Brand building is being sacrificed by the industry’s obsession with consumer insights, says Thinkerbell’s Adam Ferrier.
Speaking at the Inform summit, by NewsMediaWorks, the agency founder was scathing of the overemphasis on consumers’ wants, and says it’s for brands to tell them what they want.
“We all talk about being customer and consumer obsessed and I think it's all really bullshit,” Ferrier said while speaking on a panel.
“It’s trying to pretend we’re all good corporate citizens by putting the consumers’ interests at heart above anything else. This isn’t a good business model because if most brands put consumers’ interests at heart, their brands probably wouldn't be there in the first place.
“So what you want to put at the very core of the business is your brand and building a brand that consumers then want. Understand what your brand stands for and put that above and beyond anything else.”
Ferrier was joined on the strategy panel by The Monkeys CEO Mark Green and Tribal Australia’s national head of strategy Caitlin Lloyd, who echoed the idea that customers shouldn’t always be relied on.
“The issue with focus groups is that it’s really difficult to get people to say what they want,” Lloyd says.
“That’s not because they’re being difficult, it’s because they don’t know.
“I used to work for an entertainment company and when we asked participants what it is they liked to watch everyone would come back and say it was the really high-end documentary. But when you looked at the data it’s reruns of Friends and The Simpsons.
“It’s not that they’re lying - that’s what they would like to be watching.”
Ferrier said iconic Australian brand Vegemite, with its distinctive taste, would likely not have survived today’s obsession with consumer insights.
“If we invented Vegemite today and did some focus groups and sensory testing, I guarantee you Vegemite would not exist,” he says.
“I don’t think it would pass focus groups and sensory testing today.”
Thinkerbell has been the creative agency for Vegemite since March last year. It recently captured cricket fans’ attention with their ad battle with British competitors Marmite.
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