"It wasn't me". How many products are sitting in your bathroom or your kitchen, partly used, that you never bought again? This week we heard from Hypertag, P&G, Samsung and Tonejet about the ways that Consumer Products brand owners are improving their emotional connection to consumers, through better design, late-stage configuration, packaging, hyperlocal messaging and continuous upgrading of the product via the internet.
Brand owners envy the success of products like Dell or Threadless, that consumers can configure online during purchasing, and the iPhone, that are continuously upgraded as users download applications. Consumers become envangelists for these products. P&G spoke of their decision in the 1990s to design products holistically around improving the life of a specific consumer that represents a significant part (20-30%) of the market rather than just trying to technically improve performance. "Charlotte", a proactive intervener who wants natural remedies that can allow them to stay active, inspired the Vicks First Defence nasal spray, winning them widespread press coverage in the Times and the Daily Mail. Watching videos showing Charlotte shopping, working, spending time with her kids and her friends, watching Sex and the City etc I could immediately recognise the way that members like Red Gate design new products around individuals who represent substantial market segments. "The consumer is boss" changes the way product benefits are designed.
Tonejet then took us down to the end of the production line, as cans roll off the end of a beverage line at over 240/minute. The touch and look of packaging is a part of the product experience which affects our choice between rival brands in store and stays with us as we use the product throughout its life. While personalized packaging for services like My Heineken allow consumers to upload their own image and have it printed at a significant premium (£6-£10/bottle) for home delivery, Tonejet can deliver small production runs of 3,000 items at the same cost as conventional printing methods, essential if they are to raise the proportion of digital printing much above the 3% of the 450BN euros spent on packaging around the world each year. Right now 20% of packaging is scrapped, as marketers struggle to respond to the market with print runs of 400,000 cans and a 16 week lead time. He showed some of the 3000 cans Air Berlin used to celebrate the 40th anniversary of flights from Nuremberg.
Hypertag took us into the supermarket aisle, where messages are targetted to inform individual consumers hyperlocally. Services like Voucher Cloud are being downloaded 25,000 times/week to iPhones as consumers connect directly to brand owners and change their purchasing decisions in store. Hypertag also sends messages onto consumers' mobile phones, driving footfall towards the handsets that the store owner wants to promote. Hypermarket and shopping mall owners are keen to have different messages delivered in different parts of the store. But Hypertag see the real drivers of this direct to consumer messaging as the major brand owners who want to gather data about the interactions consumers are having with their products from wherever they are.
Finally Samsung took us out into workplace and the home, where consumers download software widgets are downloaded to upgrade their telephones and televisions and make them fit their personal needs. Samsung are also finding ways to change to feel and colour of their products, and emphasise quality of their screens in their adverts, but they know they need to attract a community of developers who can anticipate the local needs of consumers with software.
The discussion drew a large audience including 42 Technology, Cambridge Consultants, Cambridge Design Partnership, Canon, Convergys, Domino, egTechnology, Innovia, Instrata, Linx, Lumie, Nano e-Print, Nokia, P&G, PA, Paribus, Partnertech, Primilis, Scienta, Swiss Precision Diagnostics, Unilever, University of Cambridge, and Xaar among others. They had plenty of questions. Won't instore become less important as online sales increase? The Consumer Goods companies were pretty sure they'd still be designing for instore choices in 20 years - and if anything the rise of mobile internet was taking online interactions there. Couldn't printed electronics be incorporated into packaging? Cost concerns suggested not. Why not mix in store, as paint manufacturers do? While some laundry detergent mixing trials in ASDA are happening, 15 tonne batches are needed to hit a price point of £2-£3/bottle, so personalization will continue to be a late stage modification for fast moving consumer goods. Cambridge Consultants kindly blogged on consumer products to highlight a few more issues. Plenty of questions, and it was clear from the major brand owners present that they are looking forward to more good answers from the Cambridge community.
Photograph by Howard Guest
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