands are managed in the CPG aka FMCG space – because here the global brands are among the most valuable in the world. The 2014 Brand Footprint reveals all top 50 global CPG brands were chosen at least 500 million times over the past year. They made it into shoppers’ carts through a range of strategies: they talked to consumers’ heightened awareness of health issues; they delivered convenient solutions for people’s busy lives; they were smart sized in ways that made them affordable;  they were genuine and relevant in their communications and encouraged consumers to talk among themselves; they were increasingly personalized in order to build deeper and closer relationships; and more and more they were weighted towards one of three categories – affordable luxury, premium, or basic.

What surprised me the most though was that, according to Brand Footprint, there are still significant opportunities for these huge consumer packaged goods brands to grow their footprints. In fact, the average market penetration across the entire Top 50 is just 20%. That means their value chains have some way to go if they are to dominate across markets.

The other surprise is the extent to which local brands are winning share, or at the very least holding their own, in the face of competition from the mega-brands. You might expect that faced with such an onslaught, local brands would be in decline. Not so. According to the report, these more localized players have in fact been able to use their proximity to market to attract new consumers and develop loyalty much more quickly than their globally scaled competitors, to the point where they now collectively account for 60% of shopper purchases.

So the challenge for the big brands, if they are to achieve their ambitions, is to make “big” experiences count at an individual level against the more focused offerings of local competitors – meaning the real battle is between two marketing ideas that one might otherwise regard as synonyms: familiarity; and intimacy. In this context, they have different meanings. Familiarity – the brands that reach consumers and that they recognize. Intimacy – the brands consumers engage with and are loyal to.

As this tussle between market knowledge (somewhere) and global knowledge (everywhere) continues, the report identifies four ways for the big brands to increase their footprints in the years ahead:

1. They must identify and meet local requirements much better than they have, be it through new flavors or tailored marketing campaigns.

2. They must extend not just their reach but also their access through a combination of smart multi-channelled distribution and affordable product formatting.

3. They must develop new consumer needs within their current buying patterns and fulfill them in relevant ways.

4. They must include consumers in more conversations, encourage greater participation via sharing and involve them more closely in development and ideas.

There’s an interesting dichotomy here between logistical and emotional deliverables. To achieve true “glocal” status, brands will need to be able to get products to markets across the world with cold efficiency and then deliver them into market in ways that grow customer intimacy by making them feel as specific as possible, regardless of where they actually originate from.

That raises another interesting point. ‘Local’ is now more a sentiment than a geographical reality. It relates directly to the sense of proximity and to the speed of reach and sense of connectedness in the minds of consumers. Classic example of this? Amazon Prime – which has combined membership (and therefore the wish by consumers to get their money’s worth) with free shipping to make the company feel ‘next door’, everywhere. According to Time, “Subscribers not only ordered more often, but after paying the $79 fee, they started buying things at Amazon that they probably wouldn’t have in the past. Since shipping was always speedy and free, members saved themselves a trip to the store for things like batteries and coffee beans.”

The four letter word going forward for global brands is: Here. Does it feel this close? Does it reflect this place? Does it match how we live? If global CPG brands can enhance that sense of immediacy in every market they reach into, they will give local brands a run for their money. If they can’t, they may well continue to be the brands that come “here”, not the brands that are “here”.

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Mark Di Somma

2 comments

  • Jim McCormick

    January 20, 2015 at 1:44 pm

    Hi Mark
    The idea that consumers want “a sense of connectedness” is a very well put way to describe marketing localization.
    In your experience what works better, adapting content from another language or creating new content specifically for that market?

    Jim

  • Mark Disomma

    January 21, 2015 at 8:33 pm

    Hi Jim – connecting with a local audience is about a range of things. It’s about availability, it’s about cultural sensitivity, it’s about dialect and of course it’s about relevance and taste. Big brands must reflect what people know about them globally in order to remain familiar (so there must be something recognizable across markets) but at the same time they must hone languages, messages and product to suit the needs, habits and sensitivities of each market. The challenge when you’re a global brand in a local market is that you are not on “home turf”, so it’s important that you get the advice and insights needed to make your brand feel genuine in that space. I suspect that’s why global markets have achieved 20% penetration. They don’t yet feel close enough to penetrate beyond that. Localizing content will help with that, but it is not the full answer. Hope that helps. Thanks for taking the time.

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