“People are getting more savvy about the fact that there is value associated with their data,” said Laura Simpson, Global IQ director for McCann Worldgroup. Ms. Simpson believes there’s an opportunity for marketers that offer deals and discounts in return for personal information and are transparent about the exchange — notifying consumers that they’ll receive a customized newsletter near their birthday if they provide their birth month, for example.

It’s in that context that personal “data lockers,” or online information repositories designed to be the digital equivalent of a bank with security infrastructure in place, are forecasting a marketplace where consumers have considerably more leverage.

Personal is a startup in open beta aiming to recast the consumer-marketer relationship altogether. With $7.6 million in funding and 42 employees, the site works by allowing users to enter their personal information in structured-data fields within individual “gems” — or buckets of data in categories ranging from banking particulars to liquor-cabinet contents to babysitter instructions. They can share gems with selected individuals, and it’s also intended to be a tool to auto-populate forms.

Personal plans to launch an anonymous marketplace early next year, where marketers will be able to target users based on their personal information. It envisions a scenario in which consumers are compensated for buying products or viewing ads for products that are likely to be relevant to them.

The company curates four-to-five samples monthly and delivers them to every customer who is paying $10 a month. The company also seems to have  a built-in loyalty program for Birchbox fanatics. The site also features rich content including interviews, beauty tutorials and videos.

Of course, any customer can then buy a full-size version of the sample they receive.

It strikes me as incredibly interesting that commerce is to the point where not only are consumers requesting free samples, but are willing to pay for them. However, it doesn’t seem like a particularly good solution to build loyalty among the individual brands as the customer is constantly receiving new items to try. Time will tell, however!

P&G is very focused on consumers—we say the consumer is boss. And we have a go-to-market strategy that openly declares “win wherever people shop.” That’s important to understand, because as more and more people around the world are shopping in different channels, our role is to be present wherever they are.

A couple of years ago we launched the eStore with two objectives. The first one was to learn about this new space. And the second objective was to generate insight that we could share with all our retail partners so that together we can provide the best possible experience for consumers.

We are learning that more and more people are spending time online to interact with the brands, even if they buy offline. Brand-building is becoming a digital exchange, rather than a one-way exchange.

The second thing we are learning is that content is very important to help consumers make a decision. We know that what we call “enhanced content” is very important to establishing an even stronger relationship with consumers. When you go on-shelf, most of your interaction with a brand is through what you remember you saw at home or the packaging you see in front of you.

Online, as you know, you can interact with the brand with two-way, always-on communication. You can upload videos. You can read ratings and reviews from other people and other activities.

U.S. based direct-to-consumer platform Alice recently expanded to Europe (that’s our company), and now Nestle is starting their own direct-to-consumer effort in Germany:

So Nestlé has joined the social commerce movement, launching an innovative new social marketplace (Nestlé Marktplatz), allowing consumers to discover, shop and share 72 Nestlé brands. Piloting in Germany, this direct-to-consumer marketplace showcases Nestlé’s extended brand range.

Significantly, Nestlé is looking to engage Marketplace customers as brand advisors – inviting ideas and suggestions for new products, packaging and usage occasions.  In other words, the marketplace is not only a forum for buying and selling, it’s also a forum for conversations between customers – who can rate, comment, seek advice and share ideas with each other – and a forum for conversations with customers.

Overall, we like the concept of the Nestlé Marktplatz, particularly as an insight and advocacy generator, and as a central e-commerce platform that will be able to power individual Facebook fan-stores for individual brands.  We see the value for Nestlé, but the challenge for Nestlé will be to demonstrate a compelling reason-to-shop on this central marketplace – as opposed to from a brand-specific Facebook fan-store, or from supermarkets offering a far broader range of products. Why shop 72 brands when you can shop 7200 brands on online supermarkets?

The draw certainly won’t come from the Marketplace’s social features – these are increasingly standard hygiene factors on all decent e-commerce platforms.  Instead, we think Nestlé should turn up the volume on the Marketplace’s differentiator – exclusive access to new and non-local products, whilst adding in an enhanced dose of brand utility in the form of exclusive and quality recipe/nutrition guides/apps and a Kraft iFood-style shopping list manager. We’d also integrate the Marketplace with Facebook, if only to do away with the daunting friction-laden sign up form.

Brands have jumped on the e-commerce bandwagon, establishing their own direct-to-consumer domains, not just for the opportunity to sell directly to consumers, but also to engage and understand their shopping behaviours.

As you can see, the lines are quickly blurring between manufacturer and retailer. And there’s no doubt that this will foster accelerated innovation and cooperation.

What’s driving this market shift? I can think of a few initial reasons:

The economic crisis

Simply put, the rise in commodity prices and recent recession have forced us to innovate. The ability to combine advertising budgets to reach the right consumers preserves margins for both manufacturer and retailer.

Access to the consumer

For brands that don’t have their own retail website, this represents an opportunity to get closer to the consumer.

Proximity to the consumer allows a brand to capture more meaningful insights that can then be used for spotting market trends, or uncovering ways to accelerate a brand’s product development.

Lack of effective means to gather customer feedback

Brands that lack the capability to capture these insights may end up using blunt-force consumer surveys, which creates misinformation that results in products like the ‘Homer-Mobile‘.

The convergence of retailers and manufacturers foreshadows a flattening of the marketplace and increased challenges in differentiation.

Using Windows Azure as a platform, General Mills was able to build a direct-to-consumer online channel in the cloud. While the company isn’t commenting on traffic, they claim a great amount of consumer enthusiasm and positive social media feedback, including more than 90,000 Facebook fans.

The strategy is not integrated with their existing e-commerce sites, BettyCrocker.com and CascadianFarms.com

As shoppers’ economic concerns eased somewhat in the wake of the recession, some industry observers predicted that store brands would give up their recent gains, or even decline as the economy rebounded. The expectation proved without foundation, however, and the return to some kind of pre-recession status quo eluded the national brands. To the contrary, store brands held onto the gains and even built on them.

Sales of store brands saw gains of more than +2% in U.S. supermarkets and nearly +5% in drug chains. Over the past decade, annual sales of private label products have increased by +40% in supermarkets and by +96% in drug stores.

It was highly unusual, if not unprecedented, that in supermarkets national brands were negative (minus 0.1%) in year-to-year dollar sales, while their unit sales were up a by modest 1%.

It’s not surprising that store brands held their ground after recording sales surges the past few years. Recessions often force consumers to test new purchasing habits. What occurs, in effect, is a large scale sampling experience. Good results with store brands during these periods invariably breed consumer familiarity and then loyalty to the products and the stores that sell them. While some consumers do return to brands they had been buying before, a large percentage stay with their new private label choices.

via Consumer Goods.

Well, as a Gen Yer myself, I can say this recent study is right on:

In general, you can remember that Gen Yers like to shop as an experience, not just a chore and all the things they tend to like fall under that idea. For instance, we love deli counters and prefer brands with a well-developed social and mobile media presence. Is your CPG brand set up to serve and reach the millenial generation?

Here are some of her insights:

What drives word of mouth?

Beauty is a category where people take recommendations from their friends and talk about what’s new. They also look to experts for suggestions. For example, if we get a placement in Marie Claire or Lucky where they’re raving about the new tinted lip balm, we might share the link to the page.

We also find fans of the brand are recommending products to one another in this space. That’s the normal activity that takes place around beauty products. It’s mostly women talking to other women and finding out what works, but it’s taking place online in social media venues. For example, a mother might ask other moms about products that stop diaper rash: “What works for you?” These are important conversations and I think online social media is a place where people trust one another to get that information.

What’s your Facebook strategy?

Facebook is a channel for us to provide compelling content. When I came on board, we started doing simple things—posting content and behind-the-scenes images on a daily basis and discussing new products coming to market.

We use social media and Facebook in particular as relationship-building tools. We also create opportunities for consumer education around skin care, for example, and sampling offers. We ran successful sampling programs on Facebook for our relaunched body lotions and new tinted lip balm.

We talk about our products on Facebook but we also spend time talking about the culture at Burt’s Bees through our involvement with Habitat for Humanity, sustainability efforts, product ingredients and so forth.

How does your strategy stack up against Burt’s Bees?