Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) are consumer goods that are frequently bought and needed, such as food, cleaning products or personal care products. Consumers buy these goods without much or long thought and practically every day. This makes them important sales and profit drivers. Roman Klis Design Agentur für strategische Markenberatung is one of the world’s leading agencies for FMCG and is responsible for the global brand presence for its customers in over 70 countries. The digital transformation is changing the brand world among FMCG branded companies dramatically.

The purchase of FMCG happens less and less via the classic retailer channels. Today, the FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google) not only take on the presentation of the products, they also use their direct, digital customer access to generate in-depth data and consumer knowledge. This enables them to create continuous processes to optimize the placement and communication of the products. This permanently threatens the stationary trade and is a big problem for traditional FMCG manufacturers. They lose the authority to interpret the products and their visibility. In addition, Amazon, for example, uses its unique market access to replace high-quality “low involvement” goods such as batteries, cables, towels or printer cartridges with its own brands. This is because the customer buys “batteries” through the voice assistant and usually no specific brands. This means that brand manufacturers lose sovereignty over brand selection.

The FMCG brands urgently need a holistic, experience-oriented brand strategy, they have to create brand values ​​that go beyond the mere product benefit and address the real needs of consumers. Otherwise there is a risk that they will become pure producers of goods without reference to the customer and that this interface will be lost to the platforms once and for all.

That is why the clever FMCG brands are developing a position away from their product focus and towards holistic, partnership-based eco-systems that create sustainable brand experiences and thus strengthen long-term customer relationships. The stable interaction patterns with the brand come to the fore and determine the customer’s brand perception. Here IP strategies help to make the customer’s brand experience exclusive. The new digital brand, in particular, enables FMCG branded companies to protect brand perception against imitation.

Here is the presentation on the targeted use of IP for the sustainable and legally enforceable protection of the customer perception:

Roman Klis Design is a global agency for brand strategy and design with a focus on corporate, packaging and point-of-sale design. From the Swabian town of Herrenberg, around 100 international employees design the appearance of domestic and foreign brands, especially from the consumer goods sector. Roman Klis Design’s customers include Nestlé, Teekanne, Haribo, Ehrmann, Seeberger, Ritter Sport, Schwartau, Hansgrohe, Weber Grill, Häagen-Dazs, Mövenpick and Novartis. Here Roman Klis explains his work personally: