“The market is back, the market is back marketing“, summarized Guillermo Oliveto, consumer specialist, when describing the trend in which the Argentine economy entered since December of last year, and in parallel with the beginning of Javier Milei’s government management.
His presentation was part of the offer of the Marketing Day 2024organized by the Argentine Marketing Association in the space of the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the National University of Córdoba (UNC).
For two days, analysts, consultants and executives from marketing from important companies presented their views and experiences on the present of the discipline in the country, focusing on the axis proposed by the event: the current and potential impact that the artificial intelligence (AI).
In general terms, the marketers They agreed that AI has already begun to transform multiple aspects of their work, although it is a revolution in the making. Challenge and opportunity in similar doses, the incorporation of AI is far from replacing human creativity: “On the contrary, it repositions it. Algorithms do not incubate ideas, they do not get frustrated or excited. “Creativity matters more than ever as a process, and this is how it deepens,” he summarized. Eduardo Kastika, expert in innovation and creativity.
The coincidental experience is that AI came to be the great qualified assistant of human talent and, for example, free it from tasks of less uniqueness to concentrate it on those where it makes a difference: strategy, creativity and emotional intelligence.
AI is called to be an ally in the challenging state that the market entered in Argentina: a 5% drop in mass consumption in the first quarter and a general collapse of activity, with a much deeper turn that Oliveto explains: “There is a paradigm shift in the Argentine: it is the first time that he chooses to apply a reset to the economic model by voting for a man with a chainsaw. A new speed emerges, everything goes very fast. “This is an unprecedented moment that society has reached after the collective trauma of the pandemic.”
In market terms, the change is 180 degrees: “The market returned, something that did not happen 20 years ago. Milei proposes a liberal destiny for the country and bets on shock. He says: set the prices you want and sell what you can. We went from a market of demand, regulated and where people bought desperately to place the pesos, to one of supply, where spending is disputed and the one who best interprets the consumer wins. He returned marketingbut customer centric (customer-centered) really,” stated Oliveto.
This reality is already palpable in brands and is faced, from the marketing and with the help of technology, the new challenge. Some interesting cases presented at the event are detailed below.
Philco, the chainsaw and its full risk
Tame risk It is titled the book that Marcelo Romeo published in 2023, the head of Marketing of the Newsam group (owner of the brands Noblex, Ama, Philco, Siam and others) who made the leap into the void his hallmark. Immortalized in cinema by Ariel Winograd in the film Managerthe executive scored one of the greatest successes of the marketing Argentine with the promo that promised customers to return what they paid for their Noblex TV if Argentina did not qualify for the 2018 Russia World Cup. The story could have gone very wrong; but, as is known, it had a happy ending; and Romeo boldly relapsed into the World Cup in Qatar.
Within the framework of Marketing Day 2024, he once again emphatically defended that courage: “The new marketing It has to do with brave brands that get involved in people’s agenda and are not afraid to talk about their issues and question the consumer. The biggest risk for us is not taking risks,” he urged in his presentation.
As an example, he cited the recent “Chainsaw and Blender” campaign, through which Philco proposed, through public posters and other pieces, to give a blender to those who bought a chainsaw. It lasted 72 hours and stocks available was 20 chainsaws, since the main objective pursued by the brand was to attract the attention of the consumer and reinforce its relevance. It was a risky bet, since the direct allusion to Milei’s mantra includes complex connotations and divides waters: “Of course, in a polarized country like this we provoke adhesions and rejections; but for us it was a success. The President shared it on networks as a ‘genius’, we achieved a formidable reach, and we attracted support and cancellations; something that is not so serious either. “We tapped the consumer on the shoulder, and he turned around.”
A very similar case is that of Geniol, a campaign that uses slogan the slogan “There is no money” and runs these days in the mass media.
Burger King used AI to grow 226%
“In a general context of sharp drop in demand, how do we make our products more accessible without damaging the positioning premium of our brand, whose pricing architecture is 10% to 15% above the market?” That was the challenge posed by the Burger King team, led by Nicolás Iribarne as general director in the country.
The executive – his previous position was responsible for marketing Southern Cone of the chain – explained how the company relied on technology, with a focus on artificial intelligence, to resolve the situation and manage to execute a very successful promotions strategy to gain volume without harming its positioning.
“You have My BK, you have a crown,” was the axis of the campaign through which it promoted a loyalty program (unique in the segment, the brand claims) that allowed consumers to accumulate crowns and exchange them for discounts, all supported by its app. “We use artificial intelligence to personalize the offer of coupons and discounts for each consumer, according to their habits. At the same time, the function mobile order and pay (MOP) allows the customer to self-manage: purchase in advance from the cell phone, pay and schedule a pick-up time at the branch. With it, Burger was able to solve the biggest difficulty a brand faces when setting prices: figuring out how to charge each consumer as much as possible without dissuading them. “The way was to generate strong discounts, but put an accessibility barrier that makes the customer who can pay full price do not cross it, and that the one who crosses it is the one who really wants the discount. That barrier was self-management,” Iribarne explained.
According to him, the program triggered a 226% growth in tickets per day per location, a 4% increase in the frequency of use and 76% more downloads. “On top of that, the ticket average in the promo was higher, because people ended up consuming more thanks to the discount,” he concluded.
Branca and the networks: the broken bottle gone viral
Fernet Branca is a brand that achieved an emotional and identity bond with thousands of Argentine consumers, a relationship built with years of investment and work that cares about caring and feeding. Among the axes of its strategy is the focus on social networks: “We are part of the consumer’s life and we focus on staying in their conversations. There are 18 million Argentines who generate content associated with the brand all the time; and our obsession is for them to go viral. We have a time team real time that monitors what happens with Branca on networks 24 hours a day,” revealed Carolina del Hoyo, director of Brand and Innovation at Fratelli-Branca.
The brand maintains a long-standing link with the influencer Matzorama (Matías Najle), and together with him they detected an opportunity: when invited by Branca he toured the plant where fernet is made, the man from Córdoba saw a broken bottle that he turned into the axis of the content he generated about the place. Later, among the hundreds of messages he received, there was a video of a young man who broke 11 bottles of Branca due to a trip (something like an involuntary mortal sin) and another who helped him. Najle proposed to the brand to work on this organic content: the video went viral surrounded by a marketing campaign. marketing with various pieces, in which the brand enhanced its reach and the feeling of empathy it generated in consumers. “It became a successful case of marketing where we integrate work in real time, the focus on virality, the long-term relationships we cultivate and the quick and intelligent reading of context,” del Hoyo listed.
With an investment of less than $400 thousand, Branca reached more than 2.5 million consumers through this action.
Orange X anticipates desire with AI
Technology is in the DNA of the contemporary version of Naranja fintech that connects with the consumer from the cell phone.
The numbers of its business are impressive: more than four million people have deposits in the wallet’s remunerated account, the total number of enabled cards (including variants with Visa, Mastercard and American Express) exceeds 10 million and the loan business is expand at a rate today of $20 billion monthly.
This ecosystem generates enormous volumes of data that the company long ago converted into the central input of its customer-centric model. Within the framework of the Marketing Day, Silvina Jachevasky, Head of Marketing at Naranja
“Martech”, a concept that integrates marketing and technology, is the concept that summarizes this work; Jachevasky explained. ”With the data we have, we develop predictive models that allow us to anticipate what a client will do with their card or their account. And that is when we approach you with a corresponding proposal,” he explained, detailing the use of AI and automation system combined.
The propensity models anticipate to Orange X, in percentage, the chances of each customer of demanding each product; for example, loans. And they guide it to offer them proactively with a high degree of success. “Automated shipments allow us to improve the conversion rates of the campaigns. Before it was done manually, with Excel, now it is with automatic AI. This freed us from more repetitive tasks and allowed us to concentrate on the strategy of marketing” he said, describing a shared twist in the companies’ current experience.
