Brands should embrace a world where messages are pulled by consumers’ own choices and preferences
The phenomenal rise of customer relationship management (CRM) over the past 10 years has been the most significant thing to happen to marketing for a generation. Technology has given brands power to connect with more consumers on an increasingly personalised level.
As a result, CRM has become a massive industry. But the same technological revolution that has seen the rise of CRM is also changing consumers, and it’s doing it in ways that could put them beyond the reach of CRM as we know it.
Consumer-powered technologies are transforming industries and markets worldwide. Social media is now bigger than broadcast. Taxis are taking a back seat to Uber. Hotels are displaced by Airbnb. Brands need people more than people need brands. It’s a fundamental shift in the balance of power – and increasingly, it’s consumers who are in control.
It’s a new world – but too many brands look to CRM for new ways of doing the same old things. Which is why, despite their apparent sophistication, most CRM programmes are surprisingly ineffective. They’re linear, top-down and built on the mistaken assumption that brands should be in the driving seat, not consumers.
Brands must change. They need to stop thinking CRM and start thinking differently. We at RAPP believe that brands need to embrace customer managed relationships and consumer motivated responses (CMR).
CMR offers strategies and technologies for a world where consumers are no longer the passive recipients of marketing, but active partners in a dynamic relationship. It’s a world where messages are no longer pushed at consumers – forcing them to opt out – but pulled by consumers’ own choices, preferences, behaviours and opt-ins.
CMR is about creating a value-exchange. It’s about offering consumers the choice to broaden and deepen their relationship with things that enrich their lives. Sure, it requires a little more effort from brands and a new marketing mindset, but whether brands like it or not, CMR is the future of marketing in a digitally driven world.
Sophie Daranyi is president of RAPP UK
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