Guide to achieving marketing relevance through listening, learning and connecting

By Nicole Zetler, Robert Jameson & Chevara NaidooVol 1 | 4
©Copyright|LukeDaniels2013
The Guide to Relevance

Nothing is as important in marketing as
relevance.Ifyourproductsandservices,
communications and experiences are
not relevant to the people you are
trying to reach, you may as well pack
up and go home. Relevance means
that your consumers will pay attention
to you, that they will buy what you
have to offer and they will, in time,
build a relationship of trust with your
organisation. Getting relevance right
requires that you really understand
your market – on a deep, intuitive
and insightful level – so that you can
innovate to offer them marketing
that resonates. It’s the central role of
marketing, in fact, and getting it right
will transform your business and grow
your bottom line.
The Guide to Relevance

According to a news article in Target Marketing, 41% of consumers said
they would consider ending a brand relationship because of irrelevant
marketing - and 22% already have. That only leaves a little more than one
third of the market, who are likely to be indifferent. The significance of this
one fact means it’s vital that marketers understand it’s a “know me or not
me!” consumer world.
Relevance has become a wallpaper word. The statistic above explains why
it is so critical that brand and marketing managers should be on an endless
quest to understand consumers of their products and services better –
from the implementation of extensive CRM systems, demographic profiling,
extending their expertise in psychology and relationship marketing; and
experimenting with new ‘neuromarketing’ methods to monitor and study
consumers’ sensory and cognitive responses to messaging stimuli.
Relevance is the foundation for marketing that resonates. Knowing more
about your market than anyone else provides marketers with a platform to
break through the clutter and build engaging relationships with consumers,
and it provides the business with a powerful competitive advantage that is
hard to replicate and counter.
To ‘be relevant’ sounds simple, but the brands that truly get it right are
few and far between. Perhaps the reason for this is that we tend to
overcomplicate it; or because we’re trying to assign a science to something
that requires us to understand the fundamentals of people – entities that
are inconsistent, complex and driven by many unconscious influences.
41%
22%
© 2013 YELLOWWOOD. All rights reserved.PAGE 3 THE GUIDE TO RELEVANCE
By Nicole Zetler, Robert Jameson &
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

It’s time to decode, demystify, decipher and, above all, simplify the concept of relevance. This paper serves to outline how
three elements — listen, learn and connect — allow marketers to know more about the consumers of their products and
services than anyone else in order to be more relevant and ultimately to achieve real resonance.
Achieving relevance is similar to how we, as humans,
develop and maintain relationships with each other.
Essentially, to be relevant requires us to Listen, Learn and
Connect.
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

Listening helps us form opinions, embrace diversity, experience the
unfamiliar and understand one another. It allows brands to understand their
consumers and put their best foot forward. But are brands truly listening to
the conversation?
Getting research right
The building blocks of insight
In everyday life, before we make a decision or express an opinion, we tend
to listen to those around us to help shape these actions. Market research is
the gateway to listening to consumers. Doing it well should help marketers
make the right decisions.
The scope, scale and needs of market research have changed radically in
the past few years. The industry is shifting towards subconscious analysis
and neuro-marketing in order to better understand what resonates with
consumers. According to Craig Lodge, MD of Integer South Africa, “unless
you are physically analysing brains, you are clueless” because “customers
don’t know why they buy what they buy.”
There is certainly an increasing need to be innovative and experimental
in research. And it is also important to see research less as a project or
event, and more as an on-going, daily conversation. Many brands utilise a
combination of specialist market research companies and on-the-ground
observation by in-house teams to achieve this.
What is key in research is the ability to extract real insight from the
findings, so that decisions are based on a deep understanding of how
consumers think, feel and behave.
Research can no longer be just about reporting findings through numbers
and data analysis. It is critical to approach listening to consumers with
holistic and adaptable research design.
Ethnographic research, semiotic analysis and eye tracking studies are
techniques that allow us to observe the consumer in a ‘natural’ environment
with few external influences. The consumer is often more comfortable (or in
some cases unaware) and can give a greater indication of natural product
or brand interaction which is often the most reliable and insightful source
of information.
Image source
Eye Tracking: How we experience
websites & lessons learnt from research.
The image above represents how heat maps
are overlaid to show where the most attention
is drawn from eye-tracking studies.
“The most basic of all
human needs is the
need to understand
and be understood.
The best way to
understand people is
to listen to them.”
Ralph Nichols 1
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

Data in its raw form is useless; sets of figures, reels of
information that can be pieced together incorrectly to ren-
der an inaccurate view of your customer. Analysing data
can be complicated and it is not uncommon for even the
most extensive research to yield no customer insight or un-
derstanding.
Don’t confuse information with insight. It is important to col-
lect all kinds of data, from online conversations to purchase
behaviour, but as Shirley Harding, Head of Market Re-
search at Standard Bank points out, “the real skill is being
able to understand what you see and turn that into insight
– it has become a rare skill.” Craig Lodge also believes a
lack of skills is one of the greatest barriers to marketing
relevance in South Africa.
Marketers need to be comfortable with data and analytics –
to the extent that retailers such as Tesco in the UK employ
whole teams of actuaries to analyse purchase behaviour –
but the crucial skills of psychology and creativity cannot be
forgotten. Alana Dell, Consumer Insights Manager at KFC
South Africa, reiterates the view that data dumps add no
value since consumers use emotions to drive decisions –
the job of the marketer is to understand why they feel
the way they do. Marketing decisions need to be based
on real insight, so it is essential that marketers understand
what an insight is, and how it differs from raw data and
information:
From information to insight
Marketers often use the terms data, information and
insight interchangeably.
By keeping the following diagram in mind when think-
ing about markets and customers, marketers can keep
probing or asking ‘why’ until an insight or actionable
“nugget” is available to develop offerings and campaigns
from. The insight is the real human truth.
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

Transforming an insight into action and profit
After losing the lucrative distribution rights for Amstel, SAB needed to fill the
gap in their portfolio and focus marketing efforts on a new brand.
Castle Lite marketers knew that competing on packaging or taste alone
against the likes of Heineken, would be tricky. Instead, they opted to focus
on the insight that consumers respond to their thirst for beer as a “need for
a cold one”. Castle Lite is therefore the only local beer served at -4 degrees
Celsius and it is marketed as cool and refreshing.
Even the packaging has been tweaked to include blue liners that seal
in the fresh taste and a ‘Snow Castle’ icon that lets the consumer know
when their Castle Lite is at the perfect drinking temperature. Tapping into
this consumer insight and following it through with clever marketing and
packaging has resulted in Castle Lite becoming the biggest and fastest-
growing premium beer brand in South Africa.
The Castle Lite case study demonstrates the power of insight. But if you
think about it, the best insights are often the ones that make people say,
“that’s so obvious”. Insights are based on universal truths and when those
are revealed, they’re easy to understand and act on.
CASE STUDY
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

DID YOU KNOW?
In South African townships, Sunlight liquid is believed to be more natural than other cleaning materials.
It’s this perception of being ‘healthy’ that leads people to use it extensively and for various “health issues”. It has developed
the following alternative uses:
Constipation: Sunlight is dissolved in warm water, and the soapy water put into an enema to ease constipation. This
practice is very common in the townships, especially done on children because it’s believed to be healthier.
Skin problems: Sunlight is used on problem skin – eczema, acne, pimples – as it’s believed to be less harsh on the skin
and good for sensitive skin. Some use it as a mask - they let it dry on the skin and rinse with water.
Deodorant: Used as a deodorant for sensitive skin that reacts to perfumed roll on - though a lot of other soaps are used
as a deodorant as a cheaper alternative.
Toothpaste: Used as an alternative to toothpaste as it is cheaper.
Get into communities so you can uncover potential marketing opportunities for your brand!
Plan for insight development carefully; make sure you are listening to the right markets in the most appropriate, unobtrusive
and in-depth way. Insight is the foundation for building a meaningful, relevant connection with your consumer.
Source: Khumo Maluleke (2013): Yellowwood Researcher

1. Live,thinkandactlikeaconsumer:Totrulyunderstand
your consumer, place yourself in their shoes.
Understand why they think the way they do. Listen to
their friends, families and key sources of information;
and become a part of their world. Shirley Harding
reiterates, “put yourself in their mental model, not yours.
Try not to think as you do; think as they do.” This allows
you to draw real and hands-on insight.
2. Listen to the right conversation:Technology has given
us a plethora of media channels to interact and listen
to consumers, but we need to filter the noise and focus
on what is relevant. Define key words that represent
your brand and make use of tools such as Google
Alerts to notify you of online conversations around them.
Subscribe to the relevant RSS feeds. Follow influencer
and consumer conversations on social media to gauge
evolving opinions and tone.
3. Listen beyond your category: The world’s leading
marketing organisations know that they are much more
than mere products and services. To create a relevant
world for your consumers requires understanding their
lives, loves and passions beyond how they interact
with your category. Red Bull, for example, builds
cultural pillars around sport, music and adventure,
guided by market insight and their brand idea. Harding,
of Standard Bank, explains “It’s essential that we
understand the things that our customers discuss
beyond banking. Is housing an issue? Is it credit?
Is it education?”
4. Remember, you are not the target market: Many
marketers tend to forget this. Instinctively we resort to
sources that we feel might represent our audiences
best. While placing yourself in your consumers’ shoes
is important for empathetic understanding, it’s important
to trust your consumers’ perspective over your own.
Constantly ask yourself, ‘am I listening to the most
accurate source?’ Alana Dell warns that starting with
“my experience is…” is one of the largest barriers to
truly listening to and understanding your consumers.
Listen, don’t just hear
Listening, unlike hearing, requires paying close attention to what is happening. Ensure that you are really listening to the
evolving needs and mind sets of your consumers, whether these are expressed verbally or behaviourally, directly to your
company or in conversation with their friends. Using the right channels is critical. Companies not keeping a close ear to
the ground run the risk of missing an opportunity of a lifetime.
How do we listen, select and use these key consumer
whispers and translate them into relevant marketing
strategies?
Approach research with an anthropological view in mind.
Immerse yourself in the culture of your consumer and live
like them to get a real understanding of what drives them
and makes them who they are. Exploring your markets with
an open mind (and ear), can reveal a new world that you
never knew existed. Unilever brand managers, for example,
are required to actively engage with consumers and the
trade market. And other leading marketing organisations,
such as Red Bull, complement their traditional research
with constant feedback from employees in the field and on
campus, who watch how their market changes and what
resonates with them.
You will be surprised what you might uncover when you get
out into the market!
Getting out there
As Shirley Harding explains: “big surveys and experience
trackers don’t always help you understand as much
as qualitative methods like ethnographic studies do -
sometimes it only takes observing five clients to give
you a great idea, which often cannot be achieved with
thousands of quantitative survey responses.”
Plan for insight development carefully; make sure you
are listening to the right markets in the most appropriate
and in-depth way. Insight is the foundation for building a
meaningful, relevant connection with your consumer.
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

Relevance = Brand Engagement
A Yellowwood’s Engager study was launched in 2011 to measure
brand engagement across various categories in the South African
market. The brand engagement scores for brands are based on 9 key
pillars covering rational, emotional and social building blocks.
The connection pillar speaks specifically to relevance. Brands that
ranked highly on this pillar include KFC amongst a number of others.
KFC’s marketing and communication is highly relevant as they go into
markets, learn and translate these local nuances into their marketing
and communications, making KFC a loved brand in the markets it
operates in.
CASE STUDY
Some of KFC’s local advertising
Listening is only the first step to deciphering the information out there. Learning from that insight is how we dive into the mysterious
hearts and minds of our consumers.
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za
Often research and customer insights teams are stuck in a dark back office
with little interaction with the business, marketing and brand teams. With
such a vast and valuable array of information to provide and potential to
unlock, it’s perplexing that marketers aren’t utilising what is literally under
their noses. Campaigns based on true insight can provide huge competitive
advantage.
A possible reason for this is the fact that insight development has always
had somewhat of a mystical aura around it. Marketers understand the
value of insight, but the statistical jargon, numbers and raw data behind the
insight scares many and simply puts them off. This shouldn’t be the case –
some of the greatest campaigns and marketing initiatives are born from the
simplest of customer insights.
Given this, it’s time for marketers to think about customer insight generation
as a critical part of on-the-job learning and the campaign development
process. They should actively seek to find ‘insight’ from the all the
information available.
Learning should be inherent to a
marketer’s job, from new media and
new measures, to new channels and
new ways of doing things. But how
much focus is being placed on
learning more about our customers?

Below are a few tips to build a learning organisation:
1. Hire people from the target market. While not always
possible, it helps enormously to have people on your
team who intuitively understand the market you are
speaking to, especially in a market as diverse as ours.
Ensure your teams are full of insightful, creative, open
people who love to share ideas and think for themselves.
2. Build collaboration into your organisation’s
structure. Make it easy for employees to share ideas,
observations, experience and lessons. Consider
creating an ‘internal insight bank’, encourage weekly
brainstorms, flatten hierarchies so that every employee
feels comfortable sharing his insight, and share
feedback from those who deal with consumers every day
(the social media community managers, the front
of house staff, the support desk). Tom Brown, Regional
European Brand Manager for Unilever, explains that
category teams in Unilever sit together to form “hot-
houses of good ideas” with the workplace strategically
The companies that are really getting relevance right have realised the power of their people to understand the markets
they target, and have empowered them to share the insight and lessons they have. This ensures that consumer insight is
embedded into every decision that is made.
Build a learning organisation
designed to encourage the sharing of knowledge. KFC
monitors franchises to see what innovations take
place to meet hyper-local needs, learns, and adopts the
innovations that work.
3. Find ways to work with big teams: As marketing
becomes more sophisticated, bigger teams of
specialists are required. It’s important not to let the
creation of new disciplines lead to new silos in your
organisation.
4. Take risks. Keeping up with the cultural zeitgeist and
offering consumers relevant marketing requires taking
risks. Make sure you experiment with your marketing
and learn from your mistakes. Alana Dell is clear:
“relevance is not formulaic. It requires creativity.” Digital
tracking makes it easy to see what works and what
does not work, so that you can adapt and tweak as you
go – and it’s not so scary to take risks if you know you
are doing them based on solid insight into the market.
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

Learn to avoid the
common insight traps
The stand-out bias:
To the person analysing the research, certain
information may be more vividly recalled, when often
it might only be one or just a handful of customers
that feels this way. Often this information is used
on an aggregated level because it is perceived to
be more important than it is as it is stand out in the
research.
Justifying vs. Identifying:
Marketers and business decision makers often
view research selectively in order to justify their
own decisions instead of using the research to
inform strategy and decision making. It’s about
using evidence that supports your decision, even
though there is plenty that would tell you otherwise.
Fear of rocking the boat:
People often find the status quo to be comfortable
and would avoid taking action that would upset it. This
couldleadtomarketersignoringimportantinformation
about customers because it goes against the status
quo and upsetting current business processes.
People often don’t like taking risks when they don’t
really have to.
Personal benchmarking:
Marketers often become too engrossed in what they
themselves enjoy or what their preferences are and
forget about the context of the target market (which
marketers aren’t necessarily part of or aspire to be a
part of). Using yourself as the benchmark skews the
way you view your market and results in misdirected
and inappropriate customer communication.
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

One of the most challenging tasks in
marketing involves changing consumer
mindsets. Doing this allows us to break
consumer habits and influence behaviour.
Hard facts give a useful perspective into
a market, but it is also imperative to delve
into and learn about the ‘soft’ facts that
have the ability to change customers’
perspectives. It is important to always
ask yourself; Why is this happening?
How do my consumers feel? These
qualitative, soft facts provide marketers
with the opportunity to investigate the topic
in far greater depth, rendering greater
understanding of the reasons behind
consumer purchase decisions.
Traditionally marketers would conduct
focus groups and in-depth interviews
with consumers to try and gain a better
understanding of the working of their
customers’ minds. The flaw is that “what
consumers tell you isn’t always the
truth”, according to Dan Cobley from
Google.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle of
quantum physics applies to this type of
market research: that the act of observing
a molecule (or, in this case, a consumer)
changes its behaviour. Our researchers
frequently come up against this challenge.
For example, in an interview a respondent
told Yellowwood that she only buys
RAMA, because it’s the best and makes
bread taste better. On closer inspection,
the respondent’s margarine was actually
ROMI, after which she confessed that she
could not afford RAMA that month, but didn’t
want people to think she eats ‘cheap stuff’.
Be careful to not take consumers’ word
at face value, without understanding the
circumstances of the research process and
the consumer’s social and psychological
context.
In a similar vein, large group immersion
sessionscanputthecredibilityofobservation
at risk. Diving deep into a market with too
many people who may feel ‘out-of-place’
could upset the environment and potentially
change consumer behaviour. Therefore,
it’s essential that marketers visit their
consumers’ environment regularly in an
unobtrusive way to truly get an accurate
picture. Focus on trying to uncover the truth
behind consumers’ purchase behaviour.
Brown reiterated that he has been to every
township in South Africa numerous times to
see how consumers live and interact with
products. To ensure that natural behaviour
is maintained, Unilever ensures that no
more than 2-3 people, including the driver,
go on any given excursion.
Learn to understand
the magic of mindsets
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

The end goal of any research is to reveal the truth, but often the truth can be hard to digest
when it is not what you were expecting or highlights a failure on the part of your business.
Stubborn brand managers who thought they had it all figured out are regularly shocked by
the outcome of research into consumer perceptions of their brand. It is the responsibility
of a good brand manager to accept the research whether the result is negative or positive,
and to do something with it. It is part of building a learning organisation.
A brand that has been able to do this particularly well is Domino’s Pizza, who decided to
commission some research to explain why they were losing market share. After spending
time with their consumers on an intimate level through qualitative research, Domino’s
realized that is was not their brand that was failing them, but their product. Consumers felt
that the pizzas were sub- standard and that Domino’s needed to do something about it.
Accepting negative feedback is important; it lets you know what needs to change in order
to improve.
Learn to accept
the gold hard truth
CONSUMER
COMMENT
WHAT
DOMINO’S
DID
NEW
CUSTOMER
COMMENTS
THE
END
RESULT
“Processed
cheese”
“It’s
really
good”
Today, Domino’s is the second largest pizza restaurant chain
in the world.
In 2009, the year after the turnaround Domino’s share price
rose 130% from the previous year.
“This is
great”
“There is a
lot of love
in there”
New
Cheese
New
Crust
New
Sauces
“Pizza
was
cardboard”
“Totally
void of all
flavour”
Marketers need to become more comfortable with criticism, understand that negative
feedback isn’t good - it’s golden. Learning more about your consumers is vital and will
ultimately lead to a future where your brand is more capable of creating meaningful
customer connections, resulting in overall brand and business success.
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

“You can either use negative
comments to get you down
or you can use them to excite
you and energize your process
of making a better pizza.
We did the latter.”
Patrick Doyle
President of Domino’s Pizza
RELEVANCE CHECKLIST
What should you learn about your consumers?
What do your consumers care about?…and not just which brands do they care about
How do your consumers spend their lives?…and not just what demographic box they fit into
Where do your consumers live, work and play? …and not just which media channels reach them
What do your consumers need? (Functionally, emotionally & socially)…and not just how to spin
what you already offer
What do your consumers think about your brand, product or service?…and not just what you have
been telling them to think

‘Connecting’, or forming a relationship with your consumer, is the ‘holy grail’
of marketing. Relationships are formed when people interact with each
other, choose to communicate with each other, and are comfortable with
each other. Given this, marketers are going to great lengths to transform
relationship-creation into a science. But the more it is formalised into a
process, the more the authenticity of any real relationship is compromised.
The rise of mass production and mass market advertising in the 1950s
and 1960s required marketers to understand the main groups of people
that they were marketing to so that they could target communication. As a
result, a generational classification system was developed which grouped
the population into segments based on which year they were born. These
generational ‘buckets’ were given names such as ‘Baby Boomers’ and
‘Generation X’ with each group being assigned a behavioural profile and
traits which provided marketers with additional insight into the broader
population.
Recognising that generational profiling was rather limited, alternative
classification systems such as VALS (Values, Attitudes and Lifestyles) were
subsequently designed to profile consumers more comprehensively using
psychographic data.
Although organisations have become more sophisticated with more complex
database management systems, they have continued to use demographic
information (i.e. age, gender, race, income level, marital status etc.) to
define and segment their markets. But with high levels of fragmentation
and the rise of new technology that has changed the way people consume
information, shop, decide and purchase products and services, it poses
the question: if marketing has changed so much, becoming so much
more personalised, surely the way business and marketers view their
consumers should follow suit?
Ditch the demographics
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

The gap between marketing and consumer understanding
seems to be getting larger. New technology and the rise
of social media have made the need for hyper relevance
critical, yet marketers are still using ‘off-the-shelf’
consumer classification systems and demographic
profiling. What makes matters worse is that the proprietary
frameworks are often developed in countries such as the
United States where the market dynamics and social
contexts are completely different to South Africa and other
emerging markets. What relevance do social shifts in the
USA in the 1970s, for example, have for the majority of
South African consumers?
Demographic profiling has massive limitations. Not only
does it give marketers a one-dimensional, cold, scientific
view of the consumer, but with the same demographic
information available to all players in an industry, how can
marketers expect to differentiate their brands, products
and services on unique consumer insight? How can an
organisation really innovate to meet unique consumer
needs if the underlying basis for which offerings are
developed is exactly the same for everyone in that
industry? For example, if two financial services providers
were to segment their markets using monthly income as
a key variable, their offerings and the way they approach
their consumer groups would be almost identical. Harding
shares the same view: “In financial services, what you
can afford does influence your behaviour and income is
a driver, but it’s not the overriding factor. Marketers have
to understand what the driving factors are behind choice…
whether it’s needs-based drivers or lifestyle drivers for
instance”.
Comparing views of the same user: demographic vs. multi-faceted view
vs.
Woman focused on her career
Currently renting apartment in
Sandton city centre but is looking to
buy a house in the suburbs within the
next 2 years
Spends 10% of her salary online
Values and seeks convenience
Multi-faceted view:
White, Female
Age 25 – 34 years old
Gauteng
R300k – R350k annual income
Demographic view:
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

Multi-faceted: To achieve a sustainable competitive
advantage and understand your market better than
anyone else, you need to understand and layer different
types of information about your consumers. Build a
profile of needs, lifestyles, attitudes, behaviours,
mindsets, lifestage and psychographics for each
consumer cluster, so that you get as close to individually
relevant as possible. According to Harvard Business
Review (2009), “for customers to fall in love with your
product or brand, you need to understand their
personality and passions and see how those connect
with your product or service”. Think of it like online
dating: demographics can be useful to narrow the pool
down, for instance to 32-year old males in Johannesburg,
but to find the right partner (or consumer), it is critical
to consider personality, interests, value systems and
lifestyle. Only once you have all of these facets in place
can you get a general sense, or intuitive understanding
of your consumers. You will know what feels right for
them, because you ‘get them’ – and it is possible to
target offerings accordingly and ensure hyper relevance.
Contextual: All too often companies embark on
large-scale, extensive primary research to glean
insights about consumers for strategy and product
development, without accounting for changes in the
market. Understanding consumer context is essential
for relevance. Not only are people fickle, but macro-
economic shifts impact decision-making, attitudes and
behaviours. Harding describes this context as a
‘human eco-system’. She explains; “it’s one thing to
understand the person, but it’s important to understand
the context in which they operate too – how they live,
their daily activities, reference points, environments
etc.” Consider how much spending behaviour has
changed in the last four years, from an economic
boom, to recession to post-recession uncertainty and
market turbulence. If you based your consumer
insight on a single piece of research, your view of the
consumer and the associated offering would be
outdated and irrelevant. It is essential that marketers
consistently ‘check’ the context in which their market
operates.
At Yellowwood, we believe that to connect with consumers and look at consumers as people, marketers need to adopt a
more versatile approach. The following characteristics are essential when connecting with the ‘new’ consumer:
The Gephi online tool allows you to cluster online communities
and key influencers from a brand’s social media platforms to help
marketers better understand their customer communities”
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

Tips to ensure contextual
relevance to connect with
customers:
1. Understand the bigger picture:Keep your
marketing team abreast of macro-economic
shifts and consumer trends. Attend and
feedback on trends presentations, distribute
economic reports, host guest speaker
functions and make knowledge of current
affairs a performance objective.
2. On-going dipstick qualitative research:
it’s expensive to commission a large-scale
primary quantitative research study, but
smaller qualitative studies such as focus
groups or in-depth interviews are a quick
andcost effective way to glean consumer
insights. For example, Unilever recently filmed
a television commercial in South Africa to be
rolled out in other markets. In focus groups,
Nigerian respondents pointed out that the
bananas used in the ad would not typically
be found in a Nigerian marketplace. Unilever
removed them. Without this research, the
advertisement would have been irrelevant in a
Nigerian context.
3. Know the enemy: competitor intelligence
allowsyoutoeasilygarnermarketshifts.Seeing
how other industry experts view where the
market is going provides a sense check of
your view, and monitoring new entrants and
exits helps keep up to date with changing
consumer perceptions of industries.
4. Social media is the ultimate context
provider: the first place new consumers go
to vent, ponder, or rave are social media
platforms. These channels have given
marketers instant access to the market and
trends. Ask for feedback regularly, and check
what’s trending locally and internationally.
Many free online tools, such as Gephi, exist
to help extract and visualize data from your
social media platforms in a way that allows
understanding of customers’ communities,
influencers and influential topics.
HERE ARE SOME TIPS

Many large-scale research exercises such as segmentation
studies and brand trackers end up in drawer somewhere,
unused. The Yankelovich and Meer survey from Harvard
Business Review (2006) reported that of the 59% of CEOs
who had conducted a major segmentation in the last two
years, only 14% had derived value from it.
Customer research studies like segmentation are powerful
tools to provide rich customer insight that is critical for
communication, new product and strategy development.
The primary reason why so few CEOs feel they get value
from them is not the clustering or statistical mechanics, but
rather that too few organisations distribute and implement
the insight throughout the business. How often do you hear
employees, especially in leadership positions utter “what do
the Traditionalists want again?” or “how do the Achievers
differ from the Innovators?”
Those businesses which bring the organisation-wide
understanding of the customer alive – from those in
leadership positions all the way down to front-line staff –
derive enormous value from a shared language, aligned
priorities and more focused and relevant products and
services which lead to increased financial rewards.
Yellowwood has developed a number of ways to bring
segmentation clusters and consumer understanding alive
in the organisation – this is where science and art meet to
achieve something rather extraordinary:
Bring the organisation wide
understanding of the customer alive
Name your segments appropriately: once consumer
segments are developed, it’s important to give them
names that are memorable, identifiable, distinctive from
each other, descriptive and simple to understand.
Make it tangible: consider using posters, table-
talkers, photo galleries, on-hand booklets, mood boards,
visual icons, consumer rooms with permanent spaces
that describe each consumer segment, desktop screen
savers, mouse pads and other office ‘currency’ such as
coffee mugs and stationery.
Inspire&engage:noteveryonelikestoreadlargereams
of information, and you want people in your business
to ‘get’ the consumer instinctively and emotionally - so
consider using ‘a day in the life of’ ethnographic videos,
vox-pops with people representing the segment or
digital multimedia to really get the character of the
segment across.
Involvement to aid recall: as staff engage with
and discuss the different consumer segments, their
understanding will become clearer. Build in interactive
sessions such as reanimation workshops, spur of the
moment skits, and question time sessions with
audiences who represent different consumers. Create
high energy premier events to create excitement.
Unilever, for example, runs dedicated ‘consumer
connect’ sessions to share consumer insights and
knowledge with the broader teams.
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

Bringing the organisation wide
understanding alive to connect with customers
After embarking on an extensive bottom-up segmentation study, OfficeMax
realised that in order for the segmentation to work, it had to be lived in the
organisation. They therefore formed cross-disciplinary teams from different
parts of the organisation where they collaboratively decided on an initial
‘super segment’ to concentrate efforts on.
They created a persona for this customer cluster named ‘Eve’ and engaged
with all business units from sales to engineering. The teams asked “what
would Eve do?” and “what would Eve want?” and by doing this the whole
company engaged with the segmentation and began to look at customers
differently.
As a result, OfficeMax changed their approach to business, connecting
with customers like never before. They enjoyed triple digit rates of return
on initial investment. Sales also exceeded initial forecasts, the speed of
change in which new product lines were developed also improved and
more targeted recruiting practices were introduced.
With a focus on Africa, MTN carried out a large-scale pan-African
segmentation study in order to segment their prospective African base. The
output resulted in the development of a number of homogenous consumer
segments that can be applied to various African markets. Segment names
include Trendies, Survivors, Trader, Progressive and even a Her & Home
segment.
Realising the power of this consumer insight, MTN’s prerogative was to
ensure that the segments are lived in the organisation. Therefore, simple
and easy to understand collateral was produced and distributed to staff
especially those who are customer facing i.e. table talkers, multimedia and
visual posters. This way, staff can easily tell when they see a customer,
which segment they are part of, their needs and how they should be treated.
Bringing the segmentation alive internally has helped MTN realise its
African strategy and serve and connect with its customers on the continent
better.
CASE STUDY
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

If you get all of this right, you will have a thorough, deep, organisation-wide
understanding of your market. This insight should guide every innovation
that your organisation embarks on – from new product launches to
advertising and brand experiences. Listening and learning will equip your
organisation to know your market better, but to truly connect with them you
need to act on this knowledge and insight. You need to build it, so that
they will come.
The way to build a platform for connection will depend on your industry, your
consumers and your business. Red Bull, for example, uses insight into their
consumers to build a relevant content world around music and adventure
sports and spectacle. For others it may be public art, or opportunities for
consumers to help build a school in an underprivileged area. KFC ensures
that every little detail of their communication has been checked for relevance
– from the music in the ad, to the references (for example, will this segment
relate to a yoga comment?) and the accents. If your insight into your market
is spot on, you can innovate to create something that is truly relevant to
them. The test is clear: if your consumers choose to participate in what
you create, you are relevant. If you know them better than anyone
else, you should also be the first to give them what they want.
Build a platform to connect
New Product
Development
Marketing &
Communication
Innovation
Processes
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

TO WRAP UP
Being relevant means Listening, Learning and Connecting –
what are the implications for marketers?
1. Understand that your job will never have defined working parameters: consumer insight can come from anywhere
at any time; and it’s likely you’ll learn more about your market when you’re not at your desk.
2. A multi-dimensional view is essential: Do not rely on a single source, or a single methodology to gain true insight
into your consumers. Layer behaviour tracking with psychological analysis and market context. Expand your horizons
to understand key economic drivers, trends, current affairs, and the loves and passions of your consumers. Get out of
your office and into their lives.
3. Neverstoplearning:theprocessofgaininginsightison-going,notstatic.Yourconsumersarelearningeverydayand
their behaviour will shift. With on-going focus on insight identification, you can be the first to apply it and win.
4. The consumer needs to be at the centre of everything you do: marketers often get wrapped up in campaigns and
tactics – trying to do it differently and trying to push the envelope further. Always check back and ask yourself: is this
truly designed with the consumer in mind? Does it answer a need of theirs? Will they even care?
5. Makeeveryoneamarketer:Don’tkeepconsumerknowledgetoyourself.Ensureeveryoneinthebusinessisexposed
to, and contributes to, consumer understanding. Relevance can only be achieved when everyone in the organisation
is on board, living, breathing and innovating for consumer insight.

Mention the word ‘relevance’ and marketers’ ears will automatically prick up.
The reverence around the topic is justified. No one wants to be considered
irrelevant.
True marketing relevance means that your consumers will resonate with
your messaging, feel loyal to your brand and seek out your products and
services. It is the foundation of engaging, profitable customer relationships.
Because so much importance has been placed on the subject, we have
tended to over complicate, over engineer and over think how to be relevant.
As this paper demonstrates, being relevant to your consumers means
reminding yourself that regardless of which segment of the market you are
targeting, you are still targeting people – not numbers, foot traffic or income
segments.
Get out into the market, pay attention, talk to your ‘consumers’ as you would
ordinary people in your life, and make an effort to paint a picture of these
people to your colleagues. By doing this, everyone in your organisation
can better understand who it is that they’re serving and what the actual
purpose of their jobs is. It is only then that you’ll know more about your
market than anyone else. It’s only then that your business can truly offer
relevant products, services, communications and experiences that achieve
real resonance with your market.
Good luck!
Chevara Naidoo
www.ywood.co.za

References
• Domino’s Pizza. (2009). Domino’s
Turnaround. Available: http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=AH5R56jILag.
Last accessed 1st February 2013.
• Dove. (2006). Evolution of Beauty.
Available: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=IHqzlxGGJFo. Last accessed
1st February 2013.
• Ethnographic Research: A Key to
Strategy http://hbr.org/2009/03/
ethnographic-research-a-key-tostrategy/
ar/1 - , Ken Anderson (March 2009)
• Four Strategies for Staying Relevant.
Harvard Business Review. Aaker,D
(2012). URL: http://blogs.hbr.org/
cs/2012/05/four_strategies_for_staying_
re.html
• Gephi. (2012). The Open Graph Viz
Platform. Available: Gephi.org. Last
accessed 1st Febru 013.
• How Market Research Has Gone
Gonzol http://knowledge.asb.unsw.
du.au/article cfm?articleid=1499 - The
Rise of Ethnography: (October, 2011)
• How to Keep Aging Brands Relevant,
Joesph Gelman, Prophet, (July 2009)
• How to Stay Relevant In An
Accelerated Word http://spinsucks.
com/entrepreneur/how-to-stay-relevant-
in-an-accelerated-world/ : ld, Steve
Kaplan, (April 2012)
• Interview with Shirley Harding: Head
of Marketing Research at Standard
Bank, February 2013.
• Interview with Alana Dell: Consumer
Insights Manager for KFC (Yum Brands,
South Africa), February 2013
• Interview with Tom Brown: Regional
European Brand Manager of Fabric
Conditioners at Unilever, February 2013
• Interview with Red Bull South Africa,
February 2013
• Interview with Craig Lodge, MD of
Integer South Africa, February 2013
• Incite Vision Segmentation
Newsletter. Noorani, A (2009). URL:
http://www.incite.ws/segmentation_web/
VISION%20%20Bringing%20
Segmentation%20To%20Life.pdf
• Know me or no me Zoratti, S (2012).
optimising your customer retention.
Target Marketing Magazine. URL: http://
www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/
sandra-zoratti-know-me-no-me-
optimizing-your-customer-retention/1
• Know what your customers want
before they do http://hbr org/2011/12/
know-what-your-customers-want-
before-they-do/ar/1 - , Thomas H.
Davenport, Leandro Dalle Mule,
and John Lucker (December 2011)
• MTN Group Online (2010). Investor
Report. URL: http://www.mtn-investor.
com/mtn_ar2010/pdf/op_fin review.pdf
• Nectar. (2012). Privacy policy. Available:
http://www.nectar.com/helpprivacyPolicy.
nectar. Last accessed 1st February
2013.
• The Outside-In Approach: Eliminating
our Natural Bias: http://valkre.com/
papers/Outside-In%20Approach.pdf -
Jerry Alderman et al, (2009)
• Oxford English Dictionary. (2013).
Learn. Available: http:/oxforddictionaries.
com/definition/english/learn?q=learn.
Last accessed 1st February 2013.
• Segmentation: beyond the Math.
Gormley, G (2012). URL: http://www.
gravitytank.com/think_saysegmentation_
beyond_the_math
• The end of Demographics Beckland, J
(2011).: Mashable.URL: http://mashable.
com/2011/06/30/ psychographics-
marketing/
• The hidden traps in decision making.
Hammond, J; Keeney, R; Raiffa, H.
(1998). Harvard Business Review.
• 7 Universal Truths for Ensuring
Brand Relevance. Baranowski,
M. (Date Unknown). Fast Company
Online. URL: http://www.fastcoexist.
com/1679898/7-universal-truths-for-
ensuring-brand-relevance
• Want to understand your
customers? Tjan, A (2009). :
Harvard Business Review Network.
URL: http://blogs.hbr.org/
tjan/2009/05/want-to-understand-
your-custom.html
• We’re all marketers now
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/
Were_all_marketers_now_2834 -
• We’re all marketers now, Tom
French, Laura LaBerge and Paul
Magill (July 2011)
• What physics can teach us about
marketing. Colby, D. (2010).
Available: http://www.ted.com/talks/
dan_cobley_what_physics_taught_
me_about_marketing.html. Last
accessed 1st February 2013.
• Why marketers need to spend
time out of their offices http://
newmediaandmarketing.com/why-
marketers-need-to-spend-time-out-
of-their-offices/consumers-
consumer-behavior -
(6 August 2012)
Nicole has a background in financial
services marketing, and has headed up a
number of large brand repositioning and
marketing strategy projects across a
number of industries while at Yellowwood –
both in South Africa and in a broader African
context. She is passionate about relevance
for the simple reason that she believes so
few marketers are getting it right.
Nicole Zetler
Senior Strategist
Yellowwood Johannesburg
Chevara Naidoo and Robert Jameson
are Analysts on Yellowwood’s Strategy
team. Chevara believes relevance is about
more than products or services – it’s about
finding the nuances that really connect with
customers in a way that means something
to them.
Robert hopes to help marketers realise how
much value is gained by being relevant –
and that it’s not complicated to do; it just
requires hard work.

JOHANNESBURG
GROUND FLOOR, BROLL HOUSE
27 FRICKER ROAD, ILLOVO
JOHANNESBURG, 2196
Tel: +27 11 268 5211
Fax: +27 11 268 6699
CAPE TOWN
THE FOUNDRY, LEVEL 5
CARDIFF STREET, GREENPOINT
CAPE TOWN, 8005
Tel: +27 21 425 0344
Fax: +27 21 425 0338
Email: info@ywood.co.za
Get in touch
www.ywood.co.za
@askYellowwood

Guide to achieving marketing relevance through listening, learning and connecting

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Guide to achieving marketing relevance through listening, learning and connecting

Similar to Guide to achieving marketing relevance through listening, learning and connecting (20)

More from David Blyth

More from David Blyth (7)

Guide to achieving marketing relevance through listening, learning and connecting