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.

An article in Ad Age this week talks about Wal-Mart going hard after vendors for more of their ad dollars. It could mean them getting and extra billion bucks from P&G alone.
Why is that important? Right now, on a case to case volume, it’s probable that Wal-Mart under-indexes on co-op. So the money that CPG companies have to pony is going to come from guess where–all the other retailers on the planet. Turning the 800 pound gorilla into a 10 ton gorilla in terms of share of voice. Wal-Mart will be the sign-on to sign-off sponsor of every network in America.

Here’s the article. http://bit.ly/QkRTz

Love your thoughts!

It’s nothing new for a business to hold Memorial Day Sales.  However, Old Navy took it beyond the usual __% off storewide and advertised Flip Flops for just  $1 – Saturday May 23rd only.  $1 when they’re usually $3.50!

Big deal, right?

In today’s economy, it is a big deal.  Such a big deal that when my usually empty local Old Navy opened at 10AM, it was swarmed with bargain-hunting customers.  By 10:15, with all 8 registers open, the lines went all the way to the back of the store.  There was a sea of shoppers grabbing at whatever colors and sizes employees on ladders tossed down at them.

One little girl came out of the crowd saying, “I almost got trampled!  Some woman stepped on me and pushed me out of the way to get a size 9!”

With a limit of 5 pair per shopper, mothers brought kids and husbands along to take advantage.  One woman on a cell phone asked her sister what colors and sizes she needed saying, “They’re almost sold out, so tell me what you need because they aren’t going to be this cheap again any time soon!”

By 10:20 most of the colors were sold out.  Shoppers were so desperate to take advantage of the low price, they were settling for a larger size just to get the color they wanted.

Despite a handful of shoppers getting carried away in “the pit,” the mood in line was pleasant and just about everyone was friendly to those next to them.  When one woman gushed over a shirt out of arms reach, another woman behind her said, “If you want to look at that shirt, I will hold your place in line.”

There was an hour wait from the back of the line to the register. Employees made it easier by walking around playing games and handing out prizes.  They also gave out shopping bags to hold the armfuls of Flip Flops, and extra merchandise customers picked up.  It truly was an event!

This just goes to show that by advertising even one small thing at a ridiculously low price, they will come!  If you create a sense of urgency (One Day Only!) they will come in droves!  Who really needs five pair of Flip Flops?

While you can argue that a majority of those in line were only buying Flip Flops, there was an impressive amount of shoppers that purchased above and beyond.  People that normally wouldn’t be at a mall at 10AM - on a beautiful Saturday - during a holiday weekend.
In a time when so many businesses have their guard up to protect profits, those being creative and taking chances are benefiting.  (Denny’s free breakfast, anyone?) What an interesting time for businesses to brainstorm ways to bring shoppers into their stores (and hey, that makes it a great time to be a customer too).

Just for a minute, imagine that your ad didn’t get out this week.

There’s good news and bad news there, right?  Lots less markdown, but what would the sales impact be?  5 or 10%?  30%?  More?  The great unknown is how many secondary shoppers compare ads before deciding which store to shop.  If your customer base is like most stores, about 50% of your total sales each week come from what Neilsen classifies as “tin” or infrequent, value-focused shoppers. The ones who pay special attention to ads.

In this perilous operating environment, there is a real danger that one important conduit to your customers could be in grave danger.  Especially if you depend on newspapers to deliver your message.   Since 2005, we’ve seen the incredible decline of newspapers accelerate in a way that is frankly stunning.  From decades of operating at profit levels approaching 50%, newspapers can now barely lay off people fast enough to avoid bankruptcy.  In fact, today’s announcement of the Chapter 11 filing of the Chicago Sun Times adds to what is now a very long list.

There will be survivors.  Papers deliver content to readers on behalf of advertisers.  The desire for local content isn’t going to go away.  Just the delivery mechanism will be dramatically different.  Meanwhile, there will be a wrenching transition—scratch that, there IS a wrenching transition and it happening now, exacerbated by the pressures of the economy.

If you rely on newspapers, or one could argue, just about any other print based media, it might be prudent to begin now to begin to control your own destiny.  If you have a loyalty card and you use it correctly, you already know that your database is one of your brand’s most valuable assets.
Right now is the time to put a plan in place to get individual e-mail and SMS text addresses from customers.  But if you’re like most people you are thinking, “no one wants more spam in their inbox.”  Think about this:

• Last week research came out that indicated that, next to e-mails from family and friends, people spend the most time with opt-in e-mails from businesses.  That’s you.  It added up to an estimated 45 minutes per week!  That is a lifetime in the Internet age—especially when there’s no articles to get through before they come to your wonderful marketing message.
• Your best customers, even your second tier customers are truly in a relationship with you.  They want to hear from you.  They deserve to hear from you.  If you wan to keep them in the relationship, that is.
• Aggressive price conscious customers may be the bane of your existence, but your best shot is to give them something beyond the below cost ad specials to look at.
• Take a look at the traffic on your web site by day of the week.  You may find that there is a spike that coincides with your ad effective date.  Hmmmm….. Might be an opportunity to reach out right there.

Putting together your initiative to build your customer e-mail and SMS data base can be as simple or as complex as you have the bandwidth to make it.  It might involve in-store, on-line and direct to consumer components.  But one thing is certain:  The risks and the rewards are both large.  If you misstep and irritate or alienate, you will wind up in the bottom of the digital trashcan.  If you do it right, you’ll remain a valuable part of your customer’s lives.  They will be much more likely to shop with you more frequently and for a longer time.  More on that in a future post.

Start soon.  From the way things are going, the day might be around the corner when you wind up with a very large stack of print ads and nowhere to put them.

Sight, Sound & Success

U.S. banks seeing the highest returns on their advertising investment are not necessarily those spending the most but instead have the heaviest TV budgets. A new report from financial-services research firm Aite Group, which examined ad-spending trends and return on advertising performance of 32 of the largest 50 U.S. retail banks from 2006 through 2008, found that top 25% highest-performing banks are those with TV-heavy buys. The 32 banks included in the report accounted for 75% of ad spending by the top 100 bank advertisers, a group which spent $1.9 billion on advertising in 2007, according to market-research firm TNS. Yet according to Aite, sheer budget size does not always yield high returns. “There are a lot of factors that figure into bank performance,” said Ron Shevlin, senior analyst at Aite Group and author of the report. “Sales ability, ad execution and asset optimization are all things we found done particularly well in the top quadrant of banks.” He said banks in that top quadrant — which include big names such as Citibank and Wachovia, as well as smaller companies Huntington, BB&T and Hudson Bank — did best in driving deposit, loan and IRA account growth, which is, after all, the ultimate goal in bank marketing. While other banks succeeded in ramping different traditional metrics of advertising return, such as awareness, he said those ad dollars were ultimately lost because they did not result in new deposits, loan or IRA growth.

Social Network Surge

The rapidly evolving world of social networks and blogs has officially grown up. Last year, the largest increase in visitors to such “member community” Web sites came from those ages 35-49, according to a new report from The Nielsen Co. “Social networking isn’t just growing rapidly, it’s evolving–both in terms of a broader audience and compelling new functionality,” said Alex Burmaster, author of the study and communications director across EMEA for Nielsen Online. But grow rapidly it did. In 2008, over two-thirds (67%) of the global online population visited what Nielsen dubs “member communities,” which include both social networks and blogs. That placed “member communities” as the fourth-largest online category, ahead of “personal email.” What’s more, the category grew twice as fast as any of the other four largest sectors, including search, portals, PC software and email. According to the Nielsen report, Facebook–which has now surpassed MySpace as the world’s most popular social network–was visited monthly by three in every 10 people online across the nine markets in which Nielsen tracks social networking. In Brazil, meanwhile, Google’s Orkut social network had the largest domestic online reach–70%–of any social network in these markets. Germany saw the greatest increase in penetration of social networks and blogs across 2008, from 39% of the online audience in December 2007 to 51% in December 2008–a relative growth of 39%. In addition, mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social networking, according to Nielsen. U.K. mobile Web users had the greatest propensity to visit a social network through their handset, with 23%–or roughly 2 million people–doing so, compared to 19% in the U.S.–or some 10.6 million people.

Morning Show Mayhem

To promote its flagship morning show, “Good Morning America,” ABC has bought ads in rival early-bird programming, including CNN’s “American Morning.” In other words, when CNN’s John Roberts cuts to a commercial break, you might see an ad suggesting you change the channel to watch GMA’s Diane Sawyer instead. Since rival networks were not likely to accept an ad from ABC News, ABC made the purchases through local cable operators in the top 10 national markets, allowing its GMA ads to run between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. on a range of cable-news channels. ABC’s approach is the latest use of local ad time to circumvent the awkward times when a particular TV network would prefer not to run a certain ad. Alan Ives, executive producer at ABC News, says it makes sense to hunt on other channels for non-GMA watchers and hope to lure them from competitors’ programs. “It’s easier to convert someone who has the TV on at the time than it is to run a print ad to get them to remember.”

Strangest Media Opportunity of the Week: The Doghouse.

Less heard about but no less tragic is the story of the pets that are left behind as the family piles into the car and drives off. It was the plight of those animals that was running through the mind of Phil Jones, art director at an ad agency in Charlotte, N.C. Jones, a dog lover, had just finished reading a story about those abandoned pets. Says Jones: “It was one of those a-ha moments after reading a news article. The Humane Society of Charlotte is one of our clients, so I thought ‘We can do something about this, and it’s timely.’” From that a-ha moment arose an idea and then a plan and from that an alternative media campaign. The centerpiece is a dog house. Over the dog house is a sign that reads “Foreclosure” in bold red letters. It sits in front of the Humane Society of Charlotte. Next to the dog house stands a post and on the top of it is a box that looks just like those boxes you see in front of homes that are on the market. But inside, instead of the listings for available homes in the neighborhood, are listings for abandoned pets that are available for adoption.The great tragedy of this vicious economic downturn is the number of people forced onto the streets by foreclosures, and it seems not a night goes by on the evening news where we’re not told of some hapless family saying good-bye to their home.

Suffering through sporadic, slow and expensive Internet access in the U.S. has been our biggest challenge in gaining adoption of truly rich Internet applications. Imagine being able to download a 120-minute film in 12 seconds. A recent article in Gizmodo talks about how in Korea, 1 Gbps downloading speeds will soon be possible. We can only imagine the explosive impact this will have on online video.

Voice of the Future.

Want to know where the nearest Starbucks is, but don’t feel like taking out your phone to search for it? Well, now you can simply ask your phone, thanks to new voice recognition technology Google’s added to its search software for the Apple iPhone. Simply place the handset to your ear, and you can ask virtually any question. The sound will be converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which interpret the words and then pass them to Google’s search engine. The search results will be displayed in a matter of seconds on a fast wireless network. The New York Times points out that such voice recognition technology “has long been the supreme goal of artificial intelligence researchers looking for ways to make man-machine interactions more natural.” Incidentally, Google is not the first to try it. Both Microsoft and Yahoo already offer voice services for mobile phones. According to the Times, Microsoft’s Tellme service returns information in specific categories like directions, maps and movies, while Yahoo’s oneSearch with Voice is more flexible than Google’s offering but does not appear to be as accurate. That said, the Google system is far from perfect, the Times says, often returning queries that appear as “gibberish.” When asked, Google execs declined to say how often the service returns accurate results, but they believe it’s accurate enough so that people who want to avoid typing in queries would find it useful

Online TV Viewing Increasing.

As ratings for the Big Four TV networks continue to decline, more people are watching network TV shows online. According to Nielsen Online, the networks saw an average of 155 percent month-over-month growth in online video viewing in September. (Nielsen did not include the CW in its estimates.) The increase isn’t necessarily surprising since September saw the season premieres of many popular and new TV shows, but Nielsen Online reports that interest in the presidential election as well as coverage of the financial meltdown also boosted online video viewing for the networks. NBC.com grew the most, up 312 percent month-over-month, followed by Fox and ABC.com, with 165 percent and 105 percent growth, respectively. CBS.com only saw a 38 percent increase in unique viewers from August but was second in the number of minutes viewers spent on the web site at 48 minutes. Fox Broadcasting was first with 114 minutes, ABC.com saw 45.5 minutes and NBC.com 35 minutes. NBC.com also led in unique viewers with 5.6 million, followed by ABC.com at 5.2 million, CBS at 3.3 million and Fox at 1.4 million. Collectively, the Big Four networks’ average adults 18-49 rating has slipped 14 percent this season, while total viewers are down 10 percent.

Game On.

Apple’s iPhone 3G and its game-heavy AppStore may well push mobile gaming into the mainstream, Ad Age reports, in much the same way that the Web brought casual gaming to the masses. The trade pub points out that it wouldn’t be very difficult for the likes of Apple and Google to develop an in-game ad network for their mobile phones. Google, for example, already owns an in-game network. Microsoft, which owns the in-game ad network Massive Incorporated, is also rumored to be working on its own phone. Sony, which has the PSP portable gaming device and the Sony-Ericsson line of phones, is also rumored to be working on a PSP phone. It has its own in-house in-game advertising team and has partnered with ad networks like IGA. “The thing with casual gaming is that it hits a much bigger demographic than console games that just tend to attract younger men, so now with mobile gaming you have an even greater potential for generating ad revenue, more than PC games ever could. More people have phones than PCs, and they’re using them more often and with more [downtime and] opportunities for gaming,” said Rob Enderle, principal of the Enderle Group. A recent study from NPD Group corroborates those claims, finding that smartphone users play games more often than they use business-related functions. According to the study, playing games was the most increased use of the phones over the last three months.

Strangest Media Opportunity of the Week: Tubular.

When we think of out-of-home signage, we usually think of free-standing signs, but some of the most creative campaigns take advantage of existing structures that folks normally don’t pay much attention to. There was the cigar store campaign that put what looked like oversized cigar bands on wooden telephone poles, making them look like giant stogies standing on end. And just recently a campaign for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign put an Obama icon on signs alerting motorists to traffic signals. Here’s another one: A bank in Colorado is putting its message on light poles. The campaign, which is now running in the Front Range area of the state, is for FirstBank’s mobile banking service, with the idea that customers can bank anywhere. What the bank’s agency, TDA Advertising & Design, came up with were graphics that wrap around the poles in a way that makes them look like the pneumatic tubes found at drive-up banking installations. A cutout shows the capsule that’s used to transfer deposits to the bank. Below is the message: “Mobile banking. Available everywhere.”