An an article in Portfolio Magazine reported that, “as far as consumer research goes, online advertising is considered more effective than other forms of marketing because shopper activity can be tracked.” Unfortunately, the in-store marketing metric system proposed by Nielsen’s PRISM program is still in its infancy stage. We expect that once PRISM goes national, we’ll see that in-store marketing is the greatest opportunity to influence shopper behavior where it counts. In the meantime, online media provides a marketing value that CPG’s are capitalizing on.
Al Wittemen’s article in the November issue of HUB Magazine refers to the online world as “second life.” According to Wittemen, most everyone has a second life, interactions that exist primarily through online experiences. So now CPG’s are trying to meld the best of both worlds, using the measurability of online activity to predict as well as influence offline behaviors. P&G seems to be at the forefront of this experiment. Wittemen describes their Tide.com site:
“It’s absolutely brilliant from a shopper marketing perspective. When you click on any of the various products, the entire shelf set comes up in a flash movie. If you remember, a few years ago every P&G shelf set was standardized so that it is nearly identical from store to store. This allows consumers to have an experience with Tide in any store, in the comfort of their own homes.”
The benefit of this type of online scheme is farming data on shopper behavior quickly and easily. Last week, P&G invested $7.5 million for a 1 percent stake in Ocado, a British online grocer. Tressie Long, spokeswoman for P&G said of the investment, “It’s an opportunity for us to deepen our understanding of unique shopper knowledge that Ocado offers. We see their business model as fertile testing ground for new ideas.”
P&G seems to understand that cost and price manipulations are not going to do the trick in the long term. It’s like we mentioned yesterday in reference to the Nielsen report that, “marketers will have to get much closer to their customers.” The second life concept presents a way to build that closeness. Wittemen muses that marketing will have to become more relevant. “Relevance are things that may be a little softer, but more meaningful in our lives. You have to have some relevance with people’s lives to connect with them on an emotional level.”
