Beverage Report: Shopper Specificity

The shopper has garnered the strict attention of marketers in the non-alcoholic beverages category. Across the board, from The Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo to Sunny Delight Beverages Co. and Kraft Foods, there’s a commitment to knowing, understanding and connecting with shoppers, channel by channel and retailer by retailer, resulting in significant growth of account-specific shopper marketing initiatives.“I see shopper marketing superseding category management as the new basis of account-specific collaboration,” says Bill Bishop, founder of Willard Bishop Consulting, Barrington, Ill. “It makes a huge amount of sense. The big non-alcoholic beverage suppliers like Coke have a great deal of shopper insights and other related background, including well-developed skills in the area of social media.”Coca-Cola uses shopper loyalty-card information as well as Nielsen and POS data via custom studies to glean insights and “bring proactive ideas and effective programs tailored to grow our customer’s [the retailer] business,” says Michael S. La Kier, group director, shopper marketing strategy and capability. “We know our customers seek a partner who understands their business and industry, so we’ve invested in building sophisticated proprietary insights.”Similarly, PepsiCo wants to “deeply understand [the shopper’s] needs and wants specific to a channel as well as a particular retailer,” says Bryan Welsh, vice president, shopper marketing. “For us, it’s all about hitting the ‘sweet spot’ – building brands by uniquely solving the shopper problem in the distinct voice of the retailer.”While the beverage manufacturers in general are willing to share what they know about the shoppers in a specific channel, they are tight-lipped when it comes to what they know about a particular retailer’s shoppers.From Channel to RetailerLaura McCorvie, senior vice president, customer growth and shopper marketing, at Kraft, which introduced a liquid water enhancer called MiO in early 2011, says programs are typically very different in drugstores and convenience stores than in supermarkets and mass merchants since most purchases at the former two are for immediate consumption, as opposed to “take-home.”“Just like our beverage brands have specific consumer and shopper targets, retailers are also identifying and marketing to their high-value and high-priority shopper targets,” McCorvie says. “What was once ‘Here’s our grocery channel program and here’s our c-store program’ is now ‘Here’s a program we’ve developed for Meijer, and here’s a different program designed and developed for H-E-B, and yet another for a c-store.’”At Dr Pepper Snapple Group, “Our planning starts with the retailers and their most valuable shoppers,” says Brant Burchfield, director of shopper marketing. That wasn’t always the case, though. Soon after his team first began meeting with cross-functional groups from retailers during the planning cycle, he made an internal change. “We’ve shifted to prioritizing participation in retailer calendars that define specific periods of time related to seasons or occasions throughout the year to deliver solutions to their shoppers.”With the help of agency partner MatchPoint Marketing, Jacksonville, Fla., Sunny Delight Beverages has ramped up its efforts to understand shopping behavior among different targets across channels and within some key strategic retailers, with the hopes of developing “fairly robust, customized programs with them,” says David Silver, brand manager. The company knows that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t cut it even in terms of packaging because the product is now merchandised in different points of the store and at more retail outlets than ever before. “That’s certainly the case by customer, and sometimes we find we have different variations of a program in the same customer because we’ll apply it differently to different packages and different aisles within that store,” says Russ Mills, national sales director of strategic channels.The PepsiCo WayPepsiCo marketers believe that shoppers seek to resolve certain motivations and that they have one or more motivations in mind on any given shopping trip. Also, the company knows that not all retailers address these shopper motivations equally. So, to inform strategic decision-making around how it can best work with specific retailers to promote products and categories, PepsiCo has used quantitative market research to identify 20 core shopper motivations and categorize them by retailer. Among the motivations: “Looking for healthier snacks and beverages,” and “New meal ideas for my family.”The research has indicated that PepsiCo’s convenience and grocery shopper tends to be a Gen Y male who is shopping for himself and looking for instant gratification or satisfaction. Its solution would be a co-purchase of beverage and a snack, and the corresponding POS imagery would focus on “satisfying” and “fulfilling.” Conversely, PepsiCo’s drugstore shopper tends to be a Gen X female who is usually shopping for herself. She’s looking to treat or pamper herself, so PepsiCo’s in-store solution would be to connect with her “moment” and give her products designed for her and her friends. The POS imagery would be focused on “her” and “sharing.”Getting Account-SpecificPepsiCo says its account-specific Diet Pepsi “skinny” campaign at Target hit the aforementioned sweet spot. The campaign, which launched in February, targeted Millennials and promoted redesigned packaging. Stores featured branded endcaps with headers urging shoppers to “Get the Skinny.” “We were able to reinforce the stylish and trendy Target and Diet Pepsi brand images within the context of a super relevant added-value shopper solution,” Welsh says. (See cover story.)In account-specific activity with Safeway Inc., PepsiCo’s Gatorade launched an eScrip program that makes supporting local school athletic programs simple. When participating packages are purchased at any of Safeway’s chains from February through August, 5% of the purchase price is donated to the shopper’s school of choice.My Coke Rewards, Coca-Cola’s longest continuously running marketing platform in the United States, was designed to reach shoppers along the path to purchase. Requiring registered consumers to enter codes online to earn points that can be redeemed in various ways, the program has more than 17 million members. The company has executed more than 400 different customer programs, says La Kier. “It enables us to connect with shoppers all along the path to purchase, including mobile, emails, and online. My Coke Rewards creates and supports continuous loyalty and advocacy for both our brands and our customers.” As an example, Coke Zero executed a fully integrated “Big Game” football-themed program earlier this year in partnership with Kraft’s Nabisco that incorporated My Coke Rewards and benefitted retailers and shoppers. “Party planning is a critical activity connected to the ‘Big Game,’” La Kier says. “We were able to influence shoppers’ actions in stores, and afterward, they could connect socially to communicate about their parties.”Among Dr Pepper Snapple’s 2011 activity has been account-specific activity at Dollar General promoting the national rollout of Sun Drop soda. In-store and digital promotions prompted consumers to enter codes from store receipts online to receive free music downloads.Connecting DigitallyWhile many marketers still grapple with the best way to approach social media and all things digital, they do realize it helps create a meaningful bond with consumers that will then have impact at retail. A big advantage Coca-Cola’s La Kier sees with digital is the fact that it enables better measurement of results than from other tactics. “Beyond sales, you can examine how many people are searching for a specific item online, how many click on a billboard, and how many buy from online grocers,” he says. “It all relates back to how we align to the business objectives of our customers – knowing what we’re collectively trying to accomplish makes the measurements clear. Then it’s only a matter of collecting the data and discussing how to incorporate those learnings into the next shopper marketing program.”Sunny Delight’s Mills says there’s a disparity among retailers and even channels in terms of their sophistication in using social media, which affects their ability to leverage it. He recounted a recent meeting with a c-store chain in which his company pitched a national promotion overlay. “Those guys were pretty savvy and had a fair amount of experience,” he says. “The conversation quickly drilled down to, ‘How do we customize it to our shoppers in our stores?’ We’re learning a lot, but it’s coming fast and furious, and we have a lot of work to do.”Peter Bianchi, CEO of Houston-based Innovative Beverage Group, which produces relaxation beverage Drank, says his target of the 18- to 35-year-old shopper responds to social media programs such as its “Drank Happy Hour” and others. “In our social media and marketing, we wanted to create an image that by having this big purple can in your hand, you’re hip and cool and you’re being responsible,” he says. “So the consumer walking into a store already knows that we created a social movement that it’s hip to be square when you use our product.” In Canada, consumers even petitioned the government via its Facebook page to allow the product to be sold in the country.PepsiCo is committed to digital throughout the path to purchase – pre-shop, during the trip and post-shop. The use of digital during the shopping trip is not yet being emphasized in a broad fashion, Welsh says, “but digital media have a great deal of promise to aid shoppers during the buying process, particularly with respect to evaluation and selection.” Welsh says social media can also play “a very important role in creating a feedback loop with shoppers [post-shop], motivating them to come back and inspire others to do so through advocacy.”Kraft leveraged the power of social media prior to the launch of MiO by offering 100,000 full-size samples of the product via Facebook, and its “Sassy Gay Friend” video has received 1.5 million views.Always LearningNestlé Waters is still mining the data from a “pretty significant” attitudinal survey it recently conducted, says Drew Cornwell, shopper insights manager. The study focuses on decision drivers – why shoppers choose certain channels and retailers as it relates to water, down to the product and brand choice. Results were somewhat surprising on the digital front, he says. “The segmentation is showing us that certain groups of [our] shoppers are going into the digital world for communication, news and incentives,” he says. “That’s contrary to what we thought we’d see – that water is entirely an in-store decision. We’re still looking at where those people are shopping and how big of an opportunity it is, but there’s more there than we thought.”Cornwell says the company has “very comprehensive” channel plans, within which falls shopper marketing. In the club channel, above and beyond price, the two main shopper marketing levers are pre-store activity and packaging. The mass channel has many more tactics and levers to engage in and pull, and for supermarkets it’s even more prolific.Collaboration is a two-way street, though. As an example, he points to Walmart’s “Game Time” football-themed program last year in which Nestlé Waters created specific packaging that related to the retailer’s overarching strategy. Says Cornwell: “We’re looking for [our retailers] to provide us insight, especially as they become more and more sophisticated with their data and segmenting out their shoppers.”

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