Last week MyDrink beverages had been honored to speak at the Executing Shopper Insights 2014 in London. With two days of presentations, panel discussions and roundtable group discussions, this event covered all the facets within the changing world of shopper behaviour and engagement.
Together with FMCG leaders from Arla Foods, Carlsberg, Kellogg’s, Fentimans, Campofrio Food Group and many more we had a chance to discuss some of the most relevant topics for our clients like maintaining consumer loyalty, innovative branding strategies, increasing buying frequency, examining UK consumer habits and consumer driven innovations.
MyDrink beverages were covering the topic of navigating the changing world of private labels in a quest to maintain brand loyalty. As one of the independent beverage development pioneers we were able to share our comprehensive experience in the field. We tried to analyse the success stories and failures of some of our client products to find the ultimate way to compete within the FMCG market.
After bringing this question down to the roundtable discussions together with the industry leaders, some suggestions and tips for the brand owners were revealed:
1) Be better than competition in the first place. Private labels are getting more intelligent and advanced, they are not simply following the category leader anymore – they are innovating, creating new and unique products and use full marketing mix. At the same time retail brands have huge resources and advantages compared to new market entries. That means that no retail brand can be underestimated as a lower price/lower quality alternative to premium brands. Product developers have to be sure to actually create a better product.
2) Be ready to take the risks. Innovate, differentiate, experiment, keep on changing – do everything what retailers might consider to be too risky or too niche. Bring your own categories up from the ground and lead them. Work with NPD partners to enhance the creative process within your organization, be more aggressive and reinvent your portfolio more frequently than ever.
3) Discover modern retail. Search for alternative routes to your consumer, invent them within your category, and make your products approachable on the right time at the right place. Use modern technology to reduce your dependency on the retailer. Look into convenience retail, use consumer insights to understand your customer and make their life better on a wider perspective.
4) Be honest and sincere with your consumers. Create products for your community and generate value on different levels. Try to engage the consumer experience, be personal and humble. This is the quality that only brand owner can share with their loyal consumer – private labels and store owners will find this much more difficult to achieve. Be truth about your product and your brand – create intangible rewards for being loyal and understand what your consumer needs.
MyDrink were able to witness great presentations on shopper insights, realised the importance of new and future channels of communication and retail to influence the shopper and consumer decision making process. Interesting topics were disclosed on evaluating your digital media effect on sales and questions were held if it actually does influence the shopper.
One of the major factors stressed in the conference was consumer driven innovation and how does it actually help to maintain loyalty and implement changes within the enterprise.
To sum up – it was an enlightening event focusing on latest consumer insights in the UK and EU held by Canadian – an industry leading market research Company which is indeed useful to attend if you are operating within the FMCG industry. We are impatiently waiting for the next year’s event!
