» Bob Pearson - Vice President of communities and conversations for Dell (#2)
» Tim Mapes - Senior Vice President of Marketing at Delta Air Lines
» Barbara Basney - Director of global advertising for Xerox
» Bob Pearson - Vice President of communities and conversations for Dell (#1)
» Jason Dowdell - Founder of MarketingShift
» Ed Faruolo - Vice President of Brand Development and Advertising at Lincoln Financial Group
» Roy Bostock - Chairman of the Board of Yahoo, Inc.
» Gary Briggs - former SVP, Chief Marketing Officer, eBay North America
One of the greatest challenges for any brand organization is learning how consumers really feel about the products or services about to be put into market. I mean really feel. Sure, you can hold focus groups. You can poll people on the streets or in shopping aisles. Some companies even send marketing folks out to peoples’ homes to watch them load dishwashers, do laundry, or color their hair. But no matter how much insight you think you’re getting from these initiatives, chances are that even in the most carefully constructed scenarios, consumers will tell you what they think you want to hear or what their purchase intentions are. One of the greatest advantages to marketing in the digital age is that marketers can observe what people actually do. Digital tools and technology have magnified consumer thoughts and their actions. We can see what people search for, the products they compare, the questions they ask and, in many cases, what they end up buying. We have access to online product review boards on which people speak their mind without hesitation. We can see the brands people love posted on the walls of their MySpace or Facebook pages. As marketers, we have real-time access to dialogs between consumer and consumer and consumer and organization. Smart marketers use the data they glean from digital conversations and observations to make both their products and the entirety of the brand experience better and more relevant to customer needs. The digital world makes it easier to respond to what consumers really want.
This subject was among the first that came up during a great conversation I had with Bob Greenberg, Vice President of Corporate Brand Marketing for Panasonic, North America, while doing research for my book, BrandDigital. Panasonic, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics company, has been at the forefront of using digital technology to more fully understand consumer needs, and to respond to their needs and wishes, for the past few years. I began my conversation with Bob by asking him how Panasonic uses digital applications in its research and product development.
RG: The objective of all of our initiatives is to get engaged with our core users. One of the most interesting initiatives we’ve undertaken has been a campaign titled “Living in High Definition.” It launched with a contest where 100 families could win all of the Panasonic high-definition products (around $20,000 worth!) including plasma televisions, HD camcorders, digital cameras, Photo Printers, Blu-Ray players, six channel Surround Sound Home Theater systems, Toughbook laptop computers, IP cameras and Wii games. While the contest was a way to get consumers’ attention, the primary goal of the program was to engage consumers in a conversation about how they use high-definition products, to get their feedback and input on how it changes their lives, which would subsequently enable Panasonic to deliver a better brand experience. In order to get the broadest array of commentary, we’re giving 100 families high-def products to use and assess.
AA: Your goal was to get your product into peoples’ hands so they could experience it and explain what they liked or didn’t like about it in real consumer terms.
RG: Exactly. We wanted to experience their reactions to watching an HD Blu-Ray movie on our 58” Plasma screen, whether the surround sound system worked the way they expected, how easy or difficult it was for them to operate the camcorder or the digital camera or the printer. We designed the program in such a way that we were able to get spontaneous reactions. The online applications we developed, enables our participants to tell stories from their perspective. It’s far more effective for us as a research tool, and as product awareness tool, than just imposing content on consumers via traditional means. We explain something all day long, but it’s by actually using something and experiencing it that people will get what Living in High Definition really does for them.
AA: The marketing people I spoke to who used similar tactics told me that the feedback is shared with key decision makers across the entire organization. It’s a huge paradigm shift for product manufacturers.
RG: It is and it makes all the sense in the world to approach the market this way. This type of research tool opens doors across a company. And, since we’re now re-launching Living in HD as a Community site, it will engage millions of consumers who are looking for answers about the HD experience from people like themselves who are already living with all these products. That’s where the big payoff is for the consumer. Living in HD is allowing Panasonic to become more relevant as a brand because everyone in the organization - engineers and developers, the marketing and sales people, the customer support people - can see and hear what those people using our products are actually experiencing. It allows us to better understand the customer experience, the objective, obviously, to build a better Panasonic experience.
AA: I would also assume that these consumer engagement research initiatives make it easier to decide how to spend your marketing, if not development, dollars.
RG: Yes. It’s teaching us how to speak “Consumer”. And it sensitizes everyone, from R & D to manufacturing and distribution to sales and marketing. The fact is there are lots of choices and choice never simplifies, but it does cause you to rethink how you connect with the customer. There’s no one formula.
AA: Being so entrenched in the digital world, where you think we’re going next in terms of customer experience?
RG: Consumers will continue to have more content choices. This content will become easier to access, more convenient and more customized. You’re going to see a merging of desktop and TV, resulting in more screen-related group activities. We’re positioning Panasonic to be about quality family time, making the sharing of family photos, family-oriented programming, entertaining YouTube and other online video content, Nintendo, sporting events, and especially their own “consumer-generated content” more accessible and more customer-friendly. Our goal is to get the family away from their individual screens, to get them involved and engaged with each other.