Owning vs Renting the Customer Relationship: What Is Best For the Future of Your Brand?

Charles Dickens was famous for this opening line in A Tale of Two Cities – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. Thinking about marketing these days, it does feel like marketers are enjoying “the best of times,” in that messages can be tailored and targeted to very niche audiences, return on investment can be precisely measured and consumers can be reached on-line and off-line.

Yet, some days it also seems like “the worst of times” in that there is so much fragmentation of audiences across multiple platforms that it makes it difficult to promote a brand’s message and map the consumer journey. Furthermore, there seems to be a new – yet hard to understand- breakthrough in digital or tech every week, or a major change by big technology companies, thus making it hard for marketers to discern fact from fiction, and from fad.

So how does the modern marketer grow their brand, manage a P&L, and grow their business in an age of “best of times” and “worst of times”?

1. Have a solid brand positioning powered by a relevant consumer insight.
2. Own vs. rent relationships with your consumer/customer.

1. The Insight: The Benefit and Reason to Believe are fundamental marketing concepts. It is important to call out that marketing, regardless of precision and “innovation” (yeah the quotations are on purpose), will not win over a consumer unless the product/service provides a meaningful consumer benefit that is different from the competition’s. And to connect to the consumer, your brand needs a powerful insight (or set of insights).So be prepared to answer the following questions for your brand(s):
   • Why should a consumer care about your product/service/brand?
   • What’s in it for them?
   • How is it different?
2. Own vs Rent: Once you have generated meaningful consumer insights and relevant positioning, you’ll be faced with the challenge of connecting with your consumer. So while you have a choice of tactics – call them what you like (i.e. traditional, digital, on-line and off-line) – the fact that consumers are spending more time on ad-free platforms (think Netflix and Crave) or on digital platforms where marketers have to pay to play, brands need to re-think how they can make best use of their resources which include people, time and money.The solution: Brands must own the relationship with their consumers.

   Why? Because brands live in a world where algorithms frequently change, and big tech companies control tracking and can modify targeting via changes in hardware/software – at their choosing. The only way to avoid being at the mercy of platforms that they don’t influence or control is to own a direct relationship with their consumer(s).

Here are some of the ways brands can own their relationship with consumers:..

Read The Full Article