Five minutes with Paul Archer

Paul Archer, managing director and founder of Duel, a brand advocacy platform that helps brands grow organically through word-of-mouth, speaks to Transform magazine about the steps brands must undertake to combat the increasing consumer trust crisis and how businesses can, and must, marry purposed and profit.

How has your company Duel helped challenge brands’ reliance on digital platforms, such as facebook?

 For online brands, digital advertising and performance marketing on platforms like Facebook have dominated marketing strategies worldwide largely because campaigns can be segmented, optimised, measured and attributed, making them easy to justify in budgets. But with competition on the rise, costs skyrocketing and returns diminishing, as well as a rapidly changing consumer dynamic and the financial impact of Covid-19, this short-term approach is no longer cutting it. Instead Duel helps companies build communities of advocates (happy customers, employees, partners, industry professionals etc) who trust their brand and promote it to their friends, family and peers thereby driving true organic word of mouth growth. This is a much more sustainable approach for brands in the long term rather than pumping money into the likes of Facebook.

 Our technology helps companies build these communities of advocates by rewarding their loyalty. We do this through things like:powering advocacy and loyalty clubs to reward top customers and drive them to further promote and support the brand, enabling customers and store teams to promote the brand and recommend products to their online and social networks and rewarding customers with exclusive perks, benefits and exclusive sales for completing activities to support the brands such as content creation, referrals, challenges, surveys, polls and social posting.

What can brands do to combat the increasing trust crisis?

Today’s millennial and Gen Z consumers are much more sceptical than their predecessors and are losing trust in many standard marketing practices including paid advertising and influencer promotions. In fact, according to data from YouGov, only 4 percent of UK adults trust social media influencers. And Salesforce has reported that 65 percent of customers have stopped buying from a brand because they saw their actions as distrustful.

Instead, today’s consumers are looking for more meaning and purpose from the brands they buy from – and now with virtually unlimited choice, trust and authenticity have overtaken the need for low prices and convenience (Amazon and it’s army of brand-less knockoffs won that war years ago). This means long-term brand and reputation building are now essential when it comes to helping brands stay competitive. So, it will be those brands that can really cultivate a loyal network of fans (advocates) who trust and promote their brand to family, friends and peers, and create more opportunity for word-of-mouth referrals and organic growth that will succeed in the long term.

How can brands marry purpose and profit? How necessary is including purpose in ones mission to survive?

Today’s consumers are much more motivated by what a brand stands for than the price of their products. According to research from Forrester, millennials and Gen Z in particular are looking for more meaning and purpose from the brands they buy from. This is why many companies are now building the core of their brand on purpose, not profit. 

Sustainable nappy brand, Kit & Kin, is built entirely on the principle of preserving the planet’s natural resources. It is committed to using exclusively eco-friendly materials in all of its products and has partnered with the World Land Trust to raise awareness of rainforest conservation and to help save and protect threatened habitats around the world. As a result of its ethos, Kit & Kin has built an extremely loyal following of customers which is in turn leading to impressive growth. But the key thing to remember is that growth was never the sole purpose. Many brands just like Kit & Kin are succeeding by committing to a purpose and then communicating this with their customers. It builds up real loyalty and only by having a community of loyal fans can a company truly grow via word of mouth and succeed in the long term.