The Hub 'Top 20' Shopper Marketing Rankings for 2013

The Hub Top 20 survey is eagerly anticipated each year as both agencies and brand marketers vie for recognition for excellence in shopper marketing. This year-the sixth time the survey has been fielded-witnessed the same kind of intensity as in the past. There's nothing quite like an industry ranking to focus attention! The contest is exciting and fun, no doubt about that.However, amid the competitive undercurrent the survey stokes, its original purpose must remain front and center. When Hoyt & Company designed the survey in 2008, the intent was simply to begin to establish best practices in shopper marketing and evaluate industry progress toward certain standards. The evaluative criteria were based on a series of earlier industry-wide surveys that got at the skills, capabilities and practices necessary to excel at shopper marketing. The thinking was that this would help crystallize shopper marketing as a new, emerging discipline and move it forward.We know anecdotally, if not empirically, that The Hub Top 20 has indeed made a significant difference in the way some agencies and brands have organized themselves to build and deploy shopper-marketing capabilities. We have heard that some brands use the rankings as a basis for choosing their agencies, as well.The survey has also recorded industry-wide movement both toward and away from some of the 13 specific criteria that constitute best practices in shopper marketing. The most striking observation in the agency performance criteria is how little attention is paid to "global capabilities." This could be due to a lack of knowledge by respondents about the global reach of some agencies or simply that respondents do not feel that many agencies have a global reach."Research capabilities" remains in the bottom third of the criteria, and is not gaining as much attention as one would think. We're wondering when brands will get more excited about agency research capabilities since we sense that a lot of good work is going on there. Similarly, "retailer relationships," another keystone of shopper marketing, remains near the bottom in terms of the attention it's getting from respondents. However, when looking at the criteria used to evaluate brands, "retailer relationships" got a fair amount of attention by agencies. So, this is a good thing.Perhaps the best news is that "shopper marketing concept and understanding" rose from #9 last year to #1 this year among agencies, and "uniformity of shopper-marketing vision" held steady as #1 among brands. This suggests that we may finally be approaching some consensus on what shopper marketing is and where it ought to take us. Then again, it might only mean that brands and their agencies simply agree with each other-and no one else-on these issues.So, after you've pored over The Hub Top 20 rankings, be sure to spend some time contemplating the performance areas that largely determined who made the list. How does your organization stack up?That said, we would like to congratulate Procter & Gamble and CatapultRPM for earning the number-one spots at the top of the 2013 Hub Top 20 for brands and agencies, respectively.For Procter & Gamble, this marks a return to the top of the list, a place it occupied for the first two years of the survey (P&G has always ranked among the top four). For CatapultRPM, this is a first, replacing Mars Advertising, which had been number-one for the survey's first five years, and finished a solid second this year.Rounding out the top 10 among agencies are Acosta Mosaic Group, JWT/OgilvyAction, TracyLocke, IN Marketing, Match Marketing Group, Arc Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi X and Draftfcb. All of these agencies received insightful comments and high praise and are creating world-class partnerships. Their clients love them!Among brands, the biggest surprise on the list is The Campbell Soup Company, at second place, moving up significantly from 2012. It's not that Campbell's has not taken shopper marketing seriously over the years. I often see them at industry conferences presenting or seeking out shopper-marketing best-practices. We even use some of their programs as MBA class examples here at The University of Tennessee. This kind of switch shows what can happen if a brand (or the reverse-an agency) garners the attention of its partners so strongly that partners want to sing their praises. Other firms were helped (or hurt) by this change in excitement in their shopper-marketing capabilities among their industry colleagues.P&G and Campbell's were followed by Kimberly-Clark, Clorox, Hillshire Brands, Pfizer, Nestlé, Unilever, ConAgra Foods and Coca-Cola to finish out the top 10 of The Hub Top 20. All of them are solid brand marketers, and most have long histories of developing excellent shopper-marketing programs with their agency partners. Our congratulations to them-and all 40 of the agencies and brands who made the list. Well done!Download the full report from the Attached Files at right.The Hub Top 20 Brand Marketers 2013Procter & GambleCampbell Soup Co.Kimberly-ClarkClorox Co.Hillshire BrandsPfizerNestléUnileverConAgra FoodsCoca-Cola Co.Mars Inc.SC JohnsonHershey Co.PepsiCoBacardiBarilla AmericaHormel FoodsKraft FoodsReckitt BenckiserNovartis

The Hub 'Top 20' Shopper Marketing Rankings for 2013

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