Mess with the check-out at your peril!

How better collaboration can help avoid the negative consequences of our actions Not many people deliberately screw up. Some might, but the vast majority actually do try to do a good job. As a manager, when our team makes mistakes, we learn that our first assumption is that their intentions were good. It helps diffuse …

The secret behind creating quality shopper insights

There is lots of talk about the power of insights in marketing. Most advice I read on shopper marketing talks about the importance of shopper insights driving shopper marketing initiatives. Insights are undoubtedly at the heart of any marketing, including shopper marketing, but a recent conversation made me realize that perhaps there are many people …

5 questions to help reduce the true cost of promotions

A quick quiz before we get to the questions you need to be asking yourself about promotions. Question 1: Which activity takes up the most time for marketing, trade marketing and sales teams? Answer: Managing promotions (a bonus point for anyone who said “sitting in pointless meetings” 🙂 Question 2:  Seventy percent of what type of activity loses …

“Shopper Solutions” imply problems to be solved – Shouldn’t we try to delight shoppers too?

  I’ve recently re-read Booz & Co.’s new survey report on shopper marketing: “Supercharging Shopper Solution Results – Improving Returns Through Shopper Marketing and Trade Promotion Alignment”. As is often the case with Booz reports it is well put together, has some lovely statistics, and draws out a number of key points. Alignment between shopper …