Innovation at the Moment of Truth

by admin | Jun 13, 2018

Innovation at the Moment of Truth

Introduction

Today’s Consumer Packaged Goods manufacturers face a challenging environment with overall industry growth forecast to be a modest 2.0-2.5% for 2018. While price increases have historically been a reliable growth lever, it has become increasingly difficult to realize price growth even when increased input costs justify a change.

The forces of value conscious shoppers, radical price transparency enabled by omnichannel commerce, and intensifying retailer competition have merged to reduce pricing power across the market.

Within this context, innovation remains an imperative for manufacturers to drive demand and realize higher prices. While most organizations focus on product innovation as the primary growth pathway, we at the Seurat Group see few manufacturers actively use packaging as a demand and value driver for their portfolio.

We believe package innovation is an under-utilized lever that brands can use to access incremental demand pools and realize higher price points among consumers, shoppers and customers.

Outside-In Package and Pricing Innovation

Historically, manufacturers have taken an inside-out approach to innovation and pricing decisions – both inside their category and inside the package. Within a category, revenue teams often lean on syndicated data to evaluate pricing within their category and brand portfolio to find the “optimal” price point.

Inside the package, manufacturers lean in on R&D teams to develop products that deliver enhanced benefits to justify higher price points – e.g., organic or clean label offerings.

While these steps are important, focusing solely on ‘inside’ dimensions limits opportunities to increase consumer share of stomach/ usage or to drive overall value growth.

Expanding to include an exhaustive ‘outside’ view elevates the importance of consumer, shopper and customer need spaces, and reveals opportunities for brands to meet new needs through enhanced benefits at higher price points.

Looking Outside-In

We have identified four best practices to unlock incremental growth opportunities for brand portfolios through packaging innovation and price architecture optimization:

Too often brands define their competitive set as products within their physical category at retail. Unfortunately, this approach is disconnected from how decisions are made along the consumer journey and misses choices being made among a broader set of products. Narrowly defining the competitive set misses opportunities to capitalize on whitespaces that may exist in adjacent categories. For example, broadening the frame of reference from ‘Pretzels’ (~$1 billion in sales) to ‘Total Salty Snacks’ (~$28 billion in sales) unlocks opportunities for a brand to compete for incremental demand and dollars.

Within a broader frame of reference it is critical to build solutions for consumers grounded in a deep understanding of the needs that drive product selection. Traditional price and package optimization often has a narrow focus on identifying gaps within a category’s current range of package sizes and prices.

However, this often limits growth to stealing share from within the category or subsidizing sales from a brand’s current product range. Re-orienting to start with broader consumer needs allows for brands to identify incremental demand spaces that are under-served and utilize package innovation to access incremental profit pools.

For example, understanding that a consumer is looking for an interesting, on-the-go snack to alleviate boredom on their commute, rather than a small bag of chips, establishes a whole new foundation to inspire package innovation.

Defining a unique role for each product at the customer level – and the specific needs of shoppers in those customers – are key inputs into package innovation and pricing. The result is an omnichannel product portfolio that delights customers and shoppers and is naturally differentiated across points of distribution.

As online retailers shepherd in the age of Radical Price Transparency (see our growthpaper ‘Radical Price Transparency’), manufacturers increasingly need ways to manage cross channel price matching. Channel specific package innovation provides the dual benefit of better meeting customer needs and minimizing pricing conflicts.

A product’s packaging plays a key role in addressing expanded consumer, customer and shopper needs. In order to access incremental demand spaces, innovation must incorporate package design elements required to win occasions from competitive products.

Vying for a quick-fuel, on-the-go occasion highlights that a package must have portable, quick to eat, no mess (e.g., one handed) elements in order to win a consumer’s dollars. In order to be successful, package innovation needs the same focus, investment and attention as product innovation.

Conclusion

As manufacturers seek ways to increase growth in a low-growth environment, package and price innovation can unlock significant incremental profit pools for new and existing brands. Looking “Outside-In” and utilizing the four best practices outlined above provides the foundation for brands to develop concepts that connect to incremental demand spaces and price points.

The Seurat Group helps clients look “Outside-In” to uncover incremental brand growth opportunities through package innovation and pricing. Please contact us directly at info@seuratgroup.com with any comments or questions. We welcome your input.

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Innovation at the Moment of Truth

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Trade Promotion In Turmoil

by admin | Jun 13, 2018

Trade Promotion In Turmoil

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Trade Promotion In Turmoil

Trade Promotion in Turmoil

Trade promotion continues to increase as manufacturers prop up short-term performance, fend off emerging competitors, and appeal to retailers’ demands to meet their category objectives.

Today, it is not uncommon for food and beverage manufacturers to have trade spending as a percent of sales climb above 25%. At these levels, trade spending can jeopardize brand equity and quickly commoditize categories.

The average trade event lift is down as the Ad vehicle becomes less effective, display less prominent; more retailers shift to a hybrid/EDLP strategy, and overlapping competitors promote during the same week.

The overall impact is return on trade investment is declining as every dollar invested in trade becomes
less efficient.

Trade spending is increasing at a rate faster than sales for many brands, creating a situation that must be addressed by brand owners in order to meet increasing profit targets.

Retailers are asking for greater manufacturer investment as they expand demand generation efforts through social and digital marketing vehicles to reach changing consumers through their preferred means of communication.

Left unchecked, trade spending ROI is forecasted to continue its decline due to key macro trends facing the Consumer Packaged Goods industry:

Spending power is unchanged for the majority of Americans as real wages remain flat, despite improving employment numbers.

Additionally, the lessons of the ‘Great Recession’ have left a lasting focus on value for consumers across the income spectrum.

Retailers across the market, from Dollar General to Whole Foods, need to be sharp on value and are resisting attempts by manufacturers to increase margin in the form of higher prices or lower trade investment.

Adjustments to trade spending are particularly difficult since manufacturer trade investment is the one item that swings retailers from a loss to profitability.

New challenger brands are driving growth across categories and are receiving favorable treatment by retailers desperate for topline growth.

Challengers come in many forms, including those offering big brand benefits for lower prices, and retailers’ own Private Label.

Increasing global demand for commodities, combined with disruption in the agricultural sector, is driving increased input costs for many products.

Manufacturers struggle to pass along cost increases through higher prices, and when implemented, these increases are often dialed back through increased trade investment.

Macro Trends Will Have Impact

These macro trends will impact all manufacturers that are not agile in adjusting how their trade funds are managed, integrated into the marketing plan, and deployed at retail.

As the #1 marketing lever to drive desired brand and category purchasing behaviors among shoppers, adjusting with the times is critical to meet performance goals.

A change in approach is particularly timely for brands in categories where organic topline growth is difficult to achieve. While topline growth may be slowing, the expectations of Wall Street are not changing, and increasing profit delivery is a must for managers.

Fortunately, trade spending is a lever that has an immediate impact on the P&L and it should be optimized to achieve financial and marketing objectives.

Best Practices

We recommended five best practices to counter the drag of macro forces and both increase the financial return on trade investment and ensure trade investment is strategically aligned with brand goals:

Examine trade program impact on shopper behavior in order to create a ‘common language’ to drive alignment between marketing strategy and trade strategy.

Key enablers of this practice are granular, shopper behavior insights at the point of purchase that serve as the ‘planning currency’ between sales and marketing.

Managers need to examine trade performance using more than volume and spending. A true profit view is critical for optimizing trade investment to have the greatest impact on the P&L.

A key enabler is identification of item level profitability and trade spending at the point of execution.

Shoppers are influenced by a wide variety of inter-related factors when making a product choice in store. These factors extend well beyond a ‘syndicated view’ of the store and include everything from shopper marketing programs to the way price messages are communicated at shelf (e.g.,“Save $1.00” vs. “$2.99”).

Manufacturers seeking to gain an edge over competition and increase the efficiency of spending need to incorporate all of these factors into trade analysis and identify the contribution of each factor in driving demand.

Optimizing trade based on year-over-year adjustments or event-by-event, post promotion analysis is no longer an option in a world where average event performance is decreasing.

Manufacturers need to widen their analytical approach to include all of the events/factors in their ‘universe’ in order to identify winning factors that can be more broadly exploited across the business along with NEW programs to bring to market.

Plan beyond a ‘Trade Program’ by taking a total demand generation approach. Integrate leading shopper marketing strategies, investment, and programming into a total customer demand plan for retail partners.