That was the opinion of at least one attendee at the MLC’s Shopper Marketing cohort session (check out the presentation here) held on June 29 at the Newell-Rubbermaid offices.  More than 30 marketers gathered for the day to talk about the current state of shopper marketing.  The overall consensus was that the importance of the shopper function has never been more important.  Here’s why: Read More »

I recently had to subject myself to snack shopping for a bunch of seven-year-olds and their dads for a weekend camping trip. (Why I would subject myself to a weekend camping with a bunch of seven-year-olds and their dads is another matter altogether)  What should have been a five-minute blast through the snack aisle turned into 20 minutes of anxiety and frustration.  Why?  Because something as simple as grabbing a box of fruit snacks turned into a shelf-scanning, label-reading nightmare. Read More »

Two quick admissions:  I am a cynic at heart.  I am not an American Idol regular.

Yet somehow I found myself watching Idol last Wednesday night and I was struck by their authentic call to action in support of the people devastated by the tragedy in Japan.  In case you missed it, the show began with the hosts announcing that revenue generated from music downloads after the show would be donated to Japanese relief efforts.  Idol certainly wasn’t the first to make an appeal to the American people but whereas the cynic in me often jumps to the commercial reasons that companies get involved in philanthropy, I had a different feeling last night.  Here’s why: Read More »

So began a recent conversation with one of our members who happens to run marketing for a successful confectionary company.  The point she was making is that chocolate hasn’t evolved much in the past century and that anything new has been more iterative in nature.  As a consumer, however, I would vehemently disagree.  We’ve gone from a world of reasonably priced chocolates filled with marshmallow crème sold primarily through indirect channels to high-end boutiques like Vosges that sell $7.50, 3-ounce bars of chocolate filled with Tibetan goji berries and Himalayan salt. Read More »

If I gave you the choice of keeping your company’s brand or keeping the company’s products, services, and current customers, which would you rather have?

<<intentional pause to let the question sink in>>

I had that question posed to me by a CMO at a company with a historically strong brand with lots of intrinsic value in both B2B and B2C markets.  If you have the benefit of a reasonably strong brand, which would you choose?

<<a second intentional pause to let the question sink in>>

Read More »

“Oh please,” I’m sure many of you are thinking as you read the headline.  “We’re in dogfights every day with two or three competitors who seem to cave on price and depress margins.”   You’re absolutely right.   Today’s sales environment has never been more competitive and the power in the decision seems to rest firmly with the buyer.  So why on earth would the real enemy be the status quo? Read More »

I met with a retail-industry member last week that’s in the midst of growing one of their businesses from a regional brand focused on Latin America to a global brand with a strong footprint in the US and the UK.  As we talked about what it will take to enter a crowded retail space, our member expressed it this way, “we need to be very clear what are our brand standards and what are our brand standouts.”

I loved the simplicity of the statement and the depth of the insight. Given the increasing prevalence of mobile/social/location technologies like Foursquare, it can be awfully tough for retailers to differentiate, so the customer experience has never been more important.  Do you know the difference between your brand standards and your brand standouts?  If you are like most businesses, the truthful answer is “no”. Read More »

I’m not the primary shopper in our household but I love wandering the grocery store aisles when I get the chance.  Even if I take my marketer hat off, I am mesmerized by the colors, images, and words of the hundreds of products on the shelves (okay, I don’t get out much).  What never catches my eye, however, are the refrigerated cases that hold the milk, yogurt, chicken, and ice cream I’m grabbing. 

That changed recently when I spent time visiting with marketers at Ingersoll-Rand, makers of Hussmann refrigerated cases.  In this day and age, I couldn’t imagine there was a lot of innovation in the design of refrigerated cases.  Their job is pretty simple – keep stuff cold while maximizing shelf space and minimizing energy use – and people have been building them for decades.  I mean really, what’s left to do with commercial refrigerators?!?  Apparently a ton. Read More »

At first blush (okay, pun intended), it’s hard to imagine anything that would be fit for print in a post on a marketing blog.  But in reality, NASA and the nudists in question are but two examples of an increasing trend we are seeing as marketers.  If I said the answer is “open source innovation” would that allow for too many bad jokes?  The truth is NASA has been a proponent of open source innovation since 2003 and in 2002 market researchers at Moen Faucets recruited 20 nudists to be videotaped while bathing to enhance their product development efforts.

Whether co-opting outsiders into helping you innovate as NASA does or getting creative with your ethnographic research as Moen did, we are seeing more and more members reaching out to their customers – and even their non-customers – for innovation help.  Already NASA’s Centennial Challenge Program has resulted in technological breakthroughs orchestrated by a “regular guy” from Maine working alone in his dining room as well as a group led by an undergraduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Read More »

Perhaps you’ve seen episodes of Name That Tune on the Game Show Network (or maybe you’re old enough to remember when it was a hit in the 1970s).  Regardless, contestants competed to identify a song by listening to as few notes as possible.  I was reminded of that show while watching commercials during the Olympics last week.  Within the first few seconds of seeing a new ad, I knew it was for McDonald’s.  There were no golden arches or kids eating French fries to help me; there was just a vibe, an emotional connection that immediately made me recognize the ad as McDonald’s.

In an age when brands are identified by an icon like a duck or gecko, a recognizable sound like the deep voiceover of Morgan Freeman, or a celebrity spokesperson, I found it refreshing to see an ad that relied on none of those but still made a lasting and memorable impression. Read More »