Leverage today, Thrive tomorrow

FCB New Zealand’s GM of Strategy SUE KIPLING speaks to the subtle art of achieving timely agility with timeless stability in an era of uncertainty.

Covid-19 is a timely example of the uncertainty businesses will face in coming years. With increased speculation of recession, rising interest rates, climate change, shifting social values and population dynamics and changing consumer behaviour all at play – the one thing we can be certain of is uncertainty and disruption is not going anywhere, anytime soon.

This disruption has led to businesses focusing on what is changing, aiming to predict and anticipate the future. However, balancing this future focus with the realities of driving results today, is the most difficult conundrum of all.

The key question on everyone’s mind is, how do I leverage and activate today in a way that secures future success tomorrow? In other words, how do I balance timely agility with timeless stability?

To answer this question, we elevate three core foundations that will enable business to reap short- and long-term success, in a post-covid world and beyond.

1. BEYOND BRAND PURPOSE TO A COMPELLING ORGANISING IDEA

Brand purpose has been a topic of conversation in brand and marketing circles for years. In fact, according to a study released by WARC, ‘ The Marketers Toolkit 2021, Navigating through Uncertainty’: “One area that seems likely to be rethought is brand purpose. Purpose has in recent years gained a mixed reputation – marketers are keen to identify a reason beyond profit for their brands to exist; but at the same time many in the industry feel the result has been little more than lofty talk and pious advertising.”

This highlights the misapplication of brand purpose, where it is used merely as a way to codify what a brand wants to stand for, and how that might manifest through marketing and communications. As such, brand purpose is often left to marketing to define and deploy.

A strong brand bedrock built around a compelling organising idea on the other hand, is something that is owned and activated across the whole organisation – from product development to operations; from sales through to marketing. It’s not a payoff line, or an integrated campaign idea, but rather the enduring strategic heart of the brand – designed to provide clarity and focus for the business as a whole.

This shift is fundamental, not only to delivering seamlessly across the whole customer experience, but also to providing businesses with a focus for future innovation and investment; allowing organisations to distinguish which trends are relevant and worthy to pursue, versus those that will distract from future success.

We have been working alongside an integrated team at Foodstuffs – beyond marketing – to define their brand bedrock grounded in a unifying organising idea for the Four Square brand. Being sympathetic to its heritage and roots, we needed to align on an organising idea that could hold true now, but also remain timeless and relevant into the future. Thus, allowing us to meet the needs of consumers today, while providing a focused platform for innovation to answer consumer needs of tomorrow.

Our organising idea – expressed as “Dependably Convenient” – not only nods to our heritage and the largest national retail footprint in New Zealand, but also sets us up to be able to innovate consistently for years to come. Responding to a 2-4 hour need state means that we can elevate New Zealand retail by focusing on delivering hyper convenience both today through hyper relevant and targeted messaging, through to tomorrow with innovation that could impact everything from ranging to omnichannel commerce, and more.

Elevating beyond brand purpose to an organising idea that puts consumer motivators and drivers at the heart, ensures organisations can navigate with both timely agility today, and timeless stability tomorrow, in a more focused and integrated manner across the business as a whole.

2. ELEVATING BRAND CODES BEYOND ASSETS

For those Mark Ritson fans out there, the idea of brand codes is not new. However, with the explosion of consumer touchpoints, design has become an increasingly fundamental part of delivering cohesive end-to-end customer experiences.

The intersection of brand design and communication activation, brand codes are an often overlooked and undervalued part of the process. Sometimes misinterpreted as simply brand identity (such as logo, typeface, colour palette) or comms campaign art direction, the true power of brand codes is realised when they are inextricably linked to your organising idea.

Brand code design, at its best, elevates beyond individual assets to create a more visceral connection for consumers. A mood, a feeling, an aspiration, an idea that can become synonymous with the brand – amplifying any timely messaging it may need to carry, while creating a timeless link and salience that proves incredibly effective and efficient over time.

PAK’NSAVE is one of the most relevant and effective examples of this. Their organising idea “Everything we do, we do to save you money” is expertly expressed through the seemingly simplistic “budget-friendly” expression of Stickman. Not simply an entertaining character, the entire design system reinforces the organising idea in an inherent manner.

More recently, using our definitive design methodology, we have applied these principles to reimage the Four Square brand, leading to a versatile but consistent design system that not only captures the essence of where the brand has been, but builds timeless new codes for the future. Capturing the “wink and a smile” tonality of the brand, it enhances the idea of making everyday life a little easier through dependable convenience.

3. ENRICHING DATA WITH A CLEAR CONSUMER VALUE EXCHANGE

The importance of gaining first-party data will not be new news to anyone. Nonetheless, the current trend seems to be a desire for “more” data versus “the right data”. Consumers, especially millennials and Gen Z, are more than happy to share their data with companies – but it comes with an expectation – that they’ll use that data in a way that brings value to them.

By moving away from the “more is more” mindset (that can often lead to data paralysis), to a data value exchange mindset, and then designing your data ecosystem around this, enables businesses to be far more focused in the way they acquire and activate, both in the short- and long-term. In other words, with data value exchange at the heart, the data insight and behaviour activated today, also allows brands to set themselves up for longer-term innovation and timeless success tomorrow.

The key here, is ensuring that the data value exchange is aligned with the brand bedrock and organising idea, as well as business and marketing objectives. The Mercury Movers campaign is a great example of this, where we use key behavioural triggers to help consumers use their energy in more wonderful ways, by offering to resolve a pain point in cleaning your house, in exchange for a longer-term partnership with the brand.

NOT EVERYTHING CHANGES WHEN THINGS ARE CHANGING

Not throwing the baby out with the bath water is one of the strongest ways brands can respond during and post-covid. Elevating these tried and tested methodologies, in the context of modern marketing, allows brands to be more responsive without losing sight of the big picture. Thus ensuring sustained business success, despite prevailing uncertainty.

For more on how FCB can help you solve your business challenges, email sebastien.desclee@fcb.com