Building Newage Brands In The Social-digital Age

In an age when consumer feedback to a product is swift and sharp, brands need to be quick-footed and act with decisiveness and agility to ensure sustenance and growth.

- Vikas Lachhwani

Not too long ago, building an FMCG brand was about market surveys and establishing distribution networks. The new social-digital paradigm has decimated most if not all advantages of the distribution network and market information as an indomitable asset. We now operate in a world where information is available on a live wire. Customers and potential customers talk about and to the brand on real-time basis. Now it is the prerogative of the brand to listen to those voices and make the best of it. Consumer voices on social media are like an active information stock exchange.

From a linear process to a loop cycle

Brand building is now a complete loop process. Product needs are identified from consumer voices which then become a basis for new product development. The consumers then provide a feedback on the products themselves, which can be used for product enhancement. It would be incorrect to say that marketers have not been taking customer feedback. However, in the pre-social media era, the time taken between the collation of consumer feedback and any meaningful reaction was too large. It was safe to assume that by the time the product developers would react to the feedback, the market itself would have shifted. In today’s context, brands are expected to react fast and decisively to consumer feedback. This has put agility as a unique requirement for sustenance and growth of a brand.

Survival of the agile