http://www.connectsports.com/feature/event-spotlight-national-senior-games/
http://www.connectsports.com/feature/how-volunteers-make-or-break-your-event/
http://www.connectsports.com/feature/qa-tom-king-u-s-soccer/
http://www.connectsports.com/feature/run-everyone-including-looking-beer/
http://www.connectsports.com/feature/what-happens-to-olympic-venues-after-the-games/
http://www.connectsports.com/feature/what-it-takes-to-land-ncaa-championships/
http://www.connectsports.com/feature/sports-commission-vs-cvbs-is-one-better/
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Best of work from two years with OPIS newsletter Oil Express, 2012-2013 UPDATE: OPIS says I cannot show full articles; please contact me for full versions
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Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Feb. 2013 Shopper Marketing Magazine article on Social Buying and CPGs Feb. 2013
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In the spring of 2011, Shopper Marketing took notice as General Mills became the first major consumer packaged goods company to run an offer through Groupon. A couple of months later, Supervalu became the first national grocery retailer to test a vendor-funded offer for loyalty cardholders (with Unilever) through the collective purchasing website.
Later that year, Facebook executive Carolyn Everson, in an exclusive interview withShopper Marketing and then speaking at the Shopper Marketing Expo, talked about how shopping is inherently social, which creates "a great opportunity for both retailers and CPG companies." Everson spoke of the "social graph" that Facebook has built, connecting people, places and brands.
It was easy to assume that we were just scratching the surface – that a "social buying" trend was to follow. But two years later, the question remains whether CPG marketers can effectively use social websites to spur visits to the store. If nothing else, the relationship has been awkward.
"So far, CPG use of social networks for shopping and buying have been disappointing – too much couponing to Facebook and requests to 'Like' pages in low-engagement categories," says Nick Jones, executive vice president, retail practice lead, at Arc Worldwide, a Leo Burnett subsidiary. "Smart brands will work out what the underlying shopping need is – validation, information, inspiration – and use social media to answer that need."
In an effort to understand the relationship between CPGs and social buying, we asked multiple sources how they define "social buying." Most of the answers referred in some way to recommendations and opinions from social media friends or online reviews. One source suggested that "social shopping" is the more interesting and more relevant term in the CPG world, and that "social buying" is limited to crowd-source platforms such as Groupon and LivingSocial.
"Social buying to me would be specifically buying a product on a social site," says Meg Way-Edgin, director, digital strategy and planning, Kimberly-Clark. "And that's something we do very sparingly – and not for the purpose of getting sales, but more for making somebody feel like they're getting an exclusive offer, or for helping get more engagement with our pages."
There have been a substantial number of CPG deals on Groupon and LivingSocial, but mainly for online purchase. And retailers typically only dangle offers such as double the value of the purchase regardless of what's bought, not promoting any particular brand on its shelves.
"It's an interesting model, just because you better make sure that financially it makes sense for both sides," Groupon director of communication Julie Mossler says of CPG-focused offers. "There's not a lot of margin to work with. There's a lot of coordination required."
"It's an interesting model, just because you better make sure that financially it makes sense for both sides," Groupon director of communication Julie Mossler says of CPG-focused offers. "There's not a lot of margin to work with. There's a lot of coordination required."
"The Groupon and LivingSocial model is not feasible unless it's for bulk," Way-Edgin says. "The margins are too low. It doesn't pay out."
Plenty of Room to Grow
That's not to say CPG and social buying sites can't be friends; CatapultRPM helped Kellogg Co. with its "Share Your Breakfast" program during National Breakfast Week in March 2012. When consumers either commented and shared what they had for breakfast on various social media sites or bought a "families" deal through LivingSocial, Kellogg donated the cost of a breakfast to the nonprofit Action for Healthy Kids. Still, the initiative was more image enhancement than purchase.
Jennifer Romano, director of digital shopper marketing at CatapultRPM, says price and availability are not barriers to purchase for CPG companies, and those are two hurdles that sites like LivingSocial help most with. Romano believes online reviews (e.g., Amazon.com) are the most powerful of the social path-to-purchase tools. And she recommends practices that stretch the definition of social shopping tools, such as email marketing and online coupons.
"They're so important because you know they work," she says. "Sometimes it's not always the newest and the shiniest. If you're a CPG and you're looking where to put your digital dollars, personally I'd recommend a mix, that you do what you know works and keep a bucket of money for test and learn. Mobile coupons or Pinterest or some sort of in-store kiosk might be worth your testing dollars."
"They're so important because you know they work," she says. "Sometimes it's not always the newest and the shiniest. If you're a CPG and you're looking where to put your digital dollars, personally I'd recommend a mix, that you do what you know works and keep a bucket of money for test and learn. Mobile coupons or Pinterest or some sort of in-store kiosk might be worth your testing dollars."
Jason Katz, senior vice president, digital, for Acosta Marketing Group, says the return on investment in social media for brands doesn't come with one-time offers.
"Social buying and social shopping are long-term initiatives," he says. "If you look at straight ROI and start getting into that one-off model within traditional shopper marketing or trade programs, you're missing the bigger opportunities. What is our long-term approach to engaging? One of the challenges that Groupon has, the payout [for merchants] is not there from an initial transaction, but how does that impact long-term buying behavior, and how do we measure that?"
"Social buying and social shopping are long-term initiatives," he says. "If you look at straight ROI and start getting into that one-off model within traditional shopper marketing or trade programs, you're missing the bigger opportunities. What is our long-term approach to engaging? One of the challenges that Groupon has, the payout [for merchants] is not there from an initial transaction, but how does that impact long-term buying behavior, and how do we measure that?"
Erin Hunter, head of global CPG marketing at Facebook, says that CPGs have a lot of room to grow in social media, and that there is much promise due to mobile's interaction with social. She says that 51% of smartphone users have searched for a recipe while grocery shopping, and 79% use their phone to help with shopping.
"E-commerce for CPG is a small space right now, and I don't think this will change right away; bricks-and-mortar stores aren't going anywhere. With Facebook reaching some 600 million people a month on their mobile device, we're seeing the ability of marketers to influence consumers at the point of purchase skyrocket."
"E-commerce for CPG is a small space right now, and I don't think this will change right away; bricks-and-mortar stores aren't going anywhere. With Facebook reaching some 600 million people a month on their mobile device, we're seeing the ability of marketers to influence consumers at the point of purchase skyrocket."
One retailer successfully utilizing social media as a spur to not only action but repeat action is Walgreens. Social media manager Zach West says his company isn't interested in recreating its website on Facebook for online purchases because it wants people to visit its stores. Walgreens has demonstrated a close relationship with visit-intensive Foursquare, and the retailer's photo application on Facebook allows users to send their Facebook photos to Walgreens for printing and pickup.
"It builds on something that is already a core fundamental to what you do on Facebook, which is exchanging photos, keeping up with people, memories – which really plays well into our photo-printing business," West says. "It drives store business; typically you pick up more than just your photos when you walk in the door."
"It builds on something that is already a core fundamental to what you do on Facebook, which is exchanging photos, keeping up with people, memories – which really plays well into our photo-printing business," West says. "It drives store business; typically you pick up more than just your photos when you walk in the door."
Opportunity Ahead
Acosta's Katz would like to see the ability to send a list of ingredients and coupons related to online cooking videos to a viewer's phone for a shopping trip. Matt Whitaker, vice president of strategy for Dallas-based agency MEplusYOU, thinks that it's time retail locations begin to recreate the online experience that shoppers are accustomed to by providing adjacent products complementary to a main purchase, and also terminals for search capabilities and reviews.
"Replicate what we love about e-commerce," he says. "These are experiences I can't [yet] have in the store."
"Replicate what we love about e-commerce," he says. "These are experiences I can't [yet] have in the store."
And Pinterest has been on the minds of most involved with social media marketing for at least a year now. Marketers regard it as a "shopping list" site, effective for gathering and sharing users' interests. But for now, there's no commerce engine to complete the cycle.
Richard Rizzo, vice president, consumer, shopper and retail insights, at market research agency Vision Critical, says a March 2012 study of 500 Pinterest users his company conducted with Emily Carr University revealed that 12% purchased something they had pinned online, while 16% bought something offline.
Overall, one in five users bought items they had pinned. "In my world, that's a good conversion rate," Rizzo says of Pinterest. "It's an addition to the path to purchase and a change that we're looking at a lot harder."
Overall, one in five users bought items they had pinned. "In my world, that's a good conversion rate," Rizzo says of Pinterest. "It's an addition to the path to purchase and a change that we're looking at a lot harder."
Source: Path to Purchase Institute/Shopper Marketing
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Pet industry shopper marketing from Shopper Marketing Magazine
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Fido, Kitty, Buddy and Garfield can all answer to a new name: "Recession-proof." According to the American Pet Products Association (APPA), even in the worst of the economic downturn of 2007-09, pet products sales rose. Americans spent more than $48 billion on their animal companions in 2010, and the forecast calls for $51 billion this year (to be continued after Institute POV).
Why do we buy like this? When it comes to pet products, the answer is simple: love.
"It's almost like a societal shift is occurring where it's become more socially acceptable for pet owners to really pamper their pets," says David Lummis, a senior pet analyst for Rockville, Md.-based Market Research Group's Packaged Facts. "And it's not just about frivolous products. It's about the health of the pet and increasing the nutritional profile so that prices can also go up."
Lummis says that the widespread and highly publicized pet food recalls of 2007 (largely centered around Chinese animal feed with melamine) placed a harsh spotlight on the industry's safety standards. Shoppers began to pay closer attention to pet-product quality, boosting business in the natural/organic pet-product niche.
With almost two-thirds of American households (72.9 million homes) having pets, this represented an irresistible opportunity for the $19 billion pet-food industry. Global CPGs like Procter & Gamble began to snap up niche players such as Natura Pet Products, adding the holistic pet-food brands Innova, Evo, California Naturals, Healthwise and Karma to its Iams and Eukanuba portfolio.
"The industry," Lummis says, "is converting pet owners to higher-priced foods based on the affection that they feel for their animals and the belief that good nutrition – just like human foods – will be important to their overall health."
Jeff Metzner, Iams brand manager at P&G, says that today's health-conscious pet-product shoppers fall into two categories:
"In general, Iams' core consumers consider their pet to be part of the family and think first about health when choosing their pet food. This consumer wants to understand the nutritional technology in their pet food and is very interested in their veterinarian's opinion. The second approach is through natural ingredients. This consumer is seeking a healthy food but believes that natural ingredients are the key. For this consumer, the ingredients in the food are most important."
A Fragmented Path
A few decades ago, pet food was a fairly straightforward business with 95% of sales coming through supermarkets. Today, the grocery channel's share hovers around a mere 50% as sales shifted to big boxes like Walmart (on the price-value side) as well as specialized retailers like Petco, PetSmart and Pet Supplies Plus.
Dustin Lehner, vice president of shopper marketing at Catapult Marketing, Westport, Conn., says that as a result, the path to purchase for pet lovers is no longer one lane. Catapult, which counts Mars Inc.'s Pedigree brand as a client, changes its approach when focusing on a shopper at Southeastern U.S. grocery chain Publix or one at any Walmart. It's all about shopper research, Lehner says.
"What we've started to hone in on is this whole idea of these varying levels and types of relationships pet owners have with their pet – it's really starting to be, from the shopper's perspective, one of the key drivers of what we say and how we say it," Lehner says. "At a Publix for example, where I've got a little bit older shopper, typically an empty-nester, their pet has basically kind of filled that void of the child that's no longer in the home.
"Their level of looking at the ingredient, really looking at accessories, things like that, to basically treat that pet like their child, is much more prevalent than it would be at a Walmart, let's say. At Walmart, you tend to over-skew toward outdoor dogs, they're a busy, dual-income household, so there's a lot of things happening. Their moments with their pets are extremely limited: on the way to the car in the morning or coming home from work and get dinner started, fill the dog bowl and rub them on their head, and that's basically the interaction.
"So with Walmart, it was more about giving (the dog) the best you can, because when we started doing the research what we found was that Walmart shoppers, the food that they give their pet is one of the few things they really do for them – 'I would never buy him private label food because the food, for me, is kind of like treating him. I'm willing to spend the three dollars more because that's all I really do for him, buy him food.' If you look at Walmart, it was really much less about the relationship and more about, this is going to make you feel good because you're feeding him good food."
Tug at the Heartstrings
As the pet-products path to purchase has become more complex, marketers have created a variety of social awareness platforms and social media campaigns that play off consumers' deep feelings for (and some might say anthropomorphizing of) pets. One of the most successful is Iams' annual "Home 4 the Holidays" platform, which began a decade ago through an animal shelter network on the West Coast. The campaign has since gone global, serving more than 3,500 animal organizations.
The latest iteration of "Home 4 the Holidays" (Oct. 1, 2010, to Jan. 4, 2011) leaned heavily on heartstrings-tugging social media and in-store displays to help get more than 1.1 million animals adopted. In the U.S., Iams added a food-donation program named "Bags 4 Bowls." Two million meals were donated online through pet blogger sites, the Iams Facebook page and Iams' Twitter account. Another 3 million meals were donated at grocery, big-box and pet specialty chains using more traditional tactics – specially marked Iams bags of dog and cat food and at-shelf signage.
Given the highly social context of pet ownership, it's no surprise that smartphone tools have now begun to figure more prominently in petcare shopper marketing. Iams launched a fairly basic mobile site in April 2011. Sean Lee, Iams assistant brand manager, says the main goals of the site are to "educate consumers on the go, help them locate Iams products, allow them to connect with our communities [like Facebook], and provide access to user reviews."
Nestlé Purina was somewhat more ambitious when it launched its mobile app, named "The Petometer," in June 2011. The Petometer is designed to help consumers care for and monitor their pets. Sherry Smith, senior vice president of advertiser sales at Tampa, Fla.-based Triad Retail Media, says that once her company's work on the Nestlé Purina microsite on Walmart.com was established, Nestlé Purina asked for interaction away from the store and PCs.
"They came to us and said, 'We want to make sure we're reaching them while they're at home and drive overall brand awareness,'" says Smith, who works at Triad's Bentonville, Ark., branch. "We recommended an app that could track the history of your walks with your dog because it is linked to Google maps. You can set reminders for yourself, what times to walk your dog. There's a list of recommended exercises you can do with your dog. There's a calendar feature for tracking vet visits or grooming appointments." The app is available at Nestlé Purina's Walmart microsite, the iPhone app store or Android app store. Users can upload photos of their dog and share the routes and details of the walk (date, time, distance and pace) with friends on Facebook.
Soft Sells
Smith says that Nestlé Purina doesn't try to "hard sell" anything inside the app; users are instead referred to the brand's microsite on Walmart.com for shopping tools like coupons, locational pricing or product availability by location.
"It is definitely seen as a sponsorship by Purina," Smith said of the app's value. "The brand specifics are not number one. Instead, it's really about giving consumers a tool that they can use to take better care of their pets. Who knows, as the app continues to develop and we make changes to it, we may include more on product information. But right now, it's about getting it into consumers' hands, letting them interact with it and seeing what they think."
Triad's relationship with Nestlé Purina and Walmart may be unique in the pet industry, says Smith, as it encompasses the brand showcase (i.e., a microsite) inside Walmart.com. The site has several functions: Direct visitors back to Nestlé Purina's main site for more information; share games (currently "The Fast and The Furriest" and "Yarn Ball Blocker"); offer articles on pets (such as "Puppy Necessities" and "Functions of Fiber"); and most recently, show episodes of a Triad-produced series named "Real Pet Stories" that chronicles the lives of pets at Tampa-area shelters. There's also a tab at Walmart.com/purina to help visitors find pets for adoption in their areas.
"What's nice about it is that it has a co-branded URL that Purina can leverage in their marketing campaigns and on their packaging," Smith says. "It is live all year. We're updating information at least monthly, working with Purina to make sure they've got the most up-to-date content and commerce information available."
Smith says what consumers see at the brand showcase will be consistent with what they see in-store:
"For example, last April, Purina promoted a puppy pack as 'Buy Puppy Chow, go to the website to enter a code, and get a free puppy pack to try.' It was a 360-degree approach that reached shoppers in the store and drove them back online, reaching them before they shopped again, driving them to the store, and giving them a nice giveaway based off their purchase of Purina products."
Nestlé Purina is involved with another campaign, this time in the grocery channel, that targets pet owners' human feelings for animals. "Tales For The Pet Lover's Heart" is sponsored by Nestlé Purina and grocery giant Kroger. It is also dependent on a website (Talesforthepetloversheart.com), where visitors can tell a story about a pet to have Kroger donate $1 up to $25,000 to welfare organizations across the U.S.
The site also links to Nestlé Purina's Facebook page, offers downloadable projects owners can do with their pets, relates the two companies' donations (not tied to pet stories) to animal welfare organizations and informs visitors of discounts at Kroger locations if they shop in late July and early August
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