Shopper Marketing Fusion Company TracyLocke Talks with Brandweek

TracyLocke will be represented at this year's Shopper Marketing Fusion Event by Al Wittemen, Managing Director for Retail Strategy. Alan's colleague, Dorothy Allan, SVP, Retail Strategy for TracyLocke, was recently interviewed by Brandweek editor, Todd Wasserman. In the interview, Allan discusses how she has helped packaged goods enhance their ROI from shopper marketing. As she notes, CPGs have to communicate value quickly in-store or they lose out. And that's too bad, because consumers aren't only motivated by price.

Here are a few highlights from their discussion.

BW: What are some lessons you've learned in shopper marketing? (Granular
stuff, like "red doesn't work")?
DA: I’ve learned a lot about the human mind in this role. We all make decisions in basically the same way. We classify and sort information based on pattern recognition over the course of our lives. We deselect before we select. Our minds are designed to remove extraneous pieces of information to get to a decision, which is why shopper insights are so important. It gets to the very heart of what’s getting in the way of making a choice. On the granular side, there are principles of how human beings process information that need to be followed to achieve success. For example, if you want to be able to read anything from 10 feet away, you need to use a font that is at least three inches. If the store is dark, you need to use light colors for contrast. Color has meaning: Red is an action color; pink used to mean “girl” and now it stands for breast cancer; green equals the environment, etc. The first thing and last thing you read, you will remember twice as long as the lines in between, and the last line you will remember two times longer than the first. What’s the last piece of information on almost every Walmart point-of-sale unit? – “Save money. Live better.” I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

BW: How has shopper marketing reacted to the economy?
DA: This year, there has been a lot of information that really makes a case for the entire path to purchase and a cohesive approach. The In-Store Marketing Institute conference, as well as IRI and A.C. Nielsen, have begun to illustrate that the point of decision has crept out of the store. Clean store policies are forcing brands to use their leverage outside the store, and thankfully for the first time in 10 years, consumers and shoppers are reading. That is a good thing for brands. If you group shoppers into segments, you’ll find that the shopaholic is “out” and the mission-minded, pragmatic shopper is “in.” Value is the new darling, and brands have to find ways to quickly communicate their benefits to differentiate – or shoppers will default to comparing prices. Shoppers are looking to brands to help them make better value decisions. It’s not always about price, but price does have influence.


For the interview in its entirety, please click here.

Why Pink Means 'Cancer' at Retail

Al Witteman, will be speaking on Friday October 16 at the Shopper Marketing Fusion Event. Don't miss his presentation, "Solutions Without Walls" with John Dranow, SMARTREVENUE