New Path, Same Road

September turned out to be an appropriate time to change our name to the Path to Purchase Institute.The Institute's online editorial team was wrapping up coverage of a back-to-school season in which seemingly every major retailer's campaign directed shoppers to Facebook for one reason or another. We had just completed the latest in a series of sponsored reports examining the emerging landscape of digital shopper marketing (which you received inside the October issue). And our inboxes were overflowing with news about digital coupon initiatives, mobile app launches and Google-developed "game changers."Although it never occurred deliberately, the daily content we presented on instoremarketer.org evolved naturally over the years. Since launching in May 2003, our editorial goal has been fairly simple: track the marketing and merchandising activity of key retailers, with a focus on how they promote national brands. Originally, the formula was pretty straightforward: look at circulars, visit stores. (Back then, however, the first of those tasks wasn't as easy as it sounds now, because few supermarkets were posting their weekly tabs online.)Today, that formula has broadened to encompass an ever-growing, ever-changing list of potential venues and vehicles. We're now just as likely to find noteworthy examples of retailer-manufacturer collaboration online, where many retailers are energetically (and usually strategically) working to build shopping destinations. And then there's mobile marketing, an emerging area that has spawned an overwhelming number of potential vehicles for us to track. (The staff iPhone has become invaluable.)We'll soon be getting some help in covering the digital landscape from OASIS (Online Advertising Survey and Insights Service), an automated service that will track advertising activity on the websites of leading retailers. The service, which will officially launch in January, gives the Institute more and better resources with which to cover the scene. (We hope that many of our members will find it to be equally as valuable.)But as Peter Hoyt and other Institute representatives have stressed over the last two months, our name change signals a broader industry purview, not a new one. The path has been widened, for sure, and I guess it's been paved farther up the purchase funnel than it used to be. But we're still traveling the same road.As if to prove that point, it seems that several traditional shopper marketing tactics – the ones we've covered all along – have heated up as much as any digital tactic has.Look at Walmart as an example. In addition to becoming one of the most prolific practitioners of digital shopper marketing, with dozens of manufacturer-sponsored campaigns running on Walmart.com every month, the world's largest retailer recently has dramatically relaxed its near-ban on in-store promotion (giving brands greater leeway to toot their own horns), expanded its circular schedule (it's not quite weekly yet, but is during key selling seasons), and become almost as ubiquitous in co-op FSI programs as commemorative plates, address labels and L'Oreal.But it's not just Walmart. Since September 2003, we've published a weekly "FSI Report" to provide a rundown of consumer promotions showcased in the co-op ad programs operated by News America Marketing and Valassis Inc. The motivation was obvious: FSI programs signal a significant brand initiative that often also involves feature and display activity at retail accounts.It used to be fairly easy to compile a report on all the FSIs that communicated promotions other than plain coupon offers. Co-equity FSIs (overlays to a brand's national promotion for specific retailers) were so infrequent that we reported on every occurrence, even though most of the ads presented little more than price features.These days, however, co-equity overlays dominate the weekly inserts. And they've gone well beyond price features to incorporate the strategic initiatives of both the brands and their retailer partners. What once was a secondary tactic (hatched by the co-op operators themselves) has become a standard tool in the collaborative marketing arsenal. That's made our job a lot harder.So, too, has the fact that covering the FSIs now also requires us to visit the websites and/or Facebook pages to which consumers are regularly being directed, and to scan an ever-increasing number of QR codes used as the FSI's promotional trigger. (Please, folks, optimize your websites – not for our sake, but for the millions of potential shoppers you might be annoying out there.)So, again, we're not really doing anything differently on p2pi.org than we did on instoremarketer.org. We're still looking for effective collaborative marketing activity, wherever we can find it. We just have to look in more places now.Peter Breen is managing director - content for P2pi.org. He can be reached at (203) 852-8912 or pbreen@p2pi.org.

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