CMO.com Highlights — Making Your Brand a Positive Force for Good

Last week’s exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com focused quite a bit on the per­cep­tions that brands cre­ate for their cus­tomers. This affects how a brand uti­lizes social media and even the role of the con­sumer in an organisation’s process­es. Inno­va­tion is anoth­er impor­tant ele­ment for many organ­i­sa­tions that want to present rel­e­vant prod­ucts and con­tent to their cus­tomers. Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion con­tin­ues to be an impor­tant top­ic of dis­cus­sion for many organ­i­sa­tions because few things com­mu­ni­cate rel­e­vance bet­ter than an embrace of dig­i­tal and rel­e­vant con­tent across chan­nels. Final­ly, today’s brands need to be per­ceived as forces for good, and nav­i­gat­ing that expec­ta­tion can be tricky.

The week began with Gré­go­ry Pouy, Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Strate­gist at LaMer­ca­tique, with a dis­cus­sion of how brands can uti­lize the col­lab­o­ra­tive econ­o­my used by com­pa­nies like Uber. The col­lab­o­ra­tive econ­o­my nat­u­ral­ly evolved from social media, and brands like Uber and Swiss­com have been able to exploit it to give con­sumers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to help oth­er con­sumers. Pouy shared some insight­ful tips to help brands suc­cess­ful­ly inte­grate the col­lab­o­ra­tive econ­o­my into their exist­ing models.

Last week’s inter­view with Britvic CMO Matt Bar­well shed some light on Britvic’s process of inno­va­tion, both in prod­ucts and in mar­ket­ing. Giv­en Britvic’s long his­to­ry, part of the company’s inno­v­a­tive approach to mar­ket­ing is delib­er­ate­ly choos­ing not to use the Britvic name as an umbrel­la over the rest of its brands. Britvic began as a bot­tler, but it now also owns sev­er­al great brands. Bar­well shared some of the most impor­tant lessons the com­pa­ny has learned from mar­ket­ing its new cat­e­go­ry prod­uct Squash’d, as well as how the com­pa­ny approach­es cre­at­ing rel­e­vant con­tent across mul­ti­ple dig­i­tal channels.

Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is vital to any company’s mar­ket­ing approach, but the headaches that come with dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion are often over­whelm­ing. Ste­fan Svär­den­born, Vice Pres­i­dent Brand & Mar­ket­ing at Trelle­borg, shared some inter­est­ing insights about using gam­i­fi­ca­tion to engage top-lev­el man­age­ment in this much-need­ed change. Svär­den­born high­light­ed the impor­tance of giv­ing top-lev­el man­agers a more prac­ti­cal hands-on expe­ri­ence rather than rely­ing on the­o­ret­i­cal under­stand­ing alone. Giv­ing top man­age­ment a dig­i­tal jour­ney to trav­el allows them to per­son­al­ly see how the race toward dig­i­tal is imper­a­tive to the organisation’s con­tin­ued growth.

Fur­ther elab­o­rat­ing on the need for organ­i­sa­tions to embrace dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, John Travis, VP EMEA Mar­ket­ing for Adobe Sys­tems Europe, shared in an inter­view at Adobe’s Sym­po­sium in Paris that trans­for­ma­tion for Adobe meant a com­plete rethink­ing of the entire mar­ket­ing process. One of the most impor­tant changes he men­tioned was going from a cam­paign men­tal­i­ty to under­stand­ing that mar­ket­ing is an “always-on” endeav­or. It also meant try­ing things out rather than striv­ing for per­fec­tion right out of the gate and tak­ing on more of the work that had pre­vi­ous­ly been out­sourced. Take a look at the video inter­view to hear more of what Travis had to say.

Klaus Som­mer Paulsen, CEO & Founder of Adven­ture­lab and Co-Found­ing Part­ner of CNA | SOPHIS, fin­ished the week with a dis­cus­sion of cus­tomers’ expec­ta­tions that a brand be a pos­i­tive force for good at the local and glob­al lev­els. Meet­ing this expec­ta­tion is so impor­tant, Paulsen says, that an organisation’s approach to cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR) activ­i­ties could make or break a brand. Cus­tomers want a brand to enable them to be social­ly respon­si­ble shop­pers and make a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion them­selves. Paulsen shared a num­ber of insights on how organ­i­sa­tions can approach CSR and make their social con­tri­bu­tion effec­tive­ly known to the world.

We’d love for you to engage with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com and let us know what you think.