World View 2014

For the third straight year, we take the “temperature” of shopper marketing around the world by querying consumer packaged goods professionals who work outside the United States about shoppers, the path to purchase, retailer relations, etc., in their particular markets.LOCATION: SingaporeElaine Khoo, Principal Design Manager, Home Care Asia, Procter & GambleExperience in Market: 11 yearsMy Job: “I am the design leader for the air care and dish care categories in Asia, working on brands like Joy, Fairy, Febreze and AmbiPur. I lead an internal team of four, and we work with multiple external creative partners. The brand strategy work we do manifests itself in campaign visuals, in-store and packaging, sometimes going across to inform other touchpoints of the campaign. Markets I have worked on include India, China, ASEAN, Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Japan. I sometimes work on global projects with design markets outside of Asia.”The Path to Purchase: “Asia is a very diverse market – there isn’t one path to purchase. Instead it depends on which country it is and your target audience. Generally, what is upstream from in-store could be anywhere within the consumer’s world – her neighbors, her favorite magazine or her usual website.”Mobile Marketing: “The role of smartphones has not stopped changing since its inception. In countries with major retailers, shoppers are using retailer apps not just for convenient shopping or to get a deal, but also to mine for news and tips, or to get a unique experience. The increasing penetration of smartphones and the Internet has democratized marketing; it’s no longer about who has the biggest marketing budget.”Collaboration: “Asia is a region that is hungry to grow, and P&G partners with our retailers to develop solutions that will drive their desired sales. Hence, they are very open to collaboration at the brand, category and cross-category levels. My team is currently working on small displays for air care products for a major convenience chain in Thailand, and also in-store fixtures for major retailers in Malaysia and Singapore.”Shopper Marketing Effort: “In my previous assignment when I was working on personal healthcare, we did Vicks Road to Relief in Australia and New Zealand, where we enrolled our retailers to raise awareness and funds toward the eradication of pneumonia with Unicef. My brand partners defined the concept, and I worked the creatives to stretch the impact of our touchpoints. The idea traveled and became a global campaign for Vicks.”Personal Goals: “To help develop my people, create enough space within the business to keep pushing the boundaries, and guide a project through the straight and narrow path.”LOCATION: Istanbul, TurkeyElif Emiroglu, Marketing Director, Gum, Candy and Gifting and Offering, Mondelez InternationalExperience in Market: 16 yearsMy Job: “I manage 11 brands in multiple categories. My major responsibilities include brand strategy, budget planning, promotion and advertising planning and production, new product launches/innovation, P&L management, and consumer insights and media.”Mobile Marketing: “Smartphone penetration is still low in Turkey but increasing. Mobile shopping at the moment is limited to the fashion industry and some household goods shopping. These apps are generated by retailers. Third-party apps are also being launched more recently. One company is partnering with one of the biggest supermarket chains in Turkey and launching an app where you can scan bar codes on your mobile phone and create a shopping basket. You can then pay on mobile and your items are delivered to you.”Collaboration: “When the manufacturer companies can show expertise and tools to help category growth, retailers are very willing to collaborate. We had a very successful launch of Jacobs Millicano, a coffee that is prepared like instant coffee with the experience of a filter coffee. During the launch period, we did hot sampling in the major retailers to meet our consumers. All these shopper efforts were supported via conventional media such as TV and outdoor advertising. However, meeting the consumers in the stores helped them to experience this revolutionary taste in a real shopping environment.”Execution/Compliance: “We can ensure in-store compliance. Our partnership with retailers is very strong. We design and align shelves and shelf planograms, must-sell SKUs together with our business partners’, with our know-how and analytical tools. We have field teams, and account managers who check executions and report compliance.”Shopper Marketing Effort: “Every year we have in-store activations with our Milka and Jelibon brands where we brand the stores with P-O-P materials, brand icons (Milka cows), and create extra joy areas for the shoppers where they can enjoy games with their kids. These are extra shopping spaces in addition to the category shelves and checkouts, which bring 20-30% incremental sales during promotion weeks and create shopper and brand bonding. Also during the Olips XS new product launch (a leading refreshing candy in Turkey), we had special executions in more than 200 stores where we met the shoppers at the checkouts with ‘breath meters’ to measure their freshness and offer Olips XS products for 100% freshness.”LOCATION: Karachi, PakistanYasir Suleman Memon, Head of Customer Marketing Operations, Unilever PakistanExperience in Market: 7 yearsMy Job: “I lead the Unilever Pakistan Customer Marketing Excellence Team, which includes merchandising excellence, Perfect Stores, rural, e-commerce/home delivery and creative coverage.”The Path to Purchase: “In Pakistan, a vast majority of the population prefers vicinity shopping, where goods are mostly bought from the neighborhood shop that maintains a credit for an entire month. With 20% of the retail universe now having moved to modern trade, this evolving format attracts loyal shoppers from the higher affluent classes and is also a source of shoppertainment for the remaining vast majority of the population. With cheap availability of labor and 120 million mobile users, free home delivery for grocery has picked up pace with virtually every neighborhood having a retailer providing a 30-minute delivery service. In exchange, these fragmented retailers are driving loyalty for their bricks-and-mortar shops. This year Unilever Pakistan also launched its own direct delivery service, offering delivery of a selected range of products, including a 60-minute ice cream delivery service.”Mobile Marketing: “While Pakistan has recently moved to 3G connectivity, a vast majority of shoppers have already made the shift and order food through mobile apps like Food Panda and EatOye. While there aren’t any retailer-specific apps, some e-retailers like AsaanShop.pk are aggressively expanding grocery delivery services through neighborhood shops. There have, however, been no launches on any retailer-specific applications for helping shoppers in their in-store path to purchase.”Collaboration: “Mostly retailers are willing to collaborate and remain open and flexible to new ideas. In our recent collaborations with Carrefour, we have experimented with new shopper-centric tools on Toni & Guy, covering all key touchpoints in a shopper journey.”Execution/Compliance: “Through our Perfect Store program, our merchandising teams ensure that shopper-centric propositions are landed in-store on time. Our independent audit teams ensure world-class execution through a rigorous audit cycle measuring 100-plus KPIs to come out with an objective compliance score for every category and store.”Shopper Marketing Effort: “To drive market development for liquid soap in Pakistan, we set up hand-washing zones within fresh areas for all Metro stores for a period of one year. This led to the doubling of the liquids category that year and a share gain of 9% for Unilever. The liquid soap contribution to the category also increased by 500 basis points that year. The model was then also repeated to other retailers in Pakistan.”LOCATION: Mumbai, IndiaSunil Taldar, Director, Sales and International Business, Mondelez India Foods Ltd., part of Mondelez InternationalExperience in Market: 25 years with Cadbury India/Mondelez IndiaMy Job: “I lead the sales team of Mondelez India Foods Ltd., driving the growth of the business for Mondelez International in India.”The Path to Purchase: “India is a diverse market with traditional trade dominating the landscape with 7.9 million stores. At the same time we’re also seeing fast development in modern trade, which means that shoppers are evolving as a result of their interaction with the two very diverse shopping environments. Plus, with 70% of decisions made in-store – brands, SKU sizes, quantities, flavors/variants, etc. – we have a big component of impulse and we see a great opportunity to influence decision-making at the store. We identify opportunities at the point of buying, which helps us understand where we’re losing shoppers in the path to purchase and accordingly create strategies to maximize conversions. We have put in place a shopper panel, which allows us to test and learn on a continuous level the path to purchase for our brands and categories.”Mobile Marketing: “India has a huge mobile household penetration with large urban areas seeing more than one connection per person. We see mobile becoming a key tool to search and evaluate in the buying process inside and outside of the store. It will also become an instrument to communicate and promote. Mobile is already used extensively for messaging services to participate in promotional activations or redemption of coupons. Though apps are available, it is only recently we have seen online shopping portals promoting these apps aggressively, though FMCG retail has yet to see any retailers or such apps making any meaningful impact. We would expect that to change in the future with global and Indian retailers looking at online retailing as a big opportunity.”Collaboration: “Working with retailers is becoming more collaborative as competition increases for the traditional trade with the advent of modern trade. As a supplier you approach them with a solution that will drive a better shopper experience and conversation. Within traditional trade we are providing completely new sales counters, enhancing the visibility at the retailers’ end to see more conversions, especially for impulse-driven categories like chocolate and candy.”LOCATION: Saint-Ouen, FranceCaroline Doche, European Regional Customer Marketing Director, Bacardi-MartiniExperience in Market: 11 years in the spirits industry in both Europe and Asia-PacificMy Job: “I develop and drive the customer marketing programs across the European region with three main focuses: to turn key shopper insights into business opportunities, lead the category management initiatives, and define the European shopper marketing programs.”The Path to Purchase: “The European spirits market has two main characteristics: approximately 70% of spirits purchases are planned pre-store, and pre-store activation is key in order to influence the purchase decision. On-trade (i.e., bars and restaurants) has a key role in the path to purchase. On-trade drives off-trade sales as consumers are seeking to replicate their on-trade experiences at home.”Mobile Marketing: “Mobile is playing a stronger role in the shopper’s journey in order to inspire pre-store new drink moments and also to influence shopper decision in-store. In on-trade, the consumer can be influenced by a barman who helps him choose a drink. In off-trade, since there is no barman, mobile can be the link between our brands and the shoppers to help them choose.”Collaboration: “European retailers are more and more willing to drive profitable category sales through innovative shelf solutions instead of aggressive price promotions.”Execution/Compliance: “We have defined a ‘picture of success’ for strategic channel segments in order to ensure excellence in execution of our brands’ strategies at the point of purchase. We work with each outlet to improve the measures and, therefore, drive value for the customer and our brands.” Shopper Marketing Effort: The Bar Moderne. “The main shopper insight was that consumers want to buy drinks, not bottles. Our vision became to inspire more exciting drink moments. Purchase barriers were that shoppers see the spirits aisle as a ‘wall of bottles’ that doesn’t inspire them to think of spirits or make cocktails for their drink moments at home. We wanted to break the wall of bottles. The solution was the ‘Bar Moderne’ in collaboration with Carrefour in order to implement the shelf of the future, which reconnects the spirits shelf with the four shopper needs: help me find; inform me; inspire me; and help me impress.”LOCATION: London, EnglandVenu Raavi, Trade Marketing Manager – Off-Trade (Retail, Convenience & Wholesale), Heineken U.K. Ltd.Experience in Market: 7 yearsMy Job: “I lead a team of shopper activation managers. I coach and empower the team to create, activate and execute superior shopper experiences through Heineken U.K. brands at and on the way to the point of purchase.”The Path to Purchase: “We approach the path to purchase from a through-the-line (TTL) mindset. Our path to purchase framework starts well before the store and carries on way after the purchase is made. This way we reinforce the brand equity we build before the store and close the sale and keep shoppers returning by resonating the reason to believe in our brands.”Mobile Marketing: “According to an IGD Shopper Vista Study (January 2014), 20% of shoppers are now using mobile phones for their shop. This is a slight increase (19%) from June 2013. However, we’re seeing a trend of shoppers using their tablets more for their shop. Approximately 22% of shoppers said they have used a tablet to shop in January 2014, a 6% increase from June 2013. The most popular grocery apps shoppers use are those from retailers such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, ASDA (part of the Walmart family) and Ocado, an online-only supermarket and the largest online food retailer in the world.”Collaboration: “Retailers in the U.K. are willing and capable of collaborating to a great extent, provided they find the right strategic partner. We believe in true collaboration with our retailer that drives the overall category growth, which is very healthy and organic, both for us and the retailers.”Execution/Compliance: “We have an extensive field sales team with whom we pre-agree the compliance for our in-store activities. With their existing strong relationships with stores, the field sales team calls upon the big four U.K. retailers and selected convenience stores. They ensure compliance of our in-store activation and execution across our brand portfolio, they check availability of our brand portfolio and ensure that our merchandising and display plans are adhered to, and they inform stores on what is due in-store in the next promotional cycle.”LOCATION: Sao Paulo, BrazilAna Cristina Colla Maradei, Shopper Marketing Manager, Mondelez InternationalExperience in Market: 15 yearsMy Job: “I’m responsible for transforming the purchase behavior at the point of sale to increase shopper conversion. I manage categories in Mondelez key customers, transform shopper insights into action, make categories easy and exciting to shop, and am also responsible for developing visibility strategies and materials for all categories. Internally, I work with the marketing, trade marketing channels and shopper insights departments, and very closely with the merchandising and sales teams to establish execution priorities focused on assortment, organization and category placement and dynamics. Externally, we’re also responsible for category management in the clients that Mondelez is the main advisory.”Mobile Marketing: “E-commerce has been growing in Brazil and the smartphone penetration has been following the trend – it is around 30%.”Collaboration: “Customer and industry collaboration has been strengthened along the years in Brazil, but we know that we still have opportunities to make this more powerful in order to accelerate the category development.”Execution/Compliance: “Mondelez has a clear in-store execution strategy for each category and retail environment. This content is a guideline for the five P’s (product assortment, price, position, placement and promotion). We take in account the following aspects to develop the execution strategies: the shopper behaviors, the shopping mission, the category and the brand strategy, as well as the competitive environment in each specific retail environment. In order to ensure in-store execution, we train our company’s sales and merchandising teams as well as third-party teams, execution booklets are updated frequently, and we have some in-store indicators that are tracked weekly or monthly depending on the ‘P’.”Personal Goal: “The shopper marketing mission is to have a deep shopper understanding in each different retail environment, being responsible for connecting all the knowledge of shopper and trade behavior. Based on these, I want to raise powerful shopper insights, translating them into in-store strategies in order to accelerate conversion with higher profitability and cost-effectiveness.”LOCATION: Bogota, ColombiaCarlos Leal, Senior Consumer Marketing Manager, Nestlé de Colombia S.A.Experience in Market: 11 yearsMy Job: “I’m responsible for the chocolate and malt beverages/milk modifiers business strategy. I am in charge of consumer brand marketing campaigns and activities for Milo and Nesquik, and serve as the Milo brand board manager for all Milo categories.”The Path to Purchase: “We have developed the path to purchase in our market in order to generate awareness pre-store, capture attention, spark interest and create a strong brand story. We then want to generate engagement in-store and remind, reinforce and guide consumers to the shelf and trigger purchase in aisle. We also always provide a call to action to drive the final brand choice. The path has to be aligned, adapted, impactful, simple, pragmatic and immediate. Our priority is simple: to be sure that our big ideas exist at the point of sale, just as it does in other media outlets. The POS is not only a transaction outlet, it is one of our most important communication vehicles that should carry our big idea at a crucial moment of truth – and be meaningful.”Mobile Marketing: “Smartphone penetration is increasing, but the role of smartphones in the shopper’s journey is not relevant so far.”Collaboration: “We have developed a collaborative model with the biggest retailer in Colombia (Éxito) and we work together in order to identify opportunities and develop the category. For example, we have created special occasions such as Breakfast Days together to create an experience at the POS and internally to incent the purchase of Milo and other products as a part of a breakfast.”Execution/Compliance: “As we have a collaboration model with most of the retailers in Colombia, we have worked in a measurement tool where we can track all the in-store execution. With the results, we’re able to adjust the execution standards and progress.”Personal Goal: “To develop an effective offline and online path to purchase for the chocolate and malt beverages category, and drive the category growth with Milo as the leader and differentiated brand within the breakfast occasion category.”LOCATION: Manila, PhilippinesElla Gonzales, Senior Customer Marketing Manager, Asia South, The Hershey Co.Experience in Market: 16 yearsMy Job: “Drive customer marketing processes in the Asia South region to ensure proper translation of strategies to in-store plans and customer partnerships by building sales and distributor execution capabilities.”The Path to Purchase: “Awareness is most frequently generated via TV since almost 80% of households have TV sets at home. Local channels are widely taking over radio, which used to be the potent source of awareness. The digital platform is still in the infancy stage as a source of information for consumers. Internet connectivity proliferates only in the urban and suburban areas. From this awareness that pulls the consumer to the store, several mechanics are available to drive conversion from the store entrance to impulse-driving points in the store up to the destination aisle.”Mobile Marketing: “Smartphone penetration is gaining prevalence in Asia Pacific, specifically in Thailand and Singapore. Location-based shopping and convenience services via smartphones are being used now in developed markets such as Singapore. Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines usage is more on social networking and will soon evolve to be tapped for shopping and convenience. Location applications such as Foursquare and Google Maps enable the users to have the convenience of locating shopping places. Increasing prevalence of use are online shopping applications such as Groupon and Lazada.”Collaboration: “South East Asia retailers with a global footprint are generally open for collaboration as the retail landscape is evolving to be highly fragmented. We have started steering the conversation and developing a shared learning agenda with 7-Eleven in some markets in Asia to drive category development via bigger basket ring and differentiation. We’re just starting to unlock the traditional barrier of customer collaboration especially with a route to market anchored via distributorship. While collaborative attitude does start with a retailer merchandising team that sees added value to their business, we’re still faced with the challenge of driving cross-functional collaboration, which is critical in driving sustainable growth.” Personal Goal: “Having experienced working in categories where shopper marketing has already evolved to the next level of engagement with the shoppers, I see that the confectionary category in this region has a lot of opportunities in the shopper marketing platform beyond promotion. The challenge is to build shopper marketing fundamentals in the region given our current route-to-market model, and to drive this discipline across the organization.”LOCATION: Manila, PhilippinesRyan Villaflores, Perfect Store and Shopper Marketing Director for North Asia, South Asia, North Africa, Middle East and Turkey, UnileverExperience in Market: The Philippines is his base, and he has worked for the clusters mentioned above for more than a year now.My Job: “To raise the bar on shopper marketing and category management capabilities in Asia and Africa and drive the Unilever Perfect Store program in these regions, focusing on executing our market development strategy in-store in our priority channels.”The Path to Purchase: “Generally, the shopper journey covers different steps before the shopper steps into the store, where the shopper navigates in-store (on the shelf, off-shelf), when he or she purchases, and after the in-store experience (for loyalty building). The relevant shopper path helps companies identify their objectives and plans.”Mobile Marketing: “Mobile is huge in Asia and Africa. Even in the most remote parts of some markets, mobile phone penetration is close to 100%, and more of these mobiles are smartphones as they are getting cheaper. In Africa, mobile is now used to transfer money, which has an enormous impact on the way we do business with our distributors. Safety is an issue in many parts of Africa and Asia, and carrying money is a risk. By moving to phone-banking, we take away this risk, open many doors and increase the distribution of our brands.”Collaboration: “Especially in the developing world, retailers look up to Unilever for partnership on sustainability, category management, shopper marketing and various retail solutions. Over the years, Unilever has built solid credibility, not only with innovative retail solutions but, more so, with results. We have abundant best practices from our collaborations with global players such as Tesco, AS Watson and Walmart.”Execution/Compliance: “Unilever has a very robust Perfect Store program in place with clear KPIs that we built together with our customers on product availability, placement, proposition, etc., for example. All markets look at a similar scorecard with targets in everyone’s personal development plans.”Shopper Marketing Effort: “We have been activating our Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) all over the world through shopper marketing programs. In China, we mounted Walmart’s The Living Project, a 360-degree campaign with sustainability as its theme. Our brands and categories were brought to life in the Walmart shopper’s path to purchase through activation that promoted environmental stewardship and sustainable living to contribute to the USLP targets: to reduce our impact on the environment, increase health and hygiene, and increase livelihood of the people interacting with our brands.”

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