Treating Consumers as Individuals; why Colgate Remains the Preferred Brand

Thousands of entrepreneurs attempt to realize their dreams by giving rise to new products every year. Take for example, the case of Startup Village, a public – private technology incubator in Cochin (Kerala). Nearly 400 start-ups have been incubated so far since its launch in April 2012. Thousands of companies, as many products as well as brands are introduced in the now ‘one’ global market. It was around this conversation, a friend of mine asked if there is indeed potential for everyone to thrive. Only a fraction of them survive, I mentioned reading about it in a business book. ‘What differentiates the successful,’ he posed.  

Not that I am a marketing pundit but having heard this kind of talk from the wise, I thought of responding to his question. In the age of social media, when consumers tend to pry open businesses and its conduct, there is absolutely no significance of products. Not that it did in the era before social media. Back then, there was hope with marketers and technologists hoping consumers would go through the technology adoption lifecycle. Most tech marketers followed Geoffrey Moore’s bible – Crossing the Chasm, when deploying their go-to-market strategy.

  

Social Media changed all that. Products are what a company makes but it can be easily copied. This implies that what consumers buy isn’t a product but a brand, an experience. More than ever, the brand has become a marketer’s tool for creating product differentiation. More than ever, the brand has to see consumers as an individual and deliver unique experience. The best example is Colgate. 'Brush your teeth the Colgate way, every day,' ends the long copy from a 1939 print advertisement for Colgate. And every day since then millions of Indians, young and old, have used this oral-care brand in various forms, everything from powder to paste, for generations. The question is how the brand ensures that it remains the consumers first brand encounter of the day – everyday.

  

A cousin of mine who is a school teacher in Thalasserry, Kerala is a regular user of Colgate toothpaste. She lives with her ailing mother, aged around 85, and doesn’t believe in elaborate shopping. She prefers the neighbourhood kirana store where she dashes for instantaneous shopping. On one such occasion, when she wanted to quickly grab two small tubes of the Colgate, the shopkeeper didn’t have the same on stock. A large tube would be inconvenient to use for her mother and so she went around asking for the smaller tube. To her dismay, it wasn’t available anywhere in the neighbourhood. Disappointed, she decided to hit social media to find out why her favourite brand wasn’t available in the neighbourhood. She had forgotten about it until her sister called up and informed that there was an executive from Colgate waiting for her. His visit not only addressed her immediate needs (in two days) but also ensured a loyal consumer for the company for life.

Beyond the product and a great brand experience at an individual level – no wonder Colgate is the undisputed leader.      

God’s the Social Media

While young, it was common to hear elders saying, ‘remember, whatever you do, God’s constantly observing you.’ It was a tactic primarily adopted when they pre-empt something inappropriate from a youngster. God has become the social media today.

Today, we as individuals are tested in every step we take - an interaction in person or online. With eyes constantly trained on the mobile and keeping pace with the rapid flow of social media updates from friends, relatives and others, many often click intrusively into others personal matters or leave their pages open with little left for others to imagine. We are unquestionable treading into a world where there is no return. Many are known to have lost jobs because of their social media updates. Weird but true.    

Taking a leaf out of the new marketing normal wherein customers are increasingly being seen as individuals and not as segments, we should know that the same transparency that allows us to understand others as an individual; conversely allows others to understand everything about us. Further, this would mean that the dissonance between who we are and what we portray would be known to not just those who are in our network but by others whom we might not even know. Thus, in today’s connected world, the measure of one’s success would be a result of how authentically one balances the dissonance. Marketers attempt to close the gap between the brand promise by building a system to ensure that in every interaction brand and culture are one. The same should apply to individuals.

If you want to be good, be good.