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07.30.2009

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The Argument for Occasion-Based Marketing

Something has to change. Lines between channels are blurring as shoppers move almost seamlessly through a wide range of store types and across multiple product categories. Yet, traditional marketing and shopper insights do not tell the rich, nuanced, holistic story of today’s complex consumer and shopper. We believe a new way of thinking is required. We make our case here for Occasion-Based Marketing.

Traditional marketing links a brand with the needs of a specific consumer audience. It makes perfect sense…on the surface. But, if you step back, it becomes clear that by linking those needs to a specific slice of the population, a kind of marketing tunnel vision takes over. These users may be your “heavy users”, but most consumer needs are relevant to far more than any one brand’s heavy user base. The reality is that the “needs” a successful brand taps in to rarely orient to a small demographic cut of the population described as “heavy or loyal users.”

Often, a brand’s needs are “felt” by all sorts of different folks on different occasions throughout the day. By first linking a brand to the needs of specific occasion(s) and then to the consumer audiences present on those occasions, suddenly whole new vistas of incremental opportunities appear all around a brand.

The Hartman Group has developed a proprietary mapping of 100-plus eating occasions capturing the where, when, what and who around food consumption inside and outside the home. We call our powerful proprietary marketing tool The Hartman Eating Occasion Atlas™ (see sidebar on the right). We developed this tool to help food advertisers, marketers, manufacturers, retailers, foodservice and restaurants, and brand managers navigate contemporary food culture. Traditional marketing is fixated on what goes on in the store—the behaviors around shopping and dining—while the larger waters of food culture remain virtually unchartered territory. To help chart your food brand’s growth opportunities using our Eating Occasion Atlas, we’ve developed a sort of food brand GPS, the Hartman Occasion Navigator™.

Brands that venture out onto these new occasions often discover new households they never thought they could persuade. In the process, these brands can lead their category and their business to long-term growth.

No longer can we afford to restrict our attention on discounting and price-based promotions to fight product and channel switching. While the current recession reinforces this traditional marketing mindset, we believe there is an alternative to win customers and influence consumers.

We invite you to explore what some innovative brands already know. Download our Introduction to Occasion-Based Marketing POV >>

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A POWERFUL MARKETING TOOL: THE HARTMAN EATING OCCASION ATLAS™

Helping Your Brand Navigate Contemporary Food Culture

There is a fundamental flaw with today’s food marketing and shopper insights practices. Namely, these practices focus almost exclusively on where and how people shop.

One would think, however, that if you are in the food business, you’d want to know all about how people eat. This is precisely what’s behind The Hartman Eating Occasion Atlas.

Hartman Group anthropologists and social scientists have been immersed in a 20-year-long study of American food culture using ethnographic observation, tracking studies and deep study of food trends.

The dynamic sandbox we play in allows us to upend many of our traditional American eating patterns. Our analysts’ passion for studying all things food has yielded the Hartman Eating Occasion Atlas, our proprietary tool for developing strategy based on targeting eating occasions—not consumers.