New Algebra of Joint Business Planning
A+B+C=3R
The world of 2016-2020 will provide retailers and brand owners with a multitude of new opportunities and tools to create new “moments of truth” with their shopper across the digital ecosystem. A quick way to classify those new touchpoints is Kantar Retail’s “new A-B-C” guide to the increasingly blurred world between what used to be “sales/shopper marketing” inside an FMCG company and what used to be “brand marketing:”
• An addressable marketing world will create more personalized, granular touchpoints, which require tremendous capabilities to target and measure.
• That measurement will be directly linked to behavioral data platforms — providing seamless linkage between this data and activities and attitudes will be essential.
• Communication targeting and effectiveness measures will be almost useless without context — specifically, mobile communication is best served up by understanding more about someone than simply who they are. Context requires knowing where they are, what they are doing, who else they know and trust, and how they make decisions.
Those opportunities will spur the creation of literally thousands of new tools. But, in the absence of clear strategy, those tools run the risk of turning into (at best) massive corporate implementation initiatives that don’t achieve desired results or (at worst) expensive toys that engender cynicism from the teams responsible for confronting these new challenges.
To avoid that risk, Kantar Retail recommends using a simple strategic framework for what those tools should be doing. Organized under the simple heuristic of “Reach, Resonance and Returns” these objectives can help companies decide which tools yield the most benefit by focusing on business outcomes more than the tools themselves:
• Reach: How can new tools reach new shoppers or gain genuinely new share of wallet from existing shoppers? Today, so much of marketing thinking is aimed at the objective of “growing penetration” — getting new shoppers into your brand family. Think about how these tools help you access new money, either by more meaningful communication with existing targets or the ability to cost effectively reach new target audiences.
• Resonance: If we are not reaching new money, new tools can still be helpful by creating a deeper and more resonant relationship with existing shoppers. That resonance can be as simple as improving the functionality of a shopping trip to allow shoppers to make a faster, better category decision. Or it can be something more complex and holistic like a pharmacy manufacturer and retailer combining to help a shopper manage a disease state like diabetes.
• Returns: How can new tools optimize the economics of the retailer/supplier relationship to drive profits in an increasingly de-scaled and complex world. Large retailers and large suppliers are facing heightened competition from smaller, nimbler competitors who may be trying to achieve a valuation, not shareholder value. Tools that accomplish specific tasks in this value chain are critical, but the real magic is in linking those tools together into a seamless and integrated planning process.
The world of 2016-2020 will provide retailers and brand owners with a multitude of new opportunities and tools to create new “moments of truth” with their shopper across the digital ecosystem. A quick way to classify those new touchpoints is Kantar Retail’s “new A-B-C” guide to the increasingly blurred world between what used to be “sales/shopper marketing” inside an FMCG company and what used to be “brand marketing:”
• An addressable marketing world will create more personalized, granular touchpoints, which require tremendous capabilities to target and measure.
• That measurement will be directly linked to behavioral data platforms — providing seamless linkage between this data and activities and attitudes will be essential.
• Communication targeting and effectiveness measures will be almost useless without context — specifically, mobile communication is best served up by understanding more about someone than simply who they are. Context requires knowing where they are, what they are doing, who else they know and trust, and how they make decisions.
Those opportunities will spur the creation of literally thousands of new tools. But, in the absence of clear strategy, those tools run the risk of turning into (at best) massive corporate implementation initiatives that don’t achieve desired results or (at worst) expensive toys that engender cynicism from the teams responsible for confronting these new challenges.
To avoid that risk, Kantar Retail recommends using a simple strategic framework for what those tools should be doing. Organized under the simple heuristic of “Reach, Resonance and Returns” these objectives can help companies decide which tools yield the most benefit by focusing on business outcomes more than the tools themselves:
• Reach: How can new tools reach new shoppers or gain genuinely new share of wallet from existing shoppers? Today, so much of marketing thinking is aimed at the objective of “growing penetration” — getting new shoppers into your brand family. Think about how these tools help you access new money, either by more meaningful communication with existing targets or the ability to cost effectively reach new target audiences.
• Resonance: If we are not reaching new money, new tools can still be helpful by creating a deeper and more resonant relationship with existing shoppers. That resonance can be as simple as improving the functionality of a shopping trip to allow shoppers to make a faster, better category decision. Or it can be something more complex and holistic like a pharmacy manufacturer and retailer combining to help a shopper manage a disease state like diabetes.
• Returns: How can new tools optimize the economics of the retailer/supplier relationship to drive profits in an increasingly de-scaled and complex world. Large retailers and large suppliers are facing heightened competition from smaller, nimbler competitors who may be trying to achieve a valuation, not shareholder value. Tools that accomplish specific tasks in this value chain are critical, but the real magic is in linking those tools together into a seamless and integrated planning process.