Upon completion of our report, aggregate results of this research will be sent out to RAC members, survey participants and those who attended the symposium. If you wish to participate in the research or receive a copy of the report, please send an email to retail@kingmarketing.ca
Click here to read my previous comments on the flyer symposium.
]]>Financial Management Processes
How do retailers make decisions regarding the financial elements of their flyer program? Do they do the work in-house, or outsource, and why? How are co-op funds allocated?
Product Processes
What is the nature of the interaction between marketing and merchandising? How do retailers manage the trade-offs between their own goals and those of their vendors? How does a flyer program affect the buying process?
Creative & Production Processes
What processes do retailers use to take a flyer from a list of SKUs through to a printed advertisement? What technology is in use, and how has has it improved the workflow? How have changes in prepress and printing technology affected flyer programs?
Media Management & Distribution Processes
How do retailers decide where flyers will be sent and who will deliver them? How do they manage the communication of these details with suppliers in multiple markets?
In-store Processes
What do retailers do in their stores to support and enhance the flyer program? Is store signage and merchandising changed? How is inventory managed and what is done if the store runs out of product?
That is the impetus behind our decision to launch a series of studies on current practices in the retail industry. Areas that will be covered over the course of this research include:
Please click here for more detail on the topics included in each of these areas.
By carrying out studies on the current practices of the industry, we hope to develop a body of knowledge that will help current practitioners to improve their flyer programs and provide guidance to new publishers as they define their processes.Those who will be helped by this research will be individuals who find themselves in the same place I was: trying to stretch their advertising budget while meeting the demands of stakeholders ranging from the vendors who supply co-op advertising funds, to the store managers and franchisees (who are the direct link to customers).
If you would like to participate in the research or receive a copy of published reports, please send an email to retail@kingmarketing.ca
]]>Because they work, that’s why. Most retailers believe that flyers are one of the most effective means of retail advertising, providing a high degree of consumer awareness, and more importantly, above-average return on investment.
What’s the secret?
It’s all about the money.
It’s a lot easier to get a high return on your advertising investment when you don’t invest your own money. Most flyer programs are funded from vendor co-op advertising funds, making the vehicle a no-cost option for the retailer.
Why do they work?
Flyers are a highly efficient way of using small amounts of co-op funding from a multitude of suppliers. They are highly visible, and despite the “no flyers” signs popping up on some doorways, customers actively seek out flyers for categories of interest to them, because they see them as valuable sources of product information.
Junk mail is only junk when you’re not in the market for the product being advertised. When you are, it becomes information.
So why do marketing people hate them so much?
Because most creative people like to come up with new campaigns using this season’s hot colour palette, and measure success by the number of awards they get from their peers. Flyer programs, on the other hand, are driven by vendors' co-op dollars and measured in sales – numbers, numbers and more numbers, and nary a GRP in sight.
There may be little difference in effectiveness between an attractively-designed flyer and an ugly one, and it’s beneficial to have a consistent look from month to month and year to year in order to get customers’ instant attention when the flyer arrives at their door. It's important to note, though, that even though it may not matter if your flyer is ugly, it's not a requirement.
So give flyers the love they deserve
Love them just the way they are - don't try to make them something they're not.
Focus on integration with the rest of your marketing. Spend time working with all stakeholders in the process, be it buyers, store managers, customers or warehouse staff. Work with industry suppliers to improve your processes. If you or your customers are concerned about environmental impact, work on optimizing your distribution through geodemographic targeting and/or arrange for offsets like tree planting.
A well-planned, well-executed flyer program is a thing of beauty, at least in the eyes of this beholder. I hope you can see it that way too.
]]>The Retail Advertising Club of Canada is holding its 3rd National Retail Flyer Symposium on February 22, 2007. I've been at the last two and it is well worth it for anybody who works on a flyer or is thinking about adding it to their marketing mix.
]]>Catherine sends us to Mouse Print, a website focused on the sleazy things marketers will do to trick people.
Instead of spending your money on lawyers to make the weasel words in the fine print more lawsuit-proof, try actually improving the product.
]]>Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures makes a point about how user tagging (like on delicious) is fundamental to internet infrastructure and the valuable information that publishers can get out of that:
User tagging is vastly superior to self tagging because it is the consumers who are navigating and trying to find the stuff. The way they describe it is the same way they will try to find it. And it's really hard for publishers to figure out all the keywords up front.
I think it goes beyond just publishers, though - businesses of all kinds can learn from the way that users have tagged pages about their products and services, and those of their competitors. And you get to hear their voices without paying for it, because they've done the tagging out of self-interest.
All you need to do is listen.
]]>My example this morning: it's surprisingly difficult to change one's email address on file with newsletter subscriptions. I tried with three companies this morning, with three very different results.
In the first case, there was no obvious way to change my address. However, the signup form was very simple, consisting of email, name, company and title. It was easy enough to just set up a new account and cancel the old one, so I did so. Not ideal, but not too painful either.
With the second company, things were a little more complicated because the registration included tying a company payment card to the account so setting up a new account would have required entering the card information along with my home address, and a bunch of other things. I decided to find out if there was a not-so obvious way of changing the email address. Their contact feedback form had "updating or removing my email address" as a category, which when selected gave the following warning:
The e-mail address for [website name deleted] accounts cannot be changed or updated. If you need to change your e-mail address, please feel free to create a new [website name deleted] account. If you have further questions, please submit your inquiry below.
The programming work that went into displaying that warning when I selected the message category could have been put to use creating a simple change of address form.
Like the one offered by Apple. Their emails include a link leading to a simple form that let me accomplish the task in about 5 seconds.
]]>You may have to dicker a little to find the point at which they'll accept the offer, but that's just haggling over the discount rate - pretty much everyone will accept some smaller amount of money today rather than waiting.
For bonus marks, vary the dollar amounts and time periods - you'll learn interesting things about risk tolerance.
]]>Music Week for the "culture and economics" world: "When you subscribe, online or by subscription card, you get the current issue in the mail about 3 days later, in a hand-addressed envelope. No ‘please allow 6-8 weeks’: this isn’t a big corporate mag. While they put together a top-rate, slick publication with great cover photos, it’s obvious even from the transaction of the subscription that there’s a room somewhere in Philly, filled with guys (sic) who love this music and want other people to love it, too."]]>
How Loyalty Cards Can Cost You Sales
Loyalty programs are generally engineered to reward your best customers and to reap the benefits of tracking their activity. However, some retailers have done too good a job of selling the benefits of their program.
There's no question in my mind that having the card influences my buying decisions – although I probably would buy almost as many books without it, I have definitely picked up titles because of members' only promotions in the store. However, the flipside is also true - I'm much less likely to pick up books that don't have a hefty members' promotion.
And that sense of entitlement can damage the relationship altogether: I tend to buy books in batches, and in a quick tour through the store had about $150 worth when I went to the counter. As usual, I'd forgotten my loyalty card at home, but in the past cashiers had always looked it up for me. This time, however, I was informed that the store had instituted a policy of not doing so anymore. I abandoned my purchase and left because I felt cheated out of my discount. To make matters worse, I found out from another location that the policy was not chain-wide, but simply the decision of the specific store's manager.
Big Egos Are Good For Business
Being full of yourself is good for business, according to researchers at the University of Maryland. BusinessWeek interviewed Brian Wu about how Ego Makes Entrepreneurs? The key point in this is that entrepreneurs see risk differently than most people - if something is dependent on your own abilities, then the risk is simply in your own ability to execute, and having an inflated sense of your own ability allows you to overcome risk aversion.
I think there's a related issue here too - entrepreneurs deal with a constant stream of negativity. Mention to someone that you're starting a business, and they'll quote stats about how many businesses fail, express their doubts about the market potential for your idea, and generally try to convince you that you're crazy. Having a strong ego helps to get you through all of that.
Logo Development Process
This article on creating a business logo provides great insight into the communication process between designer and client.
The Dunbar Number
Christopher Allen tackles a popular misconception about the Dunbar number being the average size of of a successful community, when it is actually posited as the maximum size. There are a bunch of good examples in the article, along with some cool charts and graphs.
Most importantly, there's some thoughts on the effect that group size has on company effectiveness, especially the pain that comes with growth. I've deliberately set out to keep my business at a small size precisely because I want things to stay personal.
]]>Here's where I ask my readers to do some extra work: if it's not too much trouble, can both of you please change your RSS subscription to http://feeds.feedburner.com/kenking?
]]>The process was very easy with a moderate knowledge of HTML, and it was very satisfying to undertake and complete the task in 4-5 minutes.
]]>Managers, Not MBAs
This NYT article on George Bush came out at the same time as I was reading Henry Mintzberg's Managers, Not MBAs. There were lots of interesting things spinning through my head, so many that I never wrote the post. ;-)
"Bush has been called the C.E.O. president, but that's just a catch phrase -- he never ran anything of consequence in the private sector. The M.B.A. president would be more accurate: he did, after all, graduate from Harvard Business School. And some who have worked under him in the White House and know about business have spotted a strange business-school time warp. It's as if a 1975 graduate from H.B.S. -- one who had little chance to season theory with practice during the past few decades of change in corporate America -- has simply been dropped into the most challenging management job in the world." - The New York Times Magazine > Without a Doubt
Store Design
Store design makes a big difference - although you want to make maximum use of every square foot of expensive retail space, it's also important to ensure the design delivers the desired customer experience.
I recently visited a store specializing in storage and organization products - plastic bins, shelf dividers and the like. The reason for my visit was to find products that would help to reduce clutter in my home (including my home office) and thereby reduce stress. I presume that my goals were similar to those of many other shoppers.
The in-store experience was anything but serene. The aisles were narrow, and oriented across the store so that, once I'd progressed halfway down the store I no longer could see the exit. It was visually overwhelming and claustrophobic, exactly the opposite of the solution I sought.
It seemed that the design was intended to give the impression of a massive selection. On that front it was successful, but only to a point: with the product categories split into short aisles across the store width, one was only able to see 1-2 categories at a time. A longitudinal design would have allowed customers to view the entire selection of the store at once from the doorway, and would still have provided exposure to the broad product selection.
Team Building
I'm constantly amazed at how little effort most organizations put into giving people teamwork skills, especially since they simultaneously put a ton of emphasis on working in teams. I will probably come back to this point again, as I see the consequences every day.
The Fallacy of the Golden Rule
One of the most common mistakes made is managing by the golden rule. "Do unto others as you would have done unto you" may be good social behaviour but it falls short as a management philosophy.
This article in Fast Company addresses a specific way the golden rule can steer you wrong. However, I think the story here is more about dealing with differences in relative power, which I may address at a future date.
The article did remind me of a more general problem: it's still relatively rare for first-time managers to receive much in the way of training. Sure, most companies will include some task-specific training such as payroll processes and maybe even some touchy-feely techniques. But from talking to a lot of people about their first time as a manager, it's become clear to me that the first mistake everyone makes is to manage by the golden rule.
The problem is that everyone reacts to different stimuli - for example one member of your staff may need frequent praise, while another may devalue the praise because of its frequency. Depending on which camp you're in, you're not going to get the best out of the second person. Enlightenment comes when you realize that you need to do unto others as they would have done unto themselves. This of course takes a lot more work, but it's also very rewarding.
Business Plans
Dave Taylor published an article about why you should "never outsource your business plan", some of his reasoning being as follows:
Why would this be the case? Because it's the process of creating the plan that's important not the end document. When you share your business plan with an investor or venture capital firm, they want to see something coherent and learn about a smart business, but just as importantly, they want to know that your team can sit in a room and hammer out a single, unified vision of your company, one that covers all the major bases, from marketing to defending your intellectual property, cost of sales analysis to partnership ideas.
I think it's even simpler than that - even if you aren't trying to raise a ton of money, the process of writing a business plan forces you to think through your options, and make choices. And when some of those choices turn out to be wrong, you will be up shit's creek without a paddle if someone else wrote the plan. If you did the work yourself, on the other hand, you'll know the assumptions that went into the choice you made, and will be in a position to retrace your steps and take the road not travelled.
Investing in Personal Relationships
Roger McNamee said it better than I could - this is why I go way out of my way to maintain relationships and form new ones. Enlightened self-interest aside, though, it's just fun to have a pint with an old friend.
A J-curve runs through the New Normal. That’s when you invest more than you reap in the early stages, but in the long run you get paid huge dividends. You won’t be able to predict when a relationship will be valuable to you—or even if a particular relationship will be valuable to you—but if you invest in enough relationships, the payoff will be huge. - The New Normal - Invest in Personal Relationships
Protecting the Workgroup
A short article in Fast Company about protecting the workgroup reminded me of the going away party when I left my first management gig.
My team gave me something that's still one of my favourite gifts ever - a custom-made certificate for "excellence in buffering", reflecting the fact that I spent a great deal of my time dealing with all of the office BS so my people could focus on doing their thing. It is also reflective of my philosophy that you work for the people "below" you - if managers spent their energy on figuring out how to help their direct reports to do better work instead of currying to every whim of their bosses, they might actually achieve something.
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