If Coke Needs Retail Leverage Then You Do Too
- Jan
- 18
A KILLER APP FOR RETAIL LEVERAGE:
Coke’s Freestyle system hits on several of our 5 points in how to gain Retail Leverage.
#1 Have The Hot Product With No Substitutes
#3 Be A Top Revenue Vendor
TAKEAWAYS FOR ANY MARKETER:
No matter how big your brand is, you still need Retail Leverage
If they big guys need leverage, what does that say about the smaller challenger brands?
Figure out what you have to exploit that others don’t and leverage it.
If you don’t have something unique / different / better, then be prepared to move to the 6th, rarely spoken of, painful way to get Retail Leverage: Price.
To read the full article, click on the title!
read moreYou Can Be Skeptical of MagicJack – But Not How They Got Retail Leverage
- Jan
- 06
THIS IS AN EXCERPT; TO READ FULL ARTICLE, CLICK ON TITLE.
SUMMARY:
MAGICJACK: RETAIL AND DIRECT IN PERFECT HARMONY:
So you might ask yourself wasn’t MagicJack giving up something by tagging retailers, effectively pointing potential customers to stores?
Well they can start dialing back their Direct Response spend, or at least keep it flat. Plus after 2-3 years of hitting the airwaves hard with the same product, there are diminishing margins of return on the number of people who will buy your product direct. Chances are they saw the ad – if they were going to buy it direct they would have done so already.
Retail represents an untapped market. There are people who won’t buy direct, or maybe never even saw it on TV. And there is a good chance the retail margin they’ll pay is probably close to the cost per order to sell direct (media costs + fulfillment.
LESSONS LEARNED:
1A) Infomercials are a great vehicle for telling a story and building demand at retail.
1B) Marketers with a holier than thou attitude towards Direct Response TV (DRTV) are ignoring a viable tactic.
2) Take risk away from the retail buyer. This makes it easier for them to list / support your product. MagicJack wouldn’t be at retail if they didn’t have a success story from their direct experience, as well as ongoing aircover in the form of their DRTV spots they continue to run that in effect are ads for their retail placements.
3) There is less risk in balancing a direct and retail strategy than ever before. The battle lines have been blurred by retail consolidation, and the growth of private label. I don’t think the retail buyer spends much time worrying about where you are selling your product, as long as it is selling well in their stores. We spend way too much time worrying about who we compete against, versus just selling.
read moreCES Is A Great Opportunity To Gain Retail Leverage
- Jan
- 03
Let’s just say that I care enough about the total experience of CES that I would pay to go on my own if I didn’t get to for my job.
How Can You Gain Retail Leverage At CES?
I also believe CES provides a one of a kind opportunity to maintain industry connections, and more importantly, forge new ones.
So this is our invitation if you want to connect with us, talk shop, and discuss Retail Leverage strategies (or play craps – or both at the same time). When we have some downtime at the show, or after hours, the door is open. This invitation is to marketing and sales pros from CE brands, their agencies (PR, marketing, advertising, etc), and pretty much anybody looking to gain Retail Leverage. We hope to see you there!
The best way to contact us is via our twitter account (@retailleverage) or retailleverage@gmail.com .
read moreWill Your Brand Be Up To The Challenge At Best Buy?
- Dec
- 14
We here at Retail Leverage are big fans of Best Buy, so we were delighted when BusinessWeek took a look at Best Buy in the post-apocalyptic environment after the demise of Circuit City. While Walmart and Amazon are worthy foes, Best Buy is the only large national consumer electronics player left standing. However important Best Buy was before as part of the buying process – regardless of the final point of purchase – Best Buy is now ready to take advantage of its position.
If you are a challenger brand marketer (or an agency working with one) there are lots of takeaways.
To read the full article, click on the Title.
read moreLexmark 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 moreCostco Minus Coke Illustrates Retail Leverage
- Nov
- 19
Coke and Costco are about to find out, together, who has retail leverage in this relationship. The only question is how long will it take? One party will eventually have to make concessions, or more concessions than the other guy, and for those of us keeping score at home, it should be obvious who the winner is.
Think about other categories. At its most basic form, Retail Leverage comes down to who needs who more.
To read the full article, click on the title link above.
read moreFirst 100 Days of Retail Leverage
- Nov
- 08
What Makes Retail Leverage Tick?
Challenger brand marketers have to be more creative and do more with less. Inspiration can be found anytime, anywhere. We look for ideas in business and trade publications, store walk-thrus, weekly circulars, pop culture. The 3 contributors behind Retail Leverage have lived this daily for a combined 40 years (and with challenger brands, there definitely is a “dog years” multiplier in terms of experience). We hope that by sharing our ideas, inspiration and commentary we can help others – and we think we are.
To read the full article, click on the title.
read moreCan Airport Kiosks Help You Gain Retail Leverage? They Did For NEAT!
- Oct
- 26
NEAT! organized its retail leverage strategy around airport kiosks. They built a base of success in airports. Their first retailer was their own channel. They believe this gave them their best chance to succeed. Today, Neat’s products are found on the shelves of the largest Office Superstore chains – Staples, Office Depot and Office Max, many regional retailers and on the websites of such behemoths as Amazon.com.
To read the full article, click on the 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 moreWhat The Bleep Is POWERMAT And How Did They Get Retail Leverage?
- Oct
- 06
When you start breaking down Powermat’s launch strategy, you’ll realize they are using a hybrid of retail leverage strategies. More importantly, they are doing it on a scale much more relevant to challenger brand marketers used to dealing with 7 figure budgets.
1) Offer Program or Product Exclusivity (sort of)
2) Have Something So Big “They” Can’t Ignore
To read the full article, click on the title link.
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