Dogs, Donkeys & Ditka

A few years back, I took umbrage at an Advertising Age article that said a bad television commercial could either be cancelled or "relegated to P-O-P." But my feelings of insult (on behalf of in-store marketing) turned to outright concern after viewing this year's crop of Super Bowl ads. Among the highlights were: crotch-biting dogs gas-passing horses toilet-paper-tossing quarterbacks horny chimps not-horny-enough ex-coaches pitching erectile dysfunction pills (around Chicago, they've renamed him Mike "Limp" Ditka) and a cross-dressing donkeyThe mind reels at the strange table tents, headers and -- whoa! -- Janet Jackson standees that might be heading into stores right now.The marketing tax? While on my way to looking up other things, I stumbled across an interesting observation at www.PLMA.com, the Web site of the Private Label Marketing Association. Stating that store brands now account for one of every five items sold in supermarkets, drug chains and mass merchants, the site's authors attributed private label's growth to a new phenomenon:"U.S. shoppers who reached for the store brand version of their favorite grocery products rather than the national brand, logged an estimated $15.8 billion in annual savings, based on industry sales data. The difference is the so-called 'marketing tax,' which consists of advertising and promotional costs incurred by national brand makers that are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices at the shelf."Hmmm. We'll have to let that sink in.So the marketing of brands represents some sort of unearned "tax" that's foisted upon consumers, eh?For a contrarian point of view, let us turn to Procter & Gamble Chairman A.G. Lafley. In a presentation at a Goldman Sachs Retail Conference recently, Lafley stressed the positive contribution brands make to retailers' bottom lines. He noted, for example, that in the oral care category, products that were introduced in the last five years alone already generate more than half of today's sales.But you can bet the ranch, the kids' college fund and grandpa's false teeth that private-labeling retailers invested virtually $0 toward the technical R&D, package branding processes and in-store marketing efforts required to re-orient that many consumers to that many new items.In a perfect world, you might ruffle the feathers of anti-"marketing tax" retailers and just say, "Read My Lips: No New Products." But this is far from a perfect world.Is it the last 3 feet or last 100 yards? In Lafley's presentation, he outlined the four tools P&G is using to build relations with retailers: (1) leadership in brands and new products; (2) deeper shopper knowledge; (3) supply-chain capabilities; and (4) a retailer-business development organization.I was impressed that Lafley treated supply-chain issues such as out-of-stocks and replenishment speed as important elements of P&G's marketing turnaround. "The challenge," he says, "is to improve the last 100 yards of the supply chain -- from the back room to the store shelf."A display's design can help address supply-chain issues -- a fact that is too often understated. This becomes especially apparent during P-O-P display competitions like Design of the Times and OMA. Sometimes, a display design may improve access for retail re-stocking, or improve upon the planogramming, making it easier for store clerks to spot out-of-stocks. Similarly, a display may better exploit a packaging innovation, such as making the merchandise assortment "face" itself, or placing a relatively heavy item on a merchandising hook.These features are often subtle, but they are important. Yet many judges are too focused on the last 3 feet -- the consumer's experience -- of the P-O-P display's function. Yes, a judge's appraisal of a display's aesthetics, SKU array, brand imagery and product messaging is critical. However, anyone who's judged must also concede that at some point, this evaluation is (like one's opinion of Super Bowl ads) a subjective matter of taste.So I encourage judges to drill down to the subtle engineering elements of a display that improve its retail functionality and thereby make it trophy-worthy. Some blame must be laid at the feet of the entrants themselves, however. All too often, the entry photos, diagrams and long-winded descriptions fail to call these innovations out for proper attention.This year's Marketer Trends Survey offers plenty of hard data points. But every once in a while, it's also instructive to "look under the hood" and read some of the comments CPG executives scribble into the margins of the form while filling out the survey. The following two questions generated a fair share of ink:Has P-O-P's role changed in the past five years? 57.9%: P-O-P is more important 31.6%: No change 10.5%: P-O-P is less importantWhat's P-O-P's role within your in-store marketing mix? 72.7%: As useful as the other tools 17.3%: The foundation of the program 10.0%: Declining in usefulnessFor example, one sales executive at a non-food CPG firm said, "We really struggle to balance profitable P-O-P to complement the oversight and guidelines set by store management." Another marketing manager (from a clothing company) said, "If a display is done right and maintained, it is very useful."Finally, one of our survey respondents must be paying a lot of attention to Mr. Lafley. He said he could describe the role of P-O-P at his company in "just three words: Execution. Execution. Logistics."

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