When was the last time you went to a customer’s home? The art of “Gemba” is at the core of SBFE brand campaigns

Going back to basics sometimes feels counterintuitive in an industry fuelled by innovation and that’s always getting excited about “the next best thing”. However, the fundamentals of success are often baked in the basics: what your customer thinks, feels and does. Reverting to consumer insight for marketing inspiration is essential, as opposed to selling a dream that a self-absorbed brand team is hoping for. Peter Drucker summarised it well when he said, “consumers rarely buy what the company thinks it sells them”.

As a marketer, it’s useful to truly understand the role a brand plays in consumers’ lives and build the brand proposition upon it. If that role is forgotten or overlooked in favour of a ‘shiny new creative idea’, the strategy veers off track, the brand zig-zags, and the consumer is confused.

Sometimes, we as well-intentioned marketers attempt to rejuvenate brands, but end up confusing consumers, who don’t relate to the brand’s 2.0 version. If your brand’s role gets lost, you can be sure the consumer will “hire” another brand to do the very same “job”.

The importance of Gemba in consumer-facing campaigns

At Suntory Beverage & Food, we are very inspired by Japanese philosophy – it’s part of our business culture. Our 'Gemba' mindset, which is a Suntory specific term prompting us to go “where the action is”, has always ensured that we take time to truly understand how we are valued by customers, listening to feedback and crucially then using these insights to evolve our products.

Gemba is a fundamentally different consumer insight approach to “big data” and is based on skilful observation and asking specific questions to consumers. It is particularly relevant when you do not belong to your brand consumer target group, whether this is by nationality or sociologically, as it allows you to go much deeper than data points provide, giving marketers access to hugely powerful “small data”; consumers will say they ‘need’ a lot of things, but when observing them in the real world, you’ll often better understand why they are using a certain product versus another, and can discuss that on the spot. This should then be used to inform a product’s marketing strategy.

So, when was the last time you reviewed up-to-date consumer insights – or better yet – spoke to (or shopped with) some of them directly? And I mean you, not an insights team, not a researcher.

How Orangina saw through its iconic strapline, and uncovered a customer truth

For the last twenty years, Orangina has been encouraging its consumers to “shake” the product through various ad and marketing campaigns. To an extent however, this commitment to our iconic – and admittedly hugely successful – advertising strapline meant that ‘the tail was wagging the dog’ when it came to fresh creative briefs. Agencies and teams felt immense pressure to always raise the bar on “shake”, even to the point of silliness. Then this year, on the basis of Gemba insights and the original notes of the Orangina founder, we decided it was time our marketing got a shake-up. The team at Orangina realised that the driving factor behind love of the brand was simply its delicious taste, and the fact that this came from a natural source: the orange. That’s the one reason so many people love the brand – the orange – not the act of shaking a bottle.

This is heroed in the tag line of the new campaign, “the best thing that can happen to an orange”. It’s been a liberating move for the brand, knowing that they are acknowledging what the consumer loves about the brand, and heroing the “job” it delivers.

How La Casera tapped into a point of national pride, and a 1980’s ad, to launch a new marketing campaign

An interesting exercise I’ve done time and time again is going back to the iconic campaign of any brand – the one that everyone remembers – and working out why it resonated with audiences enough to become memorable. Usually, an ad becomes famous not just for its creativity, but because it communicated a brand and consumer truth that was so accurate it was impossible to ignore.

Our Spanish soda brand La Casera has recently done just that, with its new ads re-establishing roots via its iconic ads from the 1980s, taking a stand on quality through its re-issued, infamous tagline: Si no hoy La Casera, nos vamos! (Translation: if there is no La Casera, we leave!).

By gathering news and historic consumer insights accumulated through Gemba, we re-assessed the brand DNA which dictated that the high quality and the essence of pride and Spanish authenticity were what consumers loved about La Casera. It’s a brand that is patrimonial and part of the national familial culture in Spain. In re-booting the brand’s historic tagline in the new campaign, the new ad re-connects with consumers from years past, prompting a reinvigorated excitement and nostalgia for the products and highlighting the importance of quality as a point of principle for them as discerning consumers. This is also anchoring it back into local culture and demonstrating pride in its roots.

Back to a brand’s ‘job description’

Strong brands have timeless components that make up their brand DNA. This is how they know what they stand for, command higher pricing, and stand the test of time. Too often, brand DNAs are diluted by marketers, using vague terminology that fails to help anyone understand the job the brand does. To truly understand a brand’s purpose, it’s incredibly helpful to acknowledge its founding purpose and brand history and observe how it fits into its consumer’s life – and for that, the art of Gemba is a strategy I’ll always champion.