Success for FMCG brands today means being more in both the retailer and shopper agenda.

By andrew hovells , Head of Shopper Strategy at Live & Breathe.

The best piece of advice I was ever given in building strategy was pretty simple. Walk a mile in your target audience’s shoes.

Go talk to them, read what they read, watch what they watch. Live their reality, as well as the second-hand one in focus groups and social listening.

Not only does getting to the real shopper agenda generate powerful answers fast, but now we live in an FMCG marketing world where people call the shots, it’s unavoidable.

Go back to the 1950s, when supermarkets had a few hundred products and there was one commercial TV channel. Brands were magical, new products filled with wonder and possibility, demand very much outstripped supply. If you stocked it, they would come.

Brands called the shots, but then the grocers took over. Own label ate into brand power and the sheer scale of supermarkets began to influence shoppers more than big brands. Tesco was all-powerful, keeping it happy was paramount.

Until it wasn’t.

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Slowly and surely, the balance of power has shifted thanks to two big shocks.

The first was the 2008 crash, shifting status from ‘stuff’ to experiences. ?

Thrift became aspirational and conspicuous excess became uncool, leading to the rise of Aldi and the discounters (the cost of living accelerated this, who’d have thought that perfume dupes would become mainstream and that Aldi and M&S would have Caterpillar Wars).

The second was the digital revolution – leading to unlimited choice for shoppers.

Not only are there thousands of TV channels but TV is no longer constrained to a linear broadcast agenda – and neither is shopping. We can buy what we want, when we want, with a couple of clicks. The shopper is completely in control.

If you’re not relevant and if you’re not adding to their agenda rather than interrupting it, you get filtered out.

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So, while FMCG brands cannot avoid working with the retailer's agenda to get listed, they also cannot avoid working with the shopper’s agenda.

The pecking order in Grocery is shifting – while Grocers now compete with Amazon and all sorts of Ecomm options. The winners are closer to what matters to their shoppers:

• The cost of living.
• Health.
• Sustainability.
• The never-ending demand for convenience.

Amazon’s success isn’t rocket science, it’s just a better service – they make life easier.

So FMCG brands can only survive by matching their agenda with the shopper's agenda.

It doesn’t matter if it’s promotions, price incentives, exclusives, launches, ‘are you on TV’ or even partnerships, now the shoppers are in control - start with real life and work back to retail.