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Expo Undercurrents

By Peter Breen

Product manufacturers that do not place the shopper at the center of their go-to-market strategy are destined to fail at retail. Forget about finding ways to successfully present your brand proposition in the store environment -- your brand will become little more than props for retailers to exploit as they build deeper relationships with their customers.

Is this an exaggerated, alarmist view about the future of in-store marketing? Maybe. But industry professionals need only review our coverage of retail activity over the last year to understand the point. Retailers increasingly are taking control of their environments and calling the shots on how national brands are presented within their stores; brand managers who've historically perceived temporary price reductions as detrimental to brand equity should examine what the recent spate of "Compare & Save" campaigns pitting their products against private label has done.

General Mills just completed another successful back-to-school season by leveraging its "Box Tops for Education" platform to gain enhanced feature and display space at dozens of retail accounts. At Safeway, however, the "Box Tops" message became "Two Great Ways to Earn Cash for Your School," because the supermarket operator has its own program that now takes center stage each year. If a well-known, evergreen promotion like "Box Tops" isn't allowed to stand on its own, what chance do unknown, unproven concepts have?

Little, if any, unless they can truly help retailers better connect with their own shoppers in ways that build the store's equity as much as -- if not more than -- the brand's. To illustrate this idea, Institute executive director Peter Hoyt has borrowed the theme of Gale Sayers' autobiography (I Am Third, in which the former pro-football great explained his life-long deference to God and family): In this new age of in-store marketing, the shopper's needs must be considered first, the retailer's second and the brand's third.

This premise probably won't be discussed directly from the podium next month at the In-Store Marketing Expo (unless some brave attendee asks a pointed question -- just don't tell the speaker I suggested it). But it will provide a subtext to many of the thought-provoking presentations at the event:

  • Supervalu's Janet Sparkman and Coca-Cola's Diane Wallace are among the keynote panelists on Oct. 7 who will discuss the ad hoc Retail Commission on Shopper Marketing's efforts to create a blueprint of best practices from the retailer point of view.
  • Kim Feil of Walgreens -- the drugstore giant that now has a shopper marketing agency of record and a preferred marketing services supplier to help it build customer-centric stores -- will be on the panel for the Oct. 8 keynote to explain what traits the chain values in its national-brand partners.
  • In separate sessions, executives from Walmart will discuss how the world's largest retailer has built proprietary digital media and event programs to provide more relevance for shoppers, and why brand marketers should be utilizing the opportunities.
  • Representatives from blue-chip manufacturers Unilever and Kimberly-Clark will share the stage to explain the importance of integrating the shopper "into the DNA of consumer product marketing" and making retailer differentiation a key goal of brand campaigns.
  • Executives from private-label manufacturer Daymon & Associates will outline the current state of the private-label industry and how recent trends are affecting national brands.

OK, maybe the premise will be discussed directly in that presentation. But either way, I don't think it will ever be far from the surface of the conversation. I hope to see you there.

Peter Breen
Managing Director, Content
In-Store Marketing Institute



Published: September 2009

Source: In-Store Marketing Institute

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