Walmart Tweets -- Axe to the Rescue! A Tale of Shopper Marketing and Social Media

This week when I was speaking at a conference, someone in the audience asked what Shopper Marketing is. 

I gave my standard definition: a strategy where marketers and retailers develop together an offer that not only sells the marketers’ products, but also increases store traffic and cash register ring for the retailer.  I also cited one of my favorite examples.

Today I found another interesting example – in my Twitter feed.  Walmart sent out a promoted tweet touting the line of shave products from Axe.  Here it is:

Shopper Marketing doesn’t have to happen in the store.  Remember that one of its key objectives is to drive store traffic, so media like radio and out-of-home are very useful.  Social Media increasingly overlaps with Mobile on the Gigantic Venn Diagram, so this tweet is a logical tactic for Shopper Marketing.

Only one possible missed opportunity is that @Walmart could have mentioned the brand as it appears on Twitter, i.e., @Axe.

You might also like:  3 Reasons You Should Care About Shopper Marketing

Consumers, not Marketers, make IMC possible

On the way to work this morning, my daughter noticed that just as we passed the billboard for Potbelly’s new Grilled Chicken & Cheddar sandwich, we also heard a radio commercial for the same product.

To her, it was coincidence. To you and me, it was Integrated Marketing Communications.

Actually, it was both.

Best Laid Plans

IMC is hard work. Not only must we find a simple idea that can work across different channels, we must decide which combination of channels will drive the client’s business.

The old-school, matching-luggage, spider-chart view of IMC is that if we surround the consumer with enough identical messages, we get a force multiplier that drives effectiveness.

It doesn’t work that way.

Only Consumers can put it together for themselves

We’ve made the point before that IMC is just a fancy acronym for “Marketing”. It makes sense that any marketing plan consisting of multiple channels should be coordinated so as to maximize the investment. The conceit of IMC is that consumers see the same spider chart we do.

That’s impossible. Not even in our best laid plans could we hope that most of the audience sees all the messages. Different people will see different combinations. Social Media makes this more true than ever. Ultimately each consumer will put it together for themselves.

Our goal isn’t for consumers to see the spider chart, or appreciate our IMC prowess, but to change their hearts and minds enough that the client sells more product.

Did we buy the Grilled Chicken & Cheddar Sandwich?

In the case of my daughter, who loves grilled cheese, we saw the billboard and heard the radio commercial. I dropped her off at her job as a day camp counselor at Chicago’s museum campus this morning, and this afternoon I brought her back to the office so I could attend an important meeting. Later I’ll take her out for a sandwich – at Jimmy John’s. Why not Potbelly? Because the radio and the billboard can’t compensate for the fact that there isn’t a Potbelly’s near my office.

The world is spinning out of control...

This blog embraces the changes and challenges of modern marketing, which are legion. Here are two quick ones from the past 24 hours of marketing news.

DVR time-shifting. This article on AdAge.com reports a new study on which shows are the most "time-shifted", thanks to DVRs ("TiVo" to some of us). The study from Horizon Media counted eleven shows that are regularly watched up to seven days after they air.

Radio ratings. This morning's NYTimes.com reports that Nielsen's new Portable People Meters bring new accuracy to radio ratings. The author seems very interested in the findings that adult men listen to Celine Dion and that classical radio fans are a bit hypocritical.

These aren't just changes in technology, they are changes in how we measure the effectiveness of what we do.

How TV fits into IMC

My two previous posts about a successful TV commercial and the broad reach of Radio generated some commentary on LinkedIn and Twitter. Some of the chatter was skeptical: TV? Radio? Really?

Yes, really. That's why I posted. There seems to be an unhealthy skepticism toward broadcast media. To be sure their business models are in question. The ground is shifting underneath them just like it is for all of us. (Over the weekend there were a couple of more articles on this subject: The Wall Street Journal examined the Comcast-NBC Universal deal and the self-proclaimed Newspaper of Record pondered "An Unsteady Future for Broadcast".)

Even so, TV and Radio were never the best or only media an advertiser could use. They each have their own strengths: For example TV reaches large audiences very quickly, which is important if you're launching a new CPG product. That's powerful but an advertiser must close the sale at the shelf, so it's advisable to complement broadcast media with an FSI or a shopper marketing program.

With that, it's time to check in on our two IMC projects, one where we handled all media for a client, and another where we worked with multiple agencies.

Agency + Client = Great IMC

You may recall that we were in the process of getting to a channel-neutral plan. We ultimately decided that TV was necessary to build awareness quickly, but in this case we built the TV plan around a strong retail plan that invites consumers to see and try the product. Likewise we used Radio to build awareness of retailer events ("shopper marketing" in some dictionaries). We can summarize the role of TV as less like a megaphone and more like the flute played by the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Agency + Agency + Agency = Great IMC

We left off with this project also on the verge of a channel-neutral plan. In this case TV will played a more traditional awareness-building role, but the magic of working together with all of our client's agencies is that we had good peripheral vision on what everyone else recommended and did. It's only a small part of the deal that our messages were consistent across all media. The real benefit is that each medium played off the others in real time, like on a basketball court. TV, then, was planned in conjunction with all other activity.

What's the right role for broadcast?

My point is that TV and Radio should never be the default position for a marketer; nor should they be eschewed. The right role for all media -- broadcast, retail, digital, social -- should derive from insightful consumer and business analysis. Then, figure out how they all work best together.

The golden age of wireless

Radio will always be special to me because I was a local reporter and announcer before entering corporate life.

Over the years radio itself went corporate as thousands of stations were bought by the likes of Clear Channel and Infinity. At the same time many have predicted the medium will die at the hands of the iPod, satellite or Internet radio.

This just in: Radio lives.

According to an article yesterday in MediaPost, a recent study of media usage confirms that radio is actually thriving in several ways. The study, funded by Nielsen and conducted jointly by the Ball State Center for Media Design and the Council of Research Excellence, measures a wide range of media usage by American consumers. Radio is second only to television in terms of reach, even in the 18-34 age demographic. To be sure, this demo uses their iPods a lot, but radio doesn't seem to suffer. You can click here for a roundup of their findings.

The only caveat I'd offer is that our own agency's research consistently finds that younger adults consume several media simultaneously. Not sure if this new study accounts for that effect, but on balance it seems as if we are still in the golden age of wireless.