Point of Sale vs. Point of Sofa: Owning the Sell

Since the dawn of the ad man, marketers have looked to advertising to create a brand message that leads consumers from the newspaper, magazine, billboard, radio and/or television set, and more recently the Internet, to the store.

Even with established products that consumers know well, companies have depended on a steady, hearty diet of advertising to drive product purchase. Consumers, retailers and sales numbers are telling us, however, that we’re holding the wrong end of the marketing fire hose. Brand advertising should be the last not first step to consider in the process. Rather than begin with the brand outside of the purchase environment, we need to first consider the consumer and her experience at point of sale where the vast majority of purchase decisions are made.

Marketers must look to first win the war where the battles take place, with the consumer at the point of purchase, not miles away armed only with a television commercial sent into the viewer’s home. In all but the exception of marketing scenarios (e.g., new product introductions), it makes no logical sense to first focus most of the money and effort on the delivery of a message into an environment where purchase of a product cannot be made.

Let’s say you’re selling cornflakes. You’re one of five companies that makes cornflakes, and you’ve been selling the same cornflakes for years. Everyone knows that you make cornflakes. Is it most effective to attempt to reach the consumer through a TV commercial during the breakfast hour in hopes that she’s watching, or when she’s in the cereal aisle trying to decide which box of cornflakes to buy? Is it better to run a brand-driven print ad in a magazine that may or may not reach your consumer, or should you invest in an in-store effort that excites your retailer and gets you more shelf space? The purpose of marketing is and will always be to sell, and thus the point of sale, the retail environment, should be the launch pad for marketing strategy. And, whereas advertising is a critical component in the marketing of many products, it isn’t where brand thinking should begin.

In a typical marketing process, a corporate brand manager first meets with his ad agency to discuss the product he wants to market. If it’s a new product, the ad agency might spend months developing the product’s personality and attributes. The agency or company may execute consumer research to clarify the target audience (i.e., the group that will buy the most amount of the product) and support its assumptions made about the audience. The agency will decide how to convey the product’s personality and attributes via advertising, and will develop an advertising media plan to reach the consumers it believes will be most likely to purchase the product. At some point, the advertising creative ideas may be put before a research group of consumers to decide if the brand message works. Eventually, after the product positioning is cemented, the brand manager may work with his marketing agency to figure out how to sell the product at retail. The retailer may or may not be involved in the development or be made aware of the in-store strategy.

Without a deep understanding of the consumer within the retail environment, products risk silence at the register. The consumer is the owner of the product (they buy it, quite literally), not agencies or brand managers, and must be in the forefront of marketing consideration. Whereas all competent agencies hopefully attempt on some level to understand the mindset of the consumer, understanding that consumer within the constructs of the retail environment is critical.

The consumer’s engagement with a brand is not simply about the reinforcement of the brand positioning through constant advertising messaging. Susie Shopper isn’t carrying an advertising message in her head that relates to every product she’ll put in her cart. Instead, her experience and action at point of purchase is the primary driver of a product’s success. How do we create a valuable product experience in-store that will make that consumer engage and take immediate action at the point of contact? By determining what the consumer wants and how the product can provide it, we can build a compelling message that’s literally within the consumer’s grasp. From there, we determine the best way to involve the retailer—an increasingly powerful part of the equation—and the sales force. After we consider consumer and retailer wants/needs/desires and we analyze the competitive in-store landscape, we can create a brand strategy and advertising message that meets those needs.

For countless retail products, the purchase journey begins three feet in front of the product, not three miles away on the couch. Advertising is, and will remain in some form, important to the success of a myriad of products. It serves as a key component in building product image and awareness, as well as an important factor in communicating promotional messaging. Without product awareness, either via media or at retail, the product is a tree that falls in the forest without a consumer in earshot. Advertising is, however, the best place to end rather than begin when developing a product’s marketing strategy.

Quantifiable measurement is critical in gauging campaign effectiveness or return on investment. Advertisers have long emphasized consumer awareness levels of the advertising as a benchmark for success. Conversely, marketing agencies running in-store campaigns are typically judged by sales increases. Now more than ever, retailers are putting more value on the power of in-store “retail-estate.” If you ask any of the major retailers, the ones that actually sell the products, they will tell you their floor space and what products do with it is more valuable than a product’s advertising spends.

Consider this: On average, over 120 million people walk through the doors of Wal-Mart every week, and are exposed to thousands of messages. Put this number against the 97 million viewers who watched the 2008 Super Bowl and its handful of commercial messages, and there’s really no comparison. Shoppers are receiving more messages from their in-store experience than from traditional media. Further, Mom isn’t watching the Super Bowl ads while she’s pushing her shopping cart. If a product’s message doesn’t come through loud and clear at the point of contact in the sea of other products and their messaging, no amount of media will save it. And, if the retailer doesn’t believe the product’s marketing strategy is best for his or her consumers, it won’t have the retail-estate or support necessary to increase sales. The battle to be waged is over floor tiles and shelf space, not simply awareness garnered from advertising.

Beginning the brand marketing process at retail in the shoes of the consumer instead of ending there is a renegade yet logical ideology. And, whether advertising and marketing execs agree with it or not, there is one undisputable, overarching truth of marketing.

Sarah O’Leary is owner of Logic Marketing for Sales and author of Brandwashed: What’s Wrong with Marketing and How We Can Fix It.She can be reached at [email protected].