Marcas Blancas

Jordi Aymerich, profesor titular del área de Marketing de la Universidad de Barcelona, participa en el programa Anem d'estiu de RTVE a través de una entrevista sobre las marcas blancas.

Según Jordi Aymerich hay un cambio de hábitos que nace a raíz de la crisis, donde la marca blanca comienza a aumentar su cuota de penetración:  tanto a nivel de penetración de número de consumidores que compran alguna marca blanca que estaría alrededor de un 80% - 90%, como de share o cuota de mercado, es decir, lo que supone la marca blanca dentro de la cesta de la compra total que estaría alrededor de un 40%. Estos datos nos sitúan, a día de hoy, en niveles por encima de la media Europea.

Aymerich comenta las claves sobre la marca de distribuidor (o, marca blanca) y la marca de fabricante.

Entrevista Jordi Aymerich

             

El contenido sí que importa

La saturación publicitaria y la fragmentación de las audiencias, unidas a un perfil de consumidor súper informado y muy selectivo, sugieren reinventar los términos de la comunicación comercial. El consumidor de hoy en día tiene toda la información que necesita a tan solo unos cuantos clics de distancia. A menos que tengamos algo interesante que ofrecer, el fracaso comunicacional está asegurado. Incluso aunque lo que tengamos que decir sea interesante, si no es el momento adecuado, tampoco nos van a escuchar.

Aunque no han caído en desuso, ni mucho menos, hoy en día existen formas mucho más revolucionarias y productivas de comunicarse con nuestro público objetivo que lanzar mensajes a bombo y platillo en cuantos más medios masivos posibles. El avance de las telecomunicaciones y la diversificación de dispositivos y plataformas existentes nos abren un nuevo abanico de posibilidades para volver a conectar con un consumidor inmunizado a todo tipo de estímulos publicitarios.

Mucho se habla hoy en día del Inbound Marketing o el Engagement Marketing (Marketing de Compromiso). Y por muy técnico y complicado que nos resulte el término, no es más que situar al consumidor en el centro de la escena y cederle todo el protagonismo. Saber escucharle y darle justo lo que necesita y cuando lo necesita. Basta de interrupciones, de mensajes intrusivos, de sobresaturación publicitaria y e-mailing indiscriminado.

Si conocemos mínimamente a nuestro target, si sabemos cuáles son sus motivaciones y sus intereses, sus preocupaciones, sus inquietudes, … a qué esperamos para interaccionar con él?

De lo que se trata aquí es de generar verdadero interés a través de los contenidos, atraer a nuestro público con propuestas de valor, darles algo a cambio de su atención. Qué menos a cambio de algo tan valioso como es su tiempo. Ofrezcamos además la posibilidad de interactuar, no solo con nosotros, sino con otras personas. Dejémosles que hablen y que opinen, con y de nosotros. Generemos contenidos virales, susceptibles de ser compartidos. Intentemos gestionar todo este caudal de emociones, tanto las positivas como las negativas. Porque no nos engañemos, si hablamos de comunicar, estamos hablando de emociones. Establezcamos una relación con ellos, una duradera, de las de confianza.

Y como las cosas no son como antes, ya no nos vale con estar en un solo medio, en una sola pantalla. Debemos de estar presentes en todos ellos, pero sin olvidarnos de lo más importante: el consumidor. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram… estaremos allí dónde él esté, pero siempre generando valor y dejando que sea él mismo el que acuda a nosotros. Porque además de atraer a nuestros consumidores y hacer que ellos mismos sean nuestros mejores prescriptores, los contenidos añaden valor a nuestra marca. Podemos conformarnos con ser un simple vendedor al que se acude cuando surge una imperiosa necesidad o un experto en nuestro sector con el que estar en constante contacto, en constante interacción, al que recurrir para resolver nuestras dudas o inquietudes.

Blogging, Maketing de contenidos, Posicionamiento en buscadores (SEO), Social Media, analítica web, …Todos nuestros esfuerzos han de ir dirigidos hacia la creación de contenidos de calidad para nuestros consumidores (actuales y potenciales) y que estos los reciban con interés e incluso gratitud. A cambio de acceder a estos contenidos obtendremos valiosos Leads. Otro tecnicismo más que no es otra cosa que una persona con manifiesto interés por nuestros productos o servicios dispuesto a facilitarnos algunos de sus datos personales a cambio de recibir periódicamente algún tipo de contenidos: newsletters, podcasts, videos, infografías, ebooks, whitepapers, …

Podemos además distinguir entre leads fríos y calientes, en función de si es la primera vez que descarga algún tipo de contenido o ya ha mostrado su interés en repetidas ocasiones. Esta distinción nos permite, por ejemplo, identificar qué usuarios se encuentran más próximos a convertirse en clientes. A su vez, podemos ir personalizando progresivamente y de manera individual los contenidos y segmentar nuestra base de datos, conocer cada vez mejor a nuestros consumidores en función de los contenidos a los que acceden para que finalmente, y sin interrumpir sus vidas, ofrecerles justo lo que necesitan cuando lo necesiten.

Recientemente se celebró la segunda edición del “Inbound Marketing Made in Madrid” con ponencias de verdaderos expertos en la materia. En el siguiente video podemos ver como Pau Valdés, CEO de InboundCycle, explicaba cómo crear un canal de captación con una estrategia de Inbound Marketing. 

Raúl Hidalga

Keys to optimize the position of the laboratory in the pharmacy

According to the Asociación para el Autocuidado de la Salud (ANEFP) and IMS the pharmacy Spanish market is showing an increasing tendency since the third trimester of 2013. The private market of prescription and the self-care or consumerhealth are increasing and now are accounting for a 40% of the total volume and a 26’8% in value. The consumerhealth market ranks as the second segment that brings more sales to the pharmacy, after the prescription market, acting as a mean of survival and great support to the pharmacy.

Given this situation, it is highly attractive for the laboratory to have a closer relationship with the pharmaceutical target in order to get a better position of their products in the pharmacy office, to include advertising at the point of sale and, among others, to take their brands up to the top of mind of the pharmacists at the moment that they are recommending to the consumer/patient

From several studies done through the lasts months by the market research consultancy Hamilton, it has been detected that the pharmaceutical target would highly appreciate other resources that favored their daily activity beyond trade policies applied by the laboratories

In order to determine what can provide the laboratories, great beyond of the price variable, it is essential to use research market techniques that allow us to go deeper in their daily life, detecting insights and needs that help the pharmacist to optimize the management at the pharmacy office. 

¿How can the laboratories get closer to the daily activity of the pharmacist?

It is necessary to reinvent the traditional research market techniques to delve in the daily work of the pharmacist and the pharmacist auxiliaries, detecting what incitements are the key in the purchasing decision at the point of sale

For this we apply mix deepening techniques in which are implemented ethnographic methodologies and in depth techniques in order to observe in situ the pharmacy strategies, understanding the mission, the functions, the attitudes, the motivations and the needs of the pharmacists in their main activities. The aim is to identify what the laboratory can provide in their day-to-day situations in order to be closer with them, and indirectly, stay in a better position in the list of recommendations and sales.

Sometimes creative dynamics are also proposed in order to overcome the rational barriers, deepen to a more latent and unconscious level and landing the ideas/insights of the pharmacist in concepts of new products and/or services that define a model “win-win” between the laboratory and the pharmacy.

Helping the pharmacists in the management of the pharmacy implies, also, advising them in the mix marketing, giving them tricks about the products, services, distribution, communication and promotion, among other tools. For the laboratory it means defining a better strategy of category management in the pharmacy, optimizing the investment in publicity and communication and, also, going into detail on the rational and emotional elements that influence the pharmacist recommendation

For that is necessary to analyze the possible routes of the consumer in the pharmacy, determining the cold and the heat zone in the same and in the lineal and, moreover, measuring what elements and what stimulus are susceptible at the point of sale to attract the attention and become a trigger for a purchase. Establish a quantification of these elements will allow us to know the consumer decision tree and detect what button should we touch in order to optimize our marketing strategies and the trade marketing.

Let’s get a moment the pharmacist role… who of us would not like to be helped in their daily activities? Who would not like that others care about our business? Who would not like to sale more? 

The pharmacist are more receptive to listen new proposes, to apply marketing strategies and to improve their point of sale.

Being the first and the best in giving this advisements will let getting us a better position of our brands and products in their pharmacist and, also, in their top of mind.  

Jennifer Varón

Is it worthwhile to be wrong?

This question has the same answer than “is it profitable to win the lottery?” At the beginning both are affirmative but it depends on which is your reaction in front of an event or another, depending on how you invest and how you apply what you obtained, whether the lottery or whether the learning gained by the mistake done.

According to the politician and philosopher Marco Tulio Cicerón “is about humans being wrong but is by foolish people persisting on the error”. In my opinion, what truly results worthwhile is not doing a mistake but recognizing it.

Canadian researchers have found some evidence that as older we are, more we learn from our mistakes than from our success, and, also, that the learning from the trial-mistake is more effective for the memory than the knowledge achieved without mistakes. 

Leave open the possibility to be wrong and having the ability of identifying and recognizing the error provides the companies a high opportunity for the development of the professionals, as well as for the evolution, growth and recognition (reputation) of the brand. The recognition of the error allows the brand to be recognized as human, to be recognized as an empathic brand for its clients, employees and society.

The consumers don’t expect their brands to be infallible neither to be always perfect; they just want them to be honest about their mistakes. The human nature makes us run away from those people that (apparently) don’t have weaknesses and that never get wrong. Those attitudes generate problems connecting, trusting and engaging with the company.

Therefore, that an organization has the possibility to be wrong (I am not even saying promotes) and has acquired and developed the capacity and the ability to recognized their mistakes (I am not even saying that has created the channels) will allow it to develop other qualities for what being recognize. Among those qualities I would highlight:

•  Innovation: It is not possible to evolve and growth without assuming that there is a possibility to be wrong, without recognizing that the correct path is not always the straight line. That is an ability that leads to the bravery of assuming risks that all companies have and that all innovation process, forced or not, entails. The worst decision is the one never taken or the one taken late.

• Flexibility: For creating the process that protect the possibility of making a mistake and understanding that only from freedom emerges the trust and the creativity to evolve.

• Objectivity: To be able to read in key of future and in a positive way the situation that leaded us to the mistake, as well as we should avoid blaming the others about our mistakes

• Transparency: It is one of the ways of incorporating the honesty to the features of humanity and empathy expected from a company or brand. This transparency should show the mistake through the communication and the rectification. In an hyper connected world transparency is not an option, is an obligation. Otherwise we already know that it is a mistake of incalculable consequences.

• Coherence: closely related to the last point; the coherence is the shorter distance between what I am as a brand and a company and what I am saying that I am. For a coherent brand/company it would be easier (and cheaper) to face their possible mistakes.

• Humility: It doesn’t mean to recognize a weakness but to possess the wisdom and strength to know how to rectify.

• And above all, the learning capacity: As Oscar Wilde said: “experience is the name we give to our mistakes”. The experience is what I am able to do with what I learned. The main point is that if as a company, brand (or even a person) I will not have the humility to recognize my mistake, I will not learn from the past and even less give a good answer to the future.

But the most important, beyond developing these skills, the image that you will project will allow you to acquire a competitive advantage that will be difficult to beat for your competence, the capacity to engage and retain a talent with those same skills, this same attitude. Creative people and professional, with capacity of innovation, brave, honest, transparent, and coherent with their behaviour and their way of thinking and doing, flexible in front of the adversity and, specially, with the humility needed to learn about their mistakes.

Values from a talent that in many cases the companies, and the society where we live, seem to waste when “retiring” by force professionals that, at 50 years old, with a bag full of experience, errors and good choices, mistakes and learnings, and probably in the best moment of their professional life, we deny, and with we deny ourselves, the opportunity to do shorter (and therefore, more worthwhile) the path they already did, forcing us to go across this path again and probably make a mistake once more.

It is not worthwhile committing, year after year, generation after generation, the mistake that we will be eternally young and lacked of the humility to recognize the value of the experience of those who already did the path before us and to not develop the capacity of learning from them. Human is the only animal that stumbles twice on the same stone and, with him, all the entire society.

If we have identified the mistake, we should learn from it and, as Cicerón said, don’t be so foolish to continue persisting on it

Sebastián Fernández de Lara

Marcas que se reinventan

Jordi Aymerich, profesor de Marketing de la Universidad de Barcelona, ha participado en “El Matí de Catalunya Ràdio”, para hablar de marcas clásicas que se reinventan con el paso del tiempo. También han participado el Director de Marqueting de Munich, Xavier Berneda y el Director General de Bultaco, Curro Bultó.

XI Congreso de Retail 2014 en Lima

Sebastián Fernández de Lara, socio director en hamilton, ha llevado a cabo varias ponencias en el XI Congreso de Retail 2014 en Lima sobre los consumidores, su evolución y lo que buscan en las marcas. Según Sebastián cada vez las marcas se encuentran con un consumidor más exigente e infiel. ¿Cómo se da este cambio? ¿Qué estrategias pueden seguir las empresas frente a ello? Sebastián da respuesta a estas preguntas entre muchas otras