Brand Consumers and its Craziness

by Team Shifft | March 24,2022

What started something as small as customer feedback, is now such an evolved concept. The need for belongingness, loyalty, and trust is also expected from brands. And wanting to be the most important person in the room, is just an understatement to the lengths that brands will go for their consumers.

Feels great to be center of attention, if one had to reel back to the worst attempts at brand consumers in India, it would be when lays India tried to ask people for flavor suggestions. Something similar would be how Maggie recipes were printed at the back leading to invention of Maggie atta noodles which had both nutrition as the growing complaint was that Maggie isn’t healthy plus also the inclusion of veggies in the mix. What the customer says is taken so seriously that brands try their hardest to incorporate the suggestions and feedback into their products and services. Being pampered and spoilt of choices is nothing compared to the mammoth of marketing tactics used to make the customer feel special. This now can be understood by examples both in advertising campaigns as well as marketing.

The foundation on which marketing rests is finding a gap of need in the society and then developing the product or service. This was however based on loads of deployment of financial resources and time but also on research. Then again as technological innovations pave the wave for greater accessibility, feedback mechanisms are as simple as “Dming” on social media. Like we mentioned earlier this phenomenon is better understood through examples, lets dive into a few of them.

• Function of beauty: This brand in USA allows its customers not only inscribe their names of their bottles of shampoos and conditioners for example function of Roshini, or Function of Sanjana but allows to choose the kind of fragrance, set hair goals and customize shampoo and conditioner according to their hair goals, as well as choose the ingredients to the point where one can opt out of adding silicon to the shampoo.
• Nike: this brand sensational when it comes to its campaigns, also allows its customers to choose the color their pair of sneakers. So, if you aren’t a fan of those white Jordans, make sure you get the ones that allow for a one in a million-piece customization.
• Cadbury: More like a recent and indigenous attempt that allows the Cadbury chocolate bar lovers to send in suggestions of flavors they would like to see in the next Cadbury chocolate bar. Everything from tender coconut flavor Cadbury to paan flavor, you name it and its possible.
• OnePlus: This wasn’t a customization of the product as much as involving your loyal customers to be part of your most awaited product launch. So, those from across the world could tune into the product launch happening in one country through VR technology.

At the heart of Brand consumers lies customization. However, all of this comes at a price and significant investment. Therefore, brands must be careful to strike the proper balance between investments and customization. This means that not to go overboard with the marketing rather to choose to be creative that allows the consumers to draw to you and not allow the consumer to choose the course of action that brand must take. In short, make an indispensable product or service or for that matter a brand positioning that draws your customers to you and now the other way around.