»  Private Brands

As part of our campaign to promote Bloom Grocery's new private label brand of beef, we came up with an OOH campaign that does more than drive awareness of Sheffield & Sons Choice Angus. By commissioning a custom aroma of grilling meat and placing a powerful emitter at the base of the billboard, we reached one of the senses that marketers usually overlook: the sense of smell.

The resulting buzz has been incredible. Picked up by media outlets across the country and the globe, we were able to deliver, via one aromatic billboard, millions of dollars worth of free PR to our client. 

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.

Imagine you're on your way to the store to shop for dinner. Your stomach is growling, and as you round the curve you see a larger than life, mouthwatering piece of perfectly cooked steak. Then, as you get closer, you realize you can smell the scent of grilled beef. It's not your imagination - we actually installed the nation's first scented billboard with a high-capacity emitter hidden at the base of the billboard.

Bloom, the upmarket grocery store banner of the Delhaize Group, asked us to help them develop a private label brand of beef and drive sales with a multifaceted shopper marketing campaign. The result: Sheffield & Sons USDA Choice Angus beef. 
 
Hungry yet? With Bloom's beef sales trending higher since we launched this campaign, it would appear so.

* Consumers will focus on buying pure, simple, clean and sustainable basic ingredients. The shift will be away from convenience foods to scratch cooking.
 

* Restaurant concepts will get more creative.
 

* This is a merging of flavors that rethinks what “ethnic” is all about.
 

* People will want to know from where their food comes.
 

* Mainstreaming sustainability. Forget greenwashing. Companies will become sustainable for real in 2010.
 

* People will love food, not food snobbery.
 

* People will use social networks to barter for food.
 

* More than portion size, the trend is about food that reflects personality.

That's right. UK retailers have been pioneers in the private label branding wars which continue to erode the market share and brand recognition of big, heavily-advertised national brands. So it was no surprise when Selfridges, the fancy English department store, recently rolled out a new high-end food line. Here's what the agency responsible for the package design had to say:
 

"A re-branded food range that echo the store’s forward thinking and contemporary attitude towards retail. Although there were over 100 own brand products within the store it was somewhat unrecognisable and lacked shelf presence. Our approach was to create a range that was unique; that did not follow any traditional sector cues. Color coding everything black would make an incredible statement with only the type to reflect what was inside for example strawberry jam would have pink type. The typeface used was trade gothic range left and all the same point size across the range where possible. This ensured clarity and uniformity.”