The New York Times posted a story today that is relevant to all retailers, especially super markets. It highlights a recent study to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research, which found that while shoppers can accurately predict how much they end up spending per grocery store visit, they only go into that transaction knowing only 2/3rds of what they want. Meaning they’ve designated a part of their budget to items they see along the way.

The study further determined that those shoppers who limited themselves to only walking the aisles on their list, spent under that designated mental reserve, while shoppers that cruised up and down the store indeed did spent what they had in mind.

Karen M. Stilley, from the University of Pittsburgh’s business school who is one of the paper’s authors, sums it up best: “It’s kind of crazy that there are people walking into the store, expecting to spend money, and the store is leaving it on the table.”

This calls for in-aisle deals that you just can’t walk by. It’s an open invitation for compelling signage and cohesive pricing programs.

No need to emphasize the importance of communication in the business world. But perhaps this recent Marist Poll and additional list compiled over at Career Hub, can reinforce the weight on how we communicate, more specifically: the words we choose.

The dismissive “whatever” took top honors as the ‘most annoying word used in conversation’. Right behind it were “you know” and the ever-profound “it is what it is”. Billie Sucher, a career transition consultant and Career Hub blogger, went ahead and asked her own clients for their ‘most annoying’ terms. Below is the top 20:

01. Be that as it may; that being said; that said
02. To be quite honest
03. To make a long story short
04. No brainer
05. Awesome
06. Awesome dude
07. Dude
08. No worries
09. It’s all good
10. Sup
11. Irregardless
12. Delish (for delicious)
13. Fab (for fabulous)
14. Phenomenal
15. Bottom line (yikes, I say this a lot!)
16. Clearly
17. Talk to me
18. Um
19. Like
20. Look

See the whole list here.

So let’s say what we really mean, and mean what we really say! Or whatever.

A recent survey by Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia found that marketers most commonly handle negative Internet buzz by directly engaging with its source. Meaning that the best way to deal with harsh criticism of your brand/product/service is to meet it head-on, with solutions (not confrontation). Yes every scenario is different, but this law can still find applications across the board, from your social media/blogosphere to the retail world.

It boils down this: listen to your consumer. And respond when appropriate. In any forum, we can expect to see negative feedback. Luckily we’re not entirely judged by what that opinion is, but how we react to it.

This afternoon one of our designers came across an interesting thread dealing with Google’s amazingly cool “Street View” feature within Google Maps and the photos of billboards that are part of the Street View cache. Rarely does Gizmodo.com have anything marketing related on it, but this time they have brought up an interesting point.

We, as marketers, love new ways of reaching our audiences and we can’t wait to be the first to do the “new thing”. Here’s the new thing. Ready?

Go to Google Maps. Search for a major landmark. Now go to Street View. Some little car drove all those roads taking 360 degree photos from the perspective of the driver. Now, if you chose a landmark that has billboards near it, you should be able to spot a few in the street view mode and depending on the distance from the camera, you should be able to read these ads with no problem. Someone at Google had the idea of finding billboards in the photo collections of the street view locations and decided that these photos could easily be manipulated to hold new advertisements, more specifically AdWords.

Here is the problem, someone is paying for that billboard to host an ad with the hopes that it would not only be seen in plain sight, but that it would also be photographed (stadiums, major city centers like Time Square) or possibly appear in the background of a field reporters footage on the six o’clock news. There’s a conflict here. Can Google sell that space in its photos, cover up the existing ads and replace them with different ones? Some would say that this is perfectly acceptable since any common person can take a photo of public place and Photoshop it to oblivion. There is still the difference of money. A photographer is more likely to completely remove an unpleasant billboard rather than replace the ad with something else and then publish it while collecting a check from a client, but if the most popular search engine (and the largest online media company) is doing this on a mass level, the answer probably isn’t as cut and dry.

It’s an interesting thought which can stem to all kinds of ideas and arguements. Just an interesting bit for you to think over.

Read the Gizmodo article via this link.

Hello and happy 2010! Yes, we finally made it out of what many of us believe was the worst of the worst. I’ll spare us all the list of horrible things that happened in the marketing world in 2009 and jump right into the goodness that is already brewing in 2010.

First, it’s good see that the financial markets are responding well to upbeat manufacturing outlooks, low jobless claims, and some nice retail numbers.

The LA Times had a good piece on retail just a few days after Christmas in which they reported that retailers are saw increases in many sectors including electronics, jewelry, footwear, and men’s apparel. We are not talking about a huge spending boom, I do not think anyone was expecting there would be one, but what Kamalesh Rao, Director of Economic Research at SpendingPulse, calls “cautious spending” was obviously noticeable. Consumers did not splurge this season, but they certainly showed that they were not too afraid to spend. “The consumer traditionally has been the mechanism in driving recoveries. We have seen a bit of a rise in spending in the last six months, but not nearly as robust as in past recoveries.” says Carl Steidtmann, chief economist at Deloitte LLP. So while we are seeing an increase, the “v” recovery many bullish analysis have predicted may not actually occur. Major creditors, MasterCard and American Express did not see the spending they were hoping for, but reported an increase in consumer activity. It is believe many consumers opted to shop with cash this year instead of piling up the credit charges.

Major retailers will be releasing their December numbers later this week, so stay tuned for the news!

Now that the holidays are over, what should we be expecting to see Americans spend their money on? Well it might be worth your while to take a look at Lee Eisenberg’s new book, Shoptimism. A recent article in MediaPost echos the idea that America is “on balance” with what it buys.

Americans have four good reasons for buying products (that don’t put them into debt), Eisenberg writes and Kerry Hannon reports: Products make    them happy (e.g., ticket to a play or a trip to Paris); they transform them (e.g., a new hairdo); self-extension (e.g., Nike Air Max sneakers), and “everlastingness” (e.g., goods that in time will become an heirloom).

Maybe that is an oversimplification of the environment, nevertheless, Eisenberg makes a valid point. Consumers have identified with brands for decades, and the American consumer isn’t going to have a major paradigm shift in its brand love affair anytime soon. Building a quality brand, especially in retail, is extremely important, and that value will be made even more clear as we come out of this recession. The strong brands will be stronger, and the weak brands will go away.

It looks as though 2010 is off to a good start!

Have a safe, healthy, and prosperous 2010! We are looking forward to bringing you more ideas that build business this year!

Here is the latest installment of the Fan Cam - See it Live! campaign for the Los Angeles Clippers.

Enjoy!

This week we headed to Harlem, New York City to record a new radio spot for A&P Supermarkets featuring the Harlem Gospel Choir. As a part of the Holisaleabration campaign we sent our great production team to capture the amazing energy of this nationally known singing group. We are so happy with the partnership that has developed between a great company and a great community charity like Mama Foundation for the Arts.

Today an interesting survey was published by American Express that looks at consumer holiday spending and saving data.

We might have thought that the best of the holiday spending would have started and ended with Black Friday, but maybe there is still some hope for the remainder of the year. One of the best parts of this survey is how current the data is which gives a slightly different indication on market performance than other metrics.

Take a look at this article, I think you’ll find it interesting.

Google and Bing now have relationships with Twitter!

Search Engine Impact

Indexing Twitter with Google