Perhaps, one of the hardest truths to accept for our industry, but clearly necessary to acknowledge, is the fact that we are running out of playbook.
“What about?” you might ask. We are running out of playbook in general and we need a new constellation to guide us in the dark night.
It is a feeling that permeated the agenda and became more and more evident when, over the last two years, our research tools were able to recognize the level of social weariness, but could not identify that this discontent was going to turn into social protests throughout the planet. Take Brexit, revolts in Paris, Spain, or protests in Hong Kong. Take Latin America with people in Chile fighting against years of inequality, the indigenous in Ecuador appealing for an effective place in society, or people in Bolivia questioning Evo’s never-ending administration and then, the shady dealings for his exit.
And this lack of storyline again becomes evident when the post-fact analysis of social manifestations focuses on the macro explanation, listing the wear and tear of:
- a global capitalism that, with developments and inequalities, periods of growth and shrinkage, is not in its finest hour;
- a political order that is unable to manage the local or international agenda, to mitigate inequality, or climate change, to account for the loss of public wealth or to ethically channel technological change;
- and of new middle classes that “went up into the world” in the last two decades and today demand what they consider acquired rights: access to the market, to education, to health and to public services.
And in this way, we forget that each country processes and catalyzes unrest from a set of specific facts and from a singular culture and history.
Or when, on the other hand, the “local” is isolated from the “structural”.
The need for a common view
When, as an industry, we used the metaphor of the constellation to evidence the absence of a “compass” in the operation of a company, we were far from thinking that one day we would have to apply the term indoors. And the thing is that as “managers” in charge of explaining social phenomena, it is hard to accept that our common views are the ones limiting us.
But beyond the pain of eating humble pie, it is important to remember that the constellations we used as consensual views to navigate, understand and take action are now determining that the fact of not seeing, not understanding and not doing, become relevant to understanding the big picture.
In other words, the constellation we have been using is not allowing us to decode reality and we need a new constellation to guide us in the dark night.
The day-to-day exercise of simultaneous research in different countries of South America gave us an interesting insight to start thinking about how to read the context and contribute to this discussion.
In 2019, our team “suffered” in the attempt to explain structurally similar phenomena occurring in the various territories, but that were expressed in totally different terms and symptoms.
In order to put our approach in order, we split from pure models, whether local or global, and started to articulate in a kind of sui generis mix of thought, design and operation, what, in an anti-marketing way, we call GLO-REGIO-CAL.
And although this approach, from our experience, is more difficult to implement than to pronounce, applying it is very enriching.
What does GLO-REGIO-CAL mean?
The different dimensions of GLO-REGIO-CAL are:
- Global to decode values, trends and models at a structural level and account for consumer segments, such as young people, who, being technologically connected, share behaviors and agendas across the board.
- Regional to be able to add to the equation the understanding of economic and political processes that allow for the translation of knowledge into profitable and expandable business platforms.
- Local to incorporate proximity, belonging and relevance in the implementation and the relationship with consumers.
And local, at a deeper level, at a business level, to deliver value in a way that can be assimilated by an organisation, a business and an operation at a given moment.
Our role as strategic partners
In this direction, we are betting to take the leap we need as an industry to switch from suppliers to strategic partners in the opportunity given to companies. Because the social discontent we are witnessing is specifically an opportunity.
Today, as politicians are acting as brands and giving the cold shoulder to the needs of the citizenship, the “consumer society” is asking brands to act as politicians. In other words, to add value and to generate bonds by filling the empty space in the system.
And to the extent that companies are not yet prepared for this new role, as partners, we can, we have to and we should be able to incorporate content and sensitivity into the internalisation of the new scenario into the culture of companies. This means providing business platform vision to the company management, and field knowledge to the operation team. It also means sharing valuable information in the shift of companies from being relevant in communication to stating a position.
For years, these issues have been worked on in depth by Moiguer and Coca Cola using a particular tool we developed together: “Consumer Mood”. This tool evolves and adapts to the volatility of the period and the particularities of the market.
