P-O-P Show Keynote: Bob Connolly on Wal-Mart's Merchandising

At the recent P-O-P Show/Chicago, Wal-Mart marketing executive Bob Connolly told a crowd of marketers and suppliers to make their displays simple and executable if they want to get into the store. "Your promotional material has to be executable. The best kind is 'wheel it in, open it up, and it's there,'" he said. "As soon as you ask for something else like, 'slot this thing here,' you've begun to back off the ability of Wal-Mart to execute. I'm saying, deal in reality." Connolly, whose official title is executive vice president of marketing and consumer communications, spoke to a standing-room-only crowd on Sept. 22 as one of two keynote speakers at the show. His seminar, titled "What Wal-Mart Wants: Building Effective In-Store Marketing Partnerships," stressed the need for practical, simple P-O-P. Customers are on a mission to get in and out of the store, he said, so the store experience must be easy. He said a consumer's life is complex enough, and a retailer and marketer's job is not to throw more complexity at her. "The customer comes in, usually on a mission in a Wal-Mart store," he explained. "And all they want to do is have a fairly safe, easy shopping experience. Safe [as in] prices are going to be fair. Easy [as in] I'm going to find what I'm looking for because it's identifiable, and if I need information it's going to be readily available, and I can digest [it] in about six seconds. I think that's where you as an industry, and we as Wal-Mart, have a long ways to go." Customers shop by the calendar, on a schedule, Connolly said. They go to Wal-Mart for Halloween, back-to-school, the start of football season, and so forth. "The first thing you want to do is get on the natural calendar -- don't try to create it. Bring yourselves to reality. That's what's going to drive the customer, not your product or our intuitiveness."If you're with a candy company, all you care about is getting your candy in the store whenever you can," he said. "I respect that, [but] you're better off making sure it's there for Valentine's Day, Easter, Christmas, Mother's Day, etc." than trying to alter natural sales patterns.Another necessity for marketers is a Farmer's Almanac. "Weather drives our business, and weather should drive your thought process of what's in the stores and when it goes in."In addition to calendar relevance, Wal-Mart also demands programs that are easy to execute. "We have 400 stores doing over $100 million [annually] with an average basket of $33 [and] an average item that is probably a buck and a quarter. That's a lot of work. There's a lot going on," he said. Connolly relayed many valuable thoughts on working with the number one retailer. Here are a few more:"I just marvel at the amount of money you spend, or we tell you to spend, to make [PDQs and other displays] look pretty." Connolly said that he cares more about seeing information paramount to shopper needs, such as price, on display graphics than he does aesthetically pleasing graphics or brand-building marketing copy. For instance, telling shoppers that your soup can be microwaved in one minute is "probably more important than telling them that 'This is a hearty meal for a cold day,'" he suggested. "We want to be real careful of the cost -- cost should not be added to the product -- and it has to withstand a Wal-Mart store, which is not Nieman's. People come in with baskets and run into things." Asked about the chain's position on display materials, Connolly stressed costs and durability. "I would always encourage you to be very careful about the amount of money you put into display in a Wal-Mart store.""If it's important, something unique and happening, we would consider it. If it's just your attempt to promote your brand, then we're probably not going to like it. We're probably not going to use it." Connolly explained his "policy" for accepting branded P-O-P materials. He also said the strict rule prohibits branded signage in the store's above-head navigation zone. Wal-Mart studies have found that shoppers don't recognize signage there because they're focused on the consistency of directional and department signs. [Editor's note: The same week Connolly made these remarks, Wal-Mart announced changes to its in-store TV network that will include dropping monitors down to eye level.]"We don't like sweepstakes at Wal-Mart." If a direct-store-delivery vendor like Pepsi-Cola is running a national sweeps, "we certainly let them go up there," Connolly said. In general, however, they complicate the shopping experience for consumers, he suggested. "We like retailtainment -- if it's easy." The best retailtainment at Wal-Mart is stickers for kids' hands, Connolly said. "We don't have the time, the skill maybe, or the heart to deal with a lot of complexity." Recent promotions surrounding the release of Spider-Man 2 were successful because stores were able to "set the whole thing in about 10 minutes, because we cut out all the stuff that would take longer."Referring back to his point about following the calendar, Connolly noted that "several suppliers that did not have the Spider-Man license participated by knowing what was going to happen and working with the buyers." "Be responsive to the community where your store is." Connolly urged marketers to be familiar with local or regional attitudes and how weather patterns affect a store and its buying patterns. Although as much as 90% of Wal-Mart's product selection is cookie cutter, the company desires to be a "Town Square" that reflects the local environment. "That's a store of the community philosophy," he said "We understand it; we don't execute it as well -- part of it is your fault, by the way.""I think your perception is [that] it's one big gray building with only your stuff in there." Though he doesn't fault marketers for thinking this way, he says they can learn a lot by watching how other products work in-store and getting a feel for the overall store environment. "It's a pricing philosophy. It's an inclusive business model." Connolly explained Wal-Mart's Every Day Low Pricing policy. "We use CheerFree in our laundry. It's a Procter & Gamble product. We don't use Tide, also a P&G product. I could care less that Tide is on sale. I like CheerFree. All I care about is [that] Wal-Mart or Target -- has CheerFree, when I want it, at a fair price."

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