The traditional paradigm of grabbing a customer's mindshare and a large market share is now being challenged by Cheil's new model. “It's all about Life Share now,” says Michael Cheonsoo Kim, Global COO and senior vice-president of Cheil Worldwide. The new marketing paradigm's objective is to go beyond simply pushing products to the market. Instead, it aims to increase the brand's share of consumers' everyday lives.

Dr Wonsuk Jerry Kim, senior researcher at Communication Sciences Institute of Cheil Worldwide, says a bundle of behaviours from consumers' everyday lives should become the focus of the new marketing paradigm for this digitalised marketing environment.

According to Dr Kim, Cheil has arrived at the Life Share concept by two routes. One is the convergence of technology, through which new digital appliances such as smart phones can touch and digitalise consumers' everyday lives. The second route is penetration into consumers' everyday lives using the new digital appliances and services. For example, using the QR (Quick Response) Code, any brand can put its information into a smart phone and pop up in consumers' everyday lives.

Cheil claims that increased Life Share means increased mindshare including brand preference, brand attachment and brand loyalty. So the whole effort for it now is to increase Life Share.

To apply Life Share to marketing strategies, Dr Kim conducted research studies using about 40 brands in eight industry categories. A list of all the things that people do in a day or even a week was made. Seventy-four activities making up consumers' everyday lives were identified. Each of those things was called a life unit. For instance, driving a car, brushing your teeth and so on. Out of this Cheil tracked in how many life units various products had a role to play. According to the Life Share Index, it found that mobile phone, visual media and beverage occupied 22.2 per cent, 14.7 per cent and 11.7 per cent in the life unit of ‘take a rest doing nothing'.

In other words, explains Alok Agarwal, COO, Cheil India, a mobile phone is not just competing with another mobile phone brand but also with other activities - it may compete with visual media, and a laptop and other things, at the same time.

“Subconsciously marketers knew this - when a consumer has the last Rs 5 in his pocket, would he spend it on a telephone call or on candy?” says Agarwal. “Now we have the technology to track this.”

Even though the measurement framework for the Cheil Life Share concept was developed in 2010, the concept itself was first created in 2006 to address marketing issues for a client. Since then, it has been applied to many planning and consulting projects for diverse clients, including major credit card companies and major internet service companies in Korea. So has Cheil used the model on any of its clients? Since the model, including the measurement framework is still new, applying the model for major clients in Korea is still in progress.

The model requires in-depth data capture and analysis for the market before it can be implemented. The entire data base has been built in Korea. The initial data capture is time-consuming but once that is in place, the analysis for different brands comes faster. A pilot for LifeShare has been completed successfully in India. Even though building the database is important, the Cheil Life Share model can be customised for each client's specific needs.

The Cheil Life Share model is also in the process of trademark registration both in Korea and the US.

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