Top >> Opinion__Comment Retailer Becomes Brand Info Source with (Almost) a Great Idea Published Jul 01 Anyone’s allowed to have a good idea. But without investigating its potential with others in your organisation, it will remain just that… a good idea. A good idea will always benefit from the input of others, whose added value may leverage it into a great idea. Coles has recently introduced a small free give-away publication called ‘Handy Cleaning Hints - 2001’. It’s the first of what is promised as a series of ‘Handy Hints’ the national retailer will be producing. Informal consumer reaction we’ve had has been positive - “here’s something that is actually helpful instead of simply promoting a brand. It’s something to keep in the house. It’s a good idea.” - has been a typical response. All credit to someone within Coles for the initiative: It supports their brand promise - ‘serving you better’, It gives another reason to shop Coles rather than, say, Aldi, It’s helpful, benefit-led and based on providing consumer information, not hype, By producing such a publication, it gives them a vehicle to reach consumers that brand manufacturers will want to be part of, They’ve tied the concept into a consumer competition ‘Coles Hunt for Handy Hints’, One presumes that they have also been able to charge the brand marketers for placement and thus made it close to self-liquidating, They’ve taken yet another step to tilt the brand v retailer positioning in their favour. Overall the major benefit is that is helps to differentiate Coles from their competitors in a largely price-driven category. By itself it’s just a simple handout. As part of a series however, it could develop into a significant marketing weapon. Currently it’s largely a good promotional concept. But if it is going to graduate from being a good promotion for 2001 that reaches existing Coles customers at the checkout to a great campaign that attracts new customers and becomes an integral part of the brand promise of Coles, then it needs to be more fully exploited in a PR sense. For example: It’s not on Coles’ website. If it’s going to have longevity and be seen as part of a series that supports the brand promise, it should be ‘up in lights’ as part of the web site. It can be there in full or as an abbreviated version if the concept is to encourage people to visit a Coles store to collect the full publication. It has the potential to generate media appeal. There’s a host of lifestyle sections in media that might publish something if it was appropriately presented. That would extend the reach to non-customers. Why not have well-known Australian personalities judging what they regard as the best ‘home hints’ of the year tied into the existing competition? That could extend into a significant function or a tie-in with a major women’s publication. Why not extend the concept into radio? A consumer segment where people can ring in about the home issues, sponsored by Coles, could really extend the concept. Down the road there’s potential for a book on the whole area. Remember Margaret Throsby’s Q&A book? Using these and other ideas to extend and leverage the original good idea (not to forget actually advertising its availability) might enable Coles to actually ‘own’ the ‘taking care in the home’ segment in the consumer’s mind. Of course one of the hidden benefits to any retailer is to set itself up as the ‘expert’ to the consumer - in other words put itself between the manufacturer and the consumer. And in this ‘battle’ for control it has one considerable advantage over the brand marketer - it owns the point of distribution to the consumer. Coles ‘Handy Cleaning Hints 2001’ cleverly exploits the distribution advantage to set itself up as the ‘expert’. Further extensions of the “Handy Hints’ concept should begin to yield results (if it is exploited properly). All in all, a good marketing tool from Coles. Top marks for thinking of consumer benefits, print execution and converting it into a nice integrated promotion. But the jury is still out on whether the idea is successfully leveraged into a winner that significantly contributes to Coles’ brand promise and contributes to additional store traffic. The test of this will be whether, 2 or 5 years from now anyone remembers Coles’ Handy Hints. So where does that leave the brand marketer? In the short term - outmaneuvered. Some of those featured in Coles’ publication would have a strong claim (internationally or in Australia) to partial ‘ownership’ of the area Coles has jumped into. They do the research to produce the products and are well qualified to provide consumer advice - arguably better equipped than Coles. The big handicap most brand marketers appear to have is that they think in ‘product silos’. Each product is an entity in itself - often brands within a large organisation compete with one another for funds (and internal applause). Regrettably seldom are they able to take a corporate or sector perspective. That’s not to say that there’s not plenty of opportunities of the type Coles has introduced for brand marketers. But to do so they have to think differently. First they have to think corporate rather than simply product. Second they have think information, education and consumer benefit rather than brand and product attributes. Third they have to think soft sell rather than hard sell - PR rather than advertising. Fourth they have to think outside their individual product silos, acknowledging that others in the organisation, or contracted to it, are better equipped to think in a market segment perspective. One consumer give-away doesn’t by itself suddenly change attitudes let alone behaviour. But increasingly the type of initiative undertaken by Coles will become part of the marketing armoury for other retailers as the emphasis moves from price and features to giving consumers more information so they can feel in control when they make their buying decisions. Unless the brand marketers increasingly embrace this philosophy as part of their marketing they will end up being perceived as manufacturers selling a range of commodities with the retailer positioned as the expert in the eyes of consumers. This battle promises to be just as fascinating as the previous and ongoing skirmishes between brand marketers and retailers over control issues (e.g. shelf space). In this latest skirmish, the retailers appear to be slightly in front. But don’t write the brand marketers off yet; if they get their PR act together they have the resources to win in the long-term.

PR Influences Australian Public Relations Newsletter. Article: Retailer becomes brand information source but lacks PR. Information Content: Opinion & Comment, Marketing