Despite the industry noise level of how shopper marketing-focused companies are taking advantage of digital, the results of this survey indicate that for most companies, digital is either non-existent or in very primitive stages. To date, digital is largely defined as the sales department getting retailers to feature their brands on websites or in pre-store coupons.
There are few indications among respondents that their digital efforts are based on a true path-to-purchase strategy and are coordinated among the various departments and agencies responsible for executing in a way that interacts with their target consumers at key decision points along the path.
Despite the scope of shopper marketing claimed by respondents to be almost universally path-to-purchase (80 percent), very few are executing against this in a balanced way. More than half of respondents report that pre-store efforts account for less than 25 percent of their overall shopper-marketing initiatives. Of that, over half again report that they use digital media in less than 25 percent of those pre-store initiatives. On top of that, more than 75 percent report that their in-store digital is less than 25 percent of their efforts.
The cause of this appears to be the oft-repeated impediments of conflicting objectives and lack of communication between departments. For example, 64 percent cite ‘conflicting objectives between sales, marketing and retailers’ as the number-one impediment within their companies to planning and implementing their shopper-marketing programs.
While this has been the number-one impediment since we began measuring it, it continues to grow as a problem and is actually up from 58 percent in the 2012 survey. Then again, more than half (51%) cite ‘lack of communications/relationships between departments,’ making this the number-two impediment. It’s not that companies do not recognize the growing importance or potential of digital; the core issue with regard to digital shopper marketing is the lack of assignation of responsibility, lack of skill sets and lack of training.
There appears to be little uniformity or standard as to who ‘owns’ digital — and specifically, shopper digital — within respondent companies. Overall, 48 percent cite ‘marketing,’ 36 percent cite ‘shopper,’ 6 percent cite ‘sales’ and 10 percent, ‘other.’ As far as the agency that handles shopper digital, it is again up for grabs. Thirty-three percent assign this to their shopper-marketing agency; 27 percent to their advertising agency; 28 percent to a separate digital agency; and 12 percent to ‘other‘ (usually internal).
When responsibility for digital is as varied and diffused as this, is it any wonder that the industry is so behind the curve in leveraging the capabilities that digital offers?