Part 3: Emerging markets
Global marketers are getting perilously close to losing touch with their customers in emerging markets during the coronavirus pandemic. And that at a time when there’s a real need to connect pre-Covid-19 developments with crisis-induced changes to find out how consumer lives, attitudes and brand relationships are being shaped.
“Clients need intelligent human insight to help them navigate this crisis – relying solely on gut feel is a dangerous strategy,” says Sabine Stork, Founding Partner of Thinktank International Research. “Now more than ever there’s a real need for international qualitative research.”
The truth is that, with the onset of the pandemic, many brands chose to cut back on advertising, marketing and on market research. And some global brands that have mounted comms initiatives have tended to adopt bland, undifferentiated approaches. Many of them have been employing the same tonality and carrying the identical ‘supportive’ messaging.
“There was this Covid-19 wallpaper, where every single brand was saying, ‘wash your hands’, ‘keep your distance’, ‘we’re here for you’, says Samantha Loggenberg, Research Director at Qualitative Intelligence in Cape Town. “As someone noted on LinkedIn, ‘before, they’d said ‘eat our baked beans’, now it’s ‘we’re here for you, eat our baked beans’.”
“Nivea started selling sanitisers, Lifebuoy and Dettol started promoting sanitiser – there has been a lot of clutter,” says Rakesh Maiya, Insights Architect at India-based Inqognito. “I don’t see any brand standing out.”
Power to local
And in a number of emerging markets, local is currently outgunning global. That’s because some indigenous brands are proving to be braver, more agile and more relevant to customers experiencing a crisis-driven period of reassessment than their international counterparts.
In India, regional brands have gained share at the expense of international FMCG brands, a trend that fits in with the political sign of the times, and was hence supported by the Prime Minister who endorsed the campaign #vocalforlocal.
In Mexico, Grupo Modelo (the maker of Corona, an unfortunate brand name right now) acted with turbo-charged innovation to adapt to prohibition-style laws curbing the sale of alcohol in the country.
“It developed a completely new product very quickly with a very low alcohol content and with the very colloquial name, Chingones,” says Grace Sylva, Cultural Strategist at Hispanic innovations agency High Speed Solutions. “The pack messaging supports people and cheers them up, and Modelo also launched a very relevant competition around how Mexicans want to live post virus.”
“One South African retailer ran a campaign which featured a shop worker, about how terrified he was going to work and being in that shop,” says Samantha Loggenberg. “It was very heartfelt and, unlike some other cheesy ads, it had been researched. I’d say no brand should be launching advertising at the moment without a qualitative test.”
Times are changing
While conducting such qual research during the pandemic, Round Table participants have come to observe how consumer views and habits are changing. Here, they have noted widespread reassessments of product and brand relationships.
“People are working from home, they spend a lot of time evaluating things, they may have switched to other brands, they’re eating different things, they’re trying out things every day just to keep their sanity,” explains Rakesh Maiya.
In China, where at the time of the Round Table Session lockdown had ended, Clive Yeung, Managing Director of Shanghai-based NuanceTree, has observed more openness among consumers.
“Respondents are saying ‘I didn’t like handicraft/baking/painting etc before, but because of the pandemic I couldn’t pursue my favourite activities and now I’m finding new things unexpectedly enjoyable!’. People are learning that no product or activity can’t be substituted. It’s likely that this will lead to a wider choice portfolio – which should alarm our clients.”
The case for qual
But understanding how brands can nurture or create brand relationships at a time of consumer reassessment needs qualitative insight. Qual can assess how measurable behavioural changes interact with values, beliefs and, of course, local conditions and culture.
Evidence from recent qualitative research programmes mounted by our Round Table participants suggests that cultural relationships to the home, to food, and to work all interact with consumer re-evaluations during the pandemic.
In Russia, for example, the crisis is changing consumers’ attitudes towards their abodes.
“We used to refer to residential areas of Moscow as ‘sleeping areas’ but now the home has become a source of stability and protection so it’s invested with far more emotion,” says Lyuda Svigouzova, Senior Project Manager at Focus Plus Marketing Research in Moscow. “
In Mexico, health issues have come to the fore. The market has long had a major obesity problem, with local diets comprising high-fat content, but lockdown measures have led to something of a rethink.
“At first, people began eating even more while watching TV series all evening long – then they started to think about what all this was doing to them,” says Grace Sylva. “And now, for the first time ever, many Mexicans are proactively searching online for nutrition information and are now more interested in a balanced diet.
However, this change is interacting with the Mexican market’s famously indulgent culture to favour an easy, sweet short cut to healthy eating and has led to a growth in categories that offer a compromise between indulgence and ‘healthiness’ such as yoghurt and cereals. For consumers these products have the added advantage of convenience and are seen as allies to help control erratic eating during the lockdown.
Urban, middle-class Indians are also becoming more interested in health and are increasingly buying traditional remedies reinvented for the 21st century. “Dabur, who have branded a traditional Ayuverdic remedy, Chyawanprash, have capitalised on people’s interest in building up immunity with 400% growth during the pandemic” says Rakesh Maiya.
Shifting values, unequal societies
However, priorities are very different among the poor in emerging markets, who are arguably the worst affected by the crisis. And in societies with huge inequalities, marketers are well advised to take a closer look as these consumers’ values shift, while existing brand positionings may need to be re-assessed.
For example, in South Africa, social distancing measures are anathema to the concept of ubuntu – humanity towards others – prevalent in townships, enabling people to derive strength from the community in times of strife.
“Client segmentations and positionings built on this core value may no longer be valid,” Samantha Loggenberg states “A brand built on sociability needs to look at what sociability now looks like, at its brand propositions and segmentations.”
She also notes that aspiration as a value per se may now be less important to less affluent consumers.
“There’s a lot of image projection, a lot of using brands to signal wealth, but our consumers have been hit hard,” she adds. “A lot of brands are built on aspiration and they’ll need to shift their priorities because people will not be as aspirant.”
Rakesh Maiya agrees. “People like the migrant workers who have been forced to walk back to their villages need to fulfil their basic needs,” he states. “The poor will not look for more aspirational brands, even in FMCG.”
A pivot to saving
In Russia and Mexico belt tightening is also hitting the middle class. However, here it goes hand-in-hand with more interest in security and thinking more long-term.
“People are being more precise and functional in their purchases, they don’t want to buy things they don’t really need,” says Lyuda Svigouzova . “And they are ready to save money – most were not interested before and had no savings.”
In Mexico middle-class audiences, not too dissimilar to some Western counterparts, are questioning their way of life.
“People just realise that they were never at home, didn’t see their kids, neglected themselves and I think that might last,” says Grace Sylva. “There will be huge tensions because people will face economic uncertainty but on the other hand they no longer want to sacrifice their lives by making a living. New lifestyles may emerge to resolve that.”
However, in late-stage pandemic China, consumers emerging from lockdown do seem to feel the need to preserve an upwardly mobile identity, even in the face of changed economic circumstances.
“The appetite for quality items is still quite strong as consumers want to signal that they’re still doing well,” states Clive Yeung.
Making sense of it all
In truth, shifts and changes on the ground can seem confusing and contradictory, which may be another reason why some clients hold back on (qualitative) research spend until the situation becomes more normal, placing their bets on that future point.
However, Sabine Stork is confident that strong analysis right now can help clarify what is going on.
“A lot of behavioural and attitudinal shifts have actually been accelerated by the pandemic – but it’s important to note that many like digitalisation, an interest in sustainability, wellness, nostalgia, turning inwards, to name but a few, haven’t come completely out of the blue and were there prior to the crisis, either nascently or more overtly,” she explains. “We need to connect longer-standing developments with changes forced by the crisis and then analyse how they are shaping lives and attitudes by culture.”
At the same time, it’s worth remembering that there are shared characteristics in both how the pandemic is affecting people’s lives and how it connects with human psychology at a deeper level.
“As ever, we as international researchers need to reflect nuance on the ground by understanding where individual markets and consumer sub-groups are in their Covid-19 journey,” Sabine Stork says. “But we also have to dig deeper to get to those shared human truths that global marketers build on.”
Round Table Participants
London: Sabine Stork (moderator), Thinktank
Cape Town: Samantha Loggenberg, Qualitative Intelligence
Gurgaon: Rakesh Maiya, Inqognito
Mexico City: Grace Sylva, High Speed Solutions
Moscow: Lyuda Svigouzova, Focus Plus
Shanghai: Clive Yeung, NuanceTree