PRODUCT: Semper's baby food

Semper is one of the brands of Hero Group, an international foods group founded in Switzerland. Semper has been producing baby food for 70 years now and export baby food on the Russian market. Here, the offer is a little bit boring : you can find only very simple products (what should be what customers want), "mono-products" like simple puree (with few ingredients) stocked in a baby jar. You can find as well baby food cans but this is not very sexy and attractive...Semper launched on this very "poor" Russian baby food market another type of packaging (that you can find in other countries) : a plastic cup, easy to take away. Thank you Semper!

For more information: http://www.semper-info.ru/ 

Cashiers or machines?

"The day may come when cashouts will be self service such as gas stations, banks or highwaytolls. Customers will put their purchases in a computerized box that will scan the barcodes, VAT, do the total and will then swallow their credit or debit card, get authorization from the center, issue a receipt, give one or more bags of appropriate size and announce with a metallic voice: "Thank you-to have-made-your-shopping-in-Paco-beep-we-are-glad-to-announce-you-a-10%-discount- on-your-next-mens accessorizes-shopping-beep-great-day-thank you-to- have-done... " Paco Underhill was already right except for bags: he didn't expect that we should come with our own bags for shopping...

Self scanning system should replace the "smile" of the cashier and avoid you to deal with products in your trolley.Should be as well a gain of time and simplify customer daylife... When it works!

Selfscanning system is already working in different places and a lot of retailers are starting to use it: Carrefour ("Rapid' ticket"), IKEA, Decathlon in Europe and use 2 different systems: personnal scanners (customers take it at the entrance, scan EAN codes during shopping and connect the scanners at the end of shopping to know the total of purchases). If you have got an iPhone, it is even simplier: you can also do everything from home. Download coop@home application and you will be able to scan codes and add products to your next order sitting in your leaving room. On the place you can as well scan yourself all your products one by one at a self checkout and pay, without any help. But is it really a progress? We are far from the origin of the word "trade" that first refered to some notions of communication and relationships. Developping the notion of self service was for sure a revolution for trade and stores but where are the limits? Faster, simplier...but alone. Is that the way customer are going to buy more, to come back? Is that really the store that customers would like to find? I am sure we will find strong supporters of such concept, I am sure that this could be a way to gain time, improve margins in satured markets... but I still believe that human factor is primordial for stores success, even for hypermarkets. Customers need to meet some human beeings at least before leaving. Despite all progresses made by mass distribution, despite the whole science of merchandising, the beautification of the stores, the time at cashouts is still not a pleasant experience.
And if you add all that you have to think about, to do by yourself during shopping in hypermarkets today, it is for sure not pleasant and sometimes a real stress. Exactly at the opposite of expected result.

Let's admit now that we have cashiers in stores. What should be their role? Difficult indeed...
If they only scan products and tell us the total, we can do it by ourself. If My cashier is able to leave me and be replaced by a new cashier and tell me: "My colleague will complete" (which clearly means "my break can not wait"), this means that there is no cashier-customer relationship as she doesn't mind breaking this relationship.. Clearly, my cashier was already in fact a machine, and we are back to the previous situation. If they should do everything at the same time (and we can still find such cashiers, at least in stores Auchan in Moscow) : scan, put in bags, check the price and weight of fruits and vegetables already weighed in store, smile, within a limit of time, and this 300 to 400 times a day, whatever the mood of the person in front of them...everyone will come to the same conclusion: this is not easy and not human. Cashiers are real machines!!!

Is there any solution?

PRODUCT: Nestle at T- Time...

 We already knew Nespresso machines and its coffee capsules. With the same recipe,Nestle enters the tea market and launches pioneering tea machine system Special T by Nestle and its aluminium capsules (http://www.special-t.com/). A selection of 25 tea varieties from China, Japan, Sri Lanka, India and South Africa for women over 35 years, generally using tea bags. Unfortunately, available only on internet ... and only on the French and Swiss markets for the moment. Wait and see ...

Do retailers really understand customers expectations?

Back from France I am wondering if retailers really take care about customers or if they set up changes they want and call them " customers benefits". How can we believe that customers are happy to think about taking their shopping bags with them, not to forget and have their coin for the trolley, check out themselves products, put themselves those products in their bags when cashier is trying to win speed records, bring back the trolley to its place,...? When everybody is talking about shopping and pleasure, or about stores 100% dedicated to customers (cf Group Carrefour and their Carrefour planet), it seems that we are away from this purpose.
Dayling shopping is definitly not a pleasure or rarely. Taking care about clients and their wishes will basically consist in simplifying their life. Take for example Carrefour new concept: what is really new and what is really useful to customers? Welcome desk? Kid's garden?Loyalty card? Internet? Nothing brand-new...Amazing services: "freshness", "quality of the products", "satisfaction"..is that really customers benefits or just what should be? Apparently hypermarkets simply forgot what does the word " client" mean...
For sure you can find new services but are they really matching customers expectations?Hairdresser, customers meetings, umbrellas...: as many services that will not work within a couple of years.
Customers need real support in their daily, boring shopping and money should exactly be invested where hypermarkets are now cutting budget. What first makes supermarkets or hypermarkets a pleasant place, where we want to come back? Human beings. We want to meet people in store even if this has a cost. And I am not sure that prices went down thanks to human cuttings.
Hypermarkets should focus on basics and stop thinking about hypermarket of the future. Only simple and true things are lasting.

RETAIL>Mosmart stands out!

Still with a clear positionning (cf article on Mosmart free labels) Mosmart launched a new outdoor communication: clear, simple, effective. On a white background, just one product name or very basic picture of the product and one  very attractive price (visible and low). The message is clear (since there is only one): Mosmart offers very low prices. A real nice stroke of advertising! Others have better be careful...

Communication>Flying logos: the FLOGOS®.

"It's not a plane, it's not a bird, it's a Flogo". Flogos are new ecological and playful supports of communication : flying in the air during 30/40 mn, they are a new way to market your event or your business or advertise products. Already used in the US, in UK, Canada...they are arriving in France. Who will be the first to use it in Russia?

Flogos France

Загружено Flogos. - Смотри новое креативное видео

COMMUNICATION>Should You Create A Buzz Campaign Based On Cash Distribution?

Long ago marketers have been using money based direct-marketing incentives to motivates consumers:

- Discounts or coupons have a virtual money value available for buying a specific good / service at a specific time
- Cash-back is Real money that is credited back on your account for a specific purchase.

The techniques are different but the final price paid for the purchased item and the money you have left in your pocket after all are exactly the same. In February 2009 a web cash back company (www.bailoutbooth.com) has decided to go one step ahead. They asked themselves: should we invest our half a million dollars budget to get one 30 seconds TV commercial during the Super-bowl final to reach our targeted audience and create awareness? 90% of marketers would have said “yes, let’s go”, but Bailoutbooth marketing team came up with a complete other idea that had create one of the bigger buzz of the year: The entire communication budget will be distributed in cash in New York’s streets. “Cash booth” were installed in different part of the city and people will queue to receive 50$ or more. In just 2 days media from all around the world started to spread the word about this cash distribution. Since then, many companies have tried to implement cash distribution techniques to generate the buzz around their brand with more or less success. So is the Cash distribution a good instrument to create awareness and leverage sales or just a fad?

COMMUNICATION>How to Value the Cost of Social Media Marketing Campaign?

I have learned very recently that one of the largest Russian company had signed up for almost 1 million dollars to create and animate an online brand community with an almost unknown local digital agency. The offer included 170.000 dollars for brand blog creation, 5.000 dollars a month for IT maintenance and others un-definite expenses like yearly agency commission of 160.000 dollars.

If you are in digital or social media business, you know that such project can cost a maximum 300.000 dollars for one year the most. Such a case pushed me to ask myself one very relevant question: Do client understand what they pay for, when starting a Social Media campaign? (I will not discuss about the second big question: How much money does the guy(s) in the advertising department of this company has received as a bribe…).

RETAIL> No parking, no business

Mix marketing is like a recipe: you have ingredients (4P: Product, Price, Place, Promotion) and you should mix the right quantities of each to get a sweet cake! If you do not put the right ingredient or not the right quantity, you will certainly alter the result. This leads me to ask myself a question about all those supermarkets growing in Moscow and its suburbs ( Perkerestok, Sedmoi continent, Viktoria..): not so big formats but not so small (from 800 to 1600 square meters), interesting range of products….but no parking place (or so few, often no more than 20,always busy and difficult to access, that it is difficult to call that a parking). First answer, confirmed after observation: most of their customers are “by feet customers”. Great, although I wonder how such formats can live with only “by feet customers” (low average basket as one customer cannot carry more than 2 or 3 bags)… But then I discovered that all those stores are doing outdoor advertising in the closest big avenue, more crossed by cars than by pedestrians…I should have missed something...but I am not the only one. Retailers developing such formats should rethink their positioning and review clients’ area and cars use ( more and more Russians have got a car, growing number of people living in suburbs). I am sure that this type of supermarkets is not only attracting pedestrians. But parking is then one of the key of the business.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT>customer relationship

Just a link:
http://www.stservicemovie.com/