In the best literature on brand/product positioning, segmentation and audience are the starting points for designing any strategy. As the guru Peter Drucker once said, “The purpose of a business is to create (and keep) a customer.” The brilliance of this thought lies in the fact that brands must clearly identify how to develop new product and service ideas to connect with a group of people—even if they never asked for them. Steve Jobs believed that you couldn’t trust surveys asking consumers directly what they want. According to him, consumers don’t know what they want, and this is where the intelligence of analyzing human behavior and consumption habits comes into play.
Creating a customer is about knowing how to assess the right moment to introduce elements into their daily lives that connect, with relevance, to their economic, functional, and emotional needs.
What’s the twist?
I wrote this brief introduction to discuss a product I came across at Trader Joe’s: an Advent Calendar for pets. By way of context, for Christians, Advent (from the Latin adventum, meaning arrival) is the four-week period leading up to the arrival of Jesus on December 25th. The history of the Advent calendar dates back to the 19th century, when German Lutherans created various ways to help children count the 24 days before Christmas. The idea became so popular that today, major brands like Swarovski, Lancôme, and Lindt have their own versions of the calendar.
What surprised me most in this case was the boldness of extending the concept of this Advent celebration to pets. Even though I have three cats at home, I had never considered looking for a product like this. But upon closer analysis, I realized how fitting the product is: while children enjoy chocolates or candies each day of Advent, pets get their treats. Everyone’s happy—that’s what matters. Searching online, I found that there are several brands in this new segment. Apparently, it’s successful.
I can’t confirm this, but I’d bet good money that this idea didn’t come from focus groups with pet owners asking what new products they’d like to see on store shelves. The brilliance here lies in the sharp observation of the evolving relationships between humans and pets and how to transform that behavior into new sales opportunities. Predicting purchase intent isn’t easy. Anticipating behavior is even more challenging. That’s why working in consumer science, marketing, branding, and communication is both fascinating and daunting. What a twist!