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Friday 10th February 2012

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You are here: Home | Design, Marketing and Brands | Comment: Brilliant execution is within reach

Comment: Brilliant execution is within reach

At a time when retailing is experiencing a record number of promotions, there are now more opportunities to get them wrong as there are to get them right, both in terms of availability and with point of sale (PoS) displays.

By Geoff Clifton, business development director of marketing management solutions group Pierhouse

As far as the latter is concerned, according to Fiona Dawson, managing director of Mars Chocolate UK, who spoke at the British Retail Confederation's Annual Retail Conference last week, the difference between a poor or well-executed promotion can be worth 10% in sales. So the top line message that she spelt out was

• Keep it clear

• Keep it simple

• Execute it brilliantly.

Sounds simple, but for most retailers executing a promoti

on brilliantly across an estate is almost impossible. For most are still receiving a “one size fits all” pack of promotional material that requires staff to spend time sifting through a stack of cardboard to retrieve what is relevant for their store. And even when the promotion is up and running, it is not all plain sailing. Traditionally, staff create their replacement PoS shopping list - for damaged or missing material - in their heads as they walk up and down the aisles doing store checks. They then return to the back office and rely on their memory to recall the items that need to be ordered and fill in the various forms. This is a time-consuming process which is subject to error; it also delays getting the information onto the shop floor. And at no time does head office know what the store is doing and when.

It was this aspect of promotions that got Somerfield to think about how it might do things better. Its solution was to adopt in-store printing of PoS so that store communication material could be put on the shop floor in minutes - whether that be for a planned promotion or an unplanned local event to help push slow- moving lines of date-sensitive product.

According to Him! (Harris International Marketing), of those convenience store shoppers who noticed promotions, 69% bought from signs on the main product shelves, but only 9% from gondola ends. This further emphasises the importance of getting it right on the shelf - avoiding out-of-stocks and missing tickets.

In addition, Fiona Dawson stated that only 12% of consumers go down every supermarket aisle, suggesting retailers needed to have more cross-category sitings. To handle this, PoS material needs to be able to cope with a promotion being available in more than one place e.g. a single bottle of Coke, the bottle of Coke in a six pack, or the bottle of Coke with a sandwich and crisps special lunchtime offer.

These are the sort of challenges that we have been looking at and solving. As more retailers adopt in-store printing, the facility is there for retail staff walking up and down the aisles to send messages from their hand-helds to either a hip or in-store printer and generate PoS in real-time. Changes to ESEL or digital screen messages can also be made instantly from a mobile device.

For larger format PoS, an order can be sent direct to a retailer's central warehouse - or even to a commercial printer. Using one set of data to communicate a marketing message, irrespective of whether it appears in print, digitally or via SMS to a mobile phone, ensures 100% compliance. And all this information is fed back to head office giving the operations team full visibility of what is happening, when.

The technology is also available so that when a staff member scans an item, not only is the correct price revealed, but so is a list of associated PoS - so again no need to rely on memory.

Such new technology could meet the demand to execute all in-store promotions brilliantly. But how many other retailers can say that they do so?

Tagged as: Pierhouse | Geoff Clinton | Fiona Dawson | Mars

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