A few weeks ago, I chaired the Asia Shopper Marketing and Insights Conference in Singapore and I was struck by the volume of discussion on digital media. What is clear to me is that part of the industry increasingly sees digital and shopper marketing to be the same. They are not – or not yet anyway. [Read more…]
Are 76% of purchase decisions REALLY made in store?
A recent report from POPAI stated that 76% of purchase decisions are made in store – this is a great sound bite but if you ask me it’s both misleading and counter-productive. Why? [Read more…]
Is it me or is consumer marketing getting really flaky?
I meet a lot of marketers, responsible for a huge range of brands across some pretty diverse markets and after 20 years I’m beginning to worry.
As a practitioner in and observer of the consumer goods industry, I believe that despite recent improvements in performance, the industry continues to face some significant challenges: Input costs continue to escalate ahead of realized price points; the costs of effective media impressions continues to rise whilst trade consolidation pushes money into stores and quite frankly CPG is no longer the place to be if you are a ‘bright young thing’. [Read more…]
Using effective merchandising to drive sales
On a recent visit to a toy store with my oldest son, 
I experienced an interesting phenomena. He kept asking me to lift him up!
Why? All the cool stuff was displayed above his head. Now he stands about 1.2m tall so at his eye level all he could see were the cheaper cars and action figures. By contrast all the cool things – playsets, tracks and so on were placed directly in my line of sight. [Read more…]
If manufacturers aren’t researching then they’re probably guessing
I happened to be shopping this weekend for an accessory for a personal electronic device. Nothing special but it was a little specialist and knowing this I thought the best place to head was Singapore’s Funan IT Mall. Here over several floors you’ll find a range of specialists offering everything from high end audio to hello kitty iPhone covers. [Read more…]