Kimberly-Clark CEO: People Want Value, Innovation

ABC News and the Associated Press report that Kimberly-Clark Corp. CEO Thomas Falk did things most executives ran from during the recession: He plunged money into innovation and marketing, and raised prices. But just as Falk went against traditional means of running a large corporation during a recession, ABC reports that Falk's paid off.

Part of Falk's success lies in how he conveyed value to shoppers:

Q. You said that a lot of consumers are focusing on value right now. How do you convey the message of value to them?

A. I was in the Philippines not long ago, where we do some advertising to consumers on how a Huggies diaper would last 10 hours. A mom who was buying a very low-tier diaper in a market like that would know that a private-label or a low-tier brand wouldn’t last 10 hours. You communicate it that way as a perception of value.

If you look at marketers around the world across all categories, you see more marketing dialing up value messaging. We are all trying to communicate to the consumer that we are a good value relative to their other alternatives.

For more of Falk's interview, please click here.

How Manufacturers Use Analytics to Brand Successfully, Ryan Monahan of Kimberly Clark Corporation

Everything has changed in the wake the Walmart's Project Impact initiative which began last year. It essentially evaluates categories and reduces SKUs while changing the rules of merchandising. That means less clutter in the aisles.

Ryan Monahan, who has been on Kimberly Clark's Walmart team for three years, said the change means that shoppers have to be engaged before going to the store. As a first step, Kimberly Clark Corporation obtained the analytic tools to tell who the shoppers are, how valuable they are to the brand and what needs to be done to succeed.

As an example, he pointed to a direct mail program for the recently-launched gender-specific Depend underwear at Wal-Mart. KC developed an off-line and online campaign to identify seniors in the local trading areas and provide them with information on what to look for in the store.

In brief, the campaign was a big success.

Kimberly-Clark Shares Tried-And-True Shopper Marketing Tactics

Elaine Wong of Brandweek reports that Kimberly-Clark's Mark Scott is ready to share their shopper marketing tactics. Check out Wong's interview with Scott here. Of particular note for Shopper 360 readers, check out this exchange:

BW: What portion of Kimberly-Clark’s total ad budget does shopper marketing currently make up? Have you increased spending in this regard since the recession began? Why so?

MS: [We don’t break down marketing spend.] Having said that, we did in December actually formalize a shopper marketing structure in North America, where we’ve got some folks out in the field on some of our customer teams and some dedicated shopper marketing resources imbedded into our brand teams. All of that is intended to make sure we have the right shopper and customer choice at the right time as we build integrated marketing plans. Because we really want to put the consumer and the shopper—who, in many instances are the same—at the center of everything we do and we get deep insights [from] them.

What do you think a dedicated shopper marketing team should cost?