The Great Game of Business

I run a great little business. It has great staff and customers. It has bills to pay and debts to collect. I recently asked of the staff - “what is the single most important critical number for our business”. Of course everyone responded with sales and deals and profit. Over time we realised that they were just simple indicators of us doing our job well. We spent more time thinking about it - what we do and how we do it. And we realised that in fact sales and deals were the results of fruitful meetings with our clients and prospects. If we have more meetings we will get more work and more sales and more profit.

It sounds horribly simple, but when we began to focus the whole business on getting out there and having more meetings, we saw an incredible change in energy. It stopped being a job and became a team sport. We introduced rules and a scoreboard. We had started playing the Great Game of Business.

The Great Game of Business is not my invention, but is the wonderful work of a humble American businessman called Jack Stack. His simple theory of critical numbers can be applied to any business.

So, I ask you folk in Convenience Stores across Australia - what is your critical number? Is it the number of transactions? Is it the number of people coming through the door? Is it the amount of repeat business? Or is it again the number of meetings you have with your customers every week? If you think about someone shopping and in fact look upon it as a potential meeting your whole engagement criteria changes. No longer is it about scanning the product and taking the cash - it is about entering a conversation and becoming involved in that consumers life.

Too few Convenience Stores are just places you buy stuff when you are on the run. I don't know if you’ll remember a great TV series called Open All Hours, a comedy series about a corner shop in northern England. The store owner was a busybody who knew everything about everyone and while he was gossiping about life he was putting more and more products into the customers basket. The more stuff he had hidden away behind the counter, the more chance he had of a customer asking for it and the more chance he had of talking them into filling their basket.

The Convenience stores I visit don't have the energy and interest they need to create a wonderful and compelling reason to want to keep on shopping there. I think the trouble with C-Stores is that they have become plain old tasteless melba toast. They look the same. They are in similar positions. They have similar layouts and they range the same stuff. Marketing theory would demand that the modern C-store should compete on price, or service. We all know the pricing position is impossible given the buying power of the supermarkets, so we must think about the service. So where is the service? Where is the conversation? Where is the charm, the humour, the passion and of course the gossip?

What are you doing differently? Where are you trying to engage and become part of the fabric of your local communities?

Come on, surely it is time to excite, and delight. Combine your passion for making money with a passion for making a difference to your consumers life. Give them something back. Entertain them.

Now of course I am making sweeping generalisations and there are exceptions. I am a big fan of NightOwl. They seem to respond to the needs of their locals and also support lots of community groups and have even developed their own branded bottle water to raise funds for the Lifesavers! Brilliant.

Our local bottleshop has a massive wine tasting party every Friday. It is packed to the rafters and that is where and when we fill our boots with grog and Dan Murphy’s lose out. They email me like a dear old friend - they keep in touch and tell me what is going on. The local convenience store should do the same. Become the local hub in our community. Make a difference. Stamp your presence on the local community. Protest for more parking. Protest for less parking. Become a corporate terrorist. Whatever it takes to become an essential local voice of the people. See what your local counsellors do and learn from the good stuff!

I am waiting for Karl in my local bottleshop to stand for council. He’ll get my vote today and forever as long as he keeps throwing those parties.

Promotionally Convenient

A brand goes out there and blows its big brand trumpet. It waves its big brand flag. It bangs its big brand chest. Everyone knows about the big brand. Big ads on TV. Big billboards. Big everything.

Of course lots of brand marketing can lead the proverbial horse to water, but this writer believes that it’s a good promotion that will result in the horse having a drink! Eighty per cent of grocery purchases are impulse. Research also suggests that anything bought in a convenience store is consumed within 15 minutes of purchase, on average.

Many things influence why I would think of buying a product that isn’t on my shopping list – availability, visibility, price, what sort of mood I am in, and whether I am aware if there is a promotion running. Of course a promotion is just part of the equation. It is the part of the equation however, that the vendor can influence heavily, can seduce support from the retailer and which can drive visibility and as a result, celebrate availability. The best promotions are the ones the consumers buy-into.

If they get it and want to take part, surely it is a winner. Too often we see the big brand, big idea and it gets lost in translation because the vendor has ignored the very nature of the purchases being made in convenience.

A memorable example would have been Coke’s Rugby World Cup Thrill Seeker promotion 2003 – David Campese in a helicopter chasing down anyone who finds a mobile phone in their bottle of Coke. When he found the winner via a GPS tracker in the phone, they would win a car, cash and VIP tickets to the RWC final. Nice mechanic. Nice prize. Nice theme. But impossible to bang it all together under one simple message and engage consumers impulsively in convenience.

Make the promotion straightforward to understand, enter and evaluate. Give the consumer added value and offer something that can be brought to life in-store with energy and presence. Indeed, IMI Research’s Promo Track Report 2009 quotes: “… today’s busy consumer is placing greater emphasis on ‘ease’ of participation. Consumers want promotions that are easy to understand, easy to enter and easy to buy.”

For me? I still love the ‘one in six wins a free bar’ from Mars which ran a few years back but so captured the essence of what I am trying to convey. It was simple. It offered achievability and value. It was bought to life in-store. Of course the best is still to come. I think we have some work for Lipton Iced Tea on its way out of the door soon. Watch this space.

The retailers rock

I have almost finished my tour of the retailers and it has been a wonderful and incredible journey. They are so passionate, knowledgeable and in tune with their consumer and, at the same time, conscious of the complexity and the need to always get the operational infra-structure of retail perfectly right.

For the last 15 years I have had clients ask me to produce a raft of ideas that will engage their retail partners. I have done so with blinding obedience and managed to produce a raft of award winning brilliance. What is nuts, is the fact that these ideas have been founded upon the brief from the clients and not any in-depth understanding of the retailers.

I have created my top 8 tips

• Listen to the retailer - they know what works and what doesn't. They have seen it all before.
• Action what you promise to action. The retailers are operationally brilliant. They have timelines and commitments. If you commit to deliver - you must honour it to a timeline.
• Establish how you can become a strategic partner - vendor implant, floor staff subsidisation, training etc
• Stop being a box mover - once you have the order and they have a store full of your products, help them move it through and be very aware of how your product is tracking. The retailers make very fast decisions based on today's news. They do not wait for you.
• Appreciate their position in the marketplace. Each retailer believes they are very different from the rest. Their systems are different. The opportunity for you to integrate into the unique systems in that retailer are a real possibility.
• Look outside the limitations of your own imagination. The answer may lie in floor staff engagement or innovation - not just another promotion.
• Offer each retailer something unique. One size does not fit all and while national brand campaigns are great for driving consumer awareness, the sale is closed by the retailer and if another brand is offering them exclusive support - they will switch every consumer.
• Understand where the retailer sits in the consumers mind - they are the agent. They employ your neighbours and friends. They are part of the local community and often are so firmly anchored in the consumers life they are capable switching even the most insistent consumer.

Of course you still need Bamboo Marketing's help to come up with the bold idea, but by accommodating these tips you can begin to move closer to the retailer and hopefully sell more stuff!

Blackmores Bribe More

Look, I know consumers like to be offered cash. Sure, it is generous of Blackmores to giveaway $50,000. But what the blazes does a straight cash offer like this have to do with Joint Formula or Magnesium Supplements etc. It hasn't been treated creatively. I cannot see a component here to engage any of their retail partners - Priceline, Coles, Woolworths etc.

Surely their products are about helping the consumer achieve their personal best - whether that is hopping on the bus without pain or running in the Sydney Marathon under 3 hours. My immediate creative response would be to suggest you win the cash and get to do even more with your life.

A winner everyday is nice but I cannot understand the logic of the $1,000 a day over 50 days. I don't think $1,000 is life changing - especially after Mr Rudd has finished distributing his crisis handouts and so I question the whole structure of the activity. I would suggest re-working it and creating an activity just for Priceline and Woolworths and as part of the deal secure catalogue exposure and off-location display. Have a look at what Bayer achieves with Berocca on a fraction of the budget.

Come on Blackmores - package up your open bribe into something that compliments your wonderful brand .

Promo Review 01 - 4th April, 2008

First cab off the rank is this little puppy from Coca-Cola - who confusingly disribute Nestea for Nestle. So, the promotion is still being showcased in our local Woolworths one week after the promotion has closed.
This is probably at the lower end of our industry. Buy Nestea and get a guaranteed $50 off your next holiday.
There are a few conditions. Well if truth be told there are lots of conditions. This is obviously too good to be true and so will not be believed by a wise old owl like myself.
It's Indian Giving. That's what it is. To redeem I have to go to some obscure website desperate for traffic to get my $50 off. I am only allowed to use 1 voucher per booking etc etc.
To me it doesnt feel on-brand and doesnt seem to be shopper or consumer centric. There is a global financial crisis on at the moment and this doesnt really send out the vibe that Coca-Cola or indeed my local Woolworths understands what empathy means. A holiday is the last thing on my mind. Come on you brilliant folk at Coke - give the shopper some hope, spread the love and give us something we want and can get without having to be a member of Mensa.
And so ends Promo Review 01. Be ready for the rather more punchy titled next episode in a week.

The last 5 feet

I was interviewed about retail promotions by B&T last week - they are calling it "The Last 5 Feet". Brilliant.

It was a moment of absolute clarity when the journalist asked me why it was so hard for brand marketers to engage retailers. She had interviewed a few folk on the client side and had obviously had them refer to the retailers as 'big bullies' and 'megalomaniacs' and...I offered her the other side of the arguement.

Brand marketers believe they own the relationship with the consumer. They believe their sales team are out there gathering orders through the retail channel. They find it a rather irritating distraction when a sales guy asks for a retailer specific activity. So much so that responsibility for its development usually falls into the lap of the most junior member of the team.

Then the idea is presented to the retailer. The retailers are bright, passionate and incredibly experienced. They know who their consumer is, what they buy, how often and why. They want their vendors to help by putting together plans that help their consumers buy more at their chain of stores and to make everyone more profit.

The retailer asks some tricky questions about the idea and get a mumbled response about it being 'on-brand'. Understanding the rhyme and reason behind one retailers offering over another is key to the success of any brand. If you cant rationalise why this is perfect for your retailer you may as well pack your bags and head home before you get your head bitten off by a time poor businessman selling 20,000 other products in his store.

Sydney marketers, more than most are guilty of what someone once described to me as '3 iron marketing' - you think that your market is within about 210m (a good hit with a 3 iron in golf) of your head office.

There are some wonderful exceptions and I am in awe of what Canon and Mars are doing in the space. Coca-Cola of course cracked it years ago, despite brand and sales being 2 very separate functions.

Spend some time in your retailer outlets. Go see what a 7-Eleven, BigW and Kmart looks like. Checkout what their shoppers look like. Go stand beside a Harvey Norman salesman and listen to his brilliant patter.

So the article will get printed in a couple of weeks and we can all read that there aint many folk out there that get it. Either that or I am wrong, of course.

Nevermind the consumer

Godbless those wonderful heady thoughts that if we give the consumer all of the right bits and pieces they will want our product and go buy the little sucker from our friendly little corner store.

I had a lovely chap explain to me that 35% of Australian purchasers walk into the retail channel expecting to buy one of his products and only 12% of that 35% actually walk out of the store with one.

Why? Out of stock? Better deal? Fallen sick? Forgotten wallet? No, because the retailer has switch sold them to a competitor's product. The solution is simply to encourage key clients to throw everything at the retailers to make their products the preferred offer to the store visitors. That doesnt mean straight sales incentive. That sounds very un-Australian and a little bent. No, that means actively encouraging the retailers to participate and to experience the products. Throw in a bit of fun and some offer to help secure the consumers confidence and hey presto - 100% of the 35% will walk out with the product and of course a load more who have just been switch sold!