Brand Impact – Does your Consumer Care?

Brands are changing, giving greater importance to ‘listening, empathy, and leadership’ to meet their customers’ needs. The 2019 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity featured numerous sessions which emphasized that these three elements drive innovation, market disruption, and brand purpose, thereby changing brands’ impact for consumers.

A brand survey powered by Havas stated that ‘77% of brands could disappear and not a single customer would care.’ This is where listening, empathy and leadership come in place. With the consumer being the center of everything brands must ensure that their content is relevant to consumers to make them care. A consumer who cares is, after all, a consumer who shares. In this digital world, content sharing is the way for brands to get visibility, organic reach and to move ahead.

One of my favorite campaigns was FCB’s campaign ‘Go Back to Africa’, which won the Creative Strategy Grand Prix. They took listening, empathy, and leadership to a whole new level by identifying harassing and racist messaging through social listening, censoring hate speech and then reframing it against images and words that show the beauty of Africa. They spun the negative narrative into a positive tale. By adding human faces to the campaign they were also able to create a stronger emotional connect with their audience.

91% of millennials switch brands based on social issues, stated the speakers at Cannes Lions. Doconomy listened to customers’ needs to impact society and created DoBlack – the first ever credit card that limits carbon emissions. (DoBlack was the winner of this year’s e-Commerce Grand Prix.) It is designed not to limit customers impact on the environment by declining transactions once cardholders have exceeded their personal carbon limit using cutoffs needed to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030.

In conclusion, to ensure that they are an indispensable part of consumer’s life, brands are serving consumers with what they really want. To be change makers, we too need to identify consumers’ needs and create campaigns that reach them on an emotional and personal level.