Kantar’s Tips for Brands to Make Better Connections With Consumers

For over 30 years, global marketing data, analytics, and consulting firm Kantar has been focused on understanding the dynamics between how consumers and brands connect and how that connection creates financial value for companies. 

Kantar’s latest research and development effort, which was conducted and published earlier this year, explored the commercial performance of brands. And during ADWEEK’s Brandweek event on Tuesday, Marc Glovsky, senior vice president and senior brand strategist at Kantar, outlined the findings and the brands that are succeeding with customers.

Be present at meaningful customer moments

Among the successful brands, Glovsky pointed to Mastercard, which debuted a haptic logo during Brandweek on Monday. According to Glovsky, the brand is making itself distinct at meaningful moments in its consumers’ lives.

“Brands do this well,” Glovsky said of Mastercard. “Shower your customers with your brand’s distinctive assets, namely your logo. That greases the gears and conjures the brand and key decision moments that will facilitate choice in your brand being chosen more often.”

Nurture your differences

Glovsky said Kantar learned through its research that brands with more equity today than expected, given their size, are the ones that are primed to grow the fastest. He added that brands that deviate from the expected are the ones that drive sustainable, long-term growth.

For instance, Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty has differentiated itself from the beginning, making inclusivity a major part of its core mission and launching innovative features like the Shade Finder, which uses artificial intelligence to help customers find the perfect shade. He said the brand was smart to have Rihanna integrate the products in her Super Bowl 57 halftime show.

Additionally, established brands need to continue investing in nurturing their differences. 

McDonald’s strategy from 2020 to 2022, Glovsky said, helped revitalize its meaningful differences to drive a strong growth period for the company through several initiatives, including maximizing its marketing efforts.

The Famous Orders campaign gave a new generation of McDonald’s customers an intimate connection with celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Millie Bobby Brown, Whoopi Goldberg, Magic Johnson, Travis Scott, and Saweetie.

“They doubled down on digital, launching their successful rewards program and leaning heavily into McDelivery to really stand out and meet needs during the pandemic,” Glovsky said.

The executive noted that even struggling customers choose brands with excess pricing power three times more often than with low-to-average pricing power, especially as demand for travel and experiences increases. Airbnb, for example, is a brand that has invested in articulating its brand difference to grab more than its fair share of the travel market.

Push boundaries

Brands that put themselves everywhere are also finding success, according to Glovsky, who cited Netflix’s “outsized presence” at the Academy Awards and its Netflix House. 

To do that, marketers need to push boundaries. For instance, Spotify is pushing the boundaries as a music streaming provider to becoming a “one-stop shop for all things audio,” moving into podcasts and audiobooks, and soon, paying creators for their video content.

“Kantar’s research found that a brand having or being known to have any one of these behaviors can lead to double its rate of growth,” Glovsky said.