Why Jägermeister thinks creating a single customer view is ‘narrow minded’
While data and digital marketing have the potential to provide a nirvana when it comes to understanding consumer habits, Jägermeister thinks that creating a single customer view is actually “narrow minded”.
The German liqueur brand’s core consumer group is 18-34 year olds, which Jägermeister marketing director Nicole Goodwin told an Advertising Week Europe audience is such a broad demographic that to try to create a holistic representation of its customers through data wouldn’t work for the business. Instead Jägermeister uses its non-traditional marketing structure to gain insight on its audience.
“We actually don’t have a formalised structure… we don’t have the classic brand manager or marketing manager, we have specialists. So there is myself and we have an event manager, customer marketing manager and a trade marketing manager,” she said.
“The way that we recruit is that everyone has to be data savvy, we are not asking them to replace analysts but they should be able to interpret data at a top line level. For us in terms of our structure it is quite different to the classic and that helps us with insight. We have a lot of different consumers. We have ones who are 18 and ones who are 35, and trying to create one customer view of those would be very narrow minded of us.”
Also speaking on the panel was James De Souza, head of customer analytics at the Post Office, who said that this year value exchange is the company’s “watch word” as it tries to figure how to use data in a way that consumers feel comfortable with.
“It’s a question of what permission and right do we have in customers minds as the Post Office. We are possibly the least real time business imaginable,” he said.
“We have a long road ahead of us as the Post Office and we are looking this year at activating through social or potentially on the web to test out the value exchanges. There are just some things that people need to get done whether they like it or not… [We are looking at value exchange] in return for our biggest need which is driving lead generation into our channels. We need to earn the right to have a one-one conversation and are looking at more handraising from consumers. Value exchange is our watch word this year."