EXPERIENCE in 2018... Our Focus With Brand Leadership

Welcome to 2018!

The last Blog post was all about five of the 2018 TRENDCAST Trends. This Blog is about how EXPERIENCE will embrace and seek out 2018 opportunity... 

#1 – We will focus more on mid-size brands and their leadership teams. 

In 2017, we saw more large brands merge with their historic competitors to form large behemoth corporations. 

Brands that own retail space.  Large holding companies absorbing fast food brands.  Media companies gobbling up like media or other media firms.  Retailers continuing to merge together and become one comprehensive brand. 

Brand differentiation gets kissed good-bye.  More C-level direction and control shifts over to the financial MBAs. 

A small share of C-level leadership – and it’s a very small share – understand that the brands merging together are not only at the height of market maturity, but even on the downward spiral of declining growth. 

TLC has a show called the “My 600-lb. Life.” These merged corporate behemoths could be showcased in that series.

I have highlighted the non-sense that leadership resorts to within these merged mega-brands. 

There’s a pizza mega-giant whose whole business is about home delivery that is running a $60 million+ television campaign about how they have torn down the old store fronts and built new ones. 

There’s merged television networks that have elected to cross-share programming between their networks.  Does the programming fit under the unique network brand equity?  What’s brand equity the MBA CFO asks, “we are saving production costs by extending the reach of the programming.”

There’s fast food restaurants combining menus and others that are splitting the store fronts into half one restaurant and half another.

There’s hotels and resorts that have one logo on the outdoor signage and another brand logo on the room décor and a third logo on the complimentary breakfasts and desserts.

When I went Christmas shopping this year, I was struck by how the same clothing lines are in many of the different stores until it finally hit me that the brand name on the store fronts are all owned by the same corporate holding company.

Over the course of the last five years, EXPERIENCE has worked with a higher number of large corporate brands vs. regional and new start-up brands. 

While the CEOs that have brought us to the table share similar passions and drive to move beyond the conventional, MBA modeled, slow-moving leadership of the past, the same CEOs quickly discover just how difficult it is to make change happen because of the behemoth size of their corporations.

No question that the big corporations have big budgets to spend. 

The large ad agencies function as reinforcement for the layers and layers and layers of internal marketing and brand “leadership.” 

The thought of an ad agency rocking the boat and challenging conventional thought that is challenged in moving the behemoth, newly merged corporate brands forward… well for all their talk about keen strategy and creative innovation, those same ad agencies are challenged with paying for those posh, “novel” office space. 

CP&G, a “creative, brand strategy and digital agency” just signed a new contract extending their relationship with that pizza mega-giant running the ads about its new store fronts through 2020.  Yup… the agency telling the pizza mega-giant that the ad content the Dominos is dictating to convey is meaningless to consumers and risk the agency’s contract extension? 

Hell no. 

Here at EXPERIENCE, the audience that drives our mission and reason for existence is the consumer marketplace. 

So in 2018, our business focus will shift over to mid-size brands and new brands that can capitalize on the true drivers of change.  Corporate structures that are fluid and can be molded and shaped.  Leadership that has a passion for the brand vs. an MBA financial model of the past.

The BIG brands and corporations are no longer able to capitalize quickly and adapt. 

What we are seeing with politics where the age-old political models are driven by a mis-matched, past engineered patchwork of mechanics is quickly moving to the business landscape. 

#2 – We will not fear confronting false predictions of change vs. what is really taking place in the marketplace.

I subscribe to a number of the online editions published by American City Business Journals including their weeklies that service Atlanta, Nashville, Birmingham and Charlotte.  In addition, I subscribe to Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company and Wired. 

Each of the publications is addicted to march in unison with the same tune…

1. (1)  All of the Millennial generation is just exiting college and will continue to do so for many more years to come
2. (2)  The Internet is replacing the store fronts of the past and soon everyone will use the Internet for consumer purchases
3. (3)  The intown communities of today are evolving into luxury destinations that will drive all the business trends of the future
4. (4)  Corporate leadership is extremely brilliant in every move they elect to make
5. (5)  Soon technology will drive everything we do – literally with self-driving cars and trucks -- and the labor force of the past will be gone

If a trend forecast reinforces what they construct and reinforce, they embrace it quickly.  If a trend forecast challenges the that model, they either discount the source as unreliable or simply ignore it.

Our 2018 TRENDCAST challenges a whole lot of conventional thinking.  What is emerging right in our midst is already rattling the marketplace and a notable share of the marketplace cannot figure out what is driving the change.

I get a kick out of the recent articles in the WSJ, NY Times and Washington Post.  They ran articles that highlight changing statistics and then quickly make stupid statements like all market changes are attributed to the Internet.

EXPERIENCE doesn’t just wet the index finger and sense the direction and speed of the wind, we invest a sizeable amount of money each year in securing some of the most leading statistics tracked.

In 2018, EXPERIENCE will launch a line of market reports under the INFORUM brand name.  The reports will not only include the greatest and latest market statistics, but also a perspective of what the information means in terms of impact upon the brand whose leadership requested the report.

We are not an ad agency nor a digital shop so we are not bound to see market change and trends only through the perspective of the marketing sunglasses.

#3 – We will further integrate the cyclical change model into strategic guidance

What got me energized to script this blog the way that I have in large part can be attributed to the rag publication called Atlanta Magazine.

Atlanta Magazine is not unlike any of its publication families or like pubs produced by other media-promotional companies… they are all glorified promotional mailers the are filled with advertorial and similar ad sponsors. 

The current issue is anchored around “Atlanta in 2040.”  Here’s a share of what the advertorial writers highlight:

1. (1)  Our jackets could answer the phone (that’s the way the writers scripted it… not me)
2. (2)  Everything will be customized
3. (3)  Suburbs will learn to share
4. (4)  We won’t report to the office every day
5. (5)  Delivery food will improve

Wow.  I hear a group of middle school kids that hang out at the local coffee house make similar predictions in their essays. 

The best Atlanta prediction is that the official city of Atlanta will be “the largest city in the nation” by 2040.  The official city of Atlanta posts a new 2018 population of 466,512 residents and is growing at a rate of 5.74% over the next five years.

The official city of New York, the largest city in the nation posts a new 2018 population of 8,598,697. 

Atlanta magazine needs to purchase a new solar-powered calculator before it publishes any more predictions. 

Change is NOT linear, but rather cyclical.  Parts of the past re-surface and the influence of past dynamics re-appear. 

In 2018, we will work with clients in understanding the dynamics of like dynamics when the Boomer began forming families and having kids back in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Business need to place less attention on artificial intelligence and more focus on transferrable insight into factors that affected brand growth and development during comparative time cycles.

When I started my career back in 1981, I worked with a baking products brand called Martha White Foods.  The brand challenge was to craft product, distribution models and branding that could bring Martha White into a sense of connectivity with the growing share of Baby Boomer moms.

We are working with three brands right now on how to embrace the new Millennial moms.

One of the clients that EXPERIENCE has worked with a lot in the past 10 years is Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.  Children’s hired a new ad agency about two years ago.  The new agency launched a new brand campaign in 2017 focused around the Emotional Ignition Point that “Moms know.” 

Millennials seek out a sense of self-control and a sense of personal signature… thanks in part to how technology “invades their lives” … and thanks in part to their Boom “helicopter” parents.

Children’s Healthcare leadership has a viewpoint anchored by cyclical change.

Just a quick FYI… in 2018, 96% of all first-time moms will be Millennials.  The other 3.5% will actually be Zoomers!  And believe it or not, the other 0.5% will be GenXers.  

Sooooo….

If you are a new evolving brand or a middle-size brand seeking to capitalize on the big competitors who move very slow… call us.

If you wish to really know what are the true change agents of the marketplace and the impact they are having right now on your brand and how to strategically capitalize on them… call us.

If you ponder how the dynamics of past change operated and how the human marketplace evolves today… call us.

Call this number… 404.245.9378… and I promise that it will me answering the phone… no assistant… no admin… no automated service center… promise!