The rules of premium are changing. If once it was about showing off, now it’s all about ideas with substance. And that goes for brands too.
Read our latest report to find out which two factors are driving this shift plus how best to address the needs of today’s consumers.
Email harry.hembrow@liveandbreathe.co.uk for your free copy of A Changing Culture of Premium.
Did you know…
Alexa tells the best dad jokes.
With a smart camera, you can check in on your cat from your desk.
A smart energy meter means never having to argue about ‘putting an extra jumper on’ again.
Introducing the internet of ‘things I actually care about’
When it comes to smart home, some ideas have started to trickle into our hearts and homes. A new report from TechUK shows 77% of consumers are aware of connected technology. And device ownership is on the rise – with 80% of UK households now owning at least one smart home product1.
But it’s down to brands to find out what really motivates us and join the dots between that and the technology. Not to mention between the products themselves.
A crucial home truth
As salespeople, we know emotion is 24 x more persuasive than reason. It stimulates the mind 3,000 more than rational thought2.
And nowhere is as emotive as home – as a physical space and as a social idea. It’s the centre of our world (some of our favourite people even live there). A sanctuary, a playground and a door we get to close on any daily chaos we come across. Which might explain why 1 in 4 Brits admits to continually redecorating their place3. There’s nowhere quite so important.
Too much smart, not enough home?
With that in mind, you’d think a category called smart home, would sell itself. And yet…
One in three consumers remain on the fence about the smart home revolution. Even when it comes to the fun stuff like home entertainment or saving money on energy costs, where appeal sits above 40%. For most of us, operation smart home still feels a bit out of reach. And – unlike moving to Italy, or working a 3-day week – ‘going smart’ isn’t as aspirational as it might be.
So what do paint retailers understand that tech companies don’t?
First, let’s run through a few key, reasonable barriers standing in the way of Total Tech Utopia (TTU):
39% of Brits are concerned about the cost of smart home
Making your home smarter involves many products, none of them cheap. And even though the cost of devices is becoming more affordable, many consumers question the value of a big smart home spend.
22% are concerned about the privacy and security of smart devices
We’ve all seen the high profile hacks in the news. And we fear corporations knowing too much about us; using smart devices to bank data on our lives that we never offered up. A concern not based on Black Mirror-esque fantasy alone. A recent survey by Which? revealed 8 out of 15 tested smart home devices contained at least one security flaw4. Yikes.
16% of Brits are put off by devices that work across different systems
Until recently, brands have acted as islands. Treating their own tech products and operating systems as gospel. Which is great for corporate profit margins, bad for usability and consumer satisfaction. We want to mix and match what we buy and for it to all work together. Thankfully, voice controlled smart hubs (“Alexa, turn the lights on”) are helping to create connections room to room, device to device, person to person5.
Despite these barriers, the appeal of smart home devices is growing. Today, 39% of people agree connected home technology offers an attractive proposition. An increase of 10% from 2016.
It’s getting late, shall we get the bill?
Okay okay. We get the hint. Let’s wrap this up with a few practical tips.
Selling smart: recommendation #1
If you’re going to sell smart tech, you’re going to need to be human about it. Only 10% of Brits claim to ‘know a lot’ about smart home technology. And no one likes to feel stupid.
Brands need to demystify products in plain speak. Online, in advertising and in person. Lead with tangible benefits. Always put people, their homes and their personal concerns first. Gadgets and fancy features second. And only sell hard when you can show how tech will make real contributions to someone’s life, with very little effort and no routine upheaval at all.
Ask yourself…
What’s in it for them? Why do they need it? Will it make their life easier, more convenient, simpler?
…Then tell them precisely how.
Store staff are crucial in turning abstract concepts into handy everyday tools that make home life more fun, less faff. So be sure to put your people at the heart of everything smart you do.
Selling smart: recommendation #2
51% of people interested in connected devices say they are more likely to buy if they can demo them first. In-store demonstrations break down consumer barriers with personal service and real-time experiences.
A model example of this is the dedicated smart home space in John Lewis on Oxford Street. Visitors wander room to room, seeing connected home devices in situ. Using them as they would in their own kitchens and bedrooms. The technology becomes both aspirational and attainable all at once.
So consider giving your products a showroom. A changing room in which consumers transform from ambivalent into I-can’t-wait-to-get-this-thing-home.
Ready?
Then let’s close this conversion gap together. It’s time to bring smart innovation home.
Sources
1Tech UK Report, 2017
2SBXL Research
3Furniture123.co.uk
4Which? UK
5Mintel, The Connected Home 2017 – UK
Time is currency and if your audience is willing to invest their minutes, you’re in. Put simply: experiential events offer a more authentic way to connect with people. This way consumers are way more likely to absorb your messages than through a billboard or an Instagram ad. The idea is to have a conversation and develop interest rather than ram sales pitches down their throats. Learn the gift of the gab and you’re golden.
Events work because they give the impression that people must act right away – the immediacy of them draws the crowds and sells tickets. Pop-ups have proven extremely popular for retailers as they close the gap between people and brands. They offer instant gratification for those pesky short attention spans. They’re seasonal and shareable; braggable and brazen. This also means brands can access wider, non-traditional audiences if they put the work in.
To pull this off successfully you need to discover where your market hangs out and follow them there. That way, you’re not begging them to come to you, you just kindly interrupt their day… Street corners, train stations and festivals are all prime spots for campaigns. And think big – shop takeovers and tube station stunts work well. Give out freebies but make sure the branding is subtle and the crap is actually useful. Neon sunglasses are a nono, but a handy tote bag is perfection. Pair branded swag with a social competition and Bob’s your uncle. Another technique is to teach them something – consumers are hungry for information so why don’t you feed their curiosities? Or let them create; encourage them to put their stamp on something and they’ll be dying to show it off. When it comes to online, the priority is incorporating a hashtag that is simple and instructions to share as easy as pie.
One of the reasons live events prove so popular is they put control back in consumers hands – they have the power to leave when they want. The public even leads the content, so marketing teams can sit back, relax and watch it roll in. Social platforms act as a hotbed for user generated content that the brand can use and recycle. Trust us: “98% of consumers create digital or social content at events and experiences and 100% of these consumers share the content” according to Cronin.
A perfect example of this was Krispy Kreme’s hole-in-the-wall dispensing Nutella flavoured donuts. Everyone went mad for it and all of the proceeds went to Teenage Cancer Trust. Another one was the vending machine that dispensed free Reebok trainers if you ran past it fast enough. And it’s scalable with social, unlike billboards where you can only guess footfall, you can monitor likes and engagement.
Don’t forget it is powerful for brands to exist in live, physical spaces as well as online. Dominating the digital realm is great, but we cannot forget that human touch to engage customers. Just how we did with Body Shop’s #PlayforPeace campaign; turning shopping centre spaces into a Christmas wonderland adorned with cosmetics offering live makeup demos, board games and tastings. For every gift bought from the seasonal gift collection, The Body Shop made a donation to International Alerts Play for Peace Project. An unshakeable combination.
The Oxford English Dictionary definition for marketing is “the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.” So, are we seriously considering Moz the Monster good form? Emotional storytelling is great for party small talk and opinion column fodder, but does it bring home the bacon? Are brands getting more than a viral video and some great tweets? Does the whole thing end in one single person picking up their product and taking it to the cashier, because if not, what’s the point?
Having worked with retailers for nearly 30 years, from Morrisons to World Duty Free, we’ve learnt a thing or two about physically shifting products off the shelves. We were born out of retail and we’re tired of seeing lame video campaigns and ballsy social media content – at the end of the day, we want to guarantee stability and financial security for our clients. It doesn’t always have to be a short film that wins six LION awards, but it does have to sell and make clients’ money.
There’s nothing wrong with personality, and everyone loves a great story, but we know our clients need purpose. Zany marketing campaigns trying to pull on heartstrings or cause a PR buzz are fine, but do the numbers add up? Are the millions spent on video editing and sound bites worth it? It’s time to dig down through the chaff to the fundamentals.
We know, brand awareness matters. OF COURSE it’s important, we’re not denying that, but it’s too easy these days to become sidelined by blowout creative ideas. Regardless of trends and likes, we remain focused on one thing: selling. We live for the KPIs and we thrive on hitting targets. A brand only exists if consumers are spending money on it, otherwise it’ll wilt and shrivel up. We’re never down for letting that happen.
Our purpose is to diminish the gulf between brand communication and sales conversion. How do we do this? Through years of experience in this field and a roster of 75 hugely talented staff. We have shared knowledge that makes us smart, agile and capable to make the most of every opportunity that comes our way. We not only admire but respect our clients – we care about the brands that we work with and this translates through our work. One of our key messages is to imagine every point of interaction as a point of purchase. We give our clients the courage, tools and skills to jump on those opportunities to close the conversion gap. Because you do have to mind that gap and it’s hella important to bridge it, make it smaller, bring it together or whatever you need to do to make sure sales ring true.
After a rough start, consumers slowly are coming around to the idea of smart. Tech companies are battling to become the sole leader of the industry, but when will smart tech become mainstream? The general consensus is that people are still suspicious. In the mind of the consumer: does smart mean sacrificing security for efficiency?
A quarter of Brits now live in smart homes, according to The Memo, despite the fact that 55% “don’t fully understand it.” Perhaps this is down to too many companies fighting for attention in the smart world and information just isn’t being communicated clearly enough. The main worry is that devices will know when homes are empty, which makes the consumer feel incredibly vulnerable. How much should they leave in the hands of machines?
Understandably, consumers are approaching smart home devices with a certain amount of trepidation as they’re nervous about their privacy and security. Resistance to the technology really stems from fears of being listened to and watched, like a Big Brother style horror story. According to a survey by Deloitte, “40% are concerned about connected-home devices tracking their usage. More than 40% said they were worried that such gadgets would expose too much about their daily lives.”
In order to ease these worries, and ultimately make the whole smart experience feel more human, Maplin have created the UK’s first smart home consultation service, and it’s free. A cheery home expert pops in, talks to the customer about their reasons for wanting to go smart, then sells products and installs at an extra fee. This is useful for anyone who is feeling overwhelmed by the smart offerings out there, as Maplin can explain which device is compatible with which system. Their most popular product is a plug that automatically switches off when it’s not being used (a classic oversight that we’re all guilty of).
From locks to light switches, thermostats, blenders, toothbrushes and alarms, the initial lump sum required to set up a home as 100% smart is daunting. Brands must hammer home the message that, in the long run, this investment will make lives easier, free up time and save consumers money on bills. However, the tech isn’t quite perfect yet and there have been a few mishaps leaving consumers furious and disillusioned. This summer, Lockstate locked people out of their homes due to a software fault. Not great when smart companies are desperately trying to build trust among homeowners…
Amazon’s friendly AI voice assistant, Alexa, has proved extremely popular. This may be because in the context of the home, voice command does seem a more pleasurable, relaxed and even sociable experience compared to tapping away on a device. Robots in the home still seem a long way off (unless you’re counting humble Henry the Hoover) but there are some exciting developments coming our way. Kuri ‘the robot butler’ is a voice-command-activated security camera and LG’s Hub bot can preheat an oven, turn on a vacuum, and control a lawnmower.
So what’s next on the agenda? Apparently laundry tech – Whirlpool is adding Alexa capability to their washers and Foldimate folds piles of clothes for busy consumers. People want to spend time with their loved ones rather faffing around with washing, so this seems like a natural step. Are we looking at a future where smart homes are as common as smart phones? There are still problems to be solved and smart technology is far from being welcomed into every home. We think too many companies want in on the action and the smart tech story has become muddled – we need one streamlined offer from one solid leader. The race is on.
Mainstream is cool: you heard it here first. Gone are the days of revelling in choice; people are bamboozled. Consumers are beginning to mistrust fad following brands and running back to old faithfuls. There’s comfort in our favourites and in this tumultuous time, people want to settle down and cosy up with what they can rely on.
The best example of this is craft beer. Independent micro-breweries were all the rage a few years ago and consumers would avoid your Carlsbergs, Foster’s and Becks like the plague. It’s the same as “I knew them before they were big” claims with indie bands; as soon as they’re famous, fans move on. At one point, big beer brands even tried distressed labels to seem more “authentic.” But as craft beer has boomed, it’s no longer hip to namedrop the obscure. Fast forward a few years and consumers have circled right back by coveting friendly brands they’ve known their whole lives – we call this “poptimism.” We’re now experiencing a serious backlash to craft beer in the media, but isn’t the whole definition of being cool being different? So shouldn’t contrary consumers be doing the opposite of what the media is preaching? The whole thing makes your head spin.
The same is happening with coffee. Those iced almond-macadamia milk lattes are just too much to fathom when you just need a good old-fashioned caffeine kick. When you’re trudging into the office on a Monday morning, the warm lights of chain coffee shops represent a home from home. They draw you in during sensitive moments like a moth to a flame. It’s times like these when consumers opt for cheap buckets of filter coffee over a brag-worthy flat white (even the Instagram likes aren’t worth it). Campaign explains that the media has nicknamed this movement “normcore.”
Just look at “clean eating,” which has shaken up the food industry over the past few years. Causing endless opinion pieces on spiralizers, now consumers are retreating back to cake and abandoning complicated courgette recipes. The rainbow plates of exotic fruit and vegetables may look better on Instagram than a greasy burger, but who can be bothered with that? Cutting out entire food groups is not only time-consuming but the effort is pretty damn stressful. VICE’s Munchies is leading ‘food porn’ media by quashing health food fads one dripping cheese toastie photo at a time. As soon as people, along with hoards of trained nutritionists, started to question the credibility of fancy food aficionados, the trend was dissected and is, thankfully, slowly dissolving. The biggest issue? The complicated recipes isolate a huge chunk of the population who can’t afford to shop at Whole Foods for bone broth, sumac, chia seeds and the like. On top of that, most of those behind the clean eating surge are white, attractive, thin women (more on that in our blog on diversity). But we digress, all this aside there is proof that consumers are going back to basics – just look at soaring supermarkets.
Time and time again, consumers get sucked in with fancy logos and ridiculous names, allured by something new, only to be disappointed in the product. In other words; the novelty and fleeting excitement does not justify the risk of losing out on what they really want deep down. What’s the lesson for brands? Think it through before jumping on the bandwagon as you could end up wasting piles of cash and crawling right back to where you started. You also risk losing loyal customers who always loved your original product in the first place. Don’t follow the trends for the sake of it, choice wisely and be 100% sure your market will understand and respond well to your new tricks. But trust us; there is really, really, wrong with sticking to what you know.
As schedules become more packed, real leisure time has become sparse and more precious than ever. Ironically, the rise of mobile means consumers may be more efficient in spending money, but the distractions are overwhelming, making downtime more frantic than it should be. How can brands help? By providing a product or service that enriches leisure time rather than diluting it.
How consumers spend their free time and their cash has changed since millennials came into the picture. As The Observer puts it: “It’s not cool to show off your logo or handbag. Now, the way you brag is flaunting your healthy lifestyle, so it’s a selfie at SoulCycle, a 10 dollar green juice or geotagging a hike.” We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again: it’s all about experiences.
Because of this, the fitness industry is booming; nowadays working out is considered a treat rather than a chore. The new influx of boutique gyms in big cities are catering to the needs of millennials who prefer a ‘pay-as-you-go’ system rather than committing to a membership. Consumers’ relationship with fitness is changing; they want bespoke classes, the best instructors in the business and the snazziest equipment out there. Each workout session has to be good enough for an Instagram post. According to Courier: “Eating healthy food, taking part in group fitness activity and choosing where to live based on whether young people can walk or cycle to work is now mainstream and seen as a marked shift from previous generations.” Health is a huge priority for millennials and if their precious leisure time is spent working out, it better be worth it.
What do consumers look to when they have a free minute? In the queue, before bed, during the ads – straight to their smartphones. As Campaign put it: “One of today’s great paradoxes is that mobile technology makes life more efficient and productive, yet it generates enough distraction so it seems there is less free time.” Brands need to capitalise on this by making sure their website is slick and mobile ready. Even the tourism industry has turned ‘mobile first’ as more consumers are not only shopping from their smartphone, but they’re booking holidays too. (Yes, this probably means late at night in bed). Every step of the customer journey in booking travel must guarantee connectivity to allow a good dollop of social bragging. According to Campaign: “Facebook reports the second most shared activity as being a ’travelled to’ event.”
As for hospitality, leisure time doesn’t necessarily mean eating out; now supermarket brands have made it acceptable to eat in. M&S does this well with their hugely popular £10 dine-in deal. The way people consume entertainment has changed too; the rise of Netflix means on-demand TV is the chosen format, rather than passively flicking through channels and therefore wasting valuable time.
What’s the best way to make dollar from downtime? Most importantly, make sure your content fits the consumers’ needs and desires. According to Campaign: “Millennials use cell phones for moments of relief, so brands should consider making their messaging short and snackable.” Whilst they’re scoring their social scrolling hit, if you can shave minutes off, they’ll love you for it. It’s also about timing; see how food brands capitalise on pre-lunch hunger pangs with mouthwatering recipes, whilst fitness brands bombard consumers with inspiring workout videos first thing.
In a world where we’re scrambling for more seconds, leisure time is an opportunity for brands to swoop in to act as help, not a hindrance. People are forever looking for ways to live, shop and work more efficiently, and now is a great time for brands to monopolise on the addiction to mobile whilst maintaining integrity through relevant content and a worthwhile product.
We all know what a high feels like. It’s euphoric. Exhilarating. You feel invincible and like nothing can touch you. So naturally, you kick your shoes off and relax, feet up on the table sipping on your pint while exuding a loud sigh of satisfaction every couple of minutes or so. You become comfortable. Get complacent. And as is the natural order of things, it all comes tumbling down. It’s the normal cycle of brands and their advertising campaigns, hitting budgets hard when sales are low and pushing to meet the end of month targets that are forever looming.
But get your feet off the table and get up, because the cycle has to end and it’s time brands started their advertising campaigns well before sales take a nose dive. The rush to lift sales often leads to misplaced marketing campaigns and ad flops, and if your sales are in trouble, you don’t have time for that. There is no good reason why brands, or any business, needs to wait until things get bad to kick off their advertising budgets. In fact, there’s loads of bloody good reasons why they shouldn’t, for example:
If modern advertising has taught us anything, it’s that consumers are savvy and they’ve cottoned on to marketing tactics. Not to mention, they hate being sold to and they’re longing for authenticity. Which means real. Which means honest. Which also means, not trying to shove a load of product at them in the hopes that you’ll shift it off the shelves before month end. Come on, we’re all better than that. Plus, they know what you’re doing and it just doesn’t fly anymore.
In a world of awards, every brand and agency are looking to push boundaries and do something different. In our noisy world it’s almost impossible to not stick your head above the parapet and if you hope to gain any kind of social clout, you had better start innovating. However, leaving it until things are bad doesn’t allow room for brave advertising campaigns and bold marketing. With executive backs up against the wall and bonuses (not to mention jobs) on the line, no one is comfortable or willing to push the envelope. When sales are high and business credit is strong, that’s exactly the time to experiment and test what your brand can really do.
We’re all looking to get more consumers into our shops, whether that be our physical stores or digital spaces, and so footfall is important. When the pressure is on, any footfall you get is a win, but if you’re pushing ad campaigns when things are good, brands have huge opportunities to create massive footfall into their shops. People essentially want to ride the wave when it’s high and that’s an opportunity for brands to capitalize on.
Things don’t have to be bad for brands to push out great marketing campaigns, and in our experience, when things are bad it never leads to the best work. Instead, time, resource and good customer feelings can be the ingredients for viral ad success, as opposed to hurried campaigns in a bid to get consumers through your door.
We’ve been talking about emotion selling products for so long now, that it’s almost become second nature to most brands. Create a story, tell the narrative, use emotion and create experinces for your consumers and eventually, they will buy. However, a recent report from Marketing Week highlights that in some instances brands have invested in customer experience and they’ve seen sales dip. It’s not paying off anymore. It got us thinking, is it just a temporary lull in sales, or are consumers cottoning on to the fact that brands are essentially trying to manipulate their emotions and they’re no longer buying? And if that is the case, do we give up on our emotional stories and hit them with the traditional hard sell?
A few weeks ago we wrote about the recent Trivago campaign and how it was as basic as you could get, but how it also was a phenomenal success, and now looking back we’re wondering if that was a premonition to the next trend to hit the advertising world. Maybe it is time to strip it all back, take away the bells and whistles and just tell people what the product is. McDonalds recently did this in their coffee advert, poking fun at the culture of customer experience and instead, delivered a great coffee without all the fuss. Using humour to insinuate that if the product is good enough, it will sell itself.
After much debate in the house of Live & Breathe, incidentally, over many cups of coffee, the prevailing thought was this; we can’t do without the emotion because we’ve gone too far down the garden path to turn back now. Even if we could, we don’t think we would. Whether we like it or not, and regardless of the dips in performance that inevitably will come, emotion is the foundation of everything we do. Even the McDonalds advert is using humour and peoples’ frustration with hipster culture to create a sell. There is a clear emotional pull, and emotion doesn’t mean weeping over the latest heartbreak advert. It’s often something that resonates within us to create a feeling of affinity with a brand. But a feeling is what it does indeed create.
If brands start churning out advertising campaigns that hark back to ye olde days of television when a gruff voice over hurriedly described the product in thirty seconds or less, the chances are that sales will plummet. Because advertising today isn’t about grabbing attention like it once was. If attention was all you had to get you’d be laughing all the way to the bank. Instead, we’re tasked with winning hearts and minds. Engaging consumers in ways we haven’t previously, as well as trying to get their attention in a world that is nosier than it has ever been. Describing a product just won’t cut it.
Emotion will. Some kind of shared feeling. A connection. A community that bands together in their frustrations. A sense of belonging and family. Something, that tells people you are not alone, we all feel like this, and we’re a brand that will help you feel better. That’s essentially what it all comes down to, and you can strip back your advertising and marketing strategies all you like, but you still need to covey those feelings if you hope to shift your product off the shelves.
Believe it or not, people are willing to pay for premium. But there’s no magic tricks or hypnotism involved to prise cash out of hands – it’s just down to basic marketing techniques. Snazzy logos, brand values and piggybacking are examples of how businesses crawl up the premium ladder, but there are simpler ways.
It may sound obvious, but a high price equals a premium product. The price tag is a quick way for customers to judge the quality without too much research. Before Starbucks swooped into the world of coffee, a cuppa joe would cost a quarter of their going price. How do Starbucks get away with it? Although their coffee is far from revolutionary, the higher price tag makes it appear a cut above the rest. Consumers love the brand, it’s globally recognisable and people are happy to pay more for the Starbucks experience. Each coffee shop’s interior is slick and the fancy Italian terms ‘grande’ and ‘venti’ attract the more culturally aware coffee lover.
Let’s be honest; people do judge books by their covers, and it’s the same with brands. A good logo is key, but through relentless repetition a brand should also be recognised for its colour palette, shape or even its concept. Some examples? Chanel, Veuve Clicquot, Mercedes… We know you’re picturing them right now.
Another strategy is to build the perception of a brand’s superiority to justify the high prices. Through product development and new technology, brands can beat competitors by demonstrating how they can provide something a little better. For cleaning products, this may mean developing a ‘three-in-one’ solution or a product scientifically proven to last longer than cheaper alternatives. Premium also means tapping into your audience and knowing what the word means to them. Nowadays, consumers are willing to pay more for organic produce or a brand that shouts about their eco-friendly credentials, or a business that supports a charity or the local economy. For some customers, aligning values is a unique type of luxury.
Too much choice can be overwhelming, so these days simplicity can also mean luxury. New research revealed 62% of consumers will pay more for a simple experience. Supermarket brand Aldi offers a simple shopping experience without presenting complicated promotions. This means customers don’t have to dilly dally by choosing between seven different types of butter. The idea is that customers can finish their weekly shop in under 30 minutes. Time is a luxury and Aldi understands this – they have empathy for the customer and they want to make life easier.
Brand partnerships are also a fantastic way to reinforce a premium label. When Singapore Airlines commissioned BMW to redesign their cabins they immediately became associated with the staple luxury brand. This way, Singapore Airlines capitalised on their partner’s already solid reputation.
Unlike mass brands, premium brands are more interested in honing in on a specific group through focused marketing. This reinforces the idea that the customer belongs to an elite group and the brand becomes a status symbol. A good example of this Ferrari who rarely take out huge advertising campaigns, but they sponsor the Grand Prix instead, targeting a select few.
All in all, through marketing initiatives, a premium brand should constantly remind the consumer of their original promise when they signed up in the first place, whether that’s ease, quality, prestige or a memorable experience.