Shopper marketing will become extremely important for retail, says Hughe Boyle

Shopper marketing, says Hughe Boyle, CEO, TracyLocke (Omnicom's shopper marketing arm), is at a transformational moment. In a conversation with BT's Ajita Shashidhar, Boyle says that marketing dollars are fast moving from traditional advertising to new-age shopper marketing. Excerpts:

BT: 'Shopper Marketing' is a nascent concept in India. Can you explain to us how it has evolved over the years?

Boyle: The term 'shopper marketing' wasn't really used before 2009. People talked about point-of-sales promotions and so on. In the broader context of the marketing mix, in an area dominated by television, shopper marketing was the lowest form of marketing budgets. It typically comprised shouty promotional stuff - like 50 per cent off and buy-one-get-one-free offers. In the past two-three years, thanks to digital technology, social media and a new generation of shoppers, all of that has changed. TracyLocke is very much at the heart of a transformational moment for what we used to call shopper marketing.

Let's start with who does shopping. We talk relentlessly about 'shopper mom' in the US and UK, who is between 35 and 45 years old, she shops in modern trade and she buys in a certain way. The inconvenient truth is that there is a generation of young people (18-21) who do things differently. They use the Internet for research, they use their social peer groups for recommendations and reviews, which is extraordinarily powerful. It can either destroy or make a brand's reputation. The future shopper doesn't consume television that we used to. My son is 21, I can't remember the last time when he watched TV. He watches content on his laptop and fast forwards all the ads. So, the question, therefore, is how will Pepsi find him? So, the best space to find him is retail or through digital connectivity. That's a huge shift. For the industry at large, shopper marketing will become extremely important.

BT: So, what is new-age shopper marketing all about?

Boyle: Retail gives you an opportunity to touch, feel and experience a brand. My daughter is 18 and we recently walked into Hollister, which has a certain kind of lighting, a sound track and a fragrance. She tried a bunch of stuff on. While she was trying, she took dozens of selfies in various combinations and came out and said, let's go. I asked her why she wasn't buying anything, she said she would buy later on. For the next two or three hours she shared all of those pictures on the social media and it was her friends who made the recommendations on what to buy. The retailer had nothing to do there. So, we went and ordered the stuff on the Hollister online store and the next morning the stuff arrived. When we opened the box, the tissue paper smelt the same as the store had smelt a day before. This does give you an example of where this is going - one, rich experience and two, omni-channel experience; the ability to look at a brand in a physical environment, digital environment, social environment and so on.

That is the reason I am saying shopper marketing is going to take centre-stage.

So, a piece of business that is going to come from TracyLocke North Amercia to India is Hewlett-Packard laptops. If you think about the consideration or purchase journey in buying a laptop, especially when a teenager student gets his first laptop, all of the research is done online. The reality is that a teenager will not buy a laptop online, without having gone to the store, touching and feeling it. But when the teenager goes home, his mom will prefer buying a cheaper laptop online, completely disconnected from the store the teenager visited to touch and feel the laptop. When the kids' moms look at the piece in the store, we know they are going to walk out and buy online. So, the challenge is how do we capture the moms' attention, what tools do we use in the store to capture them, what creatives we need to use in the store to capture them. It's a really dynamic environment now, with lots of factors to consider.

BT: Did brands think about shopper marketing three to four years ago?

Boyle: At a very basic level. It was basic promotions like buy two packs and get one free, or buy a product and get the next one at a 50 per cent discount. Five years ago, brands were powerful and the shoppers were waiting for discounts and deals. Five years on, the shoppers are powerful, brands have to be grateful for the engagement, interest and connectivity that they create. We could say point-of-sales marketing, promotions, all of them are going to come together. It's no longer an invention of the marketing industry. It's an invention of people who are shopping. Nobody told my daughter to go in and take some pictures, get her friends recommendation and then ultimately buy it. She knew it inherently. For her, social media is oxygen.

BT: How much are brands investing in shopper marketing? Are spends moving from traditional advertising to shopper marketing?

Boyle: Absolutely. The needle has moved into the activation and shopper marketing space.

BT: Retail in India largely comprises mom & pop stores. How can you apply shopper marketing techniques in a traditional retail setup? Isn't it challenging?  

Boyle: It is challenging, but it's not impossible. We are doing some work for Kiwi shoe polish. It's not about shoe polish but the pride that your shoes are shinning, so there are some very nice messages around shiny shoes. It is about finding a way of delivering a shoe polish in a really restricted space that reaffirms that message. However, the most important consideration is that we don't use the stuff that we are doing in Europe and America in India. We have to pick and choose the brands very carefully that we can take to mom & pop stores and do work that will work in their environment. There is no guess work, it has to be done by connecting with the people, the insights that they give us.

We are building shopper marketing tools that will help us customise and localise in India.

BT: Won't that require a fair degree of unlearning?

Boyle: Yes, absolutely. The industry in which we work has often been guilty of assuming that our creative prowess always has an answer. In this area it's not true. So, we have done a lot of work in talking to people, sitting and talking with retailers in a focused environment.