The Hindu Business Line : Seven steps for survival

Yes, it's a blood pack, on the cover of Retailization, from Kogan Page (www.vivagroupindia.com) . Authors, introduced as `donors', are Lars Thomassen, Keith Lincoln and Anthony Aconis. And the recipient is ... your brand, fighting for its survival and fighting for sales.

Not happy news, but you are not alone. Your brand is `right in the middle' of a mountain of brands, say the authors. "A mountain so heavy and so dense, everything in it has been squeezed. It has been squeezed practically to a point where the individual brands have lost their form and identity."

In this era of retail power, the first squeeze of brands is from the retailer. "When only a few retailers control 75 per cent of an individual market and the biggest brands control less than 1 per cent, it is clear where the real power lies." There are other squeezers, such as shoppers, private labels and the media. But first you need to start with `a new way of thinking about retail', to turn the squeezes into your advantage.

Retailisation, the essential blood transfusion for brands, is defined as `optimising sales by connecting brands to shoppers', and is achieved by optimising the value of the brand `at all points of contact it has with the retail world.' Turn AIDA (attention-interest-desire-action) upside down, urges the book. Thus you'd be `putting the action that surrounds the sale of your product at the forefront of your marketing thinking.'

The authors walk you through seven steps of retailization, arranged in three phases — rethink, reimagine, and restructure. `Rethink' mindset, looking for `insights, breakthrough research, and alternative perspectives.' This commences with a study of the arena to find where sales are created.

The shelf could be any place where shoppers decide between brands and products. "It is a synonym for the meeting place between your products and the shoppers." E-commerce players have their shelves on the Internet, where `the first moment of truth' for a `buy' happens. Watch the arena, `the point of profit', not one of `action.'

Step 2 is to survey the competitive context, or more simply, finding out who else is there on the shelf with you. For, they are the ones you'd like to steal your sales from. `In this world of endless choice,' your biggest concern is not to be `one of the ignored brands'. The authors give as examples Nescafe, which "stole choice away from traditional coffee brands and redefined the way the world drinks its coffee," and Google, which has done something similar in the arena of search engines.

The third step is to find out the one who drives your sale, that is, the shopper. Don't forget that shopping is number 1 leisure activity, and that shoppers are setting the agenda. "Consumers have traditionally been thought of as constant forces. The shopper is the opposite. He or she continuously changes with the situation."

Understand your shoppers as people using your products and services. For example, `a super-cool quote' of Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, reads thus: "We're not in the coffee business serving people, we're in the people business, serving coffee." Moral, therefore, is not to forget about people, by drowning yourself in consumer research.

The second phase, `reimagine', is about `recreating great products and great retail experiences', involving two steps — product concepting (`what is creating our sales') and retail impacting (`how we create our sales'). Talk about clear and straightforward products with clear and straightforward benefits, the authors exhort. "Head & Shoulders shampoo and a Ziploc bag both possess clarity and straightforwardness, so we `get' them straightaway - their promise, their functionality and their benefits." Disappointingly, though, most brands try to make advertising compensate for `lack of product clarity' and then blame advertising `for not succeeding in covering it up'!

A book that can breathe life into gasping brands.

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D. Murali