In recent years, the trend of personalizing brands has been gaining popularity in the field of marketing. A McKinsey study has shown that companies able to establish an individual dialogue with consumers earn 40 percent more. Oleg Yasenov, a member of the jury of the national RB Digital Awards 2023, winner of the Best For Design Award 2021 in the category: Best Packaging Design Concept – Beverages and the former CMO at the international company Novabev Group (formerly known as Beluga Group until the fall of 2023), operates in European, Middle Eastern, and U.S. markets. Under Oleg Yasenov's leadership, numerous brands have been created and commercialized, leading the company to be listed in Forbes' "200 Largest Private Companies in Russia" and ranking among the top 3 importers of strong alcoholic beverages and wines in the country. Oleg shared insights on how to personalize a brand and make it popular in the international market.
According to a survey, only 20% of consumers often feel valued by businesses as their customers. This is quite expected. For years, companies worldwide have been focused on building brands, but these brands were not individualized or personalized. Therefore, most consumers don't have the feeling that a company is engaging in a dialogue with them and appreciating them. Businesses are aware of this, which is why they have been actively customizing brands lately. While in the past, a company's marketing department might have targeted 2-3 subgroups within a single target audience, today, there are dozens of such subgroups. Just a decade or two ago, the main concern for a brand manager was, "What should we name the product?" But now, the top priority is to create a value proposition for each consumer, for example: "What can our brand offer to a person who primarily makes purchases late in the evening?"
The approach to brand personalization has significantly evolved over the past 20 years. In the early 2000s, a company selling, for example, orange juice would develop a marketing strategy for three consumer groups within their target audience: adults who buy the drink for themselves, parents purchasing it for their children, and teenagers. However, today, if we focus on just the first group—adults buying orange juice for themselves—we can identify many consumer categories within it. The first category includes dedicated advocates of a healthy lifestyle: they exercise three times a week and maintain a balanced diet that includes fruit beverages. This consumer category is not homogeneous; for instance, some drink orange juice for breakfast at home, others consume it during dinner, some take it with them for a jog in the park, some bring it to the gym, and some take it to work to enjoy throughout the day. The second major subgroup consists of people who also support a healthy lifestyle but in a more moderate way; they go for a run every 1-2 weeks and don't drink juice every day, only on weekends. The third category comprises holiday enthusiasts who need juice for celebrations. The fourth category consists of people who simply enjoy the taste of oranges. The fifth group is made up of those trying to lose weight and follow a diet; they can't have pastries and cakes but can have juice. The sixth category includes people with heavy workloads who are physically and emotionally drained (such as those with lots of overtime or a newborn baby); for them, drinking orange juice is a way to treat themselves in the midst of tough days. And there are many more consumer categories and subcategories like these.
Previously, such numerous categories and subcategories were not taken into account. Companies are used to address a broad audience. Nowadays, brands engage in dialogue with each small consumer subcategory separately, creating personalized offers for each of them.
It's worth noting the impact of digital technologies. For example, thanks to artificial intelligence, it's now more accurate, faster, and cheaper to analyze consumer preferences. Personalization is not about personal communication between a company's employee and a customer but about shaping an offer that considers the specific interests of an individual consumer. How this offer is delivered to the person, whether through a promoter handing out a flier, a call from a call center specialist, a push notification, or an email, is less important.
A recent Gartner study revealed that 71% of marketing directors feel they lack the budget for full strategy implementation. Today, it's possible to cut marketing expenses without losing effectiveness. However, it's essential to evaluate when it's necessary. When a company introduces a new brand to the market, investments are required to inform consumers about the product or service, convey the value proposition to them, and achieve sufficient sales. If the company lacks the resources to implement the required marketing strategy, in specific cases, it's better to abandon the idea of introducing the product to the market during the analysis and planning phase.
When a brand is already well-known, there are more opportunities to reduce expenses. For example, if a shampoo sells well on marketplaces and in supermarkets, the company can often refrain from spending money on product placements in movies. Sometimes, companies find it challenging to cut costs due to a deeply ingrained internal culture. For instance, a brand enjoys the love and demand of its audience, and the company has always had the idea that it must be widely represented in the media landscape. As a result, the budget is insufficient because it goes into television advertising. They can't abandon it for reasons beyond marketing.
In Novabev Group (Beluga Group), a leader in its industry in Russia, I commercialized brands in Europe and Asia and took the company public. The main advice I can give to entrepreneurs and marketers facing the task of promoting their product in another country is to build a strong local marketing team.
Talented and professional marketers are typically successful because they have a good understanding of the target audience and know how to work with them. A foreign specialist, even a brilliant one, faces a "terra incognita" when dealing with another country's society. Therefore, in the United States, an American marketer will deliver the best results; in China, a Chinese marketer; and in Indonesia, an Indonesian marketer.
History has witnessed cases where large international companies entering Asian markets relied on the expertise of their specialists from American and European headquarters, leading to negative consequences for the brand. Marketers at the headquarters, despite their high qualifications and experience, found it challenging to empathize with the daily lives of Chinese or Japanese consumers. For example, Procter & Gamble placed a stork carrying a baby on Pampers diaper packaging. When they launched sales in Japan, the company faced weak demand because the idea of a stork delivering babies was familiar in Europe and America but unknown in Japan. The local population didn't understand the significance of such an image and didn't buy the product.
To avoid such mishaps, when entering new countries, companies should hire marketers who not only have high qualifications but are also local. This significantly increases the chances of success.
