All Insight, No Activation

Oak Brook, Ill. -- Sonja Mathews of PepsiCo conducted an informal poll leading up to her 2010 In-Store Marketing Summit presentation. She asked 25 retailers to rate the quality of shopper insights they were getting from their CPG partners. The result? Let's just say there's room for improvement.Mathews, director of customer strategy and consumer insights, asked the retailers to estimate how often the insights brand partners provide "really resonate with what you need." The answer was a mere 20% of the time, and that's not just for Pepsi, but across multiple CPG categories."Here's the shocker," Mathews continued. "That's doubled from the past few years. They actually said that we've gotten a lot better."Mathews said her retailer respondents used to see a lot of CPG bluster. Brand teams would come into meetings enthusiastic about an idea, pumping it up. But drilling deeper, the retailers saw no growth plan and no insights on where the idea should be activated in-store. That bluster has more recently been replaced by insights, but many of them are irrelevant. So while brand teams now present solid work and deeper insights, they're often not the right fit.Mathews spoke with a panel of three retailer executives who shared what they expect from CPGs in a presentation titled "The Retailer POV on Shopper Insights."Laura Price, Supervalu's director of market segment management, offered suggestions for Supervalu suppliers. Among them: Build advocacy. Take ownership and educate organizations so the right conversations can take place. "On the retailer side, I'd be the first to admit that between marketing, merchandising and operations, sometimes it's the Tower of Babel," she said. "However, I see that on the CPG side, too, where we talk to a shopper marketing person or a brand person who truly speaks a different language and has completely different expectations than the sales team we're talking to." Know Supervalu. Price stressed the importance of Supervalu needing to be transparent with its key strategies and objectives, so CPG partners can tailor insights to their needs. "We have segmentation models at Supervalu; one is built for vendors to pen their data to," she said. "We know, as category experts, you'll know more than us. Tap into our understanding and frame your ideas in language we understand." Think horizontally. "We want programs with multiple touchpoints," she said. Target a specific message to a specific audience for each component of the shopper marketing program. A lot of little moves can add up to great results and allow both sides to be more creative.Hy-Vee's Bernard Beary, assistant vice president, category management, dairy, also offered advice for CPG companies. He lamented the apparent lack of "slam dunk" adjacency studies. One company offered a stellar adjacency study to support the introduction of new product lines and categories, and Hy-Vee applied the insights to the new products. But when the chain went back to ask for similar insights on the manufacturer's core product lines, the company said they didn't have them because they were "too expensive."Beary also suggested brands work hard to limit turnover. He said that employees turn over every 18 months on the category management side, and that isn't enough time to learn about a customer.James Damian, senior vice president, enterprise design group, Best Buy (and a 2010 Hall of Fame inductee), offered a core message of brand and retailer alignment. He suggested brands must understand their history. "We need to understand the historical context of what we're doing."Best Buy doesn't just sell consumer electronics, Damian said. "We're in the business of communication." He said technology is the new fashion of the times. People think of it as a wardrobe or collection, and Best Buy embraces this. The retailer evolved away from the clutter of temporary signage and corrugated to something more digitally proficient, answering the call from the new age of consumers.

All Insight, No Activation

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