Building your brand - Is now the time for brands to put their trust back in the consumer? Wednesday 9th September

Focussing on the promotional band wagon.
As highlighted in The Grocer on the 22nd August the total number of promotions was up 5.1% month on month and 14.7% year on year (Assosia 4w /e21 August 2009). Whilst the overall average discount fell from 34.3% in July to 31.8% there still appears to be a trend of pushing brands and sales through promotions.

It would seem from these figures that brands are still focussing on following the promotional band wagon and one can assume that this is often via price promotions; but (dependent on the brand) are they selling their brands short and should they not be highlighting to consumers the overall value of their brand?

Whilst promotional awareness based around price will lead to short term growth and boosts in sales it will not lead to a long term relationship with the consumer where they see the brand in its true light.

Price points & brand loyalty
As highlighted in Jo Roberts’s article on 13th August 2009 in Marketing Week entitled ‘Marketing in a Recession’, there is a need for brands to focus on the values customers trust. Over time simply focussing on price orientated promotions will lead to customers disassociating themselves from the true brand values of a product.

Apart from consumer’s emotional attachment to a brand Gary Kemplay, UK head of segmentation and positioning at TNS has highlighted that the price point of a brand can be key in how consumers react to the marketing of a brand. It is those products with a premium price point which are most important to consumers. (30% of respondents are strongly attached to upmarket brands, compared with 18% to low-cost brands.)

Therefore, any premium brands who have in the past 12 months re-focused their proposition by selling themselves around price led promotional activities rather than core values may be causing long term detrimental value on the brand. Of course, for those products with a low price point there is real value in ensuring that, especially during times of recession, ‘lower prices and value’ are communicated to customers.

Brand relationships have been proved to be especially strong amongst the FMCG food and drink products; 39% of those sampled by TNS are strongly attached to brands in this sector compared to just 16% who are strongly attached to financial brands.

However, remember consumers can still be ambivalent towards brands. Whilst the public may have been dismayed by the demise of Woolworths how many of us actually frequented the store for anything other than the occasional pick & mix. This is once again backed by TNS data where 36% mentioned that if some brands don’t survive ‘that’s just life’ although 33% would be disappointed if their favourite brands didn’t survive a recession.

Focussing on core values
Therefore brands need to focus on their core values rather than quick wins via promotional price activities and this means that identifying and nurturing these values is key.

Whatever the brands key strengths, whether it is quality, health attributes or green credentials or even value it is important to develop a brand on these core values and reposition it accordingly over time.

To develop your brand without falling for price promotions, here at The Oxford Research Agency we use our OxyGen Promotional Optimisation techniques. Using qualitative in-store research and conjoint promotional execution analysis, we build market models which identify the best strategy for your brand, building in competitor and retailer reaction.

For NPD, Packaging and Shopper research expertise to ensure your brand maintains its position within the market, contact Chris Sinclair (chris.sinclair@tora.co.uk) or Andrew Tharme (andrew.tharme@tora.co.uk) or call +44 (0)1865 728272 at The Oxford Research Agency.