For Brands, Is There Such a Thing as TMI?
Radical transparency may sound off-putting, but brands are using this approach to connect with consumers, cut through the market, earn the trust and loyalty of communities and encourage authentic endorsement with great success.
Millennials, in our experience, don’t like to be sold to, having grown up with digital permeating their social interactions. They are savvy to marketing tactics, quick to note anything ingenuine.
It is this generation who are pressuring brands to engage with authenticity and share the inner-workings to ensure that day to day practices are in sync with the party line.
It’s not an entirely new tactic; we know that consumers love peering behind the proverbial curtain.
For decades now, brands have been sharing details to enhance a user’s experience, permitting consumers views of artisans working behind glass windows, or doughnuts being poured into a moving stream of hot oil at Wendy’s, and people have been going bananas for it.
The addition of video channels to the social-media sphere and increasing ease of the ‘share’ function has permitted these experiences to filter through and be viewed faster than ever before. In sharing its narrative, brands can imbue items with much more than their perceived tangible physicality.
Consumers now have an even wider assortment of options for purchase, through an increasing number of channels, and a much deeper pool of information at their fingertips. Of course, natural evolution sees consumers using more complex strategies for approaching consumption.
You might find yourself asking what does a product say about me? How do I use and dispose of it? Perhaps, can I trust the brand and will they support me in the long-term? Or is it good for me and good for the planet (or good for my
conscience…), rather than just ‘is it yummy’, or ‘pretty’.
Our consumer is now more curious and critical than ever. With the availability of so many channels for consumers to compliment or criticise, savvy marketers are responding in kind. With transparency, and easily accessible information.
