On Wednesday 21st May 2014, OMD UK welcomed a selection of clients, media partners and media industry figures to join us for an afternoon of insight and inspiration at the Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. Throughout the course of the event, we uncovered an overview of our Future of Britain research project to date, conducted a live focus group session on stage, and hosted a guest panel of pioneering industry names to discuss what the future holds for brands, media and audiences.
We will be updating this blog with teasers of our key event themes, to give a flavour of the subjects that were touched upon by OMD UK speakers and our industry panel. The second of our themes was entitled the Empowered Consumer and examined the impact Connected Britain was having on consumers’ expectations and behaviours; specifically it looked at what we have called the Era of Perfect Information and what this means for brands.
Tim Denyer, Digital Development Director, was in the driving seat for the opening of the session, revealing the key findings from our research study. Tim highlighted how consumers now have an unimaginable wealth of information at their fingertips, and as a consequence feel more in control than ever before – whether that’s the media they consume, how they shop or what they buy. However, critically, this doesn’t mean everything in the consumer’s garden is rosy; our research revealed a consumer that feels almost paralysed by the amount of choice and information available to them: perfect information gives way to information overload.
Rian Shah, Head of Strategy, took the reins and highlighted how brands can use media to create shortcuts for the consumer’s decision-making process. Sharing examples from McDonald’s, John Lewis and Tesco he emphasised the importance, but also the difficulty, of building trust. Rian went on to discuss how a transparent culture underpins this. Finally the importance of scale, brand fame and emotional connections were highlighted, acting as the antithesis to perfect information.
Download a summary of the OMD UK view of The Empowered Consumer, and what that means for brands, from here.
Rian shares a snapshot of the OMD UK view below:
