In a statement published this morning in Lake Placid (NY), A.F. Fish, the President of the Global Marketing Association declared that their members would switch the name of their ‘marketing’ departments into ‘shopper marketing’. “Since its creation in the 50s, the marketing industry has been focusing on converting consumers through the funnel, from awareness to purchase and repurchase, through preference and consideration. In 2018, the environment is way more complex and purchase behaviors far less linear than the waterfall funnel assumes. Marketing is about selling and buying. Putting the shopper at the core is just common sense”.
Hey, it’s April fool’s day. It’s a joke. I could not resist. But having said that, elevating shopper marketing can make a big difference to a business. Seriously.
In the book “How brands grow”, Byron Sharp et al, tells us that growing brands goes down to driving penetration. And that you drive penetration by simultaneously increasing mental availability and physical availability. That’s what marketing to shoppers is all about. Driving sales by making sure that a brand easily comes to mind as well as at arm’s reach while people are shopping. Shopper marketing is effective.
Shopper marketing is also efficient. It builds upon behavioral science to create solutions that help influence purchase decisions. It brings together science and creativity to convince people, in just a few seconds, to buy a product or a service. No proxies, no fuzzy metrics. In shopper marketing, you sell or you fail.
Think Shopper 