Brand Distillery

BEHAVIOUR OVER AGE

steve@branddistillery.agency (Steve Moncrieff) — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 12:37:22 GMT

Seeking a New Customer Journey: Behaviour Over Age

The Shift in Consumer Behaviour

Consumer behaviour has undergone a seismic transformation. Age demographics no longer define purchasing patterns; instead, behaviour, preferences, and digital interactions take centre stage. The punks, mods, and new romantics - once seen as rebellious youth - now represent the grey market, a segment still as vibrant and influential as ever. This evolution underscores the move to behavioural targeting, as age-based assumptions no longer capture the complexity of consumer journeys.

Steve Moncrieff, Partner at Brand Distillery, notes: “Understanding modern customer journeys requires more than just tracking age or demographics. Predictive trends and behavioural insights now play a crucial role in shaping brand strategies. Consumers are forming deeper, more dynamic relationships with brands—before, during, and long after the purchase point.”

Today’s customers expect seamless, personalised experiences across every touchpoint. At Brand Distillery, we believe that delivering inventive solutions rooted in real-world insights is key to meeting these evolving demands.

McKinsey’s research indicates that 80% of consumers consider post-purchase interactions essential in forming long-term brand relationships. The customer journey now loops continuously, fuelled by curiosity, connection, and discovery. Our approach balances creative flair with strategic depth, ensuring clients receive practical, results-driven solutions that resonate.

Learning from Sport: Adaptation is Key

Sport teaches us the power of reinvention - from Brazil’s 1960s football team to Muhammad Ali’s rope-a-dope strategy. Like these champions, brands must adapt to thrive. Deloitte’s research shows that adaptable businesses can achieve 25% higher revenue growth. This highlights the importance of designing customer journeys that embrace flexibility, creativity, and tangible outcomes.

Consumers now seek experiences beyond simple transactions. KPMG reports that 60% of shoppers expect physical stores to offer experiences that complement digital convenience. Our role is to listen, understand diverse perspectives, and collaborate with clients to craft engaging experiences that merge online and offline touchpoints seamlessly.

The Collapse of the Traditional Funnel

The traditional marketing funnel - awareness, interest, desire, and action - no longer holds. The digital revolution has shattered this linear approach. Consumers discover products on Instagram, research them on Google, and purchase them via mobile apps within hours. Accenture reveals that 71% of consumers expect personalised interactions across all channels.

What’s more, today’s grey market - those punks, mods, and new romantics - continue to break conventions. Their purchasing decisions are driven by lifestyle choices, digital engagements, and experiential values rather than age. This behavioural complexity demands that brands adapt accordingly.

Beth Ann Kaminkow, CEO of VML, states: “The consumer journey is different for almost every consumer. You have to stop thinking in terms of a funnel.” We agree. At Brand Distillery, we explore new paradigms, blending bold strategies with empathetic insights to deliver transformative customer journeys.

Introducing the Infinity Marketing Loop

The infinity marketing loop embodies the modern customer journey. This model reflects how consumers continuously engage with brands, forming opinions before, during, and after purchase. Social media interactions, brand event activations, and immersive experiences blur the lines between product sales and brand storytelling.

In today’s omnichannel world, consumers:

Read news, entertain themselves, purchase goods, and connect with peers across digital platforms.
Engage with brands in real-time, seeking seamless and personalised experiences.

This shift highlights how product sales and experiences are merging. The grey market, in particular, actively engages through digital communities and brand activations, forming deeper relationships with brands they trust.

George Popstefanov, CEO of PMG, summarises it best: “We have to authentically engage with consumers wherever they are. We cannot think in a boxed silo anymore.”

Leveraging Data and Technology

Marketeers now have the data and tools to bring the infinity loop to life. According to Accenture, 83% of consumers are willing to share personal data for tailored experiences. Our client-centric approach focuses on:

Being Always-On and Omnipresent : Delivering relevant messaging at every stage of the journey.
Adopting a Channel-Less Mindset: Integrating digital and physical experiences for cohesive brand narratives.
Delivering Consistent Personalisation : Harnessing AI and machine learning to anticipate consumer needs.

Deloitte highlights that brands employing omnichannel personalisation see a 15–20% increase in marketing ROI. At Brand Distillery, we remain determined to achieve measurable outcomes by blending insightful analysis with creative strategies.

Rethinking the Customer Journey with the Distillery Process

Our Distillery Process provides a clear, strategic roadmap for redefining customer journeys:

Audit Current Journeys: Identify engagement gaps and opportunities.
Design Seamless Experiences: Tailor journeys that align with consumer behaviours across analogue and digital platforms.
Leverage Technology: Deploy AI-driven solutions to create adaptive, responsive journeys.
Align Strategy and Operations: Ensure readiness across all organisational levels to deliver consistent experiences.

This process balances polished strategy with original thinking, ensuring our recommendations foster genuine connections and drive business success.

The Path Forward: Omnichannel and Beyond

Omnichannel campaigns remain essential. McKinsey’s findings reveal that connected campaigns are 2.2 times less cognitively fatiguing and 1.5 times more persuasive. Yet, the future lies beyond omnichannel; it rests in:

Behaviour-Driven Insights: Prioritising real-time data over outdated demographic assumptions.
Experience Integration: Crafting cohesive journeys that blend digital convenience with immersive physical experiences.
Infinity Loop Engagement: Personalising interactions at every stage of the journey.

The rise of behavioural targeting over age-based segmentation is evident. The punks, mods, and new romantics - now sophisticated, digitally engaged consumers - demonstrate that purchase behaviour is guided by values, lifestyle, and digital connectivity.

Parbinder Dhariwal of CVS Media Exchange notes: “There’s no funnel anymore. Your point of delivery-of-message to point-of-purchase is shortened so much - you just go straight down to the bottom to purchase the moment you see an ad.”

Conclusion: Embracing Behavioural Journeys

The future belongs to brands that embrace the infinity marketing loop and behaviour-driven journeys. Age no longer dictates purchasing patterns—engagement, preferences, and real-time interactions do. The grey market, with its roots in counterculture movements, remains a powerful force when approached through behavioural insights.

Marketeers who adapt, using data-driven insights and omnipresent strategies, will thrive in this era of continuous consumer engagement.

At Brand Distillery, we are committed to delivering inventive, client-focused solutions. Our authoritative yet approachable voice, grounded in data and creativity, ensures our clients achieve tangible, measurable success. Let’s shape the future together, transforming challenges into opportunities through bold, strategic action.

BLACK FRIDAY & BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS

steve@branddistillery.agency (Steve Moncrieff) — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 17:31:47 GMT

What Drives Us to Buy, and How Brands Should Respond

Black Friday is no longer just a shopping day; it’s a global phenomenon. What started as a post-Thanksgiving sales event in the US has become a frenzied retail spectacle, with urgency, scarcity, and dramatic discounts driving consumer behaviour. However, beneath the surface lies a deeper narrative about how behavioural economics shapes our decisions.

I met Richard Shotton following the publication of his book The Choice Factory and its content has remained with me particularly how psychological biases influence how we buy, this article explores how brands can rethink their approach to Black Friday. Instead of succumbing to the short-term allure of sales, they can create campaigns that engage audiences meaningfully, build trust, and resonate across marketing channels.

Whilst we are over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there are lessons that can be learned as we enter the festive season on how consumers behave when buying.

The Psychology Behind Black Friday

At its core, Black Friday is a masterclass in behavioural biases:

Scarcity and Urgency - The power of scarcity is evident when a deal is presented as limited or exclusive. As Shotton highlights in - The Choice Factory , when people perceive something as scarce, they assign greater value to it. Add urgency—“Offer ends at midnight!”—and the pressure to act becomes irresistible.
Loss Aversion - Human behaviour is more motivated by avoiding loss than seeking equivalent gains. Black Friday taps into this bias with messages like “Don’t miss out!” or “Last chance to save!” These statements aren’t just persuasive; they ignite a primal fear of regret.
Anchoring - Discounted prices anchor our perception of value. If a product originally costs £200 but is now £100, it feels like a steal—even if its usual price has been inflated. Anchoring biases consumers towards seeing the discount as the primary driver of worth.
Social Proof and Herd Mentality - Seeing others queueing outside stores or reading “1,000 people are viewing this product” triggers herd mentality. This phenomenon suggests that if so many others are buying, the deal must be worthwhile, further nudging consumers towards impulsive decisions.
Choice Overload - Paradoxically, while Black Friday thrives on abundance, it can also overwhelm. Too many options lead to decision paralysis, where customers struggle to choose and often abandon purchases altogether.

How Brands Can Respond

Brands face a pivotal decision during Black Friday: lean into these psychological triggers for short-term wins or reimagine how to engage customers in a more authentic and sustainable way.

Leverage Data for Personalisation - Understanding your audience is critical. By analysing behavioural data, brands can predict which products will resonate and tailor offers accordingly. For example, segmenting audiences by past purchases or browsing behaviour can help curate deals that feel relevant and personal, reducing decision fatigue.
Create Shareable Moments - Younger consumers, especially those aged 18–35, are heavily influenced by social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. They value experiences and stories they can share. Instead of defaulting to blanket discounts, brands in sectors like homeware, food, and drink could craft campaigns that emphasise quality, creativity, and sustainability—elements that align with this audience’s values. For example, rather than a typical sale, a food brand might offer limited-edition holiday recipes or homeware brands could showcase artisanal products tied to local craftsmanship. These create “Instagrammable” moments, increasing organic reach and engagement.
Embrace Authenticity Over Hype - The herd mentality of Black Friday often encourages brands to follow the pack, but standing out through authenticity can be far more effective. Shotton points to the importance of trust in consumer decision-making. Overusing scarcity or urgency risks eroding that trust. Instead, brands should focus on transparency and long-term value. Luxury brands, for example, rarely participate in Black Friday. They maintain consistent pricing year-round, reinforcing their ethos of quality and exclusivity. For non-luxury brands, consistency in messaging and pricing during the holiday season can foster greater loyalty over time.
Build Emotional Connections - Behavioural economics highlights that consumer decisions are driven as much by emotion as by logic. Campaigns that connect emotionally with audiences—perhaps by aligning with charitable causes or environmental initiatives—can differentiate brands in the Black Friday chaos.

Breaking the Cycle

Black Friday has become synonymous with frenzied consumerism. But as consumer confidence remains fragile, brands have an opportunity to break the cycle and forge a more meaningful path forward.

Focus on Quality, Not Quantity

Instead of overwhelming consumers with endless discounts, brands can narrow their offerings to highlight carefully chosen, high-quality products. This aligns with the principle of reducing choice overload while reinforcing a reputation for excellence.

Rethink Timelines

The extended holiday shopping season blurs the lines between Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Boxing Day. Rather than spreading promotions thin, brands could focus on distinct, meaningful campaigns that create clear moments of engagement.

Reinforce Sustainability

With sustainability becoming a critical factor for many shoppers, particularly younger demographics, brands should highlight eco-friendly practices. This could include promoting products made from sustainable materials, reducing packaging waste, or pledging to donate a portion of Black Friday profits to environmental causes.

Lessons from Great Campaigns

Some of the most effective marketing campaigns, like those pioneered by Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), succeed because they blend insight with creativity. They tell stories that resonate universally while being grounded in human behaviour.

Take BBH’s work for Levi’s with “Laundrette,” which became iconic because it tapped into timeless themes of confidence and individuality. Similarly, a brand that challenges the status quo of Black Friday with a bold, story-driven campaign could transform consumer perceptions and spark deeper loyalty.

The Bottom Line

Black Friday thrives on behavioural biases, but brands don’t need to be bound by them. By understanding the psychology of their audiences and crafting campaigns rooted in authenticity, data, and creativity, they can engage customers in ways that transcend fleeting discounts.

Whether it’s through breaking free from herd mentality, reducing choice overload, or crafting shareable experiences for a TikTok generation, brands have the chance to rewrite the Black Friday playbook. The result? Not just sales, but deeper, more enduring connections with their customers.

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WHY BRANDS SHOULD BE DATA OBSESSED

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 12:10:00 GMT

Businesses really need to get a grip on data and the enormous benefits it can bring. They continually obsess about acquisition and data capture, but then give little consideration to the future insight this data can provide in engaging and growing customer loyalty and spend. We often talk to companies who wax lyrically about their acquisition strategy, who talk about response rates of this percent and that percent, of campaign ROI’s and new customer targets.

Through all this, it still astounds me that businesses still talk about activation rates and conversions of less than 50%. The most expensive customer is a new customer, so why do companies neglect on-boarding processes whether you’re selling online or through bricks and mortar? As a consumer, how often have you subscribed; opened an account or expressed an interest in a brand to then never hear from them again?

Work with an ex-client from my old agency involved mapping the on-boarding timeline from point of sign-up to first purchase - by spend, customer type/ size and location against their overall lifetime value. This illustrated graphically when the best and worst customers engaged with the brand, when we should push the most to drive them to a first purchase and then how we see loyalty developing. Simply moving engagement pieces from week 12 to week 11 can have a significant effect on the LTV of new customers. All of this came from understanding the data, and ultimately customers.

Understanding the on-boarding process and the touchpoints of a customer through real data insight ensures the customer receives relevant and engaging content through their channel of preference, whether it be online, by post or by SMS. We have discovered behaviours that only this type of data insight can provide, and from this, we make so many assumptions in business. Yet the one time when you can map journeys with conviction, companies still neglect the use of data.

Becoming a customer-centric business is no longer a nice strategy to have, but businesses are still holding onto the notion they can still be service or product focused. Without this transition in business strategy, how can we (businesses, brands or companies) possibly engage with these customers over the clutter and barrage of messages they receive throughout their daily multi-channel lives?

Taking the interesting merging of B2B and B2C digital messaging; currently my iPhone and iPad both receive personal and business emails, and these arrive at random times throughout the day and night. My inbox becomes a relationship funnel for all the companies and brands that I buy from, with no distinction between the two. If I receive a great email that’s relevant, well designed and personalised I’ll take notice, whether its Virgin Trains or Aviva Life Insurance. This signals the need for considered and well planned customer journeys that cross the multichannel world we now live and work in.

We don’t see data or numbers at Brand Distillery , we see patterns and insight, and then we get thinking about how we can help you develop to reach customers.

For a complimentary mini workshop in 2020 on your existing customer journey, please email steve@branddistillery.agency

Red Tractor appoints Brand Distillery

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 12:09:00 GMT

Red Tractor, has appointed Brand Distillery to work on their small producer award programme for 2021, alongside their existing roster of agencies.

The agency will work with the organisation that regulates food quality in England, Northern Ireland and Wales to support acquisition of small producers in the dairy sector, including engagement strategy and comms planning.

DELIVERING TRUST WITH EMPATHY - WHERE NEXT FOR FINANCIAL BRANDS?

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 14:29:00 GMT

First published in Brandingmag on 27 August 2020. [https://www.brandingmag.com/2020/08/27/delivering-trust-with-empathy-where-next-for-financial-brands/]

Financial brands started the journey to digitization in the late 90s, that in the UK included FirstDirect, Egg, Smile, and ING. Initially used by millennials and lighthouse customers, these brands experienced a slow adoption as consumers continued to shun digital channels in favor of the human side of banks. Consumers bemoaned the closure of branches and the loss in human interaction, believing that digital touchpoints couldn’t be trusted or deliver the empathic side of banking employees.

The arrival of the iPhone in 2007 heralded a more radical shift with the birth of the AppStore that placed the consumer at its very heart disrupting a consumer’s traditional relationship with technology and brands, and putting it within the reach of the average consumer, young and old. Supported by evermore intuitive user design and faster internet connections giving users easier and faster ways of doing online banking and financial services.

However, until March 2020, financial services had continued to miss the mark with consumers and mass adoption, primarily through apathy with the older customer still preferring face to face interaction with companies offering financial services and the younger audiences lacking motivation or need to really embrace the challenger banks.

With the advent of the pandemic, the consumer landscape changed, from the way we work to the way we buy and use services, accelerating the adoption of digital touchpoints for many brands, leading to a new emotional journey for consumers that left behind the reliance on face-to-face contact. Balancing trust and engagement that needed to be authentic.

Many of the fintech and challenger brands struggled to reach mainstream banking before 2020, with consumers still migrating towards the high-street banking brands such as HSBC, TSB, and Barclays. The lockdown led to a forced change in behavior, removing the barriers to change – consumers looked to product and service needs as banks and building societies changed their operating rules and pushed consumers to seek alternative options as usability failed.

Leading to a level-up of brands previously not thought possible and certainly not within weeks, starting with the likes of Starling, Atom Bank, and Monzo. But can these brands create an emotional link between their brand and the consumer?

We know that customers who are emotionally connected to a brand are more likely to trust a message that comes from a financial brand they believe in versus one they don’t. Can fintech brands now shed the apathy historically shown by consumers when considering a change in banking services, will consumers see beyond bricks and mortar?

The lockdown has led many consumers to consider many services as they wrestle with incumbent providers that have been slow to understand new customer journeys or provide upgraded or appropriate services. Stuck with inadequate call centers or outdated apps that struggle to replicate the actions of branch staff or engage with the customer, the high-street brands have been left behind as many consumers seek ‘new’ brands that cater to their lockdown needs, breaking down the previous barriers.

Is it apathy or fear that left consumers with the traditional providers? Are we seeing consumers move in different directions as the younger consumers lack the emotional connection to banking brands that many of Generation X and Baby Boomers experienced?

In those days, bank managers were there to support as well as provide products, creating strong emotional ties to brands and even branches. As the high-street banks have retreated from the very place where people sort them out, their emotional connection has also diminished, and Generation Z will almost certainly be the last to have any connection with a bricks-and-mortar branch, although it remains to be seen whether we could move to virtual branch experiences through VR.

Consumers are moving at a pace to the Netflix model of subscription-based services and will their view of financial services change in the same way with bundled and basic ‘freemium’ products driven through apps? Premium services will be activated as the needs arise – going on holiday, add travel insurance, shopping for Christmas, adding heightened consumer protection, or saving for a house.

Consumers engage with brands that understand their lifestyle and life stage. Financial brands really need to understand what matters to their customers – in similar ways to other sectors, consumers demand diverse levels of emotional engagement that can disproportionately influence brand preference.

Next, brands need to understand that they have to be more than just a logo and a great service. To make the brand distinctive, it must have a strategy that drives meaningful differentiation through the culture of the organization and maintain the level of innovation that first attracted the customer to the service in the first place. FirstDirect has successfully remained engaged and connected to its customers from day one, innovating and moving with the times, although even this brand has struggled to genuinely engage with Generation Z, with many still feeling it’s a brand for their parents, leaving this audience to the true fintech and early adopter brands. Can high street brands and the inbetweeners re-capture these customers?

These traditional brands have history, and they also have enormous amounts of data that map and potentially highlight customer needs of the future, driving emotional engagement as they demonstrate customer understanding – when was the last time your bank actually sent you something that was truly relevant and engaging? Aside from the standard product mailing that tends to be connected to your account type – premier, advantage, etc. – there is little in the way of emotional engagement.

Could banks do better by not trying to be all things to all people/customers? M&S clothing tries to offer something for everyone but in the age of the web, consumers don’t need a one-stop-shop, they can buy from anywhere literally in the world. Are banking brands making the mistake of trying to capture a customer for life? With switching being so easy and quick, should we be encouraging customers to choose brands relevant for their lifestyle and stage? The high-street banks have tried to engage with Generation Z with brands like Bo (developed by RBS), as a customer-facing challenger brand, but was abandoned after only six months after failing to capitalize on the surging popularity of the challenger banks like Monzo and Revolut, which have garnered millions of customers.

Sitting between the challenger and the high-street banks are the apps that automatically link accounts, such as Chip that helps consumers save simply across all their products. Will this lead to banks becoming merely facilitators as consumers migrate to intuitive apps that have no care for where and how they receive money?

Will high-street banks, through their cumbersome processes, lose their interface with customers as other providers including the tech giants of Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook offer better functionality and usability to the consumer, relegating the banks to dumb conduits for holding customer money? Recent research by PWC showed that almost 40% of bank customers would share their financial data with other banks and third parties, in return for tailored benefits. Although if as we mentioned early considered distinct groups of users, research by Accenture showed that 85% of 18-24-year olds would trust third parties to aggregate their data – in contrast, this nearly halved when talking to 55-64-year olds.

Think about the impact of aggregators in the insurance sector; insurers have been relegated in favor of meerkats, opera singers, and masters of the universe, although I’m not sure this is any different to the old high-street brokers that managed the whole of customer’s insurance needs.

How can the high-street banking brands survive under a changing consumer landscape driven by a rapidly changing technological landscape? If they migrate to older customers, they risk losing long-term customer growth as the younger customers no longer see the banks as a must-have, when their phone manages all their cards, for example?

Closing food for thought and point for another day: How can AMEX, with its titanium cards, retain its brand value when the card migrates to a picture within your iPhone wallet?

Extons appoints Brand Distillery

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 14:28:00 GMT

We are delighted to announce that, after a recent pitch win, we have been appointed by Extons Foods, as their strategic and brand agency for strategic partnerships as well as developing their own brand awareness . Extons are one of the UK's leading slicing, grating and packaging companies, delivering over 220 tonnes of cheddar every week.

SEEKING A NEW CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 08:30:00 GMT

Sport has over the years showed how after defeat there can be reinvention and change from Brazilian football team in the late 60s; Muhammad Ali, the dope on the rope; the All Blacks; the list goes on from those that adapt during the game to those that reinvent themselves.

In this blog article, we suggest that for businesses to come back stronger, they need to reimagine the business model that has served them so well over the months and years as they return to the new ‘normal’. Those that step up and look how to change their game will be better prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities that the current environment presents than those who choose to carry on as before.

Through the customer journey there are key strategic areas to focus on: stabilising and returning revenue, rebuilding operations, rethinking the organisation-internally and externally and accelerating the adoption of channel-less strategies across traditional and digital solutions and experiences.

Whatever we think as a business, customer behaviour has changed and will adopt a new ‘normal’, unless we change our customer’s brand journey customers will move on or retain their lockdown habits. To operate as before and expect to carry on as before will be a huge risk to your business from acquisition to retention, for example the new retail experience, how do we re-engage and attract customers to stores when the new experience will be alien to them, how do in-store advisors engage from behind PPE.

Anecdotal research has already shown that whilst consumers are making their way back to the high street, the purchase journey will be different will instore purchase and online delivery be the new norm? Will consumers seek a more experiential experience in store? Will local retail benefit from the move to more at home working, consumers shopping near home rather than the office? Will there be an even greater move to distinguish between the shopping and leisure experiences of towns like Harrogate and major cities such as Leeds?

Whatever challenges the future holds, customer understanding remains pivotal to the success of any strong business, what continues to be hard is how you drive a whole organisation to embrace and believe these insights, whether its Julie in sales or John in customer services or Dan in marketing and Sue on the executive board - they will all see the customer from differing perspectives.

That’s why we developed the Distillery Process.

Why is it important?

You need to be clear about the experience you are giving them. Is it the best it can be? Are consistent in everything you do and are you maximising every opportunity? Are you missing out on additional revenue? Are your customers able to seamlessly move between your buying channels?

If you’re not sure then what assumptions are customers making about you, your brand and what you offer? Your brand must reflect what you want to be known for. How do you know you’re doing the right thing? What else could you be doing? What’s the impact of lost opportunities and revenue?

A logical solution

The Distillery Process/Touchpoint Programme gives businesses the tools that helps identify how and when your brand is communicating to your customers, where you are doing it well and the opportunities that you are missing. Challenging the business to rethink its strategy and operations in a channel-less consumer environment – one that views touch-points not in isolation but as part of a seamless customer journey. Importantly these journeys as so often depicted are not linear or simple but a series of handoffs between traditional and digital channels that vary enormously between customer types – the Distillery Process helps give an in-depth understanding of what consumers and customers alike really want.

The Distillery Process

A channel-less transformation is the only way for a company to meet the challenges of the post lockdown/ Covid-19 consumer identifying and addressing the rising complexity of the new journey, giving an excellent customer experience, increase customer profitability and manage operations costs of the business.

How it works

We take you through a process that won’t be overwhelming but will give you real tangible outputs:

Using a series of one-hour sessions (via conference call) we’ll help you understand the unique challenges and opportunities that exist with today’s consumers, finding the answer first. Mapping out a strategy that plots your right course of action. Using our collective experience of different sectors, brands and customer behaviour, we help to provide a unique 'sound board' to challenge your business and brand to potentially discover a new opportunity or through different insight challenge the business to make changes to its strategy.

Whether you want to review an existing customer experience or overhaul your customer data into a single view to gain new customer insights to unlock a new customer acquisition strategy. Or audit the businesses existing digital marketing framework. Or you’ve simply stopped and want some help in re-starting a communications plan to find the right people, at the right time in the right place, Brand Distillery can help.

Our framework will provide your brand with a recommended approach, using our team and trusted partners. If we can’t add value, we will tell you and if we can we will introduce you to a partner directly who can help.

WHAT SHOULD YOU BE DOING TO EMBRACE NEW CONSUMER HABITS?

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 15:50:00 GMT

On 23 March 2020 the UK changed forever, our daily habits stopped overnight, the daily visit to Starbucks, the after-work pub visit to meet pals, the weekly ‘big’ shop. Some habits will return quickly but which remain changed for the long-term? How will brands re-engage and entice consumers to re-start these old habits or continue more interestingly with new habits.

To make the point we have been shown in past research that there is a gulf between those intending to exercise and those actually doing it. Most people you ask will tell you that exercise is good for them and they would like to do more, yet global studies continue to show that merely 36% to 55% of people never convert their intention into any form of action. Yet lockdown has now given us only one reason to leave our homes and that’s to exercise, will this change the intention to action percentages?

Other research identified gaps for people to wash their hands before eating; one study found that whilst the majority of people acknowledge it's important to do this, barely 20% actually did, but the messaging around the Corona virus has forced a change in habit driven by a desire to stay healthy, will this change long-term behaviour for the better.

We accept that to change behaviour once is not too difficult but to change for good is much harder, the biggest problem is always how to make new habits stick.

Phillippa Lally is a health psychology researcher at University College London. In a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Lally and her research team decided to figure out just how long it actually takes to form a habit.

The study examined the habits of 96 people over a 12-week period. Each person chose one new habit for the 12 weeks and reported each day on whether or not they did their chosen habit and how automatic it felt. In a similar way to the way we find ourselves in Lockdown some people made simple changes like “drinking a bottle of water with lunch.” Others chose more challenging tasks like “running for 15 minutes before dinner.” At the end of the study the researchers analysed the data to determine how long it took each person to go from starting a new habit to automatically doing it.

The answer? They found the average, to be more than 2 months before a new behaviour or habit becomes automatic — 66 days to be exact. Which leads interestingly onto how peoples behaviour will have changed after approximately 50 days of lockdown and those forced habits of change.

Which is why the lockdown presents such an interesting challenge for society and brands alike, we have all entered the biggest social experiment we have ever known or will ever know. What percentage of the UK population will reset their defaults and reconsider their choices or simply choose not to return to them?

We have overnight adopted new routines for eating, exercising, home-schooling/ working, socialising and shopping. Whilst for many the novelty is wearing thin, it’s interesting to speculate which of these new habits will stick and which of our old habits we will rush back to. Countless brands are trying to work this out collectively, such as coffee shops, gyms and pubs where habits are the cornerstone of their businesses, where routines drive engagement with brands.

We have seen farm shops experience huge uplifts in business, will consumers continue to embrace ‘local’ after the lockdown has ended, will they put community before the faceless global brands, will their newfound loyalty see them consider brands from a different perspective.

Will they continue to enjoy the great outdoors for exercise rather than the sanitised wipe downs of the gym, although this may well be driven by other factors such as the weather rather than a rush to return to old habits.

Home-working and video-meetings are here to stay particularly as more businesses embrace platforms such as Teams, in Germany they are following the Netherlands and enshrining in law the rights of a worker to choose to work from home. But how this ripples through the wider economy affecting commercial offices, transport and supporting businesses of towns and cities will be interesting, who will and can choose to develop new business models? To adopt this new way of working and consumer thinking.

How can businesses use the opportunity?

Businesses that were thought to be consigned to the scrap heap, have suddenly become fashionable again. There was a time when the milkman delivered milk along with many essentials such as bread, orange juice, veg however we changed our habits to focus on the weekly ‘big shop’ as supermarkets catered for our every need. Now we are going full circle and supporting local deliveries from butchers to bakers, from farm shops to restaurants, these businesses used to be on the fringe now they are the focus.

How will brands resonate with consumers as they seek to re-engage, how can local brands maintain this position as we return to ‘normal’, it’s inevitable that lots of consumers will simply return to deep-rooted habits but if these local brands adopt clear communications they might just have a chance to retain these new customers. Although I suspect as we loosen the lockdown consumer behaviour will once again be driven by price and convenience. That is the biggest challenge for these newly engaged brands.

Will national/ international brands seek out and support local brands, can they capitalise as traditional routes to market have been disrupted, working together to offer the consumer a new choice. Will supermarkets seek more local produce to strengthen supply chains, in recognition of the consumers newfound affinity with local.

I certainly hope we can continue to embrace these new habits and changes. A friend whose café closed in lockdown now offers home delivery of freshly baked scones and who doesn’t need that to continue in their lives. Could these local businesses combine to offer a range of local produce delivered to the door?

Businesses like pubs and coffee shops need to find a way of reconnecting with lost customers, this is different to recovering trade lost to competitors, it’s about restoring the complete habit again. As consumers have adopted new habits will they so easily give up their new ‘wallets’ as they have found alternatives to gyms, pubs and cinemas, some will have to reignite the experience, to educate consumers on breaking ‘new’ habits.

The answers may lie in behavioural science, applying insights into how habits form and how they can be changed but also the insight from the vast pools of data brands and businesses hold from before the new norm.

Combining insight, we have gained from observing changing consumer patterns and the vast knowledge we have gathered from historical and current data we can capitalise on these changes or if necessary, adopt new strategies to reform the habits held by customers.

It’s true that brands will have to look at their existing strategies, but these changes in consumer habits should be an opportunity for brands to re-engage and tell a new story. Whatever awaits business after the lockdown, combining insights from behavioural science, brand creative and data will help them return to whatever the new normal is.

Simply asking how your customers will behave after lockdown is challenge enough, using these principles, tools and insight will remove some of the uncertainty.

Behavioural science, in its simplest form, is the study of human and animal behaviour.

Behavioural scientists Bas Verplanken and Henrik Aarts define habits as 'a learned sequence of acts that have become automatic, unconscious responses to specific cues or triggers around us'

LET'S TALK ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMERS

Thu, 14 May 2020 13:24:00 GMT

Brand Distillery have since its start put the customer at the heart of everything it does from data insight through to creative campaign delivery, underpinned by a strategy framework – The Distillery Process .

The process isn’t a gimmick or something to giveaway; this is real insight that can make a change to your business both in the uncertain times of today’s economy and helping build future long-term growth.

The customer experience is why we do what we do and what makes us different from many of the other agencies that talk about strategy alone, this is the part where we can add value to a business, and now more than ever its where we can help businesses today.

Our experience working in brilliant advertising agencies that helped steer business strategy from FTSE100 to entrepreneur-led start-ups, through the Recession of 1990/91, the dotcom boom and bust of 2000s and the Great Recession of 2008/09, has given the team considerable insight into what companies can do to effectively navigate and benefit from the opportunities that will undoubtably arise from the current pandemic.

Consumers, businesses and the wider economy as mentioned in earlier blogs ( , marketing in a pandemic ) find themselves in unchartered territories, and now more than ever it’s vital we take the learnings from different times, the businesses we have worked with, the insight we have gained and share these with businesses to re-define the potential a business has.

In 1978 Henry Mintzberg published an article in Management Science that introduced emergent strategy , which is not based on an original intention but consists of the company responses to a variety of unanticipated events, the place we find ourselves today. Now is the time to develop a proactive plan to adjust and adapt to changing consumer behaviours, experiences and landscape, marketing sits centre stage reflecting the tone of your brand during a tough time. Mintzberg’s thinking was informed by his insight that managers belief that they can predict the future and plan for it precisely.

We are undoubtably in an evolving situation, where consumers quickly turn on brands where they are perceived to exploit tragedy - our greatest challenge is foreseeing how consumers wants, needs, expectations and purchasing decisions will evolve.

The Distillery Process™ considers six key areas and we can use them in today’s pandemic affected economy;

The potential danger we will fall into during these times is taking a standard framework and adapting to the times we find ourselves in, tweaking or suspending our existing plans we spent so much time developing. This can lead us dangerously down a path that’s sits within the comfort of a strategy the company can control rather than thinking beyond the existing markets and opportunities.

Brand Distillery was formed to help businesses find the right partners to deliver the best customer experience, we use our knowledge to make this happen, but it all starts with our Distillery Process™.

If you fancy a virtual coffee and biscuit to chat through the Distillery Process™ , follow t his link to find out more and tell us you’re interested.

HOW CAN BRANDS EMERGE FROM LOCKDOWN AHEAD OF THE CURVE?

Tue, 05 May 2020 13:00:00 GMT

For most of the past month client conversations have been panicked, confused, frustrated, annoyed, perplexed. And rightly so. We have all been coming to terms with this surreal and shocking place we find ourselves in, scrambling to figure out what to do. Trying to focus on the positive and resisting the temptation to be too reactive.

The first literation’s of “We must say something” have eased and most brands have moved onto something that resembles “We are here for you” and in most cases consumers accepted them as sincere and considered, although some have been clumsy to say the least.

Consumers have been quick to jump on those brands that have been seen to attempt to profiteer and place them in the hall of shame. At the same time many CEOs have place their size 12s into the consumer mindset through crass public statements, from Mike Ashley, Tim Martin and Richard Branson, affecting share price and public sentiment. Where they have backtracked, tripped again and tried to re-emerge the damage has remained.

Brands like Guinness quickly read the sentiment and pushed out creative that maintained the brands core values but importantly recognised the feeling of the nation, against the veneer of the brands expressing their concern for you and your family.

Brands are there for you, your family and friends now in these troubled times but what’s next? What should brands be doing next?

Plan for the end of lockdown now!

How do brands emerge from this ahead of the curve? Brand strategy, insight, thinking and the best campaigns rarely come from been reactive. By insight we mean the discerning and penetrating facts that when combined with the insights drawn from a vast variety of sources that inspires ideas and action – the what next!

The risk is todays insight can be vastly misleading so brands need to be careful where it comes from and how they apply it, the public sentiment felt today could change quickly once society returns to the ‘new’ normal. Brands and consumer lifestyles could quickly revert to old habits ( see earlier blog on the power to change habits ).

Many consumers will revert, which is where we can use this time to start work on unlocking the value of our data and digital assets. Use this time to review our websites (a digital audit is a good place to start) or analyse customer data and look at ways we can enrich it, overlaying outside data sources to gain real insight into the habits and trends of our customers.

For example, we are looking at combining a client’s disparate databases into a single customer view and enriching with additional household data and using machine learning we can drive completely new and proactive campaigns through direct mail and digital channels unlocking previously unknown sales opportunities. Predicting when a customer is most likely to invest in a replacement product and offering relevant incentives.

We can start working on the strategy and campaigns that will help our brands and businesses emerge from these surreal and dark times. Combining insights – about people, the market, future business models, technology and society, can inspire and create new products, brands and campaigns.

Its looking more like the economy and society will unlock gradually as different sectors awaken from lockdown mentality, but will it be into a depression, recession, rebound or something completely different (likely a part of them all, depending on your sector)

Economists are desperately trying to predict the shape of the emergence and will continue to contradict themselves as more data becomes available on the global economy. As marketeers we just need to think about a point in time when consumers will begin to see normal life return and decide how to engage with them at that point. In 1976, M. F. Weiner wrote an article in the journal Medical Economics entitled “Don’t Waste a Crisis — Your Patient’s or Your Own.” Weiner meant by this that a medical crisis can be used to improve aspects of personality, mental health, or lifestyle.

Research consistently demonstrates that during and after a depression, pandemic or recession those brands that have invested in advertising and brand communications throughout the periods of uncertainty are those which come out stronger, consumers are still spending, they might be looking for better deals or brands that recognise new habits. Consumers can quickly forget the brands that stop advertising in sectors where other brands are still spending (marketing in a pandemic).

It’s not about the crisis, it’s about harnessing those aspects of the consumers life that has changed; the habits, family, work, friends. To realise your brand values and maybe a few more things, that your brand is still there and investing in its customers and the wider market.

Using the information, we have realised from our audits and reviews we can make our communications more relevant than simply promoting a discount, loyalty bonus or some other generic message. We can personalise and make our touchpoints relevant and engaging, our insight can deliver messages that reflect how the consumer has changed or not.

Many clients are experiencing an opportunity to review the ‘we’ve always done them’ lines in budgets – events, exhibitions, hospitality, open days, and channel them into something different or diverting those savings into the audits and data strategy pieces that have always eluded them as they chase the day to day.

Brands can remain on the fence, delivering predictable ‘we are here for you’ messages and wait for the competitor to break ranks and show something different or they can use the opportunity to start something new themselves. If the right insight has been identified, then brands should have nothing to fear.

Those brands that emerge the strongest will be those that have moved with surety and purpose. Start thinking and reviewing today before your back chasing the day to day.

OMNI-CHANNEL AND WHY YOU SHOULD STOP THINKING LIKE THAT

Tue, 05 May 2020 09:52:00 GMT

To be quite frank, I’m sick and tired of the term Omni-Channel, for several years marketeers and agencies have banged on about omni this and that, and I confess I used to be one those people. Being able to connect a customer to a brand via their preferred channel is important. Do you want to connect through social media, web chat, call centre, face to face or post? Do they want to buy online, instore or over the phone?

So, what exactly is omni-channel? An article What is omni-channel? By Cambridge Consulting Services has some interesting information. Omni comes from the word Omnis which can mean all or universal.

The omni-channel allows your customers to move from one channel of choice to another with their history and preferences moving with them, consumers expect this to be a seamless journey with those brands and companies they interact with the most. So the marketeer ensures that they have all these touchpoints and channels available to the consumer, but the thing is the customer doesn’t care, they just want to buy, have their queries answered and their comments acknowledged, channels don’t matter it’s about the experience and connection the customer has with the brand.

Channels will blend together, allowing customers to seamlessly switch from one channel to the next. Instead of adding more channels to the omni-channel, brands will begin to rewrite the customer experience by blending channels to better the experience. Think about the way in which chat bots are now handing across to live chat, think how this could extend further.

If we start from the customer first perspective we see where can adopt the channel less experience, as a customer we don’t want to be handed from one channel experience to another we want to move seamlessly from one to another and sometimes simultaneously. Using machine learning we can begin to join these channel experiences together and begin to determine next best action for the customer and delivering a better overall customer experience. Through machine learning we can begin to determine when a customer wants to engage, interact or buy even before they know they have a need.

Think about the longer and more complex purchase journeys – car buying, financial products and using algorithms and a blended customer journey we can reach out to these buyers at the very moment they enter the buying cycle, influencing brand choices and purchase more than ever before.

Allowing brands to make a connection, a seamless channel-less experience.

WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING TO ENGAGE YOUR CUSTOMERS MORE

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 10:37:00 GMT

So we’ve done all the hard work and acquired our customer, spending potentially millions on elaborate multi-channel acquisition campaigns, the customer is ours! WRONG .

The customer has just begun the journey with your brand and business, they have taken the first step in the relationship, purchasing or engaging with you, but how many brands fall down at this moment? They deliver ill-conceived or generic communications that do nothing but push the hard fought customer

away. Done well, customer on-boarding affects consumers’ attitudes, behaviours and lifetime value.

A report by KPMG found some significant results:

So often we talk to clients about these processes and we find that it’s a confused journey of back-office functions and generic marketing messages, the opposite to what’s needed to foster a positive customer experience.

A client project revealed through moving initial engagement communications by a few weeks could have a significant effect not just the immediate value of the customer but also their LTV (Life Time Value). Simply sending a postcard and relevant email at a different touchpoints increased the likelihood the customer would spend more and show more loyalty.

Customers expect to be engaged with through the channel of their choice, social teams are now often part of the customer services team, answering front line questions on products and services; highly personalised and relevant direct mail recognises the customer and their motivations; email that reflects their purchases and engagement, interacting digitally and utilising their digital footprint to drive relevance on their journey with the brand. As data insight continues to accelerate and customers use of mobile shows no abatement, we are entering a changing world where only the most insightful businesses will nurture customers successfully through on-boarding. Small fractional changes in customer engagement delivers not only reduces the reliance on acquisition but also potentially massive increases to the LTV of customers.

We don’t see data or numbers at Brand Distillery , we see customers, patterns and insight, and then we get thinking about how we can help develop your customer engagement.

For a complimentary mini workshop in 2020 on your existing customer journey, please email steve@branddistillery.agency

WHY YOU SHOULD THINK MORE ABOUT CUSTOMER DATA

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 10:34:00 GMT

The confessions of a (closet) data geek.

Loving nothing more than sifting through lines of client data to spot a trend or a nugget of insight, but the number of clients that understand the value of this insight remains limited. They are still to understand the ROI that can be delivered through better data insight and modelling.

As many businesses move at pace towards omni-channel, the need to understand the customer across channels has never been greater. Customer interaction with a brand or business now spans bricks n mortar, websites, mobile and social media. As the number of channels to engage customers grows exponentially, so does the customer’s expectations of relevance and personalisation.

What customer data analytics delivers

By properly scrutinising and evaluating your data, it is possible to deliver actionable customer insight that can help you deliver effective communications improving both new and incremental sales. Whilst much of the talk in recent months has been ‘big’ data, there’s huge benefits to be had from delving into ‘small’ data to give all sorts of insights, campaigns and actions.

By looking at data effectively and in conjunction with customer journeys and insights, clients can deliver huge growth in incremental sales. One client at my last agency saw over £200m in incremental sales in less than 6 years, with an ROI of over 1:20, with the best campaign delivering 1:64. Through identifying better targeting and more personalised multi-channel deliverables, reducing wastage and improving response.

How do we improve customer data insight?

Whilst many clients acknowledge that understanding more about their customers’ purchasing and engagement habits is a good thing, many clients struggle to know where to start. This is where Brand Distillery can help:

We help your business become customer-centric rather than channel-centric. Your customers don’t think in channels – they just buy from your brand and your products or services and we can help you think how to more effectively engage your customers through all channels.

Companies benefit from customer insight

We have seen and demonstrated the benefits of making effective use of the data which already exists within your business. Customers now realise their personal data has value and if they volunteer data to organisations, it is because they expect it to be used wisely for their benefit as well as yours.

Those companies who understand who their customers are and how they wish to be engaged across multi-channel campaigns with a personalised journey can deliver relevant, meaningful and effective campaigns driven by real measures and ROI.

WAYS YOU WILL BENEFIT FROM A DIGITAL AUDIT

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 10:32:00 GMT

Digital audits are so easily misunderstood, as well as one of the most abused by many agencies. Some agencies offer a “free website audit” as a sales gimmick to hook businesses in, often delivering a set of lame actions tailored unsurprising to the skills of the agency.

If you’re a business considering whether you should move forward with a digital audit ( spoiler alert : you should, it’s worth it):

Brand Distillery's digital audits go far beyond the automated reports you get after entering your website’s URL on some digital agencies website. They are detailed and personalised to your organisation’s business goals and objectives. They include an in-depth review of your digital portfolio, with insights on what has (and has not) worked effectively.

The analyses, recommendations, and strategies outlined in your digital audit report can vary. Using our Red, Amber and Green methodology there will be some must-haves , plenty of should-haves and could-haves as well.

Every agency performs digital audits a little differently (and that’s okay!). But you should expect to see a number of similar elements, no matter which agency you choose.

Do you know are you really performing online?

Most general digital audits only go so far and only tell you so much or sometimes what your agency wants you to know! Being able to interpret that information and data into meaningful actions is one of the key components of an audit – and one that is most often missed!

Helping you establish exactly where you in the market you need to be able to assess your competitors performance levels, your data metrics and that you are continuing to follow best practice. The audit should give you a number of high impact recommendations to target and achieve – they should be concise, achievable and SMART so that they can be fully tracked.

Understand where you are loosing and your competitors winning

Knowing what your direct and indirect competitors are doing and how they are performing forms a key aspect of an audit, whilst its more of an outside view the knowledge that can be gained is essential – it shows your position is the market, are there disruptors entering the market that can become an issue? (or copied).

Breakdown by Channel and Data analysis – deep

It's staggering the amount of data now available that can help and hinder your understanding of your digital landscape. Knowing what to look for and critically how to interpret the data will have a significant impact on where you think your business actually is. There is no one size fits all approach to this, every business is different. Key areas that are recommended for analysis:

Recommendations and Strategy

The audit should give provide the business with an understanding of the next steps to take (a) build on the positive aspects of your digital and online presence, and (b) work to improve what is not working or delivering as it should. The audit should give you a framework (we base ours on Red, Amber, Green) to grow your business, ideas that go beyond channels and tactics.

not a strategy because it has no context. Our audit could recommend a strategy to “Match your online product offerings to narrower younger demographics.”

Channel-specific Tactics

Your digital strategy should support specific tactical recommendations for your key digital marketing channels:

Our audits use RAG (Red, Amber, Green) in the report to establish the priority of issues – broken down into manageable chunks that are not too overwhelming to digest and that can be shared across your business.

Breaking the work down into short sprints – 14 day, 30 day, 60 day, 90 day helps keep focus on the most critical tasks.

Types of Digital Audits available

Basic Digital Audit

Our Audit Covers:

A simple, easy to read and digest overview of your company’s digital landscape performance. Gives an insight into critical metrics and how you perform in these areas against your main competitors. Report is designed for a quick turnaround, normally delivered within 2 weeks.

Price – from £500

In-depth Digital Audit

An extensive and detailed analysis which includes competitor comparisons. A full RAG report that highlights the potential ROI impact. We discuss and explain these to you so that they are fully understood, and if required we can assist with the implementation of the actions. Normally delivered back within 4-6 weeks.

Please contact for a quotation

PUTTING THE PERSONAL BACK INTO CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 10:21:00 GMT

Brilliant customer experiences and interesting personalisation should be used to help us provide the most relevant and contextualised experiences that our customers expect and want, in some cases demand.

For more years than I care to remember, we’ve used data to find out meaningful things about our customers. Whether at a simple level its using their date of birth to send them birthday offers, or the date they opened their account to send them a thank you through to tailored recommendations based on previous website interactions or an in-store purchase.

We continue to seek the “golden customer record” but there has been little movement toward data and intelligence unification. However the reality is the path to resolution has typically been paved with technology implementations that have added as many clients have discovered complexity, cost and fortified silos separating pools of data.

Personalisation helps us provide the deep relevance and contextual experiences that are meaningful and valued by an individual customer but that’s only half the story.

There are pretty compelling reasons to do so. We know that personalisation works, we have the case studies to prove it. According to CMO Council , 43% of marketers said personalisation led to more conversions. Simply by knowing and recognising our customers and talking to them as individuals, we can increase the conversion rate. Now that’s something that every brand or company would like isn’t it.

In fact, companies with a strong single-minded-channel engagement strategy have an 89% customer retention rate versus 33% for companies with a weak customer engagement.

So, imagine if we turbo charged the ways we could speak to customers. What could that accomplish for our brands and customers?

Reaching customers as a segment of one

Personalisation isn’t just about how much data we can grab and know about our customers. It’s about knowing more than the simple things – like their names, emails and addresses.

Really effective personalisation is about understanding them as real people, walking in their shoes. That means knowing their behaviour, their lifestyle habits – and even, but more importantly their emotions.

That means looking at customers not as simple personas that we strategists come up with, but as real people, like the people you know, your family, friends and colleagues. We don’t want to simply talk to people as a broad homogenised segment, using general attitudes and broad behavioural trends. We want to talk and see them as a segment of one.

And to do that, we need to understand how they engage with more than just one single brand. We need to understand what makes customers who they are.

No two people are the same – even if they form part of the same persona.

You might have a whole group of curry lovers, for example, but at a specific time only a few of those curry lovers will be actually eating their favourite vindaloo. We know that the feeling of euphoria works best when eating that curry, so deliver key messages then. By nurturing such specific and personal moments in time, we can approach personalisation at its most meaningful.

The next generation

Of course, there are even bigger opportunities to be had. In the future imagine if we were able to understand through wearable technology what’s actually going on in our customers’ heads?

Back to the future

We still have a long way to go as an industry. Our most sophisticated databases, data scientists and journeys still fail to truly understand human sensitivities and emotions of the world in which we live. AI will certainly begin to help bridge this gap as we measure, capture and analyse more and more data and whilst its always going to be a tricky path to navigate AI will begin to measure people’s fears, track their emotional journeys, goals, hopes and dreams. But it will be near impossible for AI to understand what constitutes ‘gut-feeling’ that moment when it’s just…

That’s why Brand Distillery ’s first step has always been an old fashioned one – have a conversation and listen to your customers. We like to talk, ask them what they think. Once we have this understanding in place, we begin to build in some technological solutions that can bring this insight to life.

It’s exactly this thinking which led to the Distillery Lab [no gin, sorry] – from one-to-one customer interviews to facilitated focus groups, so often brands and agencies hide behind big data and digital strategies rather than just going out and getting to know people, sometimes even over a cuppa or a beer and pizza.

And it’s this desire to get closer to ‘the real person’ that will continue to drive Brand Distillery and I hope the wider industry. We all strive through our work to understand the real person behind the ‘customer’, engage them as one and give them a seemless experience.

But continuing as many do with this lazy generalising won’t get us there. Instead, we need to use conversations, moments of joy or simple engagement, backed up by data and technology, to find that all important segment of one. Only then we put all this together can we unlock the insight that can make a genuine difference to our customers as people.

MARKETING IN A PANDEMIC IS DIFFERENT TO A RECESSION

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 10:13:00 GMT

Where to start is an interesting point in itself, having taken inspiration from an article I first read in 2009 from the Harvard Business School entitled Marketing in a Recession, but for reasons we talk about later, the economic effects of a pandemic are similar but very different to those felt during and after a ‘typical’ recession.

Many of us have experienced recessions before, whether it’s 1980s, 1990s or the last major recession of 2008, and whilst no two downturns are the same there are certain consumer behaviours and business strategies that can either accelerate or slow down performance.

However, in these challenging times we find ourselves in like no other time in modern history, never has an economy shut down so quickly and with so little warning and preparation. The Flu Pandemic of 1918 and even in wartime Britain the pubs, music halls, theatres and cinemas for the most part stayed open and social gatherings were still encouraged, and in its own way for the most part the economy still kept turning, depressed yes, changed yes but nonetheless turning. Equally no recession or downtown has been analysed and poured over by so many armchair experts all scrabbling to make their opinions heard over social media and broadcast channels, many consumers are feeling overloaded, first with something no living person has ever experienced a true ‘global pandemic’ and secondly the sheer number of media outlets and channels we now consume on a daily basis.

In April 2020, we face a time when many business are in a state of suspended animation, those in the travel and leisure sector where staff have been furlonged on reduced salaries and venues shut, only a month ago many of these businesses where preparing for the Easter holidays, the end of the 6-nations rugby, a summer of Euro football, Wimbledon and the Olympics, and then overnight they were closed or cancelled. Other businesses have restructured to remote working and reduced staff salaries, others are somewhere in between, and some have or will close for good. Whilst no recession has a defined start and end date there is a feeling that drives consumer and business confidence begins to improve – the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is different there was no warning and there is no defined end or something that business and consumers can do to change so are we in a recession?

There will undoubtably be those businesses that just won’t survive the prolonged shutdown, and many a month ago where good businesses, and are unfortunately just unlucky. Although this is different to the 2008 financial crisis that allowed a legion of zombie companies to stagger on, this will finish them off, these won’t be missed except for sentimental reasons and most wouldn’t be invented in todays economy. Like Laura Ashley and Debenhams that have long lost their raison d’etre.

Then there’s the consumer some will exit isolation with a healthy balance in the bank as their spending was curtailed, no trips to local restaurants and bars, a reduced incentive to shop for new clothes, planned home improvements on hold then there is the other consumer who has taken a pay cut or worse still lost their income and as a consequence used their treasured savings to pay the monthly bills who will emerge fragile and nervous of the ‘new world’.

Typically, in a recession business typically cut costs, reduce prices and postpone new investments, but this is different. Marketing budgets from advertising to research are cut across the board, but such cost cutting is typically a mistake in a recession. But in a pandemic driven economic shutdown, consumer and business behaviour is changed, we don’t behave rationally. Consumers race to stockpile everyday items for fear of shortages driven by media speculation and ‘fake news’.

Understanding Consumer Behaviour

In normal times, consumers are influenced not just by smart advertising and products alone, their behaviour relies on them having disposable incomes, feeling confident about their future, a strong government and a positive economy, all this shapes and encourages consumer consumption.

We’ve read that this maybe the severest recession since 2008 and possibly the Great Depression, but as we said earlier this situation has never been experienced across vitually the whole global economy. At the start of 2020 we had an improving consumer picture, we had a new Government, positive budget announcements and finally a plan for BREXIT, so where normally we see in the run up to a recession wave after wave of bad economic news that erodes consumer confidence and buying power, driving them and businesses to adjust their behaviour, this was different and we need to redefine target audiences accordingly.

In 2009 The Harvard Review in their article ‘How to Market in a Downtown’ sought to redefine consumer groups and audiences from the typical (if not crude) segments – over 40s, new parent, middle income, or lifestyle – traditionalist or eco-electric to ones that are more akin to a consumers emotional reactions and behaviours to a recession. By taking the four groups defined by The Harvard Review, Brand Distillery have redefined them for the current challenging times associated with Covid-19.

The Slam on the Breaks segment feels the most vulnerable and hardest hit financially. This group could be small business owner, the self-employed, the zero hours contractor or those traditionally associated with lower incomes. This group reduces all types of spending by eliminating, postponing or decreasing or substituting purchases. Although lower income consumers typically fall into this segment, consumers who two months ago were defined as high-income and prosperous but due to the unknown and/or simple fact that their income has just stopped have found themselves in this group.

Pained But Patient consumers tend to be resilient and optimistic about the medium term but less confident about the short term where their standard of living may have taken a hit, through a forced and unforeseen pay cut, like Slam on the Breaks consumers they too have economised, though less aggressively and because of the social isolation feel less worried as their spend on social activities has all but ended and so the reduced salary has been balanced by a fall in outgoings. They constitute the largest segment and include most households left unscathed by unemployment or zero hours contracts and represent a wide spectrum of households. As news gets worse or the pandemics social isolation periods extend beyond current restrictions, some of these Pained but Patient consumers will increasingly migrate to the Slam on the Breaks segment.

Comfortably Well-Off consumers feel secure about their ability to ride out the economic effects of the current pandemic. They consume at pre-pandemic levels, and in some areas increase their spend as they indulge in more food and home-based luxuries as they seek to ride out the isolation. They will have seen a fall in social spending as they remain isolated and frustrated at their forced home lockdown so leave this current situation with healthy finances and a demand to re-start their lifestyle. The Comfortably retired, normally associated with this group could be affected as stock market turmoil continues and they could fall easily into the Slam on the Breaks segment as their retirement investments fall.

The Live for Today segment normally carry on as usual in a recession unconcerned about savings or investments, living for the moment. Typically, urban and younger, they are more likely to rent than to own or live with parents and spend on experiences rather than stuff (except for consumer electronics and disposable fashion). Like the Comfortably Well-Off segments they spend heavily on going out and holidays, and if they retain their income and remain employed how will this group behave when the restrictions around the pandemic ends. Will the economic shock they witness around them lead them to assess their lifestyles and encourage them to behave differently, especially around travel, leisure and fashion? In this pandemic shutdown, unlike typical recessions women and the under 25s have borne much of the brunt of the lockdown, with the worst affected industries from hospitality to retail, that are disproportionately staffed by young people. These industries account for over 30% of all employees under the age of 25 and are likely to be the last to emerge from the shutdown, impacting certain socio-economic groups disproportionately.

Irrelevant of the group consumers belong to, they will prioritise consumption by sorting products and services into four categories and this is where it changes from any other recession;

All consumers consider basic levels of food, shelter, transport and clothing to be essentials, but again the pandemic has changed consumer behaviour as even the view of what’s essential is different today as we work from home, clothing and transport fall out of the essential’s category for many.

Throughout a normal recession, all consumers typically re-evaluate their consumption behaviour. Products and services such as restaurants, travel, entertainment, clothes, home improvements and cars quickly shift in the consumers’ mind from essentials to treat, postponables or even expendables depending on the individual’s circumstance. As this behaviour continues through a typical recession some products are eliminated altogether or substituted perhaps swapping meals out (a treat) to meals in (an essential). They may also seek out own brands instead of their normal brands as they become more price sensitive. This is different, many behaviours are been forced on consumers e.g. eating in.

For all these customer segments defined in the Harvard Business article following the past recession this one is different, and customers are showing different mindsets from work through to home and personal life. BBH set out an interesting table that considers these as thought starters;

Managing Marketing Investments

During recessions its normally important to remember that loyal customers are the primary, enduring source of cash flow and organic growth, this is different, many brands with loyal customers have been placed in an impossible position, where this loyal revenue has stopped, not through a customer’s reluctance to spend but by the environment preventing them from carrying out their normal everyday lives.

Traditionally many brands not only maintain but often increase marketing budgets, continuing to build a strong brand that customers continue to recognise and trust – this is different, brands are being judged differently and customers are behaving like never before. The challenge is to make well-defended choices about where to cut spending, where to hold steady and even possibly where to increase it.

Access Opportunities

Considering the previous table, determine where your brand could fit into a consumer’s lifestyle, could you influence and provide added value without appearing to not understand the current consumer mindset.

Corvid-19 has not only exposed the brands or products that were on life support following a difficult period of trading it has ripped them open and exposed all their frailties overnight, accelerating actions that would take months into days.

In some sectors sales haven’t started to decline they literally stopped overnight.

What to do?

It’s understandable that some marketers will have reached for the ‘pause’ or ‘off button’ for their communications channels, but this approach comes with a warning.

Whilst it’s sensible to press the ‘off button’ to creating demand for products and services you can’t currently sell, it’s risky for brands to go completely silent right now.

Stabilising the brand, reinforcing the core brand propositions, reminding consumers of how the brand matters in these ‘challenging times’ building on the previous investments in developing the brand and customer satisfaction. A simple example, Coral Windows have used airtime to communicate a message supporting NHS workers. Can the brand offer anything to the housebound and isolated consumer, can it engage with local communities to support activities which link to our table, some consumers are scared, many are frustrated, some are bored, some will be anxious, some will be angry and some will still be happy and content with life. Some will be afraid; many will be stressed but in many places across the country unique and special things are happening; communities are re-engaging, and families are communicating and finding new ways to entertain themselves.

Many are viewing particular brands with suspicion; Branson and Stelios wanting state relief; Sportsdirect attempting to stay open; Wetherspoon laying off staff without pay but this has been balanced by many brands stepping up; free/ discounted food to NHS staff from Pret and Leon; Tescos and Wm Morrisons investing in food banks and staff welfare or Bulldog Skincare, providing free care packages for NHS workers.

In deciding what marketing tactics to employ, its critical to understand how customers through isolation are reassessing priorities, reallocating budgets, switching among brands and product categories and redefining their needs. Through a forced lifestyle change many are trading up in brands or dropping convenience in place of home cooking, or home exercise techniques and programmes as they deal with gym closures and frustrated home-schooled children – over 1m daily viewers to Joe Wicks fitness classes. Some are considering self-improvement through digital learning. Some will be learning new skills or rekindling lost hobbies and interests. Marketeers have to adapt for this new temporary mindset, maintaining a brands presence whilst not p***ing off the consumer.

Like recessions, marketeers have to remain flexible, probably more so than ever as the situation changes daily, whilst we are more likely to see a staged re-opening of the economy, with the leisure industry likely to be the last to open. It’s vital that plans are developed to re-engage with consumers in an appropriate way, no one knows how the economy and the consumer will exit the existing isolation and then behave as the economy returns to ‘normal’ over the preceding months, these are genuinely uncharted waters. Which comes back to the original table of consumer segments, think about how each of these will emerge, does your brand touch all or some of these segments and adjust your messaging and plans accordingly.

Normally during downturns, marketeers must balance efforts to pare costs and shore up short term sales against investments in long term brand health, again this is different. Some brands are seeing sales normally associated with peak trading during boom periods, for example many of the supermarkets and food brands they stock, whereas travel and leisure have seen an unprecedented decline, with many brands left in limbo at a time when they were entering their peak trading periods like holiday companies such as Jet2, how will consumers behave after isolation, will governments continue with travel restrictions long into 2020? It’s not about plan A or B it’s more like plans A to Z for this sector.

What can brands do now?

They can invest in learning about the customers they have, invest in developing the customer journey, using the insight buried in their data to identify and isolate new customers and develop programmes to reward the best segments. Investigate propensity modelling powered by machine learning in a way that produces dynamic, productionised, and scalable solutions that will deliver a huge value lift and lead to increasing ROI.

Many brands and companies are currently swamped by massive amounts of (big) data but through machine learning in near real time they could unlock this data with smart modelling is and help hone future marketing plans and strategies.

Today’s consumers are worried, reassuring messages that reinforce an emotional connection that’s relevant with the brand and demonstrates empathy are vital, but remains an exceedingly difficult path to walk.

Companies that make it through Covid-19 will be those that have understood the pulse of the nation and focused their attention on consumer attitudes, core brand values and the wider impact on society. However companies must understand that a consumers behaviour may change following the Covid-19 pandemic so they can offer products and communicate messages that are aligned with the needs of this ‘new’ consumer, having no reference point to behaviour other than the much quoted term of recession, there is considerable risk that there may be some profound changes in consumer attitudes and importantly values. Will some brands be tarnished with their ‘prawn sandwich’ moment (Gerald Ratner 1991) and suffer the same outcome, as customers stay away?

We are clapping weekly for the NHS and frontline workers, the support and connection has been staggering, the outpouring of support through mainstream and social media will undoubtably change and redefine many consumers beliefs.

Brands need to prepare for a shift in consumer vales and attitudes, that have been shaped and changed more rapidly than ever before. The country and the economy are going through a period of change unequalled; customers will seek to engage with brands and businesses that have acted in theirs and society’s best interests, it would be foolish for marketeers to ignore these changing expectations.

With thanks and reference to BBH Labs for the segmentation chart and Harvard Business Review [How to Market in a Downturn - April 2009 by John Quelch and Katherine E. Jocz]

HOW MACHINE LEARNING WILL DELIVER YOU BETTER CUSTOMERS

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 10:49:00 GMT

First we are not talking about Skynet in Terminator or HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Machine Learning is where we want a machine to learn from the huge amounts of data we give it, and then apply that knowledge on new pieces of data that streams into the system.

Machine Learning can be seen as a subset of AI (Artificial Learning) and defines the process by which a machine can learn by its own without being explicitly programmed, and that’s the key it delivers insight of its own accord.

Machine learning will help us finally realise the promises of how to optimise and develop truly engaging and effective customer experiences. However very few companies believe they have the necessary technology or that implementing it is easy. But the technology is only the start and today it doesn’t represent the challenges it used, however the company or brand needs to re-orientate the business to the customer.

By doing this and implementing machine learning that focuses on the customer journey, brands can start to redefine the customer experience through data insight inexpensively.

Taking multiple data sources including transactional machine learning models can begin to specifically tailor and personalise the customers journey using machine learning algorithms. Whether it’s a motor retailer looking to identify the moment when a customer will be seeking to change their car or an insurer looking to identify those customers least likely to commit fraud to speed settlements up. These companies are successfully harnessing machine learning to deliver higher sales, more efficient service and most importantly higher customer loyalty, through more effective on-boarding and retention.

Using machine learning we can identify customers and tailor their journeys to deliver the right products at the right time, making engagement and the customer journey more relevant. Through algorithms we can understand prediction problems, propensity modelling, classification and regression problems, and more to effectively target communications at the moment in time when a customer is the most receptable to communications and messaging, to effect choice, selection and purchase. Through technology we have been able to identify predictive ways that customers spend and what they are likely to buy.

Through using data derived from customer interactions with a brand, machine learning can go far beyond the scope of human analysis, driving deep insight into the feelings, needs and desires of the customer. As customer touchpoints continue to grow at speed, creating more and more data we need to develop solutions that can cost effectively generate models to answer this. Customer experiences used to involve only a few hard to track touchpoints such press ads, store visits and direct mail, these have grown exponentially in the last few years to include mobile apps, call centres, social media and instore tracking. This growth will continue as wearable tech and the internet of things becomes a reality creating yet more data sets that can be tracked to a customer’s engagement.

Because todays consumers no longer follow the linear journeys they once did, accessing and using this data will be fundamental to the success of a brand and the business. Without finding ways to cost effectively reach these customers with targeted, personalised and relevant activity they will be lost to the competitor that does.

Preparing for the journey

Using machine learning to drive insight from a customer’s engagement should include:

Machine learning represents an exciting opportunity for brands to finally and cost effectively begin to drive their customer engagement strategy with real insight. Even a few years ago many of the aspects of ML would have been beyond a normal business without the recruitment of an in house team to pour over and analyse the data it holds, now we have clients gaining insight on millions of records in weeks and under realistic budgets.

Machine learning in customer insight still has room for improvement, but it is something that all businesses should be looking at and making plans to include in their future engagement strategies.

Langleys appoints Brand Distillery

Mon, 06 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

We are delighted to announce that, after a recent pitch win, we have been appointed by Langleys Solicitors, as their strategic and brand agency for business development as well as a brand awareness campaign. Langleys are a firm of solicitors working across business, personal and insurance law based in York, Lincoln and Manchester.

Morses Club appoints Brand Distillery

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Morses Club, the home credit lender, has appointed Brand Distillery to deliver a customer experience project.

The agency will work with the company to help them gain a better understanding of their customers and the journey they take with the company.

Brand Distillery works with Perrys Motors

Sun, 11 Aug 2019 23:00:00 GMT

Perrys Motors, has appointed Brand Distillery to work on their direct marketing and data strategy, alongside their existing roster of agencies.

The agency will work with the group across its 50 plus dealerships to support customer acquisition, from customer engagement strategy and comms planning to data strategy and cross-channel execution.