CPG marketing is taking on an entirely new purpose and role online, utilizing a bushel of best practice tactics that are helping amplify and solidify brand purpose.

The low consideration, frequently purchased consumer packaged good is often assigned to two extreme forms of marketing communications – the overly rationale or the overtly emotional.

Headache remedies go through great pains (ouch) to drive home the fact that four out of five doctors recommend their products over the competition. Detergents use the much practiced side-by-side demonstrations to illustrate why their product is most effective at driving out stains left by circus elephants on acid trips. Toothpastes use real people just like you and me (except for the fact they’re actors and get paid) to endorse the fact that their product will almost always help you get that dream job or elusive girl/guy.

And if any of those approaches fail, there are always babies, animals and/or baby animals to help push a consumer over the edge.

Online, however, CPG is taking on an entirely new purpose and role – utilizing a bushel of best practice tactics that are helping amplify and solidify brand purpose.

PRODUCT DEMONSTRATION

As mentioned above, this is certainly a commonplace offline best practice, however has not been deployed all that extensively or effectively on a widespread basis. With rich media and other highly engaging interactive tools available, this particular tactic is an opportunity waiting to happen.

DAY-PARTING

Previous best practices articles such as targeting via immediacy talked about how to web the right message to the right person at the right time.

Utilizing day-parting, Colgate was able to demonstrate its brand promise of long lasting (12 hour) protection with a dynamic time stamp embedded into the creative.

Kraft utilized the same approach by tying in specific messaging relevant to the audience’s state of mind at the time and connecting this to a later moment when the product is actually needed or required.

SERVICE OR UTILITY

Kraft took this to the next level when it began to offer online receivers of its communications actual value in the form of real recipes. With the print button a click away, it isn’t hard to see how stale click-through is quickly being replaced with a fresher print-through (PTR?)

COUPONING

Covered before in the series of Best Practices, this tactic remains as a viable choice to help bridge the gap between consideration and trial or purchase.

INVOLVEMENT

From time stamps to time spent -- what began as an ABSOLUT experiment is now the de facto best practice differentiator on the Web.

If you think about it, the best practice of creating involving experiences, predominantly through interactivity, is a high-involvement solution to one of the biggest category challenges in marketing: low-involvement and low-consideration purchases. How sweet it is.

Here’s a case study for Unilever’s Home Basics Site, utilizing eMode’s interactive quizzes.

This campaign used “fun and entertaining” quiz themes where self motivated Moms gain entertainment value by matching themselves with famous “TV Moms”. During the quiz key questions are asked that help flag the type of consumer interacting and invites her to become a member of Home Basics and receive additional valuable tips, offers and promotions from Unilever brands.

Mom’s were also invited to visit the relevant parts of the Home Basics Site with integrated contextual messaging in their quiz results. By placing this invitation in the results, click-through percentages topped 5%.

Other benefits included a viral marketing system that allowed women to “Share and Compare” their quiz results with family and friends. This extended the reach of the program, as well as increased the overall visits and opt-ins through word-of-mouth.

Furthermore, significant brand awareness and message association lifts resulted from the advertising that surrounded each page of the quiz experience.

GAMING

Following on naturally from the notion of involving experiences is the gaming solution. In the past, it seemed like gaming was the only solution for CPGs online. Today, fortunately, it is but one of many approaches to deploy.

Past best practices have called out the overwhelming efficacy of gaming. From Smirnoff Black Ice’s Bejeweled game to Nabisco’s Candystand.com, the act of engaging an otherwise uninvolved consumer through entertainment reaps logical rewards.

PACKAGING

Finally, a little twist on packaging, which arguably is one of the most underleveraged or underappreciated Ps in the marketing mix. Drive to Web via product packaging is without question ramping up in terms of popularity and usage, however, Web-based communications that draw attention to the packaging itself both inform a prospect of a promotion, as well as gives them a reason or incentive to choose that particular product out of a range of me-too alternatives. The pre-step in the chain or sequence of events is an ideal way to motivate a potential purchase such as that of a candy bar around lunchtime.

The world of CPG has been infused with a myriad of new possibilities thanks to the world of wide Web. Point of purchase communications have been stepped up through combinations of day-parting and couponing, for example. However, perhaps the biggest opportunity yet has been the possibility to evolve and enrich the actual process of branding by taking the relationship between consumer and product to new and previously unexplored levels.

Ain’t nothing boring about this category anymore.