This is also a new era of co-creation between brands and consumers, via both online and offline approaches, speakers said.

Dangjaithawin Anantachai, chief executive officer of Intage Thailand, a marketing research agency, said yesterday that younger people – Generation Y and millennials – could not be defined by their different demographic backgrounds such as gender, age, education or purchasing power.

She made the remark at a forum titled “What’s Coming Next: Thailand’s Future Trends” organised by the Thailand Marketing Research Society.

At the event, thought leaders in the marketing, branding and digital-media industries were invited to share their ideas and insights about how to deal with challenges amid the changes in the marketing ecosystem as well as gain better understand about coming trends.

“Marketers and brands should understand the real values of targeted consumers. What are those values?” Dangjaithawin asked, and went on to explain that there were four key values among those types of consumers.

First is “now or never”. Influenced by social media, young people are less patient than earlier generations but are still creative. The average attention span among the consumers is an indicator in this regard. Dangjaithawin suggested that the attention span of young consumers had dropped from 13 minutes in 2000 to just eight minutes in 2013.

Entrepreneurship is the second value. Young people want to have their own businesses.

New brand ownership

Marketers should realise that consumers feel that they own brands. “Marketers no longer own the brands,” she stressed.

Third, consumers love to express their ideas and thoughts,

particularly about products and services they have used. The fourth value is that future consumers’ behaviour will be driven by technology.

“Given these factors, brands should collaborate with target customers and deliver total experience via an O2O [online-to-offline] approach,” Dangjaithawin said.

Apart from this trend, consumer insight is also crucial. John Smurthwaite, Asia-Pacific ambassador of ESOMAR, a global association for market research, said that because of the advances in digital technology, brands should collect real actionable data that could help them find the right way to analyse consumer insight, leading to data-driven customisation.

Unilver Thailand is a good example of the use of consumer insight and analysis via integrated communication to boost organic growth for its brands.

“Consumers are at the heart of our marketing strategy while insight from consumers is also key,” said Supattra Paopiamsap, CEO of Unilever Thailand.

She picked Knorr’s brand strategy as an example to explain this marketing execution.

The company recently launched an emotional commercial called “Flavour of Home” to highlight the importance of doing one’s own cooking. The commercial ran on television and online media such as YouTube. The online video got 8 million views within just four weeks.

Along with this, the company provided a number of special recipes on its official website.

Supattra said the creation of this digital ecosystem for Knorr could lead consumers to make purchases at retail stores as well as through e-commerce.

“Despite the economic downturn, Knorr this year has witnessed the highest sales growth in four years,” she said.