Packaging ‘critical’ to brand experience

The CMO Council study, The Responsiveness Requirement: How Agile Marketers Act on Consumer Feedback to Drive Growth, investigated how organizations are faring when it comes to responding to customers, and leveraging customer data and intelligence to deliver the ‘right experience in the right moment’, and through the channel of the customer’s choice, whether it is a digital or physical touchpoint. The report looks at some of the obstacles in achieving a consistent, connected brand experience across all marketing channels.

As well as the importance of packaging to the success of the overall brand experience, responding quickly to consumer feedback and requests through physical touchpoints, such as product packaging and other physical branded elements, is identified as a significant challenge for marketers, who have not prioritized addressing this challenge. Respondents noted a gap between their ability to make changes to physical media and their aspirations for speed; 84 percent said they would like to be able to make changes within 30 days, but only 40 percent currently report that they can.

And 46 percent of respondents said that functional silos across the marketing landscape have separated teams into physical or digital groups, enabling specialization and functional focus but making alignment and cohesion across these channels even more difficult.

Further, 66 percent of marketing leaders have reported that their end consumers are very sensitive or extremely sensitive to variations in packaging color and consistency.

The report draws on new research undertaken by the CMO Council in partnership with X-Rite, Pantone, Esko, MediaBeacon and AVT. It was conducted in the spring of 2017 and includes input from more than 153 senior marketing executives. Download the report here.

‘If brands can’t respond quickly and with great control, they will be seen as irrelevant,’ said Ron Voigt, X-Rite president. ‘Responsiveness is the result of digitizing, automating and connecting processes in the color workflow such that instead of taking weeks, they take days or even hours. We look forward to working with our brand and converter customers to help them meet this requirement.’