Expert in Shopper Marketing and Customer Development - Author, consultant, speaker and business leader
I recently posted a blog about delivering a keynote presentation at the 2013 Shopper Marketing Conference in Dublin. I’d like to share with you the video of my presentation, where I spoke about why marketing is going through revolutionary changes and how shopper marketing has caused this. I’ve also introduced the Five-Step Total Marketing process – practical steps marketers can take to incorporate shopper thinking into their way of working.
Enjoy!
Mike Anthony and I recently published a book called The Shopper Marketing Revolution. Since its publication we’ve been asked a number of times ‘what is revolutionary about shopper marketing?’. Every time I’m asked this question, my answer is that shopper marketing is not the revolution; the revolution is the change in the total approach to the way brands are being marketed – shopper marketing is just the catalyst.
In our view the marketing model that most consumer goods companies use today has worked for us since it matured back in the fifties. It’s driven by the pretty simple idea that a company can be successful by building a huge brand and ensuring that brand is effectively distributed to the market.
This model was creaking even when I left university back in the very early 90’s. It’s true to say that media fragmentation was a reality then, as were consolidated retailers, and the combination of the two meant even 25 years ago that the way we do business needed to change. A lot of the way we thought back then was led by a very singular view of the customer – I think pretty much every marketer believed at that time that the only customer that was important was the consumer – the person that ended up using the product.
Today we know that’s not true; in order to get a brand into a consumer’s body, house, car or wherever, we know somebody has to buy it. So since P&G started talking about FMOT (the First Moment of Truth), it’s been accepted that the shopper is another important customer. If you accept that to be true then the retailer – the person who makes the brand available to shoppers – must also be important and should be considered as a third customer.
So modern marketers now grasp that in order to be successful, they need to understand and influence the behaviors of the consumers, shoppers and retailers. The rules of the old marketing model simply weren’t written to address this modern truth, and so we assert that old rule book needs to be thrown out and replaced by one that fits with the rapidly changing and complex world we face today.
The real revolution here is creating a rule book that recognizes in a storm of change, that marketers must always satisfy the needs of consumers, shoppers and retailers – hence the ‘shopper marketing revolution’. This requires a lot of changes in the way businesses operate today, and much of the book focuses on the changes that are needed to make that rule book work.
At the heart of our thinking is a five step model which makes adopting the new rules of marketing simpler and more effective. We call this process Total Marketing:
Mike and I built everything we have learnt from over four decades of combined experience in consumer goods into this simple unifying model. We begin with the principle that everything is driven by consumption. Understanding a consumption opportunity helps us identify the desired shopping behavior: for consumption to grow someone needs to buy differently. By understanding shopper behavior, we can work out which channels, which stores, are important to fuel that growth, and we prioritize these. At this point we design a marketing mix designed to deliver both consumption and desired shopping behavior. With all that worked out – the right investment can be tuned: to focus on the right activities which will drive the right growth.
Mike and I have seen exceptional results in companies that adopt this approach. In many cases this arises from aligning the business around a common purpose: driving consumption. Ultimately if you can’t get more people consuming products, more often and in greater quantities, you won’t grow.
We’ve found that by creating a clear distinction between driving consumption behavior and driving purchase behavior, marketing activities become much more focused on their required outcome. What is also cool about this, is that this distinction between consumption behavior and shopping behavior creates a common language between manufacturers and retailers, and this a point of union that is lacking in most relationships today.
But perhaps most importantly, we’ve found that investments will flow to the points where they will be most effective. This approach has proven to deliver massive improvements in real ROI on marketing investments, converting cost into profit. We know this because we measure this with our clients and we know that their investments pay back rapidly and significantly.
If you want to revolutionize the way you market your brands, why not start today? Get your copy of The Shopper Marketing Revolution.
Take a look at this clip from Unilever. It’s cool isn’t it? Indeed it’s one of five videos on the Clear Singapore YouTube channel encouraging men to be, well men, but also to look after their hair.
There’s a lot of sound consumer thinking here: encouraging male consumers to use a specific shampoo potentially encourages them to use a higher value product and it potentially gets two bottles of shampoo into the shower instead of one. But my question is, will this be enough to drive sales of the brand – I can see how it works for the consumer – but how does it work for the shopper? This is one consumer marketing campaign that needs a shopper marketing solution!
A shopper marketing solution addresses an extremely common problem – how do you ensure that consumers who want to use your brand actually do use it? In this case, if Unilever wants young men to wash their hair with Clear, they have to get bottles of Clear into those young men’s bathrooms. This means someone has to buy the product – and in this case that might be difficult because the target consumer is probably not the target shopper.
The target consumer
It’s pretty clear that the target consumer group here is young, unmarried men who currently use a shampoo designed for women. The ad is likely to play really well for this segment, not because it reflects real life but more because it reflects the life they aspire to. The reality is that the vast majority of the guys Clear is targeting most likely live at home with their parents: The property market is such in Singapore that for many under-30s living by oneself is impossibly expensive and relatively traditional values mean that cohabitation is rare. So the guys watching these ads are at best aspiring to share a girlfriend’s shampoo; in the real world most will be sharing their moms’ or sisters’ shampoo (in the real-world too, they are probably significantly younger than the guy in the ad!).
The target shopper
Who buys shampoo for young men living at home? Well certainly some young men do. Whilst not knowing what actually happens in Singapore, we do know that 31% of grocery shopping in the US is done by males. But we also know from research we’ve done in other Asian markets that more than 60% of men’s personal care products are bought by women. My guess therefore is that mothers of young men would be a key target for Clear.
Where target shoppers shop
If we accept that moms might be a key group to target, we also have to accept that in order to reach them, we have focus on the retail channels they shop in. I’m guessing that most people buying shampoo for their kids do so when they are buying groceries for the whole house, so I was keen to see what Unilver was doing in Singapore’s leading chain of supermarkets, Fair Price. And here’s what I saw: the brand is neatly positioned with other anti-dandruff shampoos:
It’s also merchandised with other “men’s products”:
So ok – this isn’t a disaster – the brand is positioned with other products; , if you were looking for a product just for men, you might be prepared to spend the time to locate Clear. Likewise, if you were looking for an anti-dandruff shampoo, you might do the same. So in-store this is likely to be successful when the guy is buying for himself.
But my question is, if you were a mom, would you take that time to seek out the product in either area? What would make this shopper buy? If Singaporean moms are anything like my own, buying the perfect shampoo for the lump of post-teen angst that fills her spare room will be way down on her list of priorities.
I believe this is a missed opportunity, not least to make an additional sale men’s shampoo, but also to meet the shopper’s needs too. Is there an opportunity to widen her portfolio? Could she be persuaded to switch her hair care brand to one in the Unilever stable whilst buying for her son? Could she be persuaded to trade up from a more generic family shampoo?
All of these are shopper marketing opportunities that might be left on the table right now. I believe a better shopper marketing solution is needed! A great solution in my view would look at blending the right mix of communication, availability and offer that would make buying Clear shampoo irresistible to Singaporean moms.
I’m offering a free copy of my new book The Shopper Marketing Revolution to the person who comes up with the best shopper marketing solution that gets more Clear shampoo into bathrooms in Singapore. Simply subscribe to the blog and leave your suggestion in the comment box below. I’ll announce the winner (and why I think theirs is such a great idea) at the end of October.
Oh – and for the record – this is just for fun. I have no affiliation with Unilever – but who knows, maybe they’ll read this and like your idea too!
Last week I was both lucky and excited to travel to Dublin to Keynote at the 2013 Shopper Marketing Conference, hosted by Ireland’s leaders in in-store marketing, Visualise. I say I was lucky, because until the week before my partner Mike Anthony was slated to speak but emergency surgery kept him from travelling.
I was joined on stage by a number of exciting speakers, including Graham Kinsella of Dunnhumby; Visualise’s own Eoghan (pronounced Owen in case you are struggling!) Phelan; Rob Thurner of Burner Mobile; and Ken Hughes of Glacier Consulting. In a well-attended event, the audience – which was composed of leading brands, retailers and agencies – was treated to a number of insights into the behavior of Irish shoppers and advice on how to influence this. Here three shopper marketing lessons which most resonated for me.
Graham Kinsella shared how Irish shoppers had become more promiscuous over the last few years and how they increasingly are citing in-store media as the most relevant influencer of their purchase behavior. Whilst 45% shoppers use a shopping list when shopping, Graham told how many use this as only a guide and that the final decision is often influenced by what they see in-store, meaning that the choice of message and media needs to be optimized to ensure impact.
This message was graphically hammered home as Eoghan Phelan showed the response of Irish shoppers to examples of in-store creative. In a focus group environment, Irish housewives were seen to strongly reject consumer-focused messages about the brand, favoring clear massages that delivered a clear reason to buy. In his presentation however, Eoghan was at pains to show that communication does not have to be all about price: He demonstrated the incredible power of emotional messages in-store by showing shoppers’ response to images of Santa Claus on Coke’s 2012 Christmas campaign.
Rob Thurner supported this general theme to demonstrate the value and application of mobile in communicating to shoppers whilst giving practical tips on how to use the latest tech in an elegantly crafted and delivered presentation.
If anyone saw me tweet this last week they might now be hoping for an explanation. This was forth-coming from behavioral economist Ken Hughes, who has made watching shopper behavior his life’s work. As a world-leading speaker in the field, Ken brilliantly brought to life the key theme of his presentation: That shoppers, like ordinary humans, DON’T behave rationally.
He showed that whilst shoppers can behave outrageously in stores, most of us are operating on auto-pilot with low levels of engagement as we shop. He gave evidence of how, the longer we shop for, the faster we move and the quicker we make decisions. He also demonstrated how the average shopper might spend no more than 30 seconds in a category and as little as 2 seconds buying a product.
In this environment he urged marketers to use creative communication to arrest shoppers and engage them quickly – to effectively pinch them and bring shoppers out of auto-pilot. He showed how emotional messaging, guilt and, in one example, scent can stimulate people to stop, look and buy.
Following so many great speakers, each delivering such high quality messages, I was impressed that the audience was really up for participating in discussion with me whilst I was presenting. Almost all of the audience agreed with me that shopper marketing was becoming more important in Ireland and many manufacturers are investing in building teams and competence in the area. It’s clear that in Ireland, as elsewhere, the impetus to market to shoppers as well as consumers and retailers is not just ‘smart marketing’. In Dublin, just as in Barcelona, marketing to shoppers also makes great financial sense – no-one disagreed with the proposition that just breaking even on in-store investment could double profits.
I’m equally convinced that organizations globally are struggling to integrate shopper marketing into their organizations effectively, and in discussions with some manufacturers after my presentation, it was clear that our five-step “Total Marketing” approach seems to be as practical and implementable in North-Western Europe, as it has proved to be in other regions of the world.
I hope you’ve find these shopper marketing lessons useful. If you’d like to see the complete presentation that I gave, please click here!
Ok – I admit it – I’m a category management skeptic. I wasn’t always that way, back in the early nineties I was a massive supporter – working with major retailers using a clear process which supported collaboration made loads of sense. At a time when traditional advertising was becoming less effective and marketing at the point of purchase was just beginning, I honestly thought ‘catman’ was the perfect solution.
Then in the early part of the last decade, I spent 18 months working with Tesco facilitating their “Category Excellence” program and my enthusiasm waned. Out of a total of 25 different projects with 23 different vendors, only two were a success. What went wrong? Everything! We found vendors’ expectations and Tesco’s were mismatched and both parties had nasty surprises along the way: often neither party had enough insight, let alone strategic clarity to support the project; the process was long and often difficult to sustain; tactics were agreed but could not be implemented in-store; and many manufacturers found that having invested in the program itself they were then asked to pay for execution.
Does any of this sound familiar to you? If so, we’ve shared a common experience. And yet, making category management work (or at least category captaincy) remains a common goal for many manufacturers when they work with major retailers. Why? Because when it works it can be magic! The picture above shows how Danone, working with Carrefour in Italy, has given the yoghurt category a major makeover. I’m told this has led to great results: higher traffic, increased basket size and better market shares for the vendor – an all-round success!
So what makes category management work? (And for clarity what I mean by this is what makes working through a joint working category management process with a specific retailer successful?) Here are the five critical success factors which I think ensure you get the best outcome:
As the idea of working collaboratively with retailers enters its fourth decade, new and interesting ways of working with retailers are evolving, but the concepts that lie at the heart of the category management movement remain the foundation for many of these new initiatives. So adopting the principles I’ve suggested above should not only help now, but also in the future.
If you’ve found this blog useful, please share it with others or feel free to add your thoughts and comments below.
Learn how to disrupt shoppers and win in-store with acclaimed authors and advisors to the biggest brands globally One Day Workshop in the UK with Mike Anthony & Toby Desforges - September 2023
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