CPG Marketing in 2018 — Winning with Daily Rituals
Habits are a powerful force of human nature. Much like animals in the wild, our habits cause us to behave in instinctive ways, often overriding the knowledge that we should act otherwise. Today, our lives have become more and more “busy” with notifications on countless social media apps, being connected 24/7 to our professional demands, and trying to teach our digital assistant Alexa or Siri to understand us. While the digital age has surely gotten us a little bit smarter along the way, we also have created an extremely noisy environment for brand’s trying to get your attention.
It’s no secret that attracting and retaining new customers isn’t easy. If your brand can’t find ways to get new customers to view your social media, regularly visit your website, or sign up for your email list, the chances are low that they keep engaging consistently with your brand. But how prepared are you to make that kind of consistent engagement happen? Should you be looking at tapping into that animal instinct of creating a daily ritual?
Daily rituals provide us nostalgia and familiarity, and a sense of connectivity and belonging. Great brands know the power of rituals in our lives and they use this power to create brand rituals. Brand rituals convey importance and could be as easy as creating the “right” way to use your product. If you think about this in terms of a CPG brand, a good example is Oreo. Think about how, even as a kid, you saw brand messaging that showed you the right way to eat an Oreo: Twist, lick the cream middle, and then dunk in milk (or I guess Almond Milk now haha). It conveys a sense that the way you eat the cookie matters, which means the cookie matters and that elevates its perceived value and desirability in the eyes of consumers.
Another way your brand can become a part of our everyday rituals is producing video, voice, or written content in set times and/or set days. The ritual act of watching/reading/listening to content offers us routine, continuity, and makes us loyal to the particular brand. Historically, this has been more apparent with traditional media companies but with media being more available to self-distribute by brands on different social media apps, astute brands will follow this proven strategy as well.
Brands that want to win in 2018 should explore the nuisances of your brand, product, and marketing that lend themselves to becoming ritualized. Creating a ritual around your brand is one of the most effective tools you have to cut through the noise of the extremely competitive market of attention in 2018.
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