In December last year P&G announced that it had purchased a 1% share in Ocado, the Grocery Delivery service linked with the supermarket Waitrose. For many this was seen as an intriguing investment, for P&G it was seen as a chance to apply it’s “two moments of truth philosophy” to the Web .
P&G has for some time now looked to build its understanding of these two moments – the first being when the shopper chooses a product in-store and the second being when they get home and use it. An amazing 70% of shopping buying decisions get made at point of purchase. TV has also become so fragmented, with P&G claiming that to reach 80% of the population in 1977 you would have needed three TV advertising spots; to reach the same figure today, around 75 spots are required. It is unsurprising therefore that P&G has focused on these moments to give it the best return on its investment.
Bain & Co more recently have identified an even more important driver of growth – customer advocacy or recommendation. Using their Net Promoter Score measure they have identified that brands with the highest levels of net recommendation in their category; outgrow their competitive set by X2.5 times.
This is the new moment of truth; the moment at which one customer turns to the other and say’s “what do you think?” It’s an exciting space, requiring new insights, approaches and partnerships. To date even blue-chips like P&G have only scratched the surface of what is possible here. With high levels of advocacy creating a natural momentum, allowing for the possibility of lower proportionate marketing spends over time; brand rallying cries, storytelling and involvement strategies will soon be at the heart of most brand strategies and this new moment of truth will truly come of age.
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Who cares if your customers say they will recommend your brand… if they never get round to doing so. Realising the potential of advocacy requires active advocates, but can you influence this? This was the question we set out to answer in our research project ‘Leading by recommendation’. We studied 120 brands in the UK and 4000 customers. We found significant differences in activation levels between brands in the same sectors. We also found striking similarities in the way these brands approached their marketing. We distilled these findings into a model, the 4C’s of advocacy activation. A model which can be applied to build advocacy, build activation and build the momentum of brands.
