Welcome to my Blog!

Below in the Blog Archive you have what I hope are informative and thought-provoking posts on how digital tech is impacting and will impact business and society. Drawing from my world-class research. This is a critical area for all of us, with new tech such as AI, IoT and robotics transforming our lives. I will post critically on implications of transformative digital tech for smarter management and a more inclusive society.

You can also find out more about me using the tabs, viewing my professional profile in key academic areas. I encourage you to comment on my posts and I will be happy to discuss them further with you.

With very best wishes.

Geoff

Bob Dylan wrote the album The Times They are a-Changin’ in 1964. There is no doubt that back in the early 1960s, the times certainly were a-changin’. They still are. The rate and pace of change in global trade, global communications, global culture and global technology in 2018 is nothing short of stupendous.

What strikes me most is not so much the change, although it is spectacular, as the fusion of global trade, global communications, global culture and global technology. The totem pole of this fusion is the power of global branding. Take Red Bull, a brand whose global success hinges entirely upon using social media to become a cultural and commercial phenomenon.

Red Bull doesn’t take the usual route of interrupting time-constrained and data-bombarded people with an unwanted message and product. In Red Bull’s Stratos campaign, it wanted to generate buzz around the brand association with an adventurous spirit and the breaking of new technological ground. Their audience was the extreme sports crowd so they knew that Felix Baumgartner jumping from space and free-falling to Earth would capture the imagination of their target demographic.

The jump was caught on video so they used YouTube, non-branded hashtags and tweets on Twitter to let people know about it, and encouraging the viral spread of the video by using Facebook Connect to get email addresses in order to publicise the event. Did they know it would go viral? Hmm

The digital heart of Red Bull’s “extreme branding” is significant given the challenge faced by 21st-century brands in gaining our attention. Social media and new technologies means you and I can and should be treated differently as individuals, and this demands figuring out how to let us control of product and branding decisions.

Take the example of bringing together 3D printing and social media to customise products. We are moving ever closer to people being able to print off from Facebook a smartphone incorporating the chips, antenna and other three-dimensional components. A feature edition of the Economist has gone so far as to relate digital manufacturing, including 3D printing, robotics and collaboration online, to a third industrial revolution.

Old control

Take McDonald’s, which is providing brand content to Generation Z (the iGeneration or post-Millennials, born since 2000) users of Snapchat. Sixty per cent of Snapchat’s users are under 25 and one-quarter are of school age. Snapchat offers a fixed and ephemeral messaging service where photos and videos disappear after 10 seconds, encouraging Generation Z users to creatively push the boundaries in manipulating the McDonald’s brand.

McDonald’s is effectively empowering the Snapchat community to deliberately transform their brand. Snapchat users edit multimedia messages provided by McDonald’s, referred to as “snaps” consisting of a photo or short video, overlaying it in irreverent and humorous ways.

For McDonald’s, letting go and losing control of its brand to Generation Z makes sense, given its problems in attracting younger consumers. In many ways they are embracing what ground-breaking thinkers such as Seth Godin have identified as a move away from mass production and mass marketing based on transactional relationships with consumers towards permission-based relationships. These treat people with respect and involve them with branding and product development as the best way to get their attention in a cluttered world.

As Godin notes, when someone chooses to pay attention, they are actually paying you with something precious. Attention becomes an important asset for a brand, something to be valued, not wasted.

In the climatic lines of the final verse of Dylan’s title track on that album, he quips “the order is rapidly fadin’”. With the irresistible march of digital into every facet of our lives, and the sophistication and empowerment of consumers, the old control logic of branding is rapidly fading.

Like Felix Baumgartner, the space jumper with the Red Bull wings, brands have to jump. And, like Felix, leaving behind what is familiar and known is not always easy!

Professor Geoff Simmons
4th March 2018

Big data key to Irish food industry overcoming Covid-19 challenges

Covid-19 is impacting global food consumption behaviour in significant ways. According to Kantar Worldpanel research, 503 million more in-home meals per week will be consumed in this lockdown period – a rise of 38%. Kantar in January reported a total of 69 billion in-home meals consumed during 2019 – which is likely to be equalled or surpassed during extended periods of lock down. Kantar note that typically 69% of meals would be eaten in the home in normal times, with 31% out of the home (52 weeks to Jan 2020).

So, what happens when the lockdowns are lifted, and we move to a semblance of normality? Significant economic disruption will lead to permanent shifts in food shopping behaviours. For food firms, this represents arguably the biggest challenge most have ever faced. How they understand changing food consumption is going to be critical to determining many firms’ survival. One evident and major change is that consumers will eat less out and more at home as Covid-19 changes attitudes and behaviours of food consumers. A further key point is that many people will be out of work, with less disposable income to spend on more premium food purchases. A potential global recession or even depression will exacerbate this.

 

For the Irish food industry this presents a specific challenge. It is dominated by small food firms, with less than 50 and often less than 10 employees. With limited resources and expertise compared to larger firms, how can they source consumer behaviour trends and make sense of them? Technology in the form of advanced Big Data consumer insight provides a means to achieve this. For example, Dunnhumby the firm behind Tesco Clubcard Big Data sourcing and analysis is a global leader in Customer Data Science.  I spent the past 10 years as an academic at Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast, working with Professor Andrew Fearne from the University of East Anglia to make Tesco Clubcard consumer insight available free of charge to small food firms in N. Ireland. Supported by Government agencies and food industry bodies, we made available to many small firms’ consumer insight representative of over 40% of buying behaviour of the UK food market. Multiple case examples show how this leads to new product innovations, new listings with multiple retailers and other successes.

Advanced technologies such as Clubcard Big Data and its analysis, are crucial to helping Irish small food firms respond to Covid-19 change in food consumption. It is also crucial for ensuring that Irish consumers’ changing food preferences due to Covid-19 are catered for. Big Data consumer insights provide small Irish food firms with changing consumption behaviours for specific food products. Such as changing socio-demographics of their consumers along with shifts of existing consumers to cheaper products, larger baskets but lower average spend per basket and so forth. This allows small Irish food firms to respond to changing consumer behaviours by deploying innovative and consumer-oriented Category Management, Price; Promotions, Customer Knowledge and Customer Engagement strategies.

 

Irish Government and food industry bodies need to come together to fund access to Big Data consumer insights and the expertise to help small food firms make sense of it. The richness and precision of these insights is typically beyond the reach of small Irish food firms. However, at this critical juncture it could be the key ingredient for ensuring their survival and future success in the face of Covid-19 and its economic fall-out.

 

Professor Geoff Simmons 

4th April 2020