Weekly Wrap-up – How We Saw Things in June of 2010

It’s been a crazy week and blogging activities have suffered as a result, but the news stops for no one and quite a few things popped up that are worth bringing to your attention. Here is what caught my eye so far this week; click on the quote to go to the original content.

 

Nielsen Unveils Retail 2015 Forecast

It’s going to be an interesting next few years for the CPG industry, and researchers will be playing a critical role in helping brands understand how changes in consumer communication channels are impacting sales channels.

With all eyes on the economic recession, it’s easy to underestimate the major trends currently reshaping the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry.  According to The Nielsen Company’s Retail 2015 Forecast, revealed at its Consumer 360 Conference today, the pace of change is only accelerating as technology, marketing trends and retail formats converge to redefine how CPG retailers and manufacturers interact with consumers.

 

11 Brands That Will Disappear in 2011

No big surprises here, but sad nonetheless.If these are major clients for you, it may be time to start cultivating some strong back-ups!

We also accurately identified brands that would disappear in our December list. With a number of the brands on the December list either gone or on a short-term path to extinction, 24/7 Wall St. has put together the latest version of the Ten Brands that Will Disappear. To qualify, we expect that brand to be gone by the end of 2011, or for its parent to be sold or go into Chapter 11.

 

The State Of Customer Experience, 2010

Adobe is offering a free copy of a report on VOC program adoption that very interesting on a few levels. One standout is the growing importance of this topic in the Board room, but the confusion about how to implement a successful VOC measurement program. Sounds like a job for MR to me! 

Forrester surveyed 141 executives from large North American firms to find out about their customer experience endeavors. It turns out that most respondents think that customer experience is very important for their companies and they are trying to use it as an area of differentiation. While the lack of funding was the top problem last year, the lack of a clear strategy has emerged as this year’s No. 1 obstacle. Many companies have a voice of the customer (VoC) program in place, and nearly half have an executive in charge of their overall customer experience efforts.

 

Exploring new Ways of Marketing – One Company shows the Way

PepsiCo continues to make waves with their pioneering new marketing direction. Is MR paying attention? PepsiCo understands the potential of social media and mobile as primary engagement and feedback channels, and is proving it.

The company last week launched PepsiCo 10, designed to bring in new ideas via an open call for partners among emerging tech companies.

Bough also established a “Mission Control Center” for Gatorade that takes the brand’s pulse 24/7. The center, which looks very much like a NASA control room, tracks in real time analytics for campaigns, Web sites, or social channels. Bough says the focus is on creating the largest sports brand in the world and one that goes beyond the liquid product.

“The question is,” he said, “how do we create this in terms of real time insights?” The center has six monitors and five people across different functions. “We are asking how do we create a Petri dish for discovering what new technology will mean to the brand; how do we challenge existing realities?”

 

Now scientists read your mind better than you can

Neuromonitoring continues to capture the imagination of the general media as well as marketers. A new study conducted at UCLA shows promise for fMRI as not just an observational tool, but also how it can be used to predict future behavior more accurately than self-reported data.

Brain scans may be able to predict what you will do better than you can yourself, and might offer a powerful tool for advertisers or health officials seeking to motivate consumers, researchers said on Tuesday.

They found a way to interpret “real time” brain images to show whether people who viewed messages about using sunscreen would actually use sunscreen during the following week.

The scans were more accurate than the volunteers were, Emily Falk and colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles reported in the Journal of Neuroscience.

That’s it for the general week in review. We hope you find these articles as interesting and useful as we did!