Dana VanDen Heuvel: So, we're back to interruption marketing...

September 21, 2005

So, we're back to interruption marketing...

After all of these years of talking about permission marketing and getting more targeted consumer data and focus less on the product and more on the customer, P&G is swinging the CPG industry back to the era of product marketing and is stepping up their game of interruption tactics with a 'new age' in store displays, says the WSJ.

At Procter & Gamble, Dina Howell, the director of FMOT, says she wants to take in-store marketing, "from an art to a science." P&G has developed a series of tests to measure the success of its packaging and in-store marketing efforts. P&G won't divulge specific details. But broadly speaking, Ms. Howell says packaging should "interrupt" shoppers on their shopping trip. P&G has developed a set of questions that a package must answer: "Who am I? What am I? Why am I right for you?"

While there is data to show the rise in spending on in-store interrruption tactical ads, there's not corresponding data or results to support this trend...yet.

Personally, I go into the damn store knowing exactly what I want over 80% of the time because I've either purchased and item before (repeat buy) or I've researched the product category and specific item of desire on the web before making a decision. Oddly enough, so do almost 50% of all consumers. However, it's interesting to note that these 'look online, buy offline' shoppers purchase incremental, 'non-researched' goods at a value of $154 more on average for additional products not 'pre determined' by their online research. So, maybe this is the ultimate incremental sales play?

Anyway, this approach makes it more complicated for everyone...

The growth of in-store marketing has made ad agencies' lives more complicated. For starters, ad agencies now have more than one master to please: the client and the retailer. Even after a retailer agrees to a newfangled in-store display, it often falls to individual store managers to install them or, in some chains, make sure the television is on at the right time; they aren't always good at complying.

I can recall while working at in a CPG firm that there was a constant struggle to get our displays up in time, our end caps installed and the proper items put in the proper place. There's got to be yet another great business idea in all of this complex mess somewhere!