25 Jun CUBE members steal the show at BAM Member Day
Giving marketers the most up-to-date insights into their domain. That was the aim of the first part of the BAM Member Day, which focused on gathering knowledge. CUBE helped shape this session, which was hotly anticipated.
It was an unusual setting, that of the first BAM Member Day, which took place on 28 May. Indeed, for the first part, the participants were gathered in a lavish TV studio.
In the centre were a few chairs and on the large bleachers around them were enthusiastic marketers who were curious about the latest evolutions in their (read: our) field.
In the central seats were five people who have made knowledge and expertise their profession, including 3 CUBE members. Kathleen Peeters (Deloitte Digital), Gerd Callewaert (IPSOS), Corinne Mostaert (Kantar), Sarah Van Oerle (Human8) and Kristel Vanderlinden (futurekind) each took turns sharing some of their key findings from their research. It was nice that most of them zoomed in on one or a few of the insights and went into depth about them.
Social listening to make innovations succeed
And those insights were broad: from AI (of course) to the importance of social media in innovations to regeneration and even the human paradox.
Gerd Callewaert (IPSOS) started with the unpleasant message that 90% of innovations fail. The result of companies not putting enough effort into understanding consumer need. His solution? Commit to ‘Lead user innovators’. These are innovations that you detect by focusing on groups that play an important role in new needs or trends. “Through social listening, you can find out consumer pain points, lifehacks, etc.,” Gert Callewaert echoes. “That way you can predict sales curves. First something stands out on social, then the same movement follows in sales.”
What drives true sustainable growth?
Corinne Mostaert (Kantar) brought some insights from the study Blueprint for brand growth. The study’s central question is what drives true sustainable growth. The answer is fourfold. “You really have to be different for more people,” Corinne Mostaert starts her story. “That’s how you become a strong brand. The next step is to make more people receptive to your brand. You do that, for instance, by turning every product launch into a global event, like Samsung or Apple can do. When you can do that, you have a higher market share and can charge a higher price.”
The third step is to increase your presence. Brands with a year-round presence attract seven times more buyers… Finally, it’s about finding new ‘spaces’, new ways of use, of distribution, of communication… Corinne Mostaert: “Think of Decathlon that not only sells bicycles, but also repairs them.”
Regeneration
Sarah Van Oerle (Human8) then delved deeper into the concept of regeneration, which goes beyond sustainability. “From less harm to more good,” she summed it up nicely.
She herself called it an important topic, because the majority of people (82%) are concerned about the future and even a higher proportion (85%) look to brands for the solution. In her research, Van Oerle describes eight ways to become ‘regenerative’. She presented three of them at the BAM Member Day, of which we were particularly struck by the inventive applications. In Africa, for instance, abandoned train tracks are already being used to bring soft drinks to less accessible places. That system is now also open to pharmaceuticals.
Which presentation had the most impact with the audience, we do not know. What we do know is that almost everyone raised their hands when master of ceremony Joke Claessen asked who had gained at least one new insight during the presentations. And then there were the workshops, led by the captains of BAM’s think tanks, and the networking drink..