Catherine Guaran Catherine Guaran

PORTFOLIO

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Award Winning Content

Authentic brand stories designed to generate organic reach via advocacy and media partnerships.

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Chasing Monsters - Award Winning Content

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Vegemite. How do you grow an icon?

Vegemite may be an Australian icon, but it is also a commercial business that needed to turn around a gradual, but persistent drop in consumption.


When working on a brand like this the trap is bringing in your own subjective take on what the brand means to you, and being unable to let it go. What do you do to get to the real problem, and therefore opportunity?


Go to the insights. Firstly, it’s already loved, this is one brand where you don’t need to create a stronger emotional connection. In this case emotion doesn’t drive consumption. Go back and look at the brand history, what made it great, and what drove consumption in the past. In this case it was the nutritional value Vegemite delivers, the Vitamin B content releases your energy and vitality.


So the brand went back to basics and communicated the benefits of Vitamin B, and link it to both physical and also mental energy to bring it into todays world.


What happened? A 6% increase in consumption of Vegemite over the 12 month period.

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Canon Shine

Canon Shine, a brand campaign built to highlight the power of meaningful imagery in a world inundated with bathroom selfies and sausage legs on the beach. This was a PR and celebrity ambassador partnership campaign that reached +17 million consumers and raised awareness for causes and charities such as Pink Hope.

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Canon - The Lab

Born out of a need to engage professional and high end enthusiast photographers by satisfying their need to push their creativity 'The Lab' became a series of thought leadership pieces that generated interest well beyond its core audience. This includes 'The Decoy' which as achieved over 11 million organic views.

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CANON - RUGBY WORLD CUP SPONSORSHIP

How do you authentically align yourself to a global sponsorship? You find a hero who has a passion for your product as well as a cause that doesn't depend on how well the team go.

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When your in-store switching problem is cropping up online...

What do FMCG and Consumer Electronics have in common? Both are at the mercy of the store experience and staff when it comes to the customers final decision on what goes through the till. And when it comes to online stores this does not change. Indeed the situation. may be worse as sales and marketing teams have focussed on the traditional bricks and mortar and found themselves caught off guard after the growth in online in this COVID world.


Here are a few of my tips when it comes to addressing the 'Switching Curse':

(1) Marketers need to form a direct relationship with the trade partners online store team. This is a basic relationship rule. If the trade are going to run any journey or customer experience tests you want to be the ones they call to collaborate with. The buyer may not know your digital capabilities and steer them elsewhere.


(2) Use your combined media to bring people through to convert, as does it really matter where they buy as long as it's your product? As you buy online media there is always a point, and an opportunity, where the opportunity to get them to click to purchase is relevant. This is where retargeting is key. Offering packages to trade partners which allows you to jointly retarget from your product pages with a localised call-to-action to store.


(3) Help their SEO with your SEO. Work together on the SEO for your sites. As a brand you can make more inspirational or help content about why your product, but co-created content wth retailers for reviews or recipes helps all parties. Share your SEO and consumer journey knowledge to provide the very best customer experience.


(4) You can't be a FMCG business and not participate online anymore. The tide has turned the need to focus on what is most probably the single largest store any trade partner has (just ask them).


The reach of the online store is huge, with 65% of consumers looking online before going into store. And when purchased online, 70% of sales come from the first page. So the same effort that goes into your Google analytics needs to go into your trade partners search. Thus the CitrusAd or Cartology bidding starts (and don't we all wish we had come up with that business idea).


With CitrusAd you can add up to 20 search terms, and it will get you up the rankings. But you'll need to define the role of this media before leaping in. If you add the cost of the bidding per SKU you'll need to be mindful of the GP erosion. However, if you see it as a brand and trial expense then the ROI can be more easily justified.


Can you get around it? Well no not really, but you can be creative. Seek out alternate routes and partnerships to reach the consumer. The sales of appliances such as the Thermomix rocketed during COVID-19, and their online recipe program called Cookidoo is able to link directly to the retailers online to add your product to cart.

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Advocacy Marketing through Content & Partnerships

The ultimate marketing tool is, and always will be good old word-of-mouth. The trusted endorsement from a respected source. The problem, and the opportunity, today is the scale at which an advocate can reach an audience. A problem because of the proliferation of endorsements. An opportunity because if you get it right, you can achieve strong engagement with your brand or product at an organic scale you never imagined.


Advocacy marketing should be executed in an authentic way. The link with the advocate or influencer must be a genuine, and not forced, fit. Beware the influencer that swaps and changes allegiances. The number of followers is not the metric you are always looking for, through Bazaarvoice you can measure how engaged their audience is, and if action follows the words.