Monday 30 January 2012

How Can Retailers Step Up Their Game?

RPM's Head of Retail Engagement, Simon Couch, believes retailers must step up their game to create relevant in-store experiences, ensuring shoppers are truly engaged and willing to remain loyal.


“I agree with Helen Edwards’ column, (Marketing Magazine, 18th January) on the importance of engaging the shopper and establishing innovative ways to create an exciting shopping experience. She rightly argues that consumer ‘infidelity’ is on the increase, and retailers must step up their game in order to build and retain loyalty. So beyond slashing prices how do they do it? Retailers, whether large or small operators need to ensure their brand remains versatile and ‘in tune’ with their local communities.

An effective way of doing this is tailoring their offering to the retail calendar using creativity to create a point of difference on the high street. 2012 especially represents great opportunities to do this. Take the Diamond Jubilee, which falls on the 5th of June Bank Holiday; the week the Euro 2012 Championship commences. Here for example there is a great opportunity to match quintessentially English products (such as Pimms, union jacks or scones) with more general summer season products (such as BBQ’s or gazebos).

To really stand out from the crowd, retailers must think locally. These are national, even global, events but be sure to make them relevant to your local shopper and community. Be reactive to news and events, find out if there are Jubilee street parties or Olympic screens, and be the champion. Create relevance and impact and sales will follow”

Wednesday 25 January 2012

RPM in Communicate Magazine

Our Head of Creative, Neil Hooper, has been featured in this month's Communicate Magazine in which he analyses the slick new re-brand of the Imperial War Museum. To read his full review, have a look at the coverage on the Communicate website or check out pages 38-40 of the magazine.

Monday 23 January 2012

RPM in Retail Week - Shopper Engagement

Our Head of Retailer Engagement, Simon Couch, gives advice to retailers looking to create stand out and build shopper engagement using a minimal budget. He urges retailers to remain reactive to events on a local and national level such as The Diamond Jubilee and The Olympics, and create synergies with these through relevant messaging, exclusive offers or bundle deals. The coverage is soon to be featured online which you can check out by clicking the following link: www.retail-week.com/surgery.

Tuesday 17 January 2012

Social Media Captures Moments of High Engagement

In Rob Wilson’s piece on the benefits of pretesting, he shows us that by gaining consumer insight through focus groups pre-campaign, brands are able to create engaging, relevant activity that taps into a consumer need, instigating brand behaviour to fulfil it. This is all very well for pretesting, but is the same market research as effective for post-campaign measurement? How can market research, post-event, tell us how engaged consumers were during the height of a campaign? This is where social media comes in. With its real-time feedback and ability to have constant streams of conversation, social media is arguably more effective when it comes to capturing exactly how consumers felt right in the moment of engagement than a survey taken a few days later or even a few hours later.


Arguably then, market research is decontextualised, and as a result brands should always look to incorporate social media into their campaigns for this very reason. Despite what some may think, this doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Brands should always create a hashtag on Twitter for each event, which would help raise the profile of a campaign by drawing all conversation into one place. The hashtag also makes it easy to track and monitor from an evaluation point of view, and it encourages people to keep referring back to your event after it has finished. Facebook is also useful for gauging real-time feedback. Creating a bespoke Facebook page for an event/campaign and encouraging users to upload photos or comments is a great way to track what they really think, right when it matters the most.

Listening to people in social media works because the comments or feedback are made at the moment of high engagement. What you learn from this kind of medium cannot be gathered through research.

Thursday 12 January 2012

2012: The Year of the Consumer

Thanks to an increased number of social media platforms, consumers have more opportunities than ever before to voice their opinions, views and feedback, which is dramatically affecting business models. Where brands once talked and consumers listened, the opposite is now true, and brands have come to expect that their marketing strategy or product development plans are dramatically shaped and determined by the needs and desires of the consumer.

What’s more, consumers have also come to expect and demand a voice from the brands they interact with. Companies therefore need to be open to consumer dialogue and present multiple platforms to support this. Never before have brands been so focused on the consumer need, and they must aim to engage consumers through a path to participation, allowing them to be valued and heard. Brands must show consumers that they strive to make positive actions from feedback, even if it is negative. Negative feedback is an opportunity for brands, not a nuisance.

Monday 9 January 2012

Recent Press Coverage


2012 is kicking off to a great start. Our Head of Retailer Engagement, Simon Couch, has been featured in this month's 'Bar Magazine' discussing the growing trend towards lower ABV products. Simon argues that consumers are becoming increasingly diet conscious, and as a result, brand owners are under growing pressure to increase their ranges to include products suitable for the health-conscious consumer. You can read his comments via the e-mag here.

Our Pop-Up team has also hit the headlines this month. Their hints and tips on creating a temporary retail space around the time of the Olympics have been included in 'Retail Focus' magazine, in which they also discuss why pop-ups should be a key part of a brand's marketing strategy.