The Branded Pantry

A mid-February report from the In-Store Implementation Network details the state of measuring Plano-gram compliance in the U.S.   According to the study, “. . . Thirty-five percent of the respondents on the survey indicated they have no process in place whatsoever to track plano-gram compliance.  Ninety-five percent of those that answered that they had some system in place indicated that they relied heavily on spot checks or store manager sign-offs.”  Visual random checks or POS data pull’s are also used to verify variety and authorized items. 

Not surprisingly, P&G found that once Plano-grams are set, they “drift” away from plan, often at a rate of 10% per week! 

And, of course, POG compliance is one of a long list of retail conditions ills we have detailed before, including Out of Stocks, promotion timing and execution, new product timing and execution, and the amount and cost of labor spent in store.    According to the survey “expense may be a key reason why compliance measurement has lagged.  Said one respondent: “The problem is that compliance degrades over time, requiring continuous costly surveys”.

So, in these times of financial challenge what do we as an industry do?  Four retail firms in the last two weeks announced cutbacks in headquarters staff, store staff or both.   I have had meetings with literally a half dozen manufacturing firms in the last ten days and all of them are doing the same.  Fewer hands planning and fewer hands executing are not going to improve execution, nor allow additional in-store conditions measurements. 

 If new planograms, new product cut-ins, displays, point of purchase material deployments are worth doing and worth spending against, they are worth measuring.  If they are not measured, they are not managed and no one is held accountable.  Further, if no one measures the efforts, the results cannot be properly understood.   Without the measurement, it is unknown whether remedial action should be applied to the plan or the implementation of the plan.  

Billions are spent in-store each year, and those billions are managed by proxy measurement, either sales themselves or by labor costs.  Neither of these proxies come close to doing an adequate job of measuring merchandising execution.    If they did, we would have vastly different results.   With emerging technologies such as ShelfSnap, measurement is no longer, expensive, limited by technology, inaccurate or subjective.  In short there is little excuse for not measuring the merchandising efforts as part of a new managment focus on The Last Big Untamed Cost and Profit Frontier in CPG Retail.

While lots of companies are paring back or hunkering down in today’s circumstances, others, are looking hard at both priorities and opportunities and are identifying areas where they can seize competitive advantage.  The Last Big, Untamed Cost and Profit Frontier, the management and mastery of the in-store merchandising environment lies within the grasp of those looking to seize the high ground.  (more…)

We last wrote about launching a business in ”times like these” in October.   The U.S. now has a new President and an economy that makes us wish for the good old days of October!   I haven’t read where start up companies , adding jobs to the economy are supposed to stand in line to get a piece of the “bailout” have you?

We have been very busy devoting a good deal of our resources in three areas:

1. We thoroughly vetted the promise of ShelfSnap.  We worked with an exacting client and a pretty demanding test of the whole system from less than ideal pictures to a very custom,  particular output.  All went swimmingly.   We proved we were cheaper, faster, more accurate and generated richer data than any of today’s in store audit techniques.   And they made us a better company for it.  At the same time we have talked with a number of manufacturers, retailers and broker/MSO’s and found pretty much everyone enthusiastic over the capability. (more…)

At the end of January Nielsen announced it’s decision to terminate both further development and the then current state of the P.R.I.S.M. service. 

PRISM was Nielsen’s syndicated service to measure in-store media in Mass, Supermarkets, Drug and Club-stores…with the intention of combining that set of measurements with its measurements of broadcast media…giving buyers a better method of comparing medium.   Reasons given were the exit of Wal*Mart from participation in the program (rumored to be starting their own service), lack of client enthusiasm for the service, a downturn in client enthusiasm for shopper marketing and trying to engage the shopper at the shelf with brand messaging,  and a tight economy. 

Of course with the demise of the service it becomes hard to tell if In-Store Advertising is shrinking more than advertising through other channels.   At any rate, it is almost that the lack of measurement may well temper the ability of service providers and marketers alike to tune this new tool-set to be most effective at converting consumers.

So why DID P.R.I.S.M. die…and why DID Wal*Mart pull out?

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A neighbor and retired Ad Exec, sent over an article from the Times the other day.  It documents cable operator efforts (specifically Cablevision) to target consumers. 

Cablevision will use a new targeting technology to route ads to specific households based on data about income, ethnicity gender, kids and pets.  They will do this in 500,000 homes generally in the NYC area.  Matt Seiler from Universal McCann- Interpublic Group stated in the article…”we have been talking about this since the beginning of time, now that we have it in 500,000 households it is real.”  Seth Haberman the CEO of Visible World was quoted as saying “TV was always big and dumb.  Now, we can be big and slightly smarter.”

But is it real….and can TV be smarter…and mostly,  does anyone care?

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