»  Consumer Promotions

Interesting insights from PROMO Magazine on trends impacting Shopper Marketing and the world of consumer promotions in 2011 ...

1) Leveraging the power of social media to drive commerce Groupon is setting the bar and we're watching for how its success may fundamentally change distribution, effectiveness, and efficiency of promotional value offers to consumers. For example, Groupon recently launched “Grouponicus,” a holiday dedicated to “filling your loved ones’ gift buckets with experiences, not gift cards.” The daily deal shopping Web site also recently entered into a partnership with eBay to offer incentives to eBay loyalty members who participate in Groupon deals.

2) Integration of mobile (handheld) into shopper marketing programming As marketers and retailers look for new touch-points along the path-to-purchase we're seeing the use of more digital applications such as QR codes.  Interestingly, marketers are trying to get on the leading edge of the trend and capture the early influencers while driving greater awareness and usage for the majority vs. waiting for overall adoption rates to hit critical mass. Canon was one such brand, testing QR codes in September on its printers in a number of retail stores, including Best Buy.

3) Marginalization of "brand.com" promotional websites Virtually all clients are looking to platform their promotions on social networking sites (Facebook), sharing sites (You Tube) or partner with existing content/audience relevant sites (e.g. WebMD) vs. building their own stand alone sites.

4) Localization of promotion We're having a lot more discussions about driving promotion down to the local grass roots level. The Web is certainly enabling this but also indicative of a trend toward greater personalization/customization and a backlash against big high-profile events as the economy continues to teeter. We’re seeing this realized often in cause marketing and at retail.

5) Continued blurring of the line between content and promotion We're looking at, and our clients are asking for, more content integration opportunities across all platforms (TV, print, digital, social, gaming).  Marketers want the promotional message to be almost indistinguishable from the content because of the ability to deliver promotional messages in high-value brand environments. We're working on a host of videogame integration opportunities right now and traditional CPG marketers are seeing that as a new frontier to reach their audience.

Contact birdsong gregory to see how we can help your brand navigate 2011.
 

In a consumer promotions effort (a successful one at that) to attract attention to its new fall line of fashions, Daffy's, a clothing retailer in NYC, held a fashion show in it's display windows and let passersby text comments to the models in the window. This certainly puts power in the hands of the consumer.

Kraft Foods' Triscuit crackers brand is partnering with nonprofit Urban Farming to create 50 community-based home farms during 2010, and the brand's new home farming initiatives also include offering free basil and dill herb seed cards on four million boxes of its original and reduced-fat varieties, and a website featuring tips on starting home gardens or volunteering at a local Urban Farming garden.

The Web site includes a tool that advises consumers which vegetables and herbs are best to plant (and planting dates) based on their regions/ZIP codes and the amount of sunny space available (ranging from a single pot on a balcony to two 4-foot by 8-foot gardens). Another tool enables users to find nearby community farms, and add their own home farms to a map. Forums and sharing tools are prominently displayed.

The site also features step-by-step advice for creating and maintaining a home garden from HGTV "Gardening by the Yard" host Paul James, who will make appearances at the openings of the sponsored community gardens.

The home farming theme meshes with Triscuit's "Weave Some Wonder" marketing campaign, which launched last year and marked the brand's return to TV advertising after five years. The broadcast component of this campaign emphasizes the crackers' "simple, authentic goodness" and quality ingredients, such as the "soft white winter wheat" from North American farms that gives the product its crunch and "22 grams of delicious whole grain goodness per serving."

What else? The home farming initiatives are being supported by PR, print ads, banner ads on gardening, women's general interest and other sites; messaging on the product boxes (which also drives consumers to the microsite), some outreach to blogs and tweeting through the Kraft Foods Twitter presence; and the community forums and sharing tools on the microsite. Rather than focus on promotion via Triscuit's Facebook page, the brand decided to make it easy for users to share the home farming movement site's existence and usefulness through their own social media pages or channels. Now that's tasty!

There are as many shopper classification tools as there are shopper marketing agencies. The original VALS spectrum still brings a lot of clarity the "plan and brand" process, and most of the proprietary segmentation models agencies try and sell their clients are still heavily derivative of the original Values, Attitudes, and Lifestyles psychograpics developed in the 1970's by Author Mitchell.

The folks at Henkel Consumer Goods recently annouced the results of a study that examined three years of data from multiple retail channels, covering 300 food and non-food categories commonly carried in supermarkets. This data was collected from the Information Resources, Inc. Consumer Network Panel and other sources

Their findings? Shoppers can be divided into three general categories: Shoptimzers, Mainstreeters, and Carefrees.

Shoptimizers are most likely to be influenced in their choices by pre-shopping stimuli such as circulars and coupons. They also are most likely among the three groups to regard a clear everyday low price (EDLP) strategy as an assurance of value. Once inside an EDLP shopping environment, Shoptimizers may be likely to respond to in-store cues.

Mainstreeters do far less pre-planning and rarely save coupons, so their channel choices are more likely to be influenced by location, convenience and price reputation. Once inside the store, however, this group is most likely to be sensitive to in-store promotions and offers.

Carefrees avoid EDLP channels and bypass most pre-planning and in-store promotions. Interestingly, they totally trust club stores to deliver value appropriate to their consumption patterns. Once inside a store, they tend to ignore prices and buy what they like.

Some other interesting tidbits:

• Coupon Use is almost entirely confined to Shoptimizers, who make up about 25 percent of households and 30 percent of household spending. Coupons are seldom used by Mainstreeters and virtually never by Carefrees.

• Private Label products are purchased more frequently (higher dollar-sales index) by Shoptimizers and less frequently (lower dollar-sales index) by Carefrees. Mainstreeters purchase store brands at about average levels.

• Trip Frequency varies significantly among the behavioral groups, with Shoptimizers visiting stores about four times per week, compared with two-and-a-half times per week for Mainstreeters and twice a week for Carefrees.

• Shopping Basket Size also varies among the behavioral groups, with Shoptimizers spending the smallest dollar amount on each occasion and Carefrees spending the most. Shoptimizers, however, due to their trip frequency spend the most per year, +16 percent versus Mainstream, and +32 percent versus Carefree.

• In-Store Promotions are primarily effective at influencing Mainstreeters, who make up 44 percent of households and dollar sales. In-store promotions have relatively little influence on the purchase decisions of Carefrees.