Author Archives: Vincent Young
Warning! Brands at Retail – Your Product Development Process Is Harmful To Your Health
- Mar
- 18
This is an excerpt; To read the full article, click the title.
SUMMARY:
Typical 5 Step/Gate Product Development Process:
1. Discovery/Scoping
2. Building the Business Case/Plan
3. Development
4. Testing & Validation
5. Product Launch
This process has one major flaw if you are a brand whose business case is primarily built on accessing the consumer through the world of retail – the retailer is predisposed to prefer a private label solution …
read moreSTAINMASTER Carpet Goes Wall-to-Wall at Lowe’s
- Mar
- 01
THIS IS AN EXCERPT.
CLICK ON THE TITLE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE:
While the STAINMASTER brand has considerable equity in the home furnishings and flooring industries, the team at INVISTA was able to gain distribution at the world’s second largest DIY/Hardware chain by thinking like a challenger brand and adopting two key strategies to gain Retail Leverage.
Retail Leverage Principle #1: Bring Pent-up Demand to Stores
Retail Leverage Principle #2: Offer Product or Program Exclusivity
Implications For Marketers From Walmart Sku Reductions
- Feb
- 22
THIS IS AN EXCERPT.
CLICK ON THE TITLE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE:
In order to effectively compete, challenger brands must learn to package innovative product offerings together with marketing programs designed to represent at least one of the following four forms of retailer financial growth:
FOUR WAYS TO OFFER RETAILERS FINANCIAL GROWTH:
1. Increase overall category demand
2. Increase the attach-rate of high-value complimentary items
3. Motivate a “trade-up” within the category
4. Help a given retailer win the war against another retailer
The most difficult thing for brands like Glad and Hefty is viewing themselves as challenger brands when their histories have been more reflective of the rare “power” brand.
read moreFive Retail Leverage Predictions for 2010
- Jan
- 30
THIS IS AN EXCERPT.
CLICK ON THE TITLE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE:
Five Retail Leverage Predictions for 2010:
1) The CMO Will Become the CCMO (Chief Customer Marketing Officer)
2) Creative Services Agencies Will Learn the Language of Retail
3) It Will Take a Village to Make Social Networking a Relevant Marketing Tool for Retail Leverage
4) “Co-operative Planning” Content Will dominate Newsstand Best-Sellers
5) The New “All-in-One” Brand Will Dominate the Retail Landscape:
Lexmark Offered the Apple Store Value Beyond Printing
- Dec
- 10
Despite its apparent misfit with the Apple Store panache, Lexmark announced last month that it successfully secured distribution of a new Lexmark-branded All-in-One Printer called “Interact” in Apple Stores and at store.apple.com. So how did Lexmark accomplish the seemingly impossible? By enacting a retail leverage strategy that aligned the Lexmark brand and product offering with the needs, wants, and expectations of the interconnected, tech & fashion-forward, high performance Apple-nation.
To read the full article, click on the article title.
read moreMaximizing Test Store Performance (A Must-Read for Challenger Brands at Retail)
- Oct
- 18
THE DILEMMA OF TEST STORES:
What should you do when your fate at retail is dependent on your product’s performance in a handful of “test stores?” If your sell-through is strong, then your product line gets rolled out to all stores nationally – if not, then your door practically closes forever at that retailer with that product line, even down the road when the “new and improved” version hits the market. The real question that we all struggle with is “Should my company put forth any efforts to stimulate demand in a test store environment, even though we know that those efforts will not likely be replicated upon national roll-out?” The answer is an unequivocal, “yes!”
To read more, click on the title.
read moreThe Ad Agency Dilemma – Retail Leverage Friend or Foe?
- Sep
- 20
Excerpt:
Our problems become their problems. Here in-lies a potential conflict – an ad agency is a business and its goal is to encourage its clients to spend as many marketing dollars with the agency as possible. While this is a very understandable desire, it may limit the challenger brand’s ability to use its marketing dollars to gain retail leverage as sometimes critical investments need to be made to support the retailer which may cut out the agency’s interests.
3 ways challenger brands can motivate their ad agencies to support their need for retail leverage:
1. Check your agency’s “Retail Leverage” I.Q.
2. Teach your ad agency about your business – not just your brand.
3. Implement an Incentive-Based Agency Fee System
Rosetta Stone Speaks the Language of “Retail Leverage”
- Aug
- 23
THIS IS AN EXCERPT; TO READ FULL ARTICLE, CLICK ON TITLE.
SUMMARY:
Earlier this week, Office Depot formally announced plans to become the exclusive office product superstore to offer Rosetta Stone’s award-winning Rosetta Stone computer-based language learning system.
How did Rosetta Stone gain retail leverage?
1. Direct-response selling (infomercials)
2. Launch exclusively with specialty/boutique retailers
3. Launch exclusively with one major retailer
Success Breeds Success – Five Ways to Unleash “Pent-up Demand” at Major Retailers
- Aug
- 19
THIS IS AN EXCERPT; TO READ FULL ARTICLE, CLICK ON TITLE.
SUMMARY:
Retail buyers hate risk.
Five approaches which establish a track record of success prior to engaging with the universe of major retailers:
1. Over-invest in Trade Shows
2. Seriously consider direct-response advertising
3. Launch exclusively with specialty/boutique retailers
4. Build a “community”
5. Launch exclusively with one major retailer
Remember, very few strategies give your challenger brand more leverage at retail than the promise of bringing your successful past to the retailer’s risk-averse present.
How To Build A Culture Geared Toward Retail Leverage
- Aug
- 12
Five Ways To Build A Culture Geared Toward Retail Leverage:
1. Tie each corporate executive’s bonus to growth at a “pet” retailer
2. Have the sales team do some heavy lifting during National Sales Meetings.
3. Require product managers to model profit pool for their category at key retailers.
4. Shop together and learn.
5. Don’t enable the “Desktop Marketer.”
To read the full article click on the title.
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