Sub-Saharan Africa’s prospects improved in 2017 as global financial conditions were more favourable, commodity prices rallied and inflation slowed helping revitalize demand. While conditions will remain tough, balancing the now and the next will lead to bigger gains. The 6th Nielsen AFRICA PROSPECTS REPORT highlights shifting country priorities and sources of growth, with multi-dimensional, comparative, integrated indicators.
The majority of global consumers are exposed to both multinational and local brands. That begs the question: Just how much does the “Made In” moniker influence purchasing behavior?
Marketers need to think more strategically beyond cheap tricks, making things pink, or adding female icons to labels to reach women.
The only metric that never changes is sales, which begs the question: Will we eventually see an industrywide guarantee on sales?
Given today’s competitive landscape, brands that leverage proven go-to-market strategies will likely be more successful than those that simply move forward without careful thought and preparation.
More than any other consumer industry, beauty and personal care are driven by trends. New trending ingredients, formulations, colors and brands come around every season. Walk into your average retail store and you’ll see this reflected on shelves.
Five years ago, mainstream alcohol segments drove the majority of the alcohol sales growth in New Zealand. More recently, niche products have emerged, and Kiwis are increasingly opting for more premium and unique beverage offerings.
Compared with the everyday consumer products we buy frequently, like paper towels and boxed cereal, durables have a much longer shelf life. Items like electric razors, coffee makers and irons fall into this category, and they play key roles in the everyday lives of consumers—yet in much different ways than fast-moving consumer goods do.
What do dental chews for pets, adult incontinence undergarments and sweetened light beer have in common? On the surface, absolutely nothing. A closer look, however, reveals that each solved a specific "job to be done."
The esports industry is growing quickly, with new leagues, teams and distribution channels. And this growth is attracting new high-profile esports investment from brands, media organizations and traditional sports rightsholders.
Bringing attention to the importance of assortment is easy. It’s getting it right that is highly challenging. Here are the top six hurdles companies face in building an optimal assortment.
The “input button,” an often misunderstood piece of remote control real estate, unlocks a wide range of content for consumers with an array of devices, and it’s no longer invisible to audience measurement.
The world is changing. Fast. The way we work. The way we travel. The way we watch videos and shows. The way we simply interact with each other. And because the pace of change is happening so incredibly fast, it can be hard to understand what, and just how much, change has happened over a week, month or year.
As marketers seek greater accountability in today’s increasingly omnichannel shopper landscape, demand for outcome-based ROI measurement has become more important than ever across the media, retail and FMCG industries.
When identifying how valuable sponsorships and brand activation can be in esports, it’s worth exploring the issue from the perspectives of the many stakeholders involved: leagues, franchisees and teams.
Neuroscience shows us that, when used correctly, music can put viewers and listeners in a more positive mood, leading to a greater reliance on intuition and a reduction in both critical thought and focus on detail.
Saying that driverless cars will have a huge impact on the automotive industry in the next decade is a truism. Saying that driverless cars could also have an equal impact on retail, however, is not.
We’ve been talking about health and wellness for years. There are two critical forces at play that are shifting this topic from niche to mainstream: increasingly complex needs and massive digital engagement.
How can manufacturers and retailers win on price in a changing FMCG industry? Here are five opportunities to help drive profitability despite today’s challenging marketplace.
This year, a range of ad execs have said digital advertising is broken and in need of repair. While they’re right to insist for better performance, their focus has been on surface issues related to the ad experience, while a larger problem lies beneath.
We’ve gotten used to emphasizing the divide between digital and physical, but it’s quickly disappearing: when digital data about the physical world is comprehensive, real-time and freely available, the physical and digital augment each other.
When testing innovations, it’s risky to ask consumers to compare a new concept against an actual product that they currently purchase. This unbalances the entire evaluation by setting up an unfair comparison.
Creative is the thing that drives what we engage with, share, talk about, debate, remember and buy. Creative has great power, regardless of where, when and how it runs.
Beyond in-store clinics and the traditional health care aisle of the store, a handful of departments should be top of mind for drug store retailers where more multicultural dollars are spent in comparison to non-Hispanic whites.
Africa’s vast potential is the stuff of investors’ dreams, but capitalizing on that opportunity is less about identifying or quantifying prospects and more about execution stemming from knowledge, insights and data to enable on-the-ground success.
For a long time, no one outside IT showed much interest in APIs, but MIT research shows that the most successful digital companies make above-average investments in APIs; these companies know that APIs are fundamental to their strategic success. Why do they think that?
With the advancements in big data, advertisers know more about consumers than ever before. And yet, they’re still challenged with how to drive the greatest return for their marketing budgets. And we all know what happens when executives don’t see the ROI they’re expecting—they cut budgets.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last couple of years, you’re seeing the FMCG industry transform right in front of our eyes. That’s scary, but equally exciting. So here are three things big FMCG marketers need to do to win as the industry evolves.
Has the traditional planning process become obsolete? Many signs within the industry point to “yes.” So in order to succeed today, companies need to move to a new form of adaptive planning that is responsive to continuous market change.
Your kid tore his favorite pair of jeans and you need to know if your local store will be open after work so you can pick up a replacement pair. If only you had a personal shopper who could find out what time the store closes.
FMCG success today is now dependent on quality product images, solid SEO and prominent placement on e-tailer websites—far more so than simply having an abundant quantity or variety on the shelf at the local store.
While unexpected by many, the Amazon-Whole Foods linkage highlights just how profoundly consumer expectations are changing with regard to food and beverage shopping—and will continue to do so moving forward.
Unbeknownst to most consumers, tremendous thought goes into developing even the most commonplace products. As a result, product development in the FMCG industry is anything but fast-moving. But what if algorithms could help streamline the process and the outcomes?
Global sports are thriving, but media consumption is changing before our eyes. And as the media world grapples with these issues, so too must the sports industry. But these challenges aren’t the only obstacles facing the sports realm.
Measuring an ad’s ability to communicate trust is a tricky business: perceptions of trust can be non-conscious, formed almost immediately and biased by subtle factors. Given these nuances, explicit research methods aren’t sufficient.
As retailers ramp up their health and wellness offerings, and the lines between channels blurs, it’s interesting to think about the role that drug stores will play in an increasingly crowded, wellness-oriented marketplace.
It’s no surprise that more and more items are being outfitted with built-in connectivity. Consumers’ adoption of internet-enabled devices isn’t a given, however, and it’s worth exploring why acceptance has been so fragmented across categories—as well as what the industry can do to accelerate usage.
Different consumer needs demand varied experiences. Enter precision marketing. The good news for marketers is that the fundamentals (and tools) remain the same across industries.
How many things can you say for certain that you're paying attention to, or even seeing, at any given moment? Our brains just aren’t good at recalling the kinds of details marketers need to evaluate their efforts in a complex world. That’s where the right neuroscience tools can help.
Companies striving for “leaner, bigger, better” innovations require realistic marketing inputs and an accurate forecast to identify their most promising initiatives. Proving that “consumers love it” without a realistic volumetric assessment simply isn’t enough.
Unconstrained by physical walls, e-commerce retailers offer a huge inventory of products in endless aisles. Unfortunately, our physical world product coding processes can’t scale to e-commerce: they’re too costly and too slow.
Without data integration, the only thing cool technology can do is stare helplessly at a pile of bricks it can’t assemble into anything useful.
In the coming decades, machine learning will transform work as we know it. And unlike previous revolutions, which primarily affected blue-collar workers, the smart machine revolution has white-collar workers in its sights.
Most new product launches are “small” or “sustaining” innovations, which include the many, many brand extensions that large companies launch year after year. These launches are absolutely essential for growing existing brands and defending shelf space.
A social responsibility strategy isn’t the only way to manage corporate reputation, but it is increasingly becoming a critical piece of the puzzle.
Most of the customer data companies gather about innovation is structured to show correlations rather than causations. Yet after decades of watching great companies do poorly at innovation, we’ve come to the conclusion that the focus on correlation is taking firms in the wrong direction.
We’ve become so accustomed to our fast-paced lifestyles that it’s even crept its way into how we consume food. This is especially the case when you look at breakfast. So what does the future of the most important meal of the day look like?
Brands armed with new products have always rushed to be first to market, as first movers often establish a stronghold that can be difficult for later entrants to break into. But being “first mover” at the expense of being “best mover” can often lead brands to competitive disadvantage.
Growing a brand isn’t easy, especially for those in in crowded categories. But even the most established categories change over time, and even categories that appear stable may be one critical innovation away from awarding one brand a significant long-term advantage.
For many companies, cost reduction efforts become an endless downward spiral. As soon as one cost reduction program is completed, it’s followed by another. It’s a dangerous cycle, but it’s one we know how to break.
Today, the enterprise needs a big data warehouse that combines on-premise and in-the-cloud datasets into a comprehensive view of its business and the environment in which it operates.
Today, the enterprise needs a big data warehouse that combines on-premise and in-the-cloud datasets into a comprehensive view of its business and the environment in which it operates.
Marketers often think of “earned” media as asymmetric marketing opportunities—they’re cheap and fast, which make them quite easy for smaller brands to exploit. But the power of earned media as an asymmetric strategy is more appearance than reality.
Mature brands will find themselves in a broader range of situations than new ones. When it becomes clear that your established brand needs investment to grow your circle of buyers, how do you know which path will work best for you?
How did business intelligence break free of its centralized command-and-control heritage to meet the challenge of the agile, democratic, digital world?
Typically, small teams build concepts, get qualitative or quantitative feedback, refine concepts, collect another round of feedback, and so on, until they arrive at a “winning” concept. This technique works well, but it suffers from one major drawback: It often produces ideas that are good enough but not the best.
The contemporary version of the low-price strategy is the “everyday low price” strategy, popularized by Walmart. But which products is an EDLP strategy ideally suited to?
Multinationals should not turn their backs on emerging market consumers. Some rebalancing toward developed markets makes sense in the near term as their relative strength improves, but it must not come entirely at the expense of investment in emerging markets.
CPG companies are looking for growth. But high growth in developing markets is no longer making up for slow growth in developed markets. In such an environment, it’s tempting to consider raising prices. But should you?
In a recent survey, Nielsen asked corporate leaders and the general public to describe the current state of corporate social responsibility. The gap in perceptions between the two groups is striking. So what’s driving the gap?
Unless you provide quality product information, you’re not going to reap the benefit of the vast amounts of money you spend on physical and virtual purchase points.
The convenience offering in Asia is more relevant now than ever. But convenience stores of the future will be more than a place to pick up a beverage or quick meal. Convenience will become a way of life, and the convenience store will be a physical delivery point for an array of needs driven by the click of a mouse.
In 1990, 57% of Southeast Asia was in poverty and access to daily necessities one could afford was not to be taken for granted. Today, so much has changed that a new niche at the high end of the affordability spectrum has emerged to fan the aspirations of consumers – premiumization.
Many FMCG sales teams in emerging markets are lacking in knowledge about the traditional trade landscape. And if you don’t know the where, what and how of your market, how likely is your strategy to be successful?
Wall Street is concerned that increasing numbers of cable subscribers are cord-cutting and investors are worried that media companies aren’t earning enough from SVOD platforms to compensate. So do the worries have merit?
Digital is gaining momentum, which has many clients asking: Should I move to an all-digital plan? “All digital” is a bold move for any marketer, with multiple factors to consider. But before you take the plunge, answer these 10 key questions.
The slowing pace of Chinese economic growth underscores the country’s need to transition from an investment- and export-led growth model to one powered by consumption. But how long will that transition take? The answer is crucial to companies looking to ride what will eventually be the next extraordinary surge in consumer spending in China.
In about four months, we’ll have officially made it to "the future"—at least according to the time-stamp on Doc Brown's DeLorean in the "Back to the Future" movie series. So now that we’re there, what will 2020 look like?
Dr. Robert Heath is a professor at the University of Bath and a pioneer in establishing the value of emotion in advertising. We recently talked to him about emotional resonance, its importance and how it can be used in improving the effectiveness of advertising.
By mid-century, the U.S. will be a “majority minority” nation. By 2060, fewer than five in 10 will be white non-Hispanic. This level of demographic change represents a remarkable challenge for retail real estate investors, developers, advisers and retailers. It’s also a remarkable opportunity.
Spend more than a few minutes in a conversation with someone in the CPG industry and you’ll almost inevitably find yourself discussing the spiraling cost of trade promotion. In Europe, decent returns on trade promotion spend are increasingly hard to generate. So how can we turn things around?
Advertisers try to make their ads hit home with audiences as much as possible—but there's room for improvement. Investing a little more heavily in determining how much ads resonate and working to improve campaigns accordingly have the potential to dramatically improve overall advertising effectiveness.
Any multinational looking for solid growth should be taking a hard look at India. In 2015, India’s economy will grow faster than China’s for the first time in 16 years. In fact, the IMF forecasts India’s GDP growth to expand by 7.5% this year and next.
As China began its meteoric rise, multinational companies from Europe and America established beachheads in the country, and did very well bringing Western products to the East.
Advertising, although inherently a creative process, offers many opportunities for greater efficiency. Advertising Process Control highlights the many non-creative areas that advertisers, publishers and agencies could and should work to control better to consistently improve their performance across advertising campaigns.
Advertising Process Control is an advanced state to achieve. Before you can start managing your advertising production process, you need to accurately assess where your organization is on the Advertising Process Control continuum.
Reliable genius is what you really want from your advertising. Why aren't you getting it? Probably because you don't take your advertising production process as seriously as you take many of the other processes in your company.
Digital audience measurement is getting better: measurers are on the lookout for “fraudulent” views, are working to include only “viewable” impressions, and are measuring what percentage of people reached by a campaign actually belong to the group the advertiser was paying for. So what’s next?
We’ve just completed a year of transformation in the retail industry, and looking at 2015, it looks like change will remain constant. But change brings opportunity, even within the familiar. Where to begin? Look to the shelf.
The Baby Boomer generation continues to play a major role in the housing market, as well as the U.S. economy more generally. Older households are less likely to move and purchase homes, but their sheer size and relative wealth means this generation will account for $1 out every $4 spent on new home purchases or rent in the next five years.
If you want to understand the fundamental economic changes happening in Southeast Asia, a good place to start is Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon, on the shores of the Yangon River.
For over 50 years, there was only a single "app" for TV viewers. The sole function of that app—the cable or satellite company—was to stream premium video content. The facts of yesterday’s TV viewing no longer hold. There are now many TV viewing apps available. Enter "the appification of TV."
All established companies must address a key challenge: How to find the next disruptive innovation while reacting to the disruptive innovations of others. To use the language of this year's TIBCO conference, how can one “ride the disruption wave”? Mitch Barns explores three things he's found that can play a big role.
The problem with brand value is simple: no one agrees on it. The GE brand value, for example, in 2011, was variously estimated to be worth $30.5B, $42.8B, and $50.3B by different valuation services. So if valuations vary so wildly, how can CMOs and CFOs begin to understand the value they deliver with their marketing spending?
The ad industry has always been consumed with the latest trends. This should be no surprise, given that marketers and their agencies spend the better part of their days trying to create them. But nothing in advertising has generated more buzz in recent months than programmatic buying. Buying ad inventory more efficiently by applying rules to technology-enabled, automated purchases has marketers salivating.
U.S. grocers need to gear up for the opportunity online.
Marketing works best when it’s not trying to sell. But if you can’t talk about what you have to sell, but a sale is what you want, what exactly do you talk about with clients and potential clients?
Successful companies in the private sector have gained deep insight into consumer psychology and individual and collective decision-making. Public policy leaders and program managers can make use of these insights to improve significantly the likelihood of success in achieving their policy goals.
No one knows whether “singularity” will arrive when computer intelligence overtakes that of humans. Will it happen in advertising, at least?
