Why Listen to Consumers?
Because They’re Usually Right
It’s become almost a cliché in the 21st century to say that technology is fundamentally changing the way we shop, communicate, work, and live. But for companies large and small, for start-ups and established multinationals, technology is more than a generic concept or obvious reality; it’s an always-evolving avenue to communicate with our consumers, to listen to them, to respond to their demands, and to inspire them when we can.
Anyone interested in building a brand — whether it’s a business created five days ago or five centuries ago — understands why this is important: a brand is only powerful, popular, and present in our culture if it hears out consumers, builds personal relationships with them, relates to their daily lives, and reflects their core values. Leaps forward in technology make that conversation with consumers easier, but this notion of consumer-focused, consumer-driven brands dates back centuries.
Simply put, it’s the age-old adage that “the consumer is always right,” updated for each generation — and it’s become more important than ever: we have to listen to consumers and let them shape our brands. We have to find ways to reflect their personalities, aspirations, and needs. Yet we also have to offer them something outside the box; we have to be innovative and creative and show them a new concept or product that they didn’t know they wanted; we have to offer a point of view, and stick by it.
This is one of the core challenges for businesses today — to build a fresh brand that stays a step ahead of consumers, without losing sight of what they want, need, or demand in the moment.
That isn’t easy to figure out or navigate. But right now, we have no choice. We are both in an age of brands and in an era of consumer dominance. You can’t focus on one and ignore the other.
Indeed, in this day and age, your brand is as important as ever. People want to identify with the right brands. Wear the right brands. Talk and text on the right brands. Eat the right brands. Because they’re familiar. They speak to something we want, whether we realize it or not. They’re part of the ether, the culture, the moment.
What’s more, individuals tend to become their own brands, so they look for goods and companies that excite them and that they want to be a part of.
And here’s another thing: consumers today are constantly bombarded with so much information from so many different channels in so many different countries that the most successful brands will have the ability to deliver clear and consistent messages every day. They’ll be able to build trust with their customers. They’ll set themselves apart by being stable, secure, and inspiring.
They’ll understand omnichannel marketing, leverage new platforms, utilize every tool at their disposal to meet consumers where they are — whether it’s in a brick-and-mortar storefront or on an app in the palm of their hands.
All of this is absolutely essential to the task of establishing a lasting and iconic brand. Particularly at a moment when consumers are becoming louder and more central wherever we turn. Speaking up through more devices and websites and portals than ever before.
Despite this, some companies have lost touch with consumers. They’ve too often sacrificed hearing from consumers at the altar of trying to anticipate what brands those consumers want. Even when the real objective is to do both.
Yet listening to consumers should never be considered a waste of time or a gimmick; it’s how you sow the seeds of success. It’s the root of long-term growth. It’s the core of any effective marketing strategy.
The reason we have to embrace this truth is obvious: consumers have the purchasing power in their pockets to help you succeed — or to take their business elsewhere. Consumers can offer the feedback needed to help you adapt, tweak, change, improve, scale up what’s working and scale back what’s not.
Consumers, in other words, can make or break your brand. So it’s certainly worth hearing what they have to say. And on this front, even the largest companies and the most well-known brands can take their cues from start-ups. Let me explain.
In this moment of rapid-fire change, big companies are obsessed with data, and rightly so. They lean on social media to track the latest trends, as they should. However, our most innovative start-ups, from Silicon Valley to Tel Aviv to Shanghai, are charting a different course, applying an almost old-school approach to building themselves up and getting their brands out there: they are listening, and they have realized that truly listening to their consumers begins with their founders and trickles down to seasonal interns.
Plenty of world famous, well-known, and life-changing brands understand this down to their bones.
Look, for example, at Spotify. Here’s a company built around a simple service — making it easier to listen to the music of your choice — while utilizing the wonders of modern technology to stream your favorite songs, videos, and podcasts directly to your eyes and ears.
Launched about a decade ago, Spotify’s insight shouldn’t have come as a galloping shock to anyone. Its founders heard consumers had to say: listeners wanted to shrink the distance between themselves and their personal playlists. So they developed a brand around doing just that and determined to never stop innovating and inspiring and inventing new trends in this space.
This may seem like an obvious idea now, but back when Spotify opened its doors, no one was doing it. No one had thought of it. No one could be certain that consumers wanted it on a broad scale. But they clearly did. To the tune of 140 million subscribers as of last year — and counting.
Take a look at LVMH, the umbrella company that includes renowned brands like Louis Vuitton, Moet Hennessy, Sephora, TAG Heuer, and more. It is built around the idea of an ongoing dialogue between tradition and modernity, between heritage and fresh ideas, between what consumers have always wanted and what might inspire them moving forward.
This legendary enterprise always aims to stay true to its history and past, yet it constantly and continuously surprises consumers with innovative thinking that strengthens its brand and embeds it even more deeply into our society and culture.
Here’s an iconic institution of the fashion and luxury good industries that revolutionized the idea of modern retail, of the traditional department store, back in the 19th century — and today, its subsidiaries run Innovation Labs, integrate new technologies, develop connected watches, and push their employees to prize innovation and creativity. All the while, their consumers benefit, from both a longstanding brand they can trust and new concepts and looks they never expect.
This is where heritage brands have to turn if they hope to compete in the years and decades ahead: keeping tabs on what the public wants to buy and giving them what they have yet to see.
There are plenty more examples in this lane, but you see where this is headed: major brands stand head and shoulders above the rest when they hear what consumers have to say, act on it, then lead them into the next great era of their sector or industry.
And this speaks to a broader notion. I believe that personalization based on CRMs are enormously important. Yet nothing should overshadow or outweigh human emotions, human connection. A brand still needs to surprise, stun, and inspire. A brand cannot simply adopt; as I noted before, we have to lead the way. We have to be confident in who we are, so consumers have something to identify with. And even as we stay true to our core brands, we have to be humble enough to change our products or our services when consumers demand it.
That means brands have to act rationally at some points and less rationally at others. We have to watch the data, to be sure, and stay informed. But we can’t be robotic. We have to be sincere with our consumers about who we are and what we believe. That’s how we start the conversation with them. That’s how they’ll trust us to listen and learn.
