Thinking Outside the Juice Box

At a Jewel supermarket on Chicago's northwest side, shoppers breeze through the self-checkout lane. A sturdy plastic Coca-Cola cooler stands to their immediate right, tempting them with chilled beverages cradled in beds of crushed ice. On this day, shoppers can choose from two flavors of Full Throttle energy drink and the new Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke, each presented in one of the cooler's three branded compartments.With easily-changeable side panels that help keep the display fresh, the rollable Tri-Barrel, as Coke terms the display, is emblematic of the new emphasis that non-alcoholic beverage marketers are placing on P-O-P that lasts longer in-store and saves retail labor costs.That's just one of many trends impacting P-O-P in non-alcoholic beverages, according to global leader Coca-Cola Co. Marketing in the center aisle of stores and cross-merchandising are others. Whether they're serving up their drinks hot or cold, beverage makers are using P-O-P in better ways to answer retailer needs, shopper habits and the always growing competition.Shopper InsightAmong the biggest non-alcoholic beverage categories are soft drinks, bottled waters and energy drinks. No marketer boasts a more substantial presence in those key areas than Atlanta-based Coca-Cola North America.Makers of Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Dasani, PowerAde and others, Coca-Cola looks for consumers' input when developing P-O-P for supermarkets, says Steve Hyland, director of retail merchandising for Coca-Cola North America."We want shoppers to tell us what they think," he says. "We develop the solution based on the shoppers' insights, take it to the retailers, and they ultimately decide whether they're going to use it in their stores. And it has to have some unifying element to make it uniform within the stores, rather than having it look different from one aisle to the next."Coca-Cola's research indicates that consumers navigate by brand in the soft drinks aisle. But in the bottled water aisle, they navigate by types of water, such as spring or filtered. Therefore, the P-O-P solution must be different in these two categories, but still must fit within the retailer's overall signage requirements and P-O-P structure for a unified look. "That's the challenge right now," Hyland says. "It might be a specific shape or a specific fixture, but the important thing is that it has consistency from aisle to aisle."In supermarkets, Coca-Cola North America relies upon P-O-P like corrugated stacker displays, permanent end-aisle displays and plastic and wire floorstands. Temporary P-O-P includes spectaculars, pole signs, shelf talkers and base wraps."Those are pretty common, consistent types of point-of-sale. Right now, we're about to launch Coca-Cola point-of-sale for the Olympics," Hyland says in early February. "And when we do something like that, the goal is to have a consistent message in-store around that time. It will be integrated in the store so consumers can tell what our message and theme is. That will also be communicated on our packaging, so the message is integrated around both packaging and point-of-sale."Coke's TrendsThe top P-O-P trend identified by Hyland is the substantial growth in P-O-P investment by Coca-Cola. That growing investment is consistent across both the soft drink and bottled water categories, and not only for Coke but for other CPGs.Second, he reports, many more retailers are asking his company to create exclusive, customized P-O-P. That's a departure from the past, when Coke created broad-based pieces of P-O-P equipment or temporary P-O-P that could work well for several retail chains. "We think that's a good trend," Hyland says. "We're developing solutions that work for the retailer, and believe we have a better chance of success in the outlet."A third major trend is a focus on center-store P-O-P approaches, he says. "Retailers are asking us for solutions that will help them draw traffic down the center of the store. In the past, the focus was on the perimeters, not any aisle where you walk down. How we can generate excitement in-aisle is a question most CPG companies are working on with retailers."Yet another big trend is the creation of P-O-P with changeable signs that allow the displays to work longer in-store and reduce labor costs. Instead of replacing semipermanent displays every few months, Coca-Cola and other brand marketers are examining ways to keep equipment longer.Oriented more to supermarkets than convenience stores is a rack designed for a product introduction that can be changed to, for instance, a PowerAde display simply by replacing the changeable P-O-P panel, he adds.Cross-merchandising represents still another P-O-P trend. "We're looking to create the right kind of bundles that make sense for the customer," Hyland remarks. "Coke with pizza, Coke with deli sandwiches. It's more cross-merchandising with other relevant products.""Got Milk?" Gets HealthyFew observers are better equipped to discuss in-store marketing of milk than Jeff Manning, the architect of the "Got Milk?" campaign. Though he no longer serves as executive director of the Berkeley-based California Milk Processors Board, Manning has leveraged his most famous creation in the name of his own firm. Got Manning, based in Orinda, CA, is a brand consultancy that helps reignite mature brands and categories in consumer products.Milk is a very unusual business, Manning says, and its success in stores relies heavily on cross-merchandising. For the most part unbranded at both the national and local level, the milk business is a huge moneymaker worth more than $20 billion nationally. Milk, however, is essentially a commodity. Ask people what kind of milk they buy and they're apt to say, "I buy 2%," or "I buy the red carton," Manning points out.Perhaps because it is so ancient and recognized a product, milk rarely receives much P-O-P support in the dairy section. The in-store efforts that tend to work best for milk are those that tie moo juice to sales of other products consumed alongside milk. "People don't drink milk alone," Manning says. "Close to 90% of milk is consumed with food, so having the message in the food aisles makes enormous sense. The consumer has a basket filled with cookies, bananas, cereal, frozen pancakes, donuts, bagels, peanut butter and jelly -- and all drive milk sales."At the California Milk Processors Board, the best success has come from collaborations with General Mills, Kraft and Nabisco to put the "Got Milk?" message in the cereal, flavoring and cookie aisles. Another memorable campaign, the result of a partnership with Dole, affixed "Got Milk?" stickers to tens of millions of bananas, Manning says.And while some cookie brands, such as Oreo, continue to promote milk at point-of-sale, that may not continue much longer, he predicts. "As the industry moves to more of a health message, with milk as a way of losing weight, they will be less and less inclined to collaborate with Nabisco for obvious reasons," he asserts.Keep the Juices FlowingJuice is a category easily divisible into several subcategories. One such subgroup is non-refrigerated juices and drinks, comprised of nationally-known brands like Hawaiian Punch, Capri-Sun and Hi-C. In the refrigerated case, shoppers find 100% juices, as well as drinks that are not 100% juice. The former includes brands like Tropicana, Minute Maid and Florida Natural, the latter drinks under the Tropicana and Minute Maid banners, as well as the industry leader, Tampico. Yet another subcategory is comprised of nectars with names like Kerns and Jumex that squeeze in between the 100% -- and the juice drinks.Richard Ross, senior director of marketing for Chicago's Tampico Beverages, notes several important trends taking shape in the category, including the growing reliance on static clings on refrigerated case glass doors, on vertical shelf talkers that protrude in a perpendicular manner into the aisle, and on instantly redeemable coupons that appear as either stickers or as neck hangers on bottle spouts.Another emerging trend finds retailers appealing to marketers to help stores reduce labor costs. "One thing that really rates there is any kind of pallet-ready display that can be rolled out and used in place of having to stock shelves," Ross notes.The types of collateral that makes most sense in that context includes pole signs anchored into pallets and base wraps that identify products' names and messages. "That's something to watch for, mainly in the chains," he says.Juice marketers and retailers alike are also increasingly utilizing bilingual collateral. In fact, the materials used by Tampico in-store almost always feature messages in both English and Spanish. That presents a challenge on one level because twice the language has to fit into the same space, and on another because Spanish translates at 130% of English, Ross says.Because its products are permitted to be displayed outside refrigeration for short periods, Tampico favors the use of P-O-P merchandising racks, including 48-gallon white plastic displays and 48- and 96-gallon blue wire racks with changeable header cards.These racks are used both as permanent displays at the ends of aisles and as a means of co-merchandising the juices with items like tortillas or produce. "The most creative use is as lane blockers to let customers know a checkout counter is closed, or to actually reduce the chance of someone leaving the store without paying," Ross says.More important than the racks are the display-ready pieces. These are brightly-colored four- and six-gallon corrugated cases that display the Tampico logo along with the message that every eight-ounce serving delivers 100% of recommended daily Vitamin C consumption.Showcasing bright blue, orange and yellow colors and festooned with illustrations of fruit, the display-ready cases are used primarily as PDQs, or two-week promotional cycles, in the action alley at Wal-Mart Supercenters, Ross says.Key differences exist in the way independents and chains greet promotions, says Ross. The former are "incredibly accepting" of new innovations. "For example, we do a lot of sweepstakes, using P-O-P related to the sweepstakes, giving away a bike or cooler, a mini-refrigerator or shopping spree," he says."Independents are very easy to work with in setting these up in-store. We even had pi atas made in the shape of the Tampico mascot, filled them with candy and raffled them. We use those to get incremental displays in stores on a market-by-market basis."Eye-Opening Coffee P-O-PCoffee sales are perking, and coffee brands are striving to create P-O-P that awakens consumers to the distinctive appeal of their javas. A case in point is Westwood, MA-based FilterFresh Coffee Service, which uses P-O-P to 'dress' its in-store brewers, according to Ed Holloran, vice-president of business development.Today, FilterFresh markets coffee under the Van Houtte name, utilizing P-O-P to make shoppers aware of the single-cup coffee brewer, which produces hot coffee right in the store.A piece the company calls the topper sits on top of and is fastened to the brewer, shrouding the equipment with an awning striped in two shades of gold. The topper displays a paper cup filled with coffee and reads, "Van Houtte: The Taste of Europe in Your Cup," Holloran says."It's very effective, a very clear messaging tool," he notes. "It draws a parallel between the brewed coffee and any bagged coffee we may have in the store, from whole bean hoppers to one-pot pouches to all formats of packaged ground coffee. The awning gives a little European flair, reflecting the European origins of the company founder, Albert Louis Van Houtte."In c-stores, meanwhile, the company uses everything from pump toppers on gas pumps to vinyl static window clings to promote its coffees. A few feet above the 6- to 8-foot long coffee counters inside c-stores, FilterFresh suspends a gold-striped acrylic awning, "giving us ownership of that space and defining the coffee area," Holloran says. The awning is either hung from the ceiling or is perched on four brass poles attached to the coffee bar itself."Five years ago, if you walked into the coffee area of a c-store, you wouldn't have seen the kind of attention given coffee today," Holloran observes. "That's changed because, much like everything else in the coffee world, Starbucks and similar coffee shops and chains have really heightened awareness of what coffee is. Now, convenience stores are trying to provide an upscale image in a gourmet type of environment. They're competing with Starbucks, Caribou and others." Waterbury, VT-based Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, a specialty company, has spotlighted harvesting in its P-O-P. When it began offering Green Mountain's organic, fair-trade-certified coffees, specialty retailer Wild Oats Markets, Boulder, CO, allowed the coffee company to develop a line of 2-foot by 3-foot posters to appear in-store at ends of coffee aisles. The posters changed throughout the year, each depicting workers harvesting beans or coffee-growing communities profiting from free trade. Each included a holder for brochures touting free trade's benefits and featuring the Green Mountain and Wild Oats logos.Green Mountain also relies on P-O-P in a new relationship it has forged with McDonald's restaurants in New England and upstate New York. On the outside of many of the 658 McDonald's stores in that region, banners proclaim that the eateries serve Newman's Own Organics Fair Trade Coffee, sourced and roasted by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Table tents do the same within the McDonald's restaurants.Freestanding 4-foot-tall signs promote the benefits and quality of this organic, fair-trade coffee and its certifications, while brochures distributed at the counter provide additional details. Another window sign depicts a hand holding a steaming cup of coffee. In addition, the cups used to serve the coffee convey the stories of both Newman's Own and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, with the McDonald's logo positioned in the middle.Specialty coffee stores depend heavily on P-O-P to promote their brews. Irvine, CA-based Gloria Jean's Gourmet Coffee, for instance, uses a wide array of P-O-P elements in its mall stores and kiosks, where it brews gourmet coffee and sells espresso drinks, full-blended drinks, and whole beans and coffee-related merchandise, says marketing manager Kathy Spray."The majority of our marketing dollars are spent on P-O-P," she says. "We're not a large enough brand to be able to afford broadcast media, so we try to talk to people already in the mall. To do that we have to use as much P-O-P as we can."Tea PartyLike coffee, tea is growing at a healthy rate. Expanding varieties include herbal remedy teas, white teas, red teas and even white iced tea.One of the best-known brands is Celestial Seasonings, which produces bag teas sold in boxes everywhere such as grocery stores, Wal-Mart, Target, major drug chains and natural food stores. Celestial Seasonings currently offers a line of 11 green teas, and another line of specialty teas that includes herbal tea, green tea and black tea categories as well as a wellness tea category, says Matt Sungy, Boulder, CO-based product manager for The Hain Celestial Group, headquartered in Melville, NY.Taste has always been the primary message in the bag tea category, says Sungy. But over the past five years, health messages have become more and more common, particularly within the green tea subsegment, Sungy reports."The antioxidant properties naturally found in green tea have received a tremendous amount of press," Sungy says. "They have been linked in studies with a whole host of positive things for the body, from being good for your heart and circulatory system to fighting infection and helping prevent cell damage that can cause cancer."P-O-P is increasingly competitive, particularly in supermarkets. Shelf banners and floor clings are among the means used to convey messages of taste, flavor and health, he says.Perhaps the biggest trend, not only in-store but throughout tea advertising, is the tie to antioxidants. "But you don't usually see just the health message," Sungy adds. "The research we see is that taste is still the number one factor, and you see that reflected in the advertising."Proliferation Stunts P-O-PAt least one observer believes beverage P-O-P efforts may be misdirected. Simon Sinek, CEO and founder of New York's SinekPartners, a marketing consultancy, observes that the number one trend in the beverage category is the explosion of choices. "It's no longer acceptable to have an apple juice; you have to have 15 line extensions of that apple juice," Sinek says. "All that does is make it more and more difficult to stand out. And it's not just in soda and juice, but in water, energy drinks, smoothies, coffee drinks, beverage powders and sports drinks. It's ridiculous."Given this environment, the question confronting every beverage company is how to capture attention, Sinek says. P-O-P displays are tactical efforts to do so, but they are short-term solutions. "You do a co-op with a food item. How long will that last? A year?" he asks. "You put a display at the end of an aisle. What's the incremental sales? Two months worth?" Sinek questions how beverage makers are creating relevance in the lives of consumers and potential consumers. They must have a clear understanding of that first, he says. If their P-O-P tactics flow from such an understanding, that P-O-P will be more effective and longer lasting."Here's the challenge: How many beverage makers are defining their values based on themselves, as opposed to what their customers truly care about?" Sinek asks. "Very, very often, beverage makers will talk about product benefits like low calories, but who cares? Unless a consumer can answer, 'Why should I care?' they're operating on a short-term tactical basis."In terms of the future of non-alcoholic beverage P-O-P, one of the trends Manning of Got Manning sees is the use of beverages as carriers for nutrients. Some bottled water now has fluoride, and other waters as well as orange juices contain added calcium. "This will begin showing up in point-of-sale messages," Manning predicts."They'll want to get across that 'This is a bottle of water with calcium.' That's a big message. That's where the industry is going, with good-for-you beverages and fortification. And the chief beneficiary will be bottled water. You could put calcium in a soft drink, but in bottled water it makes all the sense in the world."Such evolution will transpire in an environment that should also produce a major transformation in beverage options in schools, Manning adds. Many school systems have already banned soft drinks in school vending machines, which means soft drink makers will devise other options to be embraced by schools and parents."Coke is well on its way," Manning says. "It's got a juice and a water, and my feeling is it will have a milk someday. I think the beverage industry is going to change. It's not going to remain the same; it's going to change a lot. There's every indication of that."

Thinking Outside the Juice Box

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