We like to believe it’s love. That when someone reaches for Heinz over own-label, or Nurofen over unbranded, it’s a deliberate, emotional choice.
Proof that brand building works. But behaviour tells a different story.
Switching is easy. A promotion, a better shelf position, a new brand, and that “loyalty” disappears.
What looks like love is often just habit, availability, and convenience, writes Ian Reeves, Managing Director, Flourish CRM.
And crucially, for most FMCG brands they’re building this at a distance. Brands shape perception, but they rarely own the interaction. The transaction (and the data) sits with the retailer. Which means there’s little opportunity to build real understanding or an ongoing customer relationship.
Which raises the question: if brands don’t own the moment of transaction, what opportunity is there to own the relationship?
The relationship dilemma: driving demand, renting the customer
FMCG brand building creates demand upstream, shaping perception and intent before a shopper reaches the shelf, but conversion happens in an environment brands don’t control. That leaves a gap – not in awareness, but in understanding. And it’s an expensive one: renting the relationship from retailers drives up costs, with future spend on aisle-ends, BOGOFs and promotions baked into the model to maintain share, rather than being defended through more sustainable, direct relationships.
While brands may not own the transaction, they do have opportunities to build direct interaction around it – through CRM. Not just emails or offers, but any addressable touchpoint where a brand can engage, learn, and respond to an individual over time.
This is where most brands often fall short. They are highly effective at driving consideration but underinvest in the layer of interaction that builds understanding, influences future choice, and creates value beyond the shelf.
Direct-to-consumer offers some control, but rarely at scale. So the opportunity isn’t to replace the retailer – it’s to make better use of the moments brands do own.
That’s the role CRM can play: closing the gap between demand creation and real consumer understanding.
From brand building to real-world application
Strong brand building creates the distinctiveness and mental availability that drive choice at scale. But most traditional brand-building activities are for one-to-many environments – where creativity, consistency and repetition do the heavy lifting.
The challenge is how that translates into the moments brands actually control with consumers directly.
When the big brand building messaging is copied to one-to-one environments like CRM, it often falls flat. Messaging becomes generic, execution becomes blunt, and what was once a strong platform loses relevance at an individual level.
In FMCG, this is amplified by the fact that brands don’t fully own the relationship in the first place. With limited visibility and interaction, there’s less room to rely on traditional ideas of loyalty or long-term connection. Instead, impact is shaped by how well a brand shows up in each moment it does reach the consumer.
The issue, then, isn’t the brand but the application. Without adaptation, even the strongest platforms become repetitive rather than responsive. Recognisable, but not necessarily relevant.
The opportunity is to apply brand more intelligently in one-to-one contexts, using data and context to shape how it shows up, while maintaining the consistency that makes it distinctive. It’s no longer enough to build a strong brand at the top of the funnel. It has to work just as effectively in every consumer interaction a brand is able to own.
Applying brand through data
If the challenge is application, then the opportunity lies in how brand and data work together. CRM doesn’t need to replicate the shelf or replace the retailer, its role is to build a layer of interaction around the moments brands do control, creating relevance and value over time.
That understanding doesn’t have to come from purchase data. It can be built through the moments that surround consumption – the routines, rituals and everyday decisions products are part of, whether that’s deciding what to cook midweek, recovering after a workout, or grabbing a quick snack between meetings. These moments provide the context brands need to show up in ways that feel timely and useful.
Crucially, this context can be gathered in ways that feel natural rather than intrusive – through interactions that offer value in return. Experiences that adapt based on preferences, tools that learn from inputs, and content that evolves with engagement all start to build a clearer picture over time.
This is what shifts CRM from broadcast to interaction. Instead of repeating the same message, brands can respond to behaviour and context in ways that feel timely and useful; helping, guiding, and fitting into real moments.
That’s how the gap starts to close. Not by owning the transaction, but by owning the experience around it.
A more useful role for brand
Ultimately, this reframes the role of brand in FMCG. Success is no longer just about building awareness or even preference at scale. It’s about ensuring the brand delivers in the moments that matter, and in the interactions a brand has the opportunity to own.
In this context, brands don’t need to be loved in the traditional sense. They need to be useful, easy to choose, and consistently relevant. The brands that succeed are those that combine distinctiveness with utility – recognisable enough to stand out, but practical enough to fit seamlessly into everyday decisions.
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