Ged Carroll

Category: fmcg | 雜貨業務 | 소비재 | 食料品事業

FMCG or fast moving consumer goods sprang out of the mass industrialisation. Brands sprang up originally as a guarantee of quality. Later on as these brands needed to be promoted, we saw the foundation of the what we think of as modern marketing and advertising.

Today media and entertainment takes up an increasing amount of the household spend, as does housing, but FMCGs are a crucial part of their essential and disposable income spend.

They have nostalgia wrapped up in them, distinctive aromas, taste and packaging designs. From the smell of my Granny using so much Pledge on the TV that I was surprised it didn’t burst into flame to the taste of Cidona and texture of Boland’s Fig Roll biscuits in my mouth.

The sound of their advertising jingles was the soundtrack of my childhood. Digital advertising is largely rationale, it lacks the fluent devices that provide the centre to advertising and made FMCG advertising iconic. Fluent devices like the Peperami ‘Animal’, the M&M characters or the Cadbury Smash robots were embedded in deep marketing research. FMCG brands still sponsor the best research in marketing science.

I had the good fortune to work inhouse at Unilever and agency-side for their brands. I also managed to work on Coca-Cola and Colgate during my time in Hong Kong.

  • Hasan Minhaj and other things that caught my attention this week

    Supreme by Hasan Minhaj. I hadn’t watched much of Patriot Act mainly because there is more content that grabs my attention on Netflix. This clip is a great dive into hype culture by Hasan Minhaj – often the best humour is that with uncomfortable truths in it.

    Amazon playbook on Amazon Vine. Gartner L2 made this useful clip on the effective use of Amazon’s Vine programme.

    Key take-outs (my observations in italics):

    • Amazon don’t allow vendors any editorial controls over reviews and look to keep them honest and authentic
    • Vine seems to be really good in the process of accelerating product launches for vendors
    • Use Vine BEFORE Amazon’s sponsored products and sponsored brands advertising function; by the sounds of it pretty similar to the way you’d have previously used PR in a product launch marketing campaign
    • L2 recommends ensuring the efficacy of the product; but Vine COULD be used as the last gate in the innovation process before you go gangbusters. Lots of negative reviews could still save you on a massive production run and huge advertising spend

    Sophie Cope (Electronic Frontier Foundation) on digital privacy and the surveillance state. Great video on the World Affairs channel – interesting how this has become such a big issue amongst ‘wonkish’ audiences. More privacy related content here.

    Lynx (Axe for non UK audiences) have latched on to the ASMR meme that has been popular for a couple of years. It feels weird to watch, I am not sure what the strategic insight(s) were for this work beyond the fact that beards are sticking around for a good while yet.

    https://youtu.be/x9T7BJ-jf6o

    The last thing is the positive experience I had with American Express this week when I lost my card. I spoke to a real person on a decent phone line who quickly canceled my old card sent me out a new one that arrived in 48 hours.

  • Brexit approaches + more things

    Sky, Unilever and McDonald’s slash UK ad spend as Brexit approaches | The Drum – not terribly surprising. I would expect other changes as Brexit approaches. Changes in warehousing or even moving teams offshore. From a marketing perspective there is a compelling argument for a counter-cyclical strategy, which is how Proctor and Gamble built their brand in the US during the great depression via sponsored radio plays and serials which gave us the ‘soap opera’. The theory would go something like this. As Brexit approaches, media spend declines. Which means for flat or increasing spend your share of voice increases. Market share growth is directly related to share of voice.

    China’s lunar new year spending growth slowest since 2005 | Financial Times – That was an increase of 8.5 per cent from last year, a sharp drop from 2018’s year-on-year growth of 10.2 per cent and the slowest rate of growth since such data were first tracked, in 2005. – interesting numbers. China is seeing weakening capital investment due to recent interest rises, paired with declining consumer sentiment and consumer spending growth. It impacts global economic indicators and also the Communist Party of China plan for a ‘dual circulation’ economy. (paywall) More related posts here.

    Opinion | China’s Online Censorship Stifles Trade, Too – The New York Times – I only agree to a point on this, China’s services, in particular Baidu who went to head-to-head with Google won out in China. This was as much down to Google’s lack of preparedness to invest in search indexing that would grow at the same rate as the Chinese net. Censorship then provided them an excuse to get out of China. Amazon China is still way behind JD.com and Alibaba and its market share has been going down for years. That doesn’t mean that these services shouldn’t be blocked in international expansion as part of the trade dispute, but also don’t discount US hubris so lightly

  • Aston Martin classics + more things

    Aston Martin Will Make Old Cars Electric So They Don’t Get Banned From Cities – Slashdot – surprised more companies like Porsche aren’t doing this. This upgrade process reminded me of the service that Bristol Cars have provided for years. Like Aston Martin has planned, Bristol Cars has steadily upgraded cars with better brakes, handling, electronic fuel injection and more emissions friendly engines. Their purchase by Fraser Nash is now looking at an Aston Martin like electric upgrade service. More luxury related content here.

    Exclusive: Amazon’s Alexa begins crowdsourcing answers to common quest – reminds me of the original thinking behind Yahoo! Knowledge Search (what begat Yahoo! Answers) when I first heard Jeff Weiner articulate it

    Mark Ritson: The story of digital media disruption has run its course – Marketing Week – It’s hard to get emotional or feel any of the romance of news media from a home page, but the paper edition carries with it the great cultural power of journalism. Print editions will become the ‘couture’ offering of the news brands – loss-making but important assets for building and retaining authority and influence over the market

    WSJ City | Britain’s stock link to China falls flat – many larger foreign institutions can already access mainland-listed Chinese stocks via trading accounts in Hong Kong. – Not terribly surprising. The big problem is how much hope had been pinned on it from a Brexit point of view

    Unilever’s rules for influencer marketing | WARC – that its influencer efforts focus not just on a product, but on attempts to covey a brand’s purpose – as shown by Dove, the personal care line, focusing on “real beauty”. “We are using influencer marketing for Dove across the whole spectrum. In some cases, we use influencers to talk about the features and benefits of the products,” Di Como said. “But, more and more, we are using them to talk about the idea to buy into – to talk about the brand value, of why the brand exists, and the purpose of the brand.” “There is an obsession that the only KPIs out there are ‘reach’ or ‘number of followers’,” said Di Como. “We need to talk about what the real impact is on brand equity – the real impact on the values of the brand.” – which is interesting as I heard that there were efforts to move away from brand tracking surveys and instead interpolate the equivalent data from social listening

    Apple Offers New iPhone Promo Deals, Trade-Ins to Boost Sales – Bloomberg – I think the market in general for smartphones is over-baked

    Bose Global Press Room – Bose Announces Frames — A Revolutionary New Wearable – this looks interesting, if they get it to work and you have enough connectivity to the cloud

    46 insurgent brands shake up China’s FMCG market – Kantar – the redefinition of consumers, merchandise and stores known collectively as“New Retail.” China’s consumers have growing expectations for tailored and specific offerings, which creates many niche opportunities for insurgent brands to capture. The traditional scale advantages of incumbents, such as large sales forces and large retail shelf space, have in some ways turned into disadvantages by digital disruption. For example, the e-commerce channel can reach millions of consumers without a single sales rep, and online platform advertising can reach millions of consumers with much lower budgets than traditional brands typically spend

    Volvo & Ericsson – Scroogled? – Radio Free Mobile – interesting article looking at Google’s move into automotive systems

  • 2018 Chinese consumers insights + more

    Who is winning more 2018 Chinese Consumers? – Global site – Kantar Worldpanel – top line is that western FMCG brands are growing 2018 China consumers market share at a slower rate than their local competitors. Any of them that banging on about 2018 Chinese consumers as a strategic market long term have another think coming. Expect these Chinese brands to go after emerging markets in Southeast Asia and Africa later on. More on consumer behaviour here.

    Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the Collapse of the Tech Mythology – The Atlantic – opportunity for public affairs and public relations industries

    Chart: Is TV’s Reign Nearing Its End? | Statista – the conclusion on this is a bit off base. What is TV? Is it the TV set, is it broadcast infrastructure or is it passive content consumption. IPTV is an extension of TV rather than something new. Is there really that much difference between Amazon Prime and cable TV or nowTV. Is Netflix that much different to HBO? Broadcast networks (terrestrial and satellite) cover more of the population in most western countries than mobile networks, or wired broadband. The technology moves a lot slower which makes have a TV that will last a decade or more an attractive proposition. By comparison my parents have an iPad that is six years old and Apple no longer supports

    Cognitive Training Does Not Enhance General Cognition: Trends in Cognitive Sciences – bang goes a parents excuse for more gaming

    Two great articles on the Dolce & Gabbana Chinese adverts and how it all blew up

    LinkedIn cuts off email address exports with new privacy setting | TechCrunch – interesting move. Especially given that LinkedIn had complained about Facebook doing a similar tactic. Web 2.0 data portability is dead and buried according to LinkedIn. The fit with Microsoft becomes apparent.

  • Japan as a power in aerospace + more

    Quietly, Japan as a power in aerospace industry | Ars Technica – really interesting analysis of Japan as a power aerospace sector. What people don’t realise is that Japan supplies key components to Boeing. It also has a set of indigenous plane designs to solve problems like being able to land on water or long range marine patrol. In addition, Japan as a power in aerospace also includes outer space; creating both rockets and payloads for the Japanese space agency

    ‘No Morals’: Advertisers React to Facebook Report – The New York Times – “Now we know Facebook will do whatever it takes to make money. They have absolutely no morals.”  Surprised that advertising execs are going hard on Facebook

    Asda beats Waitrose and Harrods in Which? mince pie taste test | Business | The Guardian – Having done a student job at Cereal Partners I realise how arbitrary taste tests can be. With many products, the same manufacturer might be making the same product for a number of different retailers, with only the boxes changing. It caused some amusement reading the taste test on cereal that was exactly the same, except for the box.

    However the most interesting part of the article was the sub headline: Supermarket tops consumer group’s chart but general standards drop due to rising cost of ingredients. More related content here.

    Inside the hype and reality of Alexa, Siri and the voice assistant ‘revolution’ – Recode – “Smart speaker listeners are much more passive,” she added. “People with voice interfaces tend to accept what’s given to them.”

    The seven deadly paradoxes of cryptocurrency | Bank Underground – great write-up that everyone should read

    A contest wants to build an environmentally friendly air conditioner — Quartz – people generally choose their air conditioners based on price, there is little innovation in the market for a more- efficient AC. There is a need to re-engineer the incentives as well as the technology