Hall of Fame Profile: John Pender

How did you get started in P-O-P?I started right out of college as a merchandiser. I interviewed on a Friday and [Whitehall Laboratories Inc.] flew me that Sunday to Albany. The story back then was that they had 150% turnover a year in that territory and they said they needed somebody there. I didn't even go through a full interviewing process.I had an apartment in Albany, and the funny story is that because I was a bachelor, I put all my racks, and all my brochures and everything in my kitchen cabinets. That's where I stored everything except for a few cabinets that I left for the essential things.What did you do prior to your work in merchandising?My Dad worked for Kerr Packaging Products -- they make bottles and caps. To put myself through college, I made bottle caps. I actually assembled some of the first child-safety caps that were ever made, before they were even out there. I made Avon bottle caps and Listerine bottle caps. I kind of grew up in the packaging area.My first exposure at retail was working in the factory. But I didn't have any experience in merchandising, and everybody was saying I should go into sales and this was sort of the training area to become a sales guy. You started as a merchandiser and cut your teeth on that.I advanced and was eventually a sales regional manager. Then I was in the administration area and more into promotions.Tell us about your team and how they help to create great P-O-P?Ron Elowitz, is our display and development manager. Ron is actually going for his Ph.D. right now in packaging design and engineering. When I accepted this job, Ron was working at Chanel, he had left Schering-Plough, and I brought him back here and he helped me put this department together. Ron is the other side of me. He knows all the technical stuff and specs that I didn't have as a formal trainee. He's the formal trainee guy. I rely on Ron to write the SOPs. He's your classic designer. Jack Walker, manager of retail promotions, handles all the sales literature and the empty P-O-P that we put in the catalogs and ship out of here. He has a Ph.D. in history. Sarah D'Ovidio, coordinator of display development, who does all of our tracking, started here a few years ago and is a system person. She runs our weekly meetings where we go over every project. The purchasing people are a large part of the team -- that's Pete LaMontia and Marge Hendrickson. April Massey, display planning, is the material planner who works out of Memphis. That's the core team.What makes it a great team?We've basically had the same team together since I've been in this job. We have a very knowledgeable team and a tremendous work ethic. We sit every Wednesday for two hours and go over every project. In any given month, we have 100-120 different projects we're working on. Today, with being very customer-focused and with the demands of the trade, it varies, but 50-80% of our work is custom for each account.What are the biggest challenges involved in creating outstanding P-O-P?There is a strategy behind how the P-O-P piece has to perform. There's the longevity of it, what's its role against competition? Then you have the cost element and the timing element. Lead times over the last few years have became shorter. I think since Sept. 11 cost pressures have increased. That's the nature of things today, when you look at a project you have to balance those elements together in creating the right display.You deal with a lot of prescription products converting to over-the-counter. What challenges do you face with those launches?I can't go into depth on Claritin because we're in the middle of it, but I want to talk about Advil. Advil's a very good scenario. When I was at Whitehall with Advil, we were out a month before Nuprin. Bristol-Myers had bought the rights to market Nuprin. What's interesting about both of those products is both names are totally made up. Advil is an ibuprofen but there wasn't an Advil prescription like there's a Claritin prescription.Well you say, "How did Advil dominate the market, which it does today, compared to Nuprin?" It was the retail execution: making sure things weren't out of stock and making sure we had the best display placement. We also comment on the TV commercial, which everyone remembers from back then as "the advanced pain relief." You know there was a lot of street fighting going on with those two products. Other products like Lotrimin and Claritin, they have the Rx heritage when they go over the counter and people recognize those names immediately. It's a different dynamic but yet when you go into any retailer and you're presenting your plans on these projects, they realize the growth potential for the category. It's huge.Some launches are for products that aren't so glamorous, like Lotrimin anti-fungal cream. Creatively, how is that difficult?I've been told in 1990, when we launched Lotrimin, it was the first time we ever showed a pharmacist on a display. His pocket was the pamphlet holder and he was a freestanding character. That was the display, and we nicknamed him Larry Lotrimin. The ethical image of that standing on the floor was incredible for the launch of Lotrimin. Like you said, a Lotrimin is not as glamorous as other launches, but for somebody who has that problem, it's a very important product.What one display are you most proud of?I'd say, other than the Claritin launch which was so incredible last year, the one display is our Coppertone Fun Center which won a gold POPAI award about four years ago. When we launched that display we had a previous display that was around for eight or nine years called the "space system." We spent about a month talking to marketing, talking to sales and talking to the people who merchandise our sun care products in the field about where they expected this rack to perform. It took a month to put it together.They had tried to come up with a rack two or three times previously to replace the space system merchandiser, but nobody could get anyone to agree upon the objectives of the program. They kept missing the dates because you have to make these things so far in advance in the season. Finally, we got everybody together and one of the simple things that came out of asking the right questions up front was the time it takes to erect the display. When we introduced the display, two of us erected it in less than two minutes almost in the dark. We turned the lights down to make the point of how easy and quick this thing was to erect. It was so well told and so well thought out that to this day we've changed the graphic elements on it and added some pieces to keep the look fresh, but it is still one of the best racks in the business.I'm very proud of the work we did to make sure that the display was right. And after we had the display designed, we tested it. I'm told we are one of the most stringent companies when it comes to testing. We did pullover tests to simulate what would happen if a 50-pound kid held onto the side of it. We did threshold tests. We made sure that when we loaded it up with 900-pounds that the rack wouldn't fall apart. We've tested competitive racks, and they have fallen over when you roll them with 900 pounds.What are the most important elements of a successful product display?It depends on the customer. Customers are looking for different things in a display. One is labor-reduction, the logistical side of the display, the ease of the display. Other things are making sure there is good communication, that communication is consistent with the packaging communication and the advertising communication.In pharmaceutical merchandising, education is very important. With Coppertone, for example, we must educate about the dangers of skin cancer from sunburn. With Dr. Scholl's, products to improve people's lives, we have to describe our in-soles.What have been the most significant changes affecting merchandising in recent years?Execution. Marketing would create a forecast, build a display with a set mix and at the end of the season you would de-pack what you didn't sell and that was the program. With the Internet at Schering, one of the first things we did with our internal Internet is we went in with a universal system. You hear buzzwords about modular parts. We were doing this five years ago. If we offered 20 displays in a given time, we would have four times that many up on the Internet. What that does is it gives people a lot more freedom to come up with the right mixes for their stores instead of being set in the predetermined mix. You become much more customer-focused. So by having that up on the Internet, the sales people got all of their dimensions and all of their specs. The Internet has really revolutionized how we can improve performance to our customers.Do you expect to see more or less emphasis on P-O-P materials in the pharmaceutical category?More. Our company believes in it. P-O-P is the nature of the category. In sun care, it's essential. Regarding education in advertising, I think we're on the verge of a revolution in our industry. I think pharmaceutical and health and beauty aid products are going to benefit heavily from that.What market forces and cultural changes are affecting your company's use of P-O-P materials and how will this affect your displays in the future?Now you have me on my soapbox, so I'm going to take this beyond Schering-Plough. (He laughs.) I think many people still think of looking at our industry in terms of materials. I'm looking at it more as advertising. By advertising I mean education, awareness and trial as well as being aligned with media. In the future, we'll measure compliance with the radio-frequency technology chips that are coming out. When I say compliance, I say that in a positive way. We'll know when a display is sold out so we can replenish it. We'll know if it's up in the right place. These are technologies, I predict, that will be used in the next three years everywhere.With the Internet red hot, no one is talking about the integration of Internet and wiring at retail. Stores are going to be wired with the Internet for messaging. Displays will be more of a vehicle to get the goods there, and the message will be sold by the retailers for that space. Just like you now contract for displays using your promotional monies, you'll be wanting to use the retailer's Internet to get the message to the store. You could also change it daily depending on the demographics of those markets. That, tied to the compliance, is going to be very exciting for our industry in the next few years. With retailers sharing the data immediately over the Internet, we'll be able to react to changing the program right when the program is being executed. Traditionally you have to wait until the next promotional period to make any changes.When you measure performance, you'll be able to test different ideas at a given time, different display designs, different copy points. It ties into this idea of using P-O-P as a measured medium. We talk about it now in terms of measuring it, and to use that to promote P-O-P. And I'm saying in the future that will be how we do business, more so now than we've ever done. It kind of gets back to my comment about starting out in the industry. P-O-P was looked at as secondary placement and strategic placement in the store, not as an advertising vehicle. I think it will get even bigger than it is today. The next stage of that will be something like in the movie "Minority Report," you'll have interaction. The consumer will be able to ask the kiosk or the panel the question, "which anti-fungal should I use?" I really believe in the next 10 years that's going to happen in many accounts.The other thing that is going to drive this is larger accounts getting larger and the proliferation of stores. I just think it's a natural evolution of the industry. Wal-Mart today typically does 25% of anybody's business. The figures that Wal-Mart tells us concerning how many people go through their doors are incredible. So you say to yourself, "what if Wal-Mart had its own Wal-Mart formal advertising program tied to displays?" It's incredible. They could bid it on the Internet.What do you like best about your job?There are two parts to that one. There's something about our industry. I call it retail essence. The thing that's really refreshing is that if I go to a dinner or a social engagement, people in our industry love talking about what we do. Every person in our business who goes on vacation and sees a chain store they haven't seen before, has to go in to look at the shelving. It's a business that has a tremendous amount of passion. It's the joy of improving the consumer's experience. And in other circles I travel in, sales or marketing, or in other areas, it's not that way.The other thing I think that's interesting is that this business is built on small innovations. Somebody improves a design, now and then you see true innovation, but generally it's built like bricks, one innovation over another innovation. Being part of that every day is a little different.What advice would you give to anyone just breaking into the P-O-P business?The first thing I would say is walk and talk retail. I don't think our industry gives enough credit to those people working retail who do exceptional jobs. There is some true entrepreneurial thinking and some innovation pockets that go on in stores and until you hit those stores and talk to the people doing them, you don't realize how much they impact the sales of our goods.

Hall of Fame Profile: John Pender

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