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Shopper Marketing tends to focus on using shopper insights to enable selection at the point of sale. However, in categories that are complex, overwhelming or otherwise hard to navigate, enabling deselection is just as important. You have to enable your shoppers to deselect what they don't want before they are able to select what they want. I learned this lesson while working on Millstone, at the time a P&G premium coffee brand. In an intimidating category like premium coffee, we found that organizing the shelf based on shopper insights gained from research brought about more clarity and ultimately, more sales.

The above picture is a fun way to approach another category that can be intimidating - wine. Press in Charlotte, NC chose not to take the typical approach to categorizing wines by regions or varietals, instead creating fun categories based on what the shopper will experience. Deselection ultimately should enable better and faster selection and in this example, narrow down a large wine list into a smaller set of relevant options.