Entertainment to utility: the dilemma facing FMCG

This article argues that FMCG brands will be rendered invisible day-to-day as digital marketing shifts its purpose from entertainment to adding value and providing utility.

Entertainment to utility: the dilemma facing FMCG

Michael Beyler

Day-to-day invisibility may be the price FMCG brands will have to pay for the digital marketing shifts from entertainment to utility.

We have been here before. More than once.

When first the record companies, and then the Hollywood studios, awoke to the destructive effects of digitised media on their until-then impregnable business models, there was much corporate distress. Following this, we saw in each case a wave of aggressive anti-piracy lawsuits, delivered with both limited success and a tone of aggrieved rage.

Not that piracy was or is now acceptable. But...

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