Sanford Rewrites the Book on P-O-P

Historically a commercially focused business, the writing instrument category is beginning to improve its chances of reaching consumers by riding the recent growth of the office superstore market.Sanford Co., producer of Sharpie, Colorific, EXPO and Paper Mate products (it acquired the Paper Mate brand along with the rest of Gillette's writing instruments division in 2001), sees opportunity in designing and launching the most significant P-O-P in the category."In the past, when it came to merchandising for Paper Mate and some of our other products, we built a lot of displays that were very utilitarian. They held a lot of product, they got it in the stores," says Jon Boeve, who as packaging leader for Paper Mate heads up the brand's merchandising. "We want to create displays that are going to be very impactful to consumers, so that when people come into stores, they can see the bright blue Paper Mate display, whether it's in the middle of the floor, or in the aisle, or near the register."Sanford's marketing plan is for the Paper Mate brand to become the mass-market category leader. "By saying the leader, it means that of all the players in the arena, we're doing the most in terms of new products, advertising, merchandising and packaging," says Barry Calpino, vice president and general manager of Paper Mate.Adds Mike Finn, Sanford's commun-ications manager, "This is a category with little differentiation between products. The opportunity for differentiation is great-looking P-O-P with great-looking and great-working products. Paper Mate has that."The growth of such retail chains as Staples, Office Depot and OfficeMax over the past several years has fueled this opportunity to lead, Calpino says. Prior to that shift, "While there was probably a planogram in every retailer, the whole industry was very focused on the commercial class of trade, so there wasn't a lot of innovation in terms of packaging and merchandising," he says. "Today, you have the three office superstores, plus Wal-Mart, and then you have all the traditional food and drug, and Target. They now represent the vast majority of the whole category."That's a total shift versus 10 to 15 years ago," Calpino adds. "So now, it's all about retail. It's being successful with planograms, category management, packaging, and cool, creative, impulse-driven merchandising. That's been a big change."Paper Mate is well-positioned as a brand to capitalize on that change because Sanford, which was founded as an ink company in 1857 but moved toward promoting markers and other writing instruments around the time Sharpie was introduced in 1964, is "a very focused company," according to Calpino. "The opportunity is for Paper Mate to tap into the whole Sanford company and all the resources and expertise." Office superstores and other channels that merchandise the category find P-O-P an especially promising avenue because writing instruments are considered more impulse-driven than most products, Calpino says. Finn concurs, saying that industry figures show 60% of pens are purchased on impulse.Sanford, therefore, has begun to incorporate "test pads" on its Paper Mate displays. These pads enable consumers to try products before buying them, a technique pioneered by fragrance and cosmetics marketers. Calpino explains: "No matter who we talk to, [whether the] market researcher or the end-user, we always end up in the same place -- 'How can we find a way for people to play with and touch and write with our hot new writing instruments?'" This is the case, Calpino maintains, because "the conversion rate is through the roof.""Everyone feels there's a lot of upside to driving impulse sales, to driving trials of new products, to merchandising this category more like a traditional consumer category," he adds. "There's a widespread feeling that it's under-merchandised."Boeve describes a typical consumer's experience: "You're coming to a display to buy some pens, and you see that pen there to try out. You pick it up, start feeling it [and think], 'This is a great-looking pen. This feels cool.' It gives you that great trial. There's a 90% chance you're going to pick it up and take it home."Customizing for RetailersGiven the high conversion rates, retailers have been very enthusiastic about merchandising the category, Calpino says. This, he explains, presents a challenge: Each retailer has its own desires and requirements, and Sanford can't afford to produce a custom display for each one."There seems to be a really strong mentality of experimenting and trying things," Calpino says. "That's really healthy. We don't have a customer base that's change-resistant at all. The receptivity has been unbelievable from our big customers. As we've come to them with much more impactful, branded, creative merchandising, we haven't had the same resistance that I think others have had."There is a flip side, though. "Our biggest challenge is all the retailer specifications," Calpino says. "We don't want to have 100 versions of displays, but one version doesn't work, either. So it's trying to find the right, most practical balance. We don't want Jon to have all these ideas that are beautiful in a conference room, but have the retailers say, 'They don't fit our specs.'"Paper Mate sometimes tries to strike a balance by customizing pieces of the planogram while keeping most of it standard, Calpino says. "I can customize a header card with an Office Depot promotion for Paper Mate, and I don't need a whole new structure," he says. "Everybody loves some sort of customization."Boeve agrees. "Trying to find these great solutions to merchandise our products off-shelf, and which will meet their criteria, can be challenging when you've got so many different stores and retailers to work, and each wants its own, unique, custom-made display," he says.Integrating the MessageThe current campaign for Paper Mate, tied to the tag line "Where's Yours?" is Sanford's latest (and greatest, according to the company) attempt to cut through the clutter in the pen section. The $5 million campaign, the largest in the brand's history, includes P-O-P, print advertising in teen lifestyle magazines, and 15- and 30-second television spots that feature a modernized logo and deep Reflex Blue packaging.The strategy and its catch phrase are built upon the notion that consumers build up a strong attachment to their favorite writing instrument, Finn says. All elements in the campaign complement each other and support the idea. Sharpie has a similarly integrated strategy built on the idea that one can be bold and expressive with the product, he says."We want everything -- from the TV spot to the point-of-sale material -- to look the same, and to carry the same message and feel," Finn says. Adds Boeve, "We're trying to keep a very, very consistent look to our brand."This wasn't always the case. During the interview, Boeve showed examples of the prior, more utilitarian displays, one of which has a simple black background with various pens randomly placed. He showed another pegboard version and said, "It's just a mess of color. There's so much going on. The only thing consistent is the yellow and black logo."Now, however, the Paper Mate P-O-P features bold, bright blue -- the brand's new iconic color. Furthermore, the packaging and pens have been redesigned to be more eye-catching, Boeve says, and the new Paper Mate planograms are broken down into retractable pens, ball-point pens, mechanical pencils and other sub-categories of the brand."We're trying to make it easier for consumers to see what they're buying in a very confusing category," Boeve says, "and also just making the product the hero, making it nice and bright and bold so it just pops off the shelf." The biggest challenge of designing the planogram is what Calpino terms "the age-old paradox." "Everyone wants it to be simpler, but everyone wants variety," he says. So Sanford breaks down its pens by brand, and further delineates product by other variables, including price point. Calpino says that the company has even added features like a color-coded stripe for each sub-category.How Sanford Gets it DoneSanford has about 700 employees at its Bellwood, Ill., headquarters, and about 10,000 worldwide, Finn says. The company operates marketing, R&D, operations and sales divisions, and it maintains facilities in various locations, including Tennessee, Mexico, Wisconsin and California. Although Sanford has been a subsidiary of Newell Rubbermaid since 1992, no one from the parent company approves displays, Calpino says. Sanford's marketing division is split into brand marketing and channel marketing segments, and ideas for displays can come from either, Boeve says. Any given project includes at least Boeve, a channel manager, a brand manager, a person from the company's creative group and a packaging engineer, usually for a total of six or seven people."We're looking at doing either brand-initiated displays, which the brand is offering to the sales force and to the channels to use, or channel-initiated displays, which basically are displays where [Sanford's channel marketing managers] come to me and say, 'Hey, Jon, we've got a great opportunity with this customer, we've got a floorstand that holds this much product, and I need it to hold this much product,'" Boeve says.At that point, he and his team sit down to discuss the opportunities, parameters and expectations from the customer, and he looks back at past displays to see if something already built can be used or adapted. "If it's a new program, then I'll sit down and do the renderings myself, come up with different concepts and ideas, and then I'll go and work with my display manufacturers through the process of concepting and rendering them," Boeve says. "Once we get that approved, we go and build a white sample. I take a look at it and show it to my brand managers and channel managers."Boeve then assigns people from the creative team to handle the look, feel and message of the display. He also sees to it that the structure is built and tested by the company's packaging engineers. "They make sure everything is structurally sound, make sure that these displays are going to hold the product they're going to hold, work with the operations group in making sure they get executed properly, and then follow through in getting them shipped out on time. They're a big, big part of the process."While the creative is done internally, Boeve consults with a variety of P-O-P vendors and uses their designs about half the time, he says. "I'll give them a drawing and say, 'This is what I'm thinking about doing,'" he says. "These are the kind of specs I have. Come back to me with some reality.' Other times, they come to me and say, 'Hey, Jon, I have a great new idea for a floor display.' "Boeve says he appreciates vendors who take the initiative. "One of my strong talking points to them is they should be coming to their customers and saying, 'Hey, I've got these great ideas,'" he says. "I look to my vendors to push me and to lead me. I don't really want to see myself always having to push my vendors and always giving them ideas." He notes that the company's major suppliers include Justman Packaging & Display of Los Angeles, Linpac Displays Inc. of Tullahoma, Tenn., and Custom Packaging Inc. of Lebanon, Tenn.Sanford's timelines for in-store projects are generally pretty short, but the company can take nine months -- from start to finish -- to design displays for the back-to-school season, which may be the category's most significant sales period. "We try to back that up as far as we can," Boeve says. He explains that in addition to the design and production schedule, Sanford focuses on meeting shipping stock dates. While the company is doing more P-O-P now than it did in the past, lead times generally aren't changing that much, Calpino says. "More and more accounts are doing more account planning, longer term," he says. "Everyone's getting better. The industry was already targeting '04 and '05 in July of '03."Sanford tries to remain as flexible as possible in meeting a variety of deadlines to satisfy all of its retail customers. "We'll plan out a long-term, back-to-school promotion for something really big, like a Wal-Mart or a Target," Calpino says. "But Office Depot might call us and say, 'Hey, we have an opportunity that just came up for a display in March.' And here we are -- this just happened -- it's November, and we'll put something together really fast."We have to have the ability to be long-term and develop huge, back-to-school events, but also be very nimble in the short- to medium-term," he adds. "We have to be great at both. If we are, our retailers will keep coming to us for opportunities."Trend TrackersTrends that Sanford sees among its retailers are moves to larger, more permanent P-O-P and complementary place-ments (a display positioned next to the greeting card aisle in a supermarket or drugstore, for instance), which reflect clean-floor policies and the category's impulse-driven consumers, respectively."It's getting bigger, permanent-side, with some of our superstores," Boeve says. "They're looking at permanent fixturing within their stores. We're showing them a lot more. They've been very receptive to different concepts and different strategies.""The way we differentiate ourselves is the breadth of our product line, the design, the style, writing performance," Calpino concludes. "We provide the best combination for the price point." He notes that the sales lift Paper Mate receives from its P-O-P displays varies, and that "sometimes, we'll see 300 or 400 percent on a new display."

Sanford Rewrites the Book on P-O-P

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