From Peppa Pig and M&Ms to Johnnie Walker and EA Sports, building iconic brands relies on creative strategies that connect with consumers.
At the Brand Innovators Game Changing Creativity Summit hosted by Hasbro in London, marketers shared insights on how they go about building brands to cultivate brand love.
M&M’s has a lot going for it as a brand – the brand recognition is universal and the product is joyful and shared in moments of connection. But the challenge associated is that while every one knows and loves M&Ms, the path to purchase is usually very heavily impulse-driven.
“We’re in a very competitive landscape, and therefore, creativity is what you need to focus on to stop people in aisles as they’re going down the confectionery aisle, or while they’re scrolling on social media,” said Lily Akerman, senior manager, global M&M’s ecosystem experience, Mars. “You want the thumb-stopping content. We use that to drive our performance against our competitor set.”
M&Ms is focused on shifting consumer love into a purchase stage, which is the brand’s biggest metric.
“It’s that shift of taking love, but what does that mean to actually make your purchase?,” Akerman. “That’s often a relevance question, or how do we make our brand feel really right and relevant for the consumer at the right time, in the right touch point, and make it really seamless for them to convert in that moment?”
Ruedilyn Cox, global director, franchise strategy & management, Peppa Pig & New Preschool Brands at Hasbro
A lot has changed since Peppa Pig debuted more than 22 years ago and that has led the Hasbro brand to shift the story to keep her alive and well for a new generation of children and parents.
When Ruedilyn Cox, global director, franchise strategy & management, Peppa Pig & New Preschool Brands at Hasbro, joined the brand two years ago, there was a bit of a mantra internally – let’s keep it as it. “It’s working. If it ain’t great, don’t fix it,” she said.
But the world had changed and the brand needed to evolve. “Obviously, in 22 years, parenting has changed. The world has changed. Media has changed. As brands and as any company, you need to evolve to survive,” explained Cox. “That realisation hit the team about three years ago. We did a ton of research to understand why we were seeing a slight decline in shelf space, why we were seeing a slight decline in brand health, etc.”
The research showed that the family was iconic. The house on the hill was iconic. The red car was iconic. The lack of evolution was at the core of the decline.
“We want evolution, not revolution,” explained Cox. “Please don’t change us because we already have so much brand equity. We as a team had to strategically think, how do we find that balance and how do we evolve?”
The results was a new baby for the family and Peppa became a big sister to two little pig children with the birth of baby Evie. The news gave the franchise a lot of attention in the media – 440 placements in press and 6.5 billion impressions. Peppa’s social media channels were up 1095% in the period where Mommy Pig announced her pregnancy and gave birth to baby Evie.
“Now it is our job to maintain that growth. That is the challenge,” said Cox. “I suppose: how many family members can you end up with? I cannot tell you how much our team has reminded everyone in the business that we cannot have another baby.”
From left to right: Alberto Romano, global consumer & shopper planning collaboration at Diageo; Graham Field, Chief Revenue Officer of Outra
Diageo is in the business of celebration and celebrating life every day, everywhere, which is embedded in culture. This gets the brand closer to consumers’ lives but being customer centric had gotten more nuanced in recent years.
“Today’s world requires a bit more than just understanding one consumer and focusing around one person,” said Alberto Romano, global consumer & shopper planning collaboration at Diageo. “When we start seeing and talking about the environment, the ecosystem, the culture, where the consumer is, things change and being able to spot them, act on them, and then make them evolve is something that we like to have our brands do.”
Most of Diageo’s brands have a cultural space –an ecosystem where the brand thrives, where the brand is part of the group where the consumer spends time such as music, fashion, tech, education. The first step is finding that cultural space, making sure that we’re understanding that habitat, where the brand should live, what consumers are already there, understanding the pain points, the passion points within that space and that makes a brand act natural in this habitat,” said Romano. “It’s not forcing things, it’s not pushing things to consumers, it’s being part of the dynamics within the group.”
For instance, Johnnie Walker partnered with Bad Bunny to launch “Bad Johnnie,” a special cocktail featuring Johnnie Walker Black Label, highlighted during the artist’s Puerto Rico residency.
From left to right: Gloria Ruiz, EMEA partnerships & promotions manager at Hasbro; Robbie McCawley, director, franchise strategy & marketing at Motorsports EA Sports; David Duffiled, GM, EMEA, Livewire
It is key that brands participate organically for consumers to connect. “Brands invest a lot of money creating promotional mechanics, creating lovely digital games and sometimes consumers get out of that experience feeling a bit empty if it doesn’t feel organic for the brand,” said Gloria Ruiz, EMEA partnerships & promotions manager at Hasbro.
Hasbro has found success in strategic collaborations such as the McDonald’s Monopoly game. “For us at Hasbro, brands take our games – for example, Monopoly or Connect Four – to create promotional mechanics, but we’re in completely separate worlds,” added Ruiz. “We have to make sure that it feels organic and then at the end of the journey, the consumer feels truly rewarded. It doesn’t work if it takes you longer to submit your receipts and fill in all the spaces through register if the gameplay is five seconds.”
Creativity is a key way for brands to break through and connect with their audiences. Robbie McCawley, director, franchise strategy & marketing at Motorsports EA Sports suggests that brands start small and use trial and test. He said brands should approach every problem as a creative problem that needs a solution.
“It doesn’t have to be all singing and dancing at the beginning, especially because budgets are very short, very small, and things are expensive,” he said “Start with something. If it’s a food and beverage product, something on retail, just POS, and just reward your consumers in a very instant way. That is always very effective. And then you can start building as you go and make it a little bit complex and rewarding for consumers.”
