CPG Digital Marketing

In an article by Jack Neff from AdAge.com, he writes about how digital marketing may not be what it is cracked up to be in regards to the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries. I have always been interested in the CPG industry and recently was doing research about Johnson&Johnson for an upcoming interview with them. In my research I found this article by Neff about how the budget for digital marketing in CPG companies has increased. While the budget has increased, only a measly fourteen percent of the shoppers surveyed by Cadent Consulting Group are aware of digital ads.

What I found to be the most surprising part of the article is that both the retailers and shoppers surveyed preferred traditional advertising to digital advertising. Taking into account the current shift towards everything digital say with Amazon disrupting the retail industry and FinTech companies such as Venmo disrupting the financial services industry, it seems bizarre to me that shoppers would prefer traditional ads.

This graph depicts the percentages of awareness and the influence that a particular form of advertising has on a consumer. I suppose that because everything is so technologically oriented these days that consumers are becoming desensitized to online advertising, thereby making it a less effective means to promote brands. I suppose whenever an ad for something pops up, lets say, before a YouTube video I’m sure most of us would click to skip the ad as soon as we can.

It will be interesting to see how CPG companies deal with this issue of lack of brand knowledge on a digital platform balanced with an increased digital advertising budget.

http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/study-cpg-spends-digital-traditional-advertising-combined/308077/