What’s The Best Way To Get Customers’ Attention Today?

In his 17 years as CEO of Yum Brands, the fast-food corporation that operates KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, David Novak doubled the company’s size and increased its market capitalization by 800%.

According to the Wall Street Journal, before stepping down in 2016, he was ranked among the best CEOs in the world by Barron’s and Harvard Business Review. Now that he’s a leadership coach, Mr. Novak frequently reflects on his career, highlighting his most significant failure - Crystal Pepsi.

The birth of Time magazine’s top ten (worst) products of all time

The soft drink was born out of the idea that colas were losing market share to clear drinks, so why not develop a clear drink to compete?

As Annette Franz, Founder and CEO of CX Journey, described in Forbes:

“Yeah, why not develop a clear version of the original Pepsi? Well, distributors said it didn’t taste like Pepsi, while customers said it tasted too much like Pepsi (and they expected something different based on expectations set through marketing and advertising messages). In the end, it was pulled from shelves by 1994, and Time magazine said it was one of the ten worst product fails of all time. As they noted, ‘Companies often launch new products in response to a competitor’s successful idea. But such products fail if they cannot measure up to the competition or capture consumers’ attention.’”

And therein lies the rub: capturing your customers’ attention.

If digital marketing existed in 1992, could Crystal Pepsi still be on the market?

So where exactly did Mr. Novak go wrong, and how do today’s marketing leaders avoid those mistakes? As Annette Franz explained:

“...unless you’ve taken the time to understand customers, their pain points, their needs and expectations and the problems they are trying to solve before you execute on the idea, you’ll likely either never get their attention or you’ll lose it shortly thereafter if they’re early or curious adopters.”

Mr. Novak told the Wall Street Journal, “I was too in love with my own idea, and I moved too fast on it,” pushing it into stores in time for a big Super Bowl campaign. He suspects that if he had taken the time to listen to feedback, the soda would still be on the market today.

The story of Crystal Pepsi’s downfall isn’t a story about products. It’s one of miscommunication and disagreement - between Mr. Novak, his customers, and the distributors. It wasn’t just the distributors and customers who couldn’t decide whether the drink tasted too similar or different from the original Pepsi. It was Mr. Novak.

It was up to him to control the narrative with his distributors and customers. The product’s murky branding resulted in poor feedback that was ultimately neglected in a push to market.

If today’s digital marketing channels existed in the 90s, could Crystal Pepsi still be around? What would the branding look like? What demographics would Mr. Novak target? Would he spend more advertising dollars on TikTok or Instagram, Amazon or Facebook, email, or SEO? Would he have been able to pivot the right message to the right people?

Those are questions Mr. Novak can only speculate about and modern marketers have to answer.

“Listening to consumers is more important than marketing to them.”

By understanding the trends consumers are conveying, modern marketers can answer those questions.

“Listening to consumers is more important than marketing to them,” according to the 2023 Digital Consumer Trends Index, conducted by Econsultancy and Marigold. “Understanding them as individuals and meeting their unique needs in the right moment is core to developing trust and loyalty for the long term. Technology has finally caught up to consumer demand in this respect...”

When it comes to understanding your customers, meeting their needs, and developing trust and loyalty, the outcome depends on the value you convey and the channel you do it on. Here are some of Marigold’s top survey findings:

• More than half of consumers have bought a product directly from an email pitch in the past year.

• Cookie-based ads remain a creepfest for 61% of consumers, but conversely, the approval numbers nearly flip when it comes to getting personalized content and offers from a brand they trust.
  

• Consumers will pay more for products from a brand they like and trust (59%). Two-thirds of the time, consumers will actually cite a brand’s loyalty program as critically important in building their lasting devotion. But screw up the loyalty program, and they’ll walk, as a third of respondents said they’d done in the past year.
  

• Consumers are down on the state of the economy, with 60% “very pessimistic” about inflation and the overall outlook. Half of the respondents reported reducing impulse purchases and increasing research before buying, and nearly half are also waiting for sales and utilizing loyalty benefits.

What’s the best way to get customers’ attention today?

Other insights from the study include how to maximize email response (as this is the most effective way to connect with customers), and what’s wrong with banner ads (as this is one of the least effective ways to connect with customers).

“Of course, marketers need a strategy that leverages all channels, but brands own their databases, so email is not only the most effective channel but also the most cost-effective.”

Not everything in the marketing landscape is sticking as it once did (or in Crystal Pepsi’s case, never did). Even traditionally successful approaches need to be rethought, with a more sensitive and personalized approach in a highly skeptical marketplace.

This is especially the case with online banner ads in which the report says consumers “stop clicking” and many of them “blind the banner ads” when they visit websites. Only a quarter of respondents had purchased something through a banner ad in the previous year, a 29 percent drop from the previous year.

Consumer behavior is exponentially changing. And marketing is becoming more competitive. As David Bloom said in a recent Forbes article: “Instead of ‘spray and pray’ shotgun blasts of banner ads, companies should be shifting to more targeted approaches that give consumers something of value – a discount, a deal, entertaining content – in exchange for valuable things like the consumer’s email and name.”

Authenticity, sober selling, and delivery

Everyone has a message to shout, stories to tell, ideas to spread, and products to sell. And sometimes, the story you tell about your idea or product is more important than the idea or product itself.

In his teachings, Mr. Novak emphasizes the value of asking for advice. He notes that the leaders he has interviewed on his podcast, including quarterback Tom Brady and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, are “avid learners,” always looking for new ideas and insights. As a new CEO with little experience with investors, Mr. Novak recalls that he pursued counsel from Warren Buffett, who taught him the importance of sober selling. “Investors suddenly trusted me more when I let them know what could go wrong with the business.”

Marketing extends beyond display ads, search engines, subscriber lists, and social media channels. It involves authenticity, understanding, and consistent delivery. It lives in the conversations we have, the decisions we make, the products we buy, the clothes we wear, and of course, the Pepsi we drink.