Who Can We Blame – Anyone?

I recently had the opportunity to talk with some senior-level retailers. We discussed a number of subjects and ended up talking about how consumers hate to grocery shop. This is a much-publicized research fact, and one we hear in our qualitative consumer chats as well. Grocery shopping just isn’t fun. It’s a chore. It’s a pain. Filling up the shopping cart is work. So let’s hunt down the culprit and string him up. Let’s once and for all save supermarkets and mass merchandisers and drugstores, our life blood. (Or else let’s chuck ’em all and surf the Web.)

My manufacturer friends (none of whom are clients, of course) blame the retailers. “We have to pay to play,” they whine. “We don’t have any dough left over for marketing or R&D – much less boondoggles to Marco Island like the good old days.” And most manufacturers must play it safe with line extensions and mass coupons and trade promotions. After all, their success rates are higher. There’s less risk. They can be forecast and budgeted accurately, and they fit nicely into an Excel spreadsheet. Sure, they’re boring tactics and don’t add any excitement to the brand or the shopping environment, but they work, dammit.

My retailer friends have plenty of excuses, too. “We’re just real estate managers,” they shrug. “Our margins are so razor-thin that we need the manufacturers to add value to the shopping experience.” Boo hoo. It’s hard to find good help these days. Consumers are fickle and demanding and unpredictable, and they squeeze the Charmin when no one’s looking.

While all this finger-pointing is going on, there’s something else happening as well: innovation. It’s happening all around. Check out toy retailer Zany Brainy. Why can’t Toys R Us be like these guys? Check out Eatzi’s – talk about home meal replacement. And I still eat at Boston Market, although I guess that threat to grocers has turned out to be a false villain after all. In St. Louis, Maxine Clark (former muckety-muck at the May Company) just opened a prototype store called the Build-A-Bear Workshop. It’s a store where kids (and adults) make their own customized stuffed animals. There are lines out her door.

Or check out Apple’s iMac computer. I want one. The new VW bug. DVD. Flat TVs. Satellite telephones. Nutraceuticals. Innovation is alive and well, just living in a foreign land.

Some innovations are among us on the shelves. The Andrew Jergens Company has done a fabulous job with Biore – you know, those pore strips that pull out blackheads from your nose. Pretty cool. Or Clean Shower, the spray you use to prevent mold and slime build-up. We work with The Republic of Tea. Ron Rubin runs that business sip by sip, not gulp by gulp. He does what’s right for the brand.

Shopping for a Scapegoat Now look at the track record for mass marketer innovation. It’s not good. Look at Celestial Seasonings. It thrived as a small company, suffocated under Kraft Foods’ ownership, and is thriving again as an independent business. Remember Smart Foods, the upstart popcorn company that put costumed skiers on the slopes up East? Where’s the brand today? Swallowed up and choked off by Frito-Lay. And for goodness sake, the Snapple story is a classic example of an entrepreneurial brand that was corporatized into mediocrity. Maybe the most poignant example, though, is Rubbermaid. Here’s a company that stopped innovating and then stopped running independently.

I’m not saying that big companies compromise innovation, and thus make their offerings uninteresting, and thus make the shopping experience boring. Far be it from me to be able to connect all those dots.

We can’t blame the retailers and we can’t blame the manufacturers, so who can we blame? How about consultants? I’d sure like to blame them, but I have to admit that my motive is envy. How about ad agencies? Now there’s a target. Have you ever seen a group quicker to paint a bullseye on its broadside? I have to laugh when I read about all these clients who blame the advertising for not driving business. I think a suitable response is, “You get what you deserve.” I know it’s hard to put a blockbuster promotion initiative together for a play-it-safe client, so I can imagine that the same holds true for advertising.

So, let’s blame the Wall Street analysts. They’re the ones who’ve made America’s shopping experience the travesty it is today. Or maybe it’s lawyers. Or the media. The politicians? Anybody?