Consumers have changed tremendously in the past two decades, and businesses will fail if they can’t GENUINELY adapt

It is now 2020 and we enter a new decade, and most of us are optimistic about our future. We do know, however, that we need to put forward our fair share of energy and work to make our optimistic thoughts come to life: if you want to lose weight, you’ve gotta eat right and exercise; if you want a promotion, you’ve got to show results.

How about the CEO of a once thriving business? How does said CEO lay the path to see his optimistic vision of growth come to fruition? While there is no silver bullet, the best place to start is knowing your consumer. 

Spoiler alert! Consumers in this decade, are NOT the same as they were in the 2000’s. This “evolved” consumer did not emerge overnight. This consumer has been evolving for the last two decades, maybe even more, so companies that want to grow sustainably and build a loyal base of customers need to deeply understand what currently drives their decisions.

The new 4Ps on the Block

Many people have heard about Professor Kotter’s 4Ps that guide every marketing plan: Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion. These four Ps call out important aspects to activate marketing ideas to reach consumers in the best possible way.

However, consumers enter this new decade looking for a deeper relationship with the products, services, and companies they choose to bring into their lives and support with their hard-earned money. The drivers of this deeper relationship can be explained by the new 4Ps on the block: PEOPLE, PLANET, PURPOSE and PROFIT (yes! PROFIT).

1. PEOPLE: JW Marriott said, “Take care of your people, they will take care of your customers, and your business will take care of itself.” Employee satisfaction drives customer satisfaction. A business’s customers can “feel” when employees are dissatisfied. Customers know by the tone of their voice and their energy when they call the 800 number to get questions answered, or when they try to have a complaint dealt with via text, chat, or by submitting questions online. The way employees feel comes across in their interactions with customers. Take care of your people, they will take care of your customers.
   
   
2. PLANET friendly Products: Constant streams of innovation, ease of use, clear benefits, and value propositions are all important aspects of successful products, of course. But not at the unrestricted expense of our planet's natural resources. No, not anymore. Wasteful products are getting ditched by consumers; gone are the days when the more boxes within a box, the more luxurious and expensive was the product perceived. Environmentally friendly packaging is now guiding consumer decisions, as well as responsibly harvested ingredients. Take for example Natura, the personal care Brazil-born company that since 1969 states their reason for being as “to create and sell products and services that promote the harmonious relationship of the individual with oneself, with others, and with nature.” It’s with this philosophy that Natura has been responsibly using Brazil natural’s resources to create its products, gathering hundreds of thousands of loyal consumers around the world. They’ve become a force to be reckoned with, recently acquiring The Body Shop and Avon.
   
   
3. PURPOSE: Cause-marketing is not new. Recall the Dawn dish soap advertising showing that it’s so mild and yet so effective that it can wash ducks that’ve been caught by oil spills. At the same time their advertising was using nature to communicate the product benefits (gentle yet strong), they were also donating to wildlife conservation efforts. That’s cause-marketing. What the 2020 consumer expects now is a business with a PURPOSE: a business with a soul. Take for example, Toms Shoes and Bombas Socks, where for every shoe and sock sold one is donated to a child in need. Their mission is to help children in need of shoes and socks around the world, and they enable their mission buy selling their products PROFITABLY. Warning: don't pay lip service to consumers, because they can see right through it; businesses must mean it.
   
   Consumer product companies are not the only ones catching the purpose driven business wave. The service industry is too, and perhaps the most shocking example comes from the financial industry: banking … the Evil Empire itself. Standard Chartered Bank launched the AMAZING “We Are Here for Good” campaign, which explains the brand’s position that a bank can be a force for good in the world. One of the many powerful advertisements in this campaign shows how it uses its network and scale as a global bank to track the money in illegal elephant poaching and report the activity to the authorities (here’s a link to the commercial).
   
   
4. PROFIT: Last but not least; in the few examples above, it’s clear that companies that take care of their PEOPLE, develop their products with the PLANET in mind, and run their business with a PURPOSE, are highly PROFITABLE. Cause and effect. The bottom line (pun intended): it IS possible to do good AND to do well, and the consumers of 2020 expect it.