Shopper Culture

Making the most of a Super Bowl promotion

The Super Bowl is a tremendous opportunity for anyone in the retail business to capture momentum in sales volume early in the year.  Though cash-strapped from the holidays, consumers spend an estimated $11.7 billion on Super Bowl parties, a month after the traditional holiday season is over.  The event is bigger than the game, as we all head to Super Bowl parties to sample part of the $5 billion worth of goods the hosts bought, or the $6.7 billion worth of goods the rest of us guests threw in nationwide.   Sales data shows us that its not just chips ($33.4 million), meat ($16.6 million), soda ($18.6 million), and beer ($20.7 million), being purchased incrementally, but nearly 4 million HD TVs (65 % bought at Wal-Mart or Best Buy) and 1.8 million pieces of furniture outfitting living rooms. This, and the fact that it is consistently the highest rated TV program of the year, makes the Super Bowl a boon for all the brands that stand to benefit from the occasion.

Brands market at retail for the Super Bowl in a variety of ways. Brands like Coors Light, Pepsi, Doritos and others pay the NFL for official sponsorship and rights to the marks for the Super Bowl. Non-sponsors like Coke, Miller Lite, and Kellogg’s use generic terms like the “Big Game” to try to capture the essence of the big game. The biggest retailers “took back” the Super Bowl by creating their own programming themes. But promotional programs that most brands execute offer fewer, bigger prizes, don’t interact with the shopper beyond their experience at the shelf. Despite their efforts, most promotions seem generic because everyone is doing the same thing. Brands with the greatest connection to football parties – especially food and beverage brands – tout the “Ultimate Party” but don’t give us a compelling reason to believe them.

It’s as if most Super Bowl brands are talking to themselves and not their audience – the fans. And the fans can tell the difference.

We the fans want to have the best experience possible.  And, unless you are a one of the few fans that has connections, your chance of getting tickets to the game is nil. The biggest fans, the most loyal ones, are watching at home because they simply can’t go to the live event.  So the game becomes a reason to get together with friends, consume copious amounts of stuff and enjoy a pop-culture event with no equal. Outside of the host stadium, the Super Bowl is 28 million parties with 154 million viewers, who are there for the game, the advertising, and to be with friends, in that order. The host's success is measured on putting out a great spread, showing off the home theater, or placing a friendly bet on which quarterback will throw the first interception.

So, what can brands do more to enhance our experience before, during and after the pinnacle moment of kickoff?  How can brands connect with the shopper at retail when there is so much clutter and noise in the context of a shopper wants to get in, get out and get to where they are going?  At a time when everyone is sponsoring everything, how can a brand be authentic to an increasingly skeptical audience? 

When there is so much opportunity to make a great impression for the Super Bowl, brands need to create programming that breaks through the clutter at retail and communicates a relevant message for the shopper. Brands must connect with the consumer in a meaningful way, understanding the insights of what the Super Bowl occasion is about. And perhaps most importantly, brands need to connect to their audience in a way that is authentic to the brand, while most of all remaining true to the fans.

- Contributed by Eric Anhold

Source: ACNielsen: average weekly sales for two weeks ending Feb. 10 2007; BigResearch: CIA survey, Jan 2007

Image credits: In-Store Marketer

Toshiba after HD-DVD: Down but Not Out

If you read the recent post on Sony's Blu-Ray's recent victory over Toshiba in the HD-DVD space, you know Toshiba pulled out of the race the moment they calculated they couldn't win. In today's Wall Street Journal, Toshiba's CEO, Atsutoshi Nishida commented on the move:

"One has to take calculated risks in business, but it's also important to switch gears immediately if you think your decision was wrong. We were doing this to win, and if we weren't going to win then we had to pull out, especially since consumers were already asking for a single standard."

Moving quickly on bad news is bold step, especially for Japanese CEO, many of whom might have postponed a decision even in the face of the inevitable, in order to save face. Building on this, the Wall Street Journal cited five management tips from the Toshiba CEO:

For those of you who are concerned about Toshiba's future, don't worry too much. CEO Nishida reminds us that HD DVD was one of 45 strategic business units or "areas of growth" and 44 still remain.

The Diaper Dilemma

As a woman just over a month away from having her first child I am continually awed by the strategies marketers use to target new moms; continually taking advantage of their emotional highs and lows, their raging hormones, and their fear that they won’t have everything they need to care for their new arrival – it is no wonder that this is a booming industry. I receive non-stop ads in the mail for the myriad of things that new parents (allegedly) need. How did our parents ever do it without all of this stuff?

Having just completed a trip to Wal*Mart and Babies R’ Us, I was overwhelmed by the back wall of diaper options. From Huggies, to Pampers, to generic brands. Although I did not see any eco-friendly options the choice is amazing. Where does one begin?  All of my “green” friends keep asking me if I am going to use cloth diapers, or find an eco-friendly route? As an overwhelmed pregnant women, the thought of cloth diapers is not very appealing at the moment. (Ironically none of my "green" friends have children). But in a time when sustainability and environmentally friendly are becoming everyday terms, what are my eco-friendly options and why am I not seeing them?

There is no doubt that we live in an era and a culture where convenience and time are extremely important. Cloth diapers might not be an option for me, but there have to be some choices out there for biodegradable, or green products that are still convenient and easily available to me. I started searching and found a couple options. My goal was to find things that were easily accessible and didn’t cause me a trip out of my way.  Seventh Generation was the most readily available and is a disposable option. They market chlorine free / toxic free diapers. Obviously I have not tried them yet, but if they are anything like Seventh Generation toilet paper or paper towels, then I won’t want them touching my newborns sensitive skin! The price is slightly higher, and there are still conflicting reports on whether they are actually that much better for the environment than regular diapers. The other interesting option available is G-Diapers. The idea around this is that you purchase cloth velcro pants and then insert flushable refills into the pants  - making the diaper.  The flushables are plastic free and have no toxins. They are marketed around the convenience of flushing them down a normal toilet. The cost is approximately 35 – 40% more than regular Pampers or Huggies, and I can only purchase them online. It is here that the Diaper Dilemma begins!

In the baby category, filled with toys, clothing, swings and all the “must haves” for a newborn, the environmentally friendly diaper options are limited and the marketing for these products appears to be sparse (or, maybe it is just getting lost in the clutter of everything else).  New moms are easily overwhelmed and are looking for convenience, cost savings and ease of use.  It appears to me that there is a huge opportunity here, one that will make the Diaper Dilemma a little easier to solve. 

Images courtesy of DailyClipArt.net
   
- Contributed by Tera Gill

Sony vs. Toshiba in the Battle for HD DVD Supremacy

Like competing samurai clans, Sony and Toshiba's corporate rivalry is the stuff of legend in Japan. Their most recent public conflict came to its conclusion today following Wal Mart's announcement to abandon Toshiba's HD DVD format in favor of Sony's Blu-Ray disk technology.

Both technologies offer a significant advantage in their ability to store up to six times more data than traditional DVDs, enabling more content and higher resolution for today's HD television monitors. Analysts think Sony's retail success with PS3, based on Blu-Ray technology, was the factor that ultimately favored Sony over Toshiba.

Wal Mart's announcement was not the first strike against Toshiba, but it was certainly the decisive one. Last May, Time Warner announced it would no longer support titles on both high-definition video formats, choosing Sony Blu-Ray as its format of choice. This was the tipping point. Like the VHS vs. Beta wars of a generation ago (which, ironically, Sony's BetaMax format famously lost), it was clear that the world needed only one standard. Supporting two standards may in theory create competition but is ultimately inefficient. Retailers have neither the desire nor the shelf space to carry two technologies that do the same thing, be they DVDs or the hardware that reads them. When Netflix and Best Buy announced their support of BluRay earlier this month, it was clear the battle was waning; Wal Mart's announcement made Sony's victory complete.

The announcement leaves not one, but two losers. The first is Toshiba, having spent millions developing this technology, leaving them no choice but to move on to the next battle. The other losers are Early Adopters, who pay a premium for buying first-generation technology, and sometimes pay the price for supporting the wrong brand.

For Early Adopters, however, there is a silver lining. Since Wal Mart's announcement, the price of HD DVD disks has suddenly dropped by half. Buy now - supplies are limited.

Was your Wal-Mart clean today?

Months ago I was at a Wal-Mart outside of Des Moines and noticed that upon checkout, the credit card payment screen asked me "Was your store clean today?" Not sure what to make of it, but since that transaction I haven't seen the retailer use the checkout terminal for self-reported consumer opinions. 

The basket tells all

An oldie but goodie from The Onion: Shopper Insecurities Laid Bare in Wal-Mart Shopping Cart.  Thanks to Todd for forwarding.

Managing the Myriad Forces Impacting Retail

The more we read and hear about the retail space, the less clear it sometimes is about where things are headed. PRISM hopes to simplify the media aspects of it, while retailers are becoming more interested in custom customer specific programs as well as now customer/shopper specific efforts.

There was an interesting article in the Hub about shopper marketing which raised questions for us about the myriad forces at work in retail marketing. The article written by Chris Hoyt and Gail Peterson of Hoyt and Associates basically outlines the shift by retailers to better shopper segmentation and what it means to anyone selling goods at retail. Check it out here.

The net net is that retailers are aiming to better serve their shoppers by customizing stores (product selection, layout, etc...). The hope of the more "shopper relevant" store is, as always increased sales, but also increased loyalty. "This store understands me" seems to be the general response that retailers are looking for.

This is smart and makes complete sense, but will change what agencies are going to be tasked with in the future. The challenge will no longer be to create customer specific programming across a client's top 5 or 10 retailers (for example) but is going to grow geometrically as each customer specific program will have 4 - 8 "shopper segment" twists. This, however, is a challenge worth stepping up to as it this will inevitably lead to more targeted programming which means more effective and successful work.

 

So as planning looks to become more targeted and customized, in working with the PRISM consortium, we see the science side of in-store looking to generalize and simplify. This then raises the question, as stores differentiate further, what does this mean for attempts to create uniform measurement and planning?

One could argue the measurement factor can remain less affected as "eyeballs are eyeballs" in the world of media measurement. An impression in prime time TV is added on top of an impression in Time Magazine and then added again to a Yahoo impression is terms of overall plan delivery. Yes, the levels of engagement are different, but that's a separate consideration as a part of the planning process. As far as Nielsen is concerned, they are measuring "opportunity to see"; again eyeballs are eyeballs. (It’s the same song for TV, Print and everything else measured.)

So, this leads us to the part which is affected by all these shifts in retailer/shopper specific planning. While thanks to PRISM we will know how many people will see our in-store pieces, how to interrupt and engage will become a more important art. Encouragement on the part of retailers for more specific programs around shopper segments in particular store formats provide an opportunity to create more relevant creative.

This opportunity raises some very interesting questions from a creative insight standpoint. How do we drive relevance across different store- and shopper-types? What are the vehicles that allow the flexibility to creative these types of campaigns? What kind of creative measurement do we establish to test what works where and for whom?  How can PRISM’s science help in development and measurement of the more artistic side of planning?