The conference #TrendingNYC17 organized by Foresight factory
The trends that brands must look at in 2017 are related to emotions, personality pressure, technology, innovation and values, according the conference #TrendingNYC17 organized on November 17th by Foresight factory. “Companies that are based in very strong values, and who live and breathe these values will prevail in 2017” said Christophe Jouan, CEO & Co-Owner of the firm, during his talk called: Brand magic: the values that attract and strengthen consumer engagement. Jouan sees brands like people. Apart from substance, companies need functional attributes that are what make them do good products and services. “But then you need magic -and I prefer to use charisma-, which in terms of brands is about having very strong values that are going to be embedded in everything you do about your business.” Jouan refer to a study they developed in order to find out from where brands advocacy comes from. They found that strong advocacy comes from positive attributes such as: value money, best quality, genuine, and “make me feel good.” But also they discover that attributes like environment, treating workers well and good customer service don’t have a clear relationship with brand advocacy. But the surprise was that, across all sectors, providing extensive and personalized promotions, allowing to pay flexibly, and loyalty, don’t create brand advocacy, instead they are damaging for the brand. He explained that the problem with loyalty is that 99% of these programs are transactional, they make profit but they don’t do anything to the brand. “There is a very simple answer to it: embed your values into your loyalty programs.”
