Why consumer goods Just-in-Time
Marketers outperform their peers
A select group of consumer goods and services
companies grows faster and more profitably compared
to other players in the industry.
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Accenture research identifies them as Just-in-Time (JIT) Marketers,
and they’re skilled at directing the right message or offer to the right
consumer at the right time. They integrate digital and analytical
capabilities firmly into their operating models while focusing strongly
on profitable growth. It’s a strategy that pays off: on a global,
cross-industry basis, JIT Marketers significantly outperform other groups
in achieving growth that exceeds 26% over both one- and three-year
periods. These trends play out in CG&S as well.
% reporting greater than 26% growth vs peers
year
year
year
JIT
JIT
Everyone
else
Everyone
else
26%
year
JIT
Everyone
else
26%
26%
Cross Industry
Consumer Goods & Services Industry
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Industry challenges intensify
The need to practice what JIT Marketers have
mastered has never been more urgent among
consumer goods players. Trends are largely
driven by more demanding consumers who
are causing products, offerings, services and
marketing efforts to become obsolete at a
quicker pace. Widespread digital connectivity
has produced near-perfect market
information, resulting in shorter product
shelf lives and increased demand for better,
cheaper and more convenient offerings,
irrespective of provider.
Accenture research shows that
even when companies use the most
effective marketing tactics, less than
20% of the consumers they reach find
the messages relevant. In other words,
many consumer good marketers
have an inventory problem in that
most of their brand-building efforts,
campaigns and messaging lacks
relevance when it comes to meeting
real-time customer needs.
The resulting waste, inefficiency and
poor quality call for the same kind
of JIT solution that manufacturers
use. Recognition of this problem is
widespread within the industry:
Only half of JIT marketers are
satisfied with their approach; and of
all consumer goods chief marketing
officers only 32% are very satisfied
with the results they achieve.
What really sets JIT Marketers
apart, though, beyond the focus
on eliminating waste in all of its
forms, is their understanding that in
the current environment, achieving
sustainable profitable growth takes
more than cost cutting—it requires
robust operational capabilities,
innovative new business models,
strong leadership, digital maturity,
well-positioned categories and brands,
and exceptional customer knowledge.
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Five keys to successful growth
JIT Marketers in the consumer goods space focus on five
elements that set them apart in terms of profitable growth.
1
Value delivery
JIT Marketers invest in the marketing infrastructure they need to
communicate and execute their customer value propositions
They ensure they have the right
processes, controls, talent, skills,
and infrastructure to meet marketing
objectives, and structure them to
operate in centralized (global) or
de-centralized (local) models as
needed. Far more consumer goods
JIT Marketers say they are very
satisfied with their ability to insert
the right message at the right time
in promotions, as well as in mobile,
broadcast, web and social media
channels, than the global average
for consumer goods players.
One global fast-moving consumer
goods company, for example, handles
social media in a different way. The
firm uses job sharing to staff its social
media center. This way, different parts
of the business are aware of each
other and speak more frequently. The
company even requires employees
to keep a portion of their current
responsibilities. In that way, the
insights get put into action as they
occur by the people doing the work.
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2
Leadership
JIT Marketers exhibit strong leadership that balances efficiency with
effectiveness and supports the company’s marketing strategy and vision
Strategy
Vision
Effectiveness
They make marketing and digital
innovation parts of the C-suite
agenda, and concentrate on tailoring
value propositions at the right
price, the right time and in the
right channels.
Efficiency
As such, the executive team has
created country-specific teams led by a
local CMO tasked with ensuring digital
fluency and best practice sharing
across the business unit functions.
For example, a leading Beauty
Manufacturer has put accelerated
Digital adoption as a key imperative
to transform the organization.
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3
Digital maturity
These consumer goods players work to achieve maturity in functional
digital capabilities and ecosystems, focusing on the technologies
required to make it happen
They also strive to apply fact-based
measurement and accountability
when assessing the performance of
their marketing capabilities. While
JIT Marketers haven’t overinvested
in digital technology, many in
the consumer goods category are
projecting massive new spending over
the next three years to improve or
expand their IT infrastructure. This
investment significantly exceeds the
global sample of JIT Marketers, and
likely reflects both the technology’s
readiness for use in the industry and the
marketers’ own willingness to use it.
For instance, the coffee brand whose
coffeemaker automatically enables the
re-ordering of refills for consumers
while at the same time aligning
real-time demand with real-time supply.
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4
Categories and brands
JIT Marketers proactively proactively anticipate and plan for the rapid
obsolescence of the products and services they offer to consumers,
continuously cultivating the ability to innovate, develop, manage, and
provide offerings effectively and competitively in the marketplace
Take one manufacturer of sports
T-shirts, which evolved its offerings
by focusing on the user experience.
Now it includes a comprehensive
combination of, among other things,
an app and watches, enabling the
firm to provide ‘living services’ to
consumers. These are sophisticated,
contextually aware digital services
designed to anticipate and respond to
your needs. They react in real-time
to changes in the environment and
patterns of behavior, in ways that will
transform how we live, work and play.
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5
Consumer as well as
customer knowledge
These players have both the customer and overall consumer data they
need to plan and execute effective marketing strategies, and strive to
obtain a high level of understanding of both groups
They realize that understanding and
communicating with consumers
effectively requires them to operate
seamlessly in an increasingly real-time
digital environment.
All of these are able to build on a
shared consumer database of almost
500 million consumers, thus enabling
a consistently high level of social and
email campaigns.
For example, one major consumer
packaged goods company has for
several years invested in a shared
service center of excellence, ensuring
that all geographies, markets and
brands have access to the same high
level of capabilities.
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To achieve new levels of profitable
growth, consumer goods companies
need to understand their current
performance across these five
elements. The recommended approach
involves a holistic assessment of the
firm’s current standing and its progress
in each area, instead of “over-indexing”
on capabilities or operating models
alone. For instance, JIT marketers don’t
invest more in digital or analytical
capabilities compared to other players.
Instead, their marketing effectiveness
results from the unique ways they use
those resources.
In contrast to the average company,
JIT marketers are far more likely
to integrate digital and analytic
capabilities into their operating
models. Like JIT Marketers across all
industries, Consumer Goods & Services
JIT Marketers are twice as likely as
their peers to report the highest level
of integration.
On a cross-industry basis, significantly
more JIT Marketers establish centers
of excellence for digital marketing
activities, and hire employees with
specialized digital skills that align
with the requirements of targeted
customer segments and product
categories. They also make sure
they embed these experts in their
marketing campaigns and promotion
teams. They take a similar approach
to analytic capabilities: while not
investing more than others do in the
discipline, they make sure they have
the analytics capabilities they need to
inform their operating models.
Value delivery
1
Consumer as well as
customer knowledge
5
Key success
growth factors
4
Categories and brands
2
Leadership
3
Digital maturity
Five keys to successful growth
JIT Marketers in the consumer goods space focus on five elements
that set them apart in terms of profitable growth.
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Conclusion
Consumer goods companies face enormous
challenges from an ongoing series of
disruptions that is transforming the
industry’s competitive space. As players
position themselves for the growing wave
of digitalization, CMOs need to determine
how best to adopt the five JIT marketing
skills and capabilities that generate
profitable growth.
Methodology
Focused on CMOs in the consumer goods and services industry, the research is a subset of
Accenture’s 2016 global survey of 532 marketing executives, which covered a variety of other
industries, including telecommunications, electronics and high-technology, banking, media and
entertainment, retail and insurance, among others. The countries included in the sample were
Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The survey identified a subset of firms that outperform others in how efficiently and effectively
they spend each marketing dollar. Labeled Just-in-Time marketers, these companies excel
when it comes to targeting customers at the right time, in the right
place and with the right message.
All the information described is based on the Survey Results.
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Authors
About Accenture
Anurag Thakor
[email protected]
Accenture is a leading global professional
services company, providing a broad
range of services and solutions in
strategy, consulting, digital, technology
and operations. Combining unmatched
experience and specialized skills across
more than 40 industries and all business
functions—underpinned by the world’s
largest delivery network—Accenture
works at the intersection of business
and technology to help clients improve
their performance and create sustainable
value for their stakeholders. With more
than 375,000 people serving clients in
more than 120 countries, Accenture
drives innovation to improve the way the
world works and lives. Visit us at
www.accenture.com.
Jan Van der Linden
[email protected]
Joshua Bellin
[email protected]
Copyright © 2016 Accenture
All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and
High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
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