What great transformations will the world see in the next decade?
Tomorrow marks the kick-off of the 42nd edition of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting which will take place January 25-29 in Davos, Switzerland under the theme The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models.
Over 2,600 top officials from leading private-sector companies, governments, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions will gather to discuss the increasingly complex, interdependent and fast-paced era we live in whereby leaders return to their core purpose of defining what the future should look like, aligning stakeholders around that vision and inspiring their institutions to realize that vision. Ahead of the event Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme outlines 3 trends that are driving this global transformation.
Like last year, Accenture Chairman Bill Green was once again invited to share his vision and opinions and will moderate a panel session entitled A Smart Growth Solution that examines how technological advances drive economic growth and employment.
In the past five years, Accenture’s Consumer Electronics Study has researched consumers’ preferences for technologies and services. As innovations in technology continue, it doesn’t appear that consumers’ affection for technology will fade anytime soon. With mobility as the latest trend in consumer technology, hardware and content providers enjoy a booming market that shows no signs of slowing down, at least in the foreseeable future.
Accenture’s 2012 survey of more than 10,000 consumers across 10 countries shows consumers are making their networked lives more robust. They are connecting in more than one way and on multiple devices, consuming more content, and doing it all on the go. Specifically, this research has identified 5 trends for manufacturers and service providers to consider as consumers strive to be always connected. Below I will discuss three trends of these trends in more detail.
Recent Accenture research confirms that while the level of social media activity among hundreds of companies confirms the perception that social media applications can enhance consumer marketing, sales and service practices, few are using social media to its fullest potential across marketing, sales, service and innovation.
Low Level of Engagement Accenture recently surveyed executives at more than 200 companies to get insights in their social media attitudes and actions. The research revealed that 65 percent of survey respondents considered social media an “extremely important” or “very important” channel and only one in six (17 percent) of executives perceived social media as not very important or not important at all.
Today Accenture launched the new global brand campaign to take its successful “High performance. Delivered.” positioning to the next level. After last year’s advertising campaign which featured photographs of animals — giraffes, sheep, elephants and polar bears — as metaphors to bring to life the Accenture brand theme, the new campaign demonstrates the full depth and breadth of Accenture’s global capabilities, and how we leverage our industry expertise and leading consulting and technology capabilities to create significant, tangible business value for clients. In the Netherlands, we kicked off our new advertising campaign with a series of ads in today’s Innovation issue of FD Outlook.
With clear headlines and “bold colors”, the campaign focuses on results-focused case studies featuring clients, which are being leveraged across a variety of marketing channels, including advertising. Prominent among these case studies, is Anglo-Dutch company Unilever, focusing on how Accenture helped the global consumer goods company to leverage technology to simplify, standardize and unify business processes across more than 100 countries — resulting in €1 billion in savings for Unilever.
In addition to leveraging engaging imagery, clever copy and a bold color palette, the new brand campaign features the Accenture symbol — “>” — which has been part of the company’s logo for more than 10 years. The campaign includes print ads, posters in 73 airports in 35 countries, outdoor ads, digital ads, social media and video clips of case studies. Images from the ads will also be displayed in 200 Accenture offices around the world.
Interactive new media offer new opportunities to interact with consumers. Considering the importance of these interactions, communications taking place within this new digital space can have an important effect on the perceived brand personality. Research I am currently conducting as part of my MBA program focuses on defining important elements within interactive, social media that can contribute to the formation of brand personality and investigating those relationships.
Transformation of engagement
When Howard Schultz returned to the CEO position at Starbucks in 2008, he stated rebuilding trust with the customers was the main priority for the company. At the basis of his approach: social media. “It has become paramount that brands understand that trust isn’t something you build through traditional marketing,” Schultz said. “You do that through integrating social and digital media. It is a science – as well as an art – to understand how to do this in a way that is authentic and genuine, and not just marketing. Because if it’s just marketing, (consumers) will see right through it.”
In recent years, social media has gone past the hype and became mainstream. In the U.S. for example, social networks and blogs now reach close to 80% of active internet users and represent nearly a quarter of total time spend online. Other countries follow closely, with users joining either local heroes and/or the global giants. But social media not only connects people with each other, but also with places they go, media they watch and items they like and buy. This phenomenon has great implications for business. As everybody and everything is connected and exchanges information real-time, organizations get flattened and leadership becomes more transparent. But arguably the biggest impact is that it has changed the old way of doing business forever.
In today’s service environment, a differentiated customer experience strategy clearly enhances the brand. It enables organizations to deliver a premium service to customers while maintaining the affordability of the overall service experience. A positive service experience provides competitive advantage due to reducing support costs, and grows the customer base with differentiated treatment in customer acquisition and retention.
Customer experience management is emerging as a critical component of success in business-to-business (B2B) industries. Despite its importance, customer experience management is just emerging as a formal program in most B2B companies. In fact, recent research reveals that half of B2B firms’ top executives say customer experience management is a competitive differentiator and influences major decision-making. The same research reports that just 28 percent of B2B executives base strategic decisions on customer experience or customer lifetime value. And, for many companies, investment in customer experience management is minimal—about half (48 percent) of B2B firms invest less than one percent of annual revenue in customer experience management.
The most recent recession was difficult for enterprises around the world and spurred an intense series of cost reductions in many developed-market countries. With the economy now improving in most parts of the world, companies want to reignite growth while continuing to make appropriate cost reductions to strengthen profitability.
According to Accenture’s comprehensive research over 1,000 executives in 12 countries, most companies are still hesitant to believe in a full-scale recovery and operate in a position of strength from a cash standpoint. The research provided us various key findings including that price optimization is one of the three most important strategic priorities in the past 18 months for seven in 10 companies: Read more…
Recently online newspaper Energeia published below article by Accenture’s Manon van Beek about the current role of the free energy market in Europe. I translated the article from Dutch to English and republish it with their full permission.
The decision by Germany and Italy to phase out the production of nuclear power has generated uncertainties on the goals of the European Union (EU) to achieve emission reductions and energy independence. The difference between the future electricity needs and our ability to meet this need is in fact only increasing. Is the free market economy still playing a role? And what happens now?
The required investment for bridging the gap between the future electricity needs and our ability to meet these needs are up to EUR 3 bln over the next four decades. This is essentially due to the country-specific approach of selecting energy sources and power generation. The relative autonomy of the EU member states has led some critics to question whether market liberalization is still the preferred method to achieve our energy goals. This question, however, ignores one key aspect: market operations are indeed crucial, but can only bring results if it is widely supported on a European level.
While many signs point to economic recovery, companies will need to work harder and smarter to find and capitalize on growth opportunities. In an environment undergoing profound change, the face of Marketing is changing.
According to the Accenture Marketing Executive Survey 2011, nearly eight in 10 senior marketing executives noted growing profitably was most important to their current marketing strategy. To support this renewed focus on growth, improving customer retention loyalty was cited as the most important business issue to address by 79 percent of marketing executives. The most important key aspect of this transformation is a heightened focus on building customer-centric loyalty in a rapidly changing consumer context.
Changing playing field: Is consumer loyalty truly a relic of a past era?
Marketing has a greater role than ever when it comes to returning companies to profitable growth—and the key will be developing a new, nimble and customer-centric approach. With fewer than 50 percent of consumers declared themselves to “feel loyal” to the brands they purchase, Marketing executives acknowledge the fact that they are increasingly challenged by major changes in their customer bases. The economic downturn significantly altered customers’ overall purchase behavior and what they want and expect from (their) providers, especially in terms of product quality, more value for their money and customer service.
Today’s customers are generally better informed, less influenced by conventional brands, and more likely to assess brands based on their own experience or the experience of their acquaintances. Customers are also increasingly aware of their power, as well as their value, and are not shy about exercising this power.
Social media is rapidly coming of age, as the massive acceleration of social media adoption around the world can attest. More people are taking to their computers and mobile devices to connect with friends, post their opinions and engage in conversations. Therefore it’s vital for business leaders to understand this phenomenon and to prepare their organizations to thrive when customers wield more power and influence over businesses than ever before.
As companies consider their approach to social media, they must first understand the benefits of engagement, as well as the risks of not engaging. For most organizations, social media offers significant opportunities to accelerate their ability to launch new brands, incrementally strengthen customer relationships and drive revenues from existing customers, new customers and new local/global markets. If a company chooses not to engage, it will find competitors rapidly filling the gap—and, potentially, could see its brand and reputation damaged by critical comments that ‘‘go viral.’’
Leslie: I will have to agree with Wouter…Too many companies do take their customer’s loyalty for granted…Hopefully this will change...Read the full comment
Wouter: Nice story, Angela! Unfortunately there are still too many companies that take the loyalty of their customers for granted. I hope Roy’s story...Read the full comment
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Recent Accenture research confirms that while the level of social media activity among hundreds of companies confirms the perception that social media applications can enhance consumer marketing, sales and service practices, few are using social media to its fullest potential across marketing, sales, service and innovation.
In today’s service environment, a differentiated customer experience strategy clearly enhances the brand. It enables organizations to deliver a premium service to customers while maintaining the affordability of the overall service experience. A positive service experience provides competitive advantage due to reducing support costs, and grows the customer base with differentiated treatment in customer acquisition and retention.
The most recent recession was difficult for enterprises around the world and spurred an intense series of cost reductions in many developed-market countries. With the economy now improving in most parts of the world, companies want to reignite growth while continuing to make appropriate cost reductions to strengthen profitability.
The decision by Germany and Italy to phase out the production of nuclear power has generated uncertainties on the goals of the European Union (EU) to achieve emission reductions and energy independence. The difference between the future electricity needs and our ability to meet this need is in fact only increasing. Is the free market economy still playing a role? And what happens now?
While many signs point to economic recovery, companies will need to work harder and smarter to find and capitalize on growth opportunities. In an environment undergoing profound change, the face of Marketing is changing.
