Loyalty Progams To Boost Word Of Mouth

There is a link between loyalty programs and the ability of one company to buzz. That is the result of a Colloquy study, which "Reveals Reward Program Members 70% More Likely to be Word-of-Mouth Champions than Non-Members".

Here are the key results of that study:

• Reward program members are 70% more likely to be WOM champions (defined as customers who are “actively recommending” a product, service or brand) than the general population;
• 55% of reward program members are self-described WOM champions;
• Only 32% of non-reward program members are self-described WOM champions;
• 68% of WOM champions in reward programs will recommend a program sponsor’s brand within a year;
• Actively participating reward program members are over three times more likely to be WOM champions;
• Reward program members who have redeemed for experiential rewards are 30% more likely to be WOM champions than those who have redeemed for discounts.

Top Five Reasons Consumers Talk, Blog, Email & Post Info on Their Favorite Brands

The COLLOQUY research also examined the motivations of WOM champions—asking why they engaged in WOM activity regarding their favorite products and brands and what categories of offers and information they were most likely to pass along to others within their networks. The top five motivations of WOM champions were:

— To tell manufacturers what I think..........	73%
— To get smart about products/services........	68%
— To be the first to discover new items.......	68%
— To get free product samples.................	63%
— To share my opinion with others.............	61%

Hence, word of mouth is driven by opinion leaders and loyal customers. Therefore, if one company owns a powerful loyalty program, which has a large customer data base, and active members, it will be more likely it could leverage it for buzz marketing purpose.

There is a common statement that social media would help companies to find new leads, because loyal customers will spread the word. This study actually demonstrate it.

Now, if a company own a great loyalty program, that doesn't imply its community management and/or social media strategy will be a success. Nevertheless, it owns a great competitive advantage to stand out of the competition.

Customer relationship management (CRM) aims to leverage existing customers to expand business, especially through cross selling and upselling, but thanks to new social media, it could also imply to get new prospects thanks to its own customers, as a referral marketing strategy would.

Very interesting results. Very inspiring.

Customer Loyalty Shifting From Brands To Retailers

Customer loyalty has always been a hot CRM topic. Thus, the main focus of a CRM strategy is to build a strong customer lifetime value, capturing its loyalty, in order to insure larger cashflow from this specific customer.

Brands have always been great in marketing, and retailers, kind of the followers. In the category management field, which aims for both the brands and retailers to collaborate to enhance departments performances, brands have always been sort of the provider of customer insight, which would ultimately lead to customer loyalty.

Now, based on years of studying people's shopping habits, Hartman Group's researchers predict consumer loyalty is shifting from products and brands to retailers, particularly those that offer shoppers an experience rather than just goods.

That is exactly what I was exposing you not so long ago, about customer experience marketing.

"People don't relate to brands in the same way they used to when there weren't that many products to choose from," said Hartman Senior Vice President Michelle Barry. "Capturing the attention of the consumer requires different tactics, getting a lot more intimate and experiential."

Customer experience aims to bond with customers, and as the retailer can be close to customer's daily life, it is the best placed to get valuable insight, and hence, create customer loyalty. Therefore, even though customer experience improvement effort might be difficult to estimate in term of return on investment, it is indeed a valuable asset, which will create customer loyalty and provide a great competitive advantage.

The Starbucks Example
Starbucks is the best example of how you could turn a classic business into a great customer experience that will drive high revenues. "Starbucks took a tired product category and transformed it into an entire world," he said. "Imagine if someone had walked into Folgers and said, 'We have a new business model for you: Open thousands of stores around the world based around the espresso bean.' It's hard to get somebody to wrap their head around what could be."

It also explains the reason why French retailers are so eager to develop private labels, to create differenciation with the competition.

Designing Your B2B CRM Strategy: 4 Customers Profile

Interesting article inspired by a Gartner study in the B2B CRM field. Here are 4 kind of profiles B2B websites should focus on to improve their ROI on the web.

The Influencer

The main goal of the influencer is to drive sales, but the final transaction does not necessarily end with an online sale. Promotions, test marketing, product information and tools such as loan calculators and quoting engines, are all part of the influencer's activities. The influencer also seeks to raise consumer awareness of the company or product. However, the end transaction is not necessarily on the Web, nor does it have to be with the company.

Consumer goods companies, for example, have sites that influence consumers to go to a reseller to pick up their products, avoiding channel conflicts, and pharmaceutical companies have marketing material online to coax consumers into asking their doctors for the product. For the influencer, online campaign management, email marketing, brand management, product marketing collateral and lead management are most important for influencing and increasing awareness to ultimately drive a sale. Influencer website examples include Toyota, P&G and Maytag.com.

The Facilitator

The main goal of the facilitator is to extend the relationship online, creating a multichannel environment. The facilitator might allow consumers to transact online, but that is only one tool in its arsenal for extending the relationship. The facilitator seeks to understand where the Web fits best in the overall relationship or buying process, and to optimize online functionality, ensuring compatibility and integration with the applications that are used in other channels. For example, an airline company uses a multi-channel relationship in which the Web facilitates the booking of flights, displaying frequent-flier mileage and publishing Web flight updates while its call center assists cancellations, seating arrangements and so on, and the airplane delivers the product, the actual flight. For the facilitator, customer analytics, online dialogue and multichannel integration are the most important technologies. Facilitator website examples include Bank of America, American Airlines and Fidelity.com.

The Seller

The seller creates an environment for transactions, driving business online. The seller, unlike the facilitator, doesn't mind what you buy, as long as you buy it from the seller, and preferably online. It is transaction-oriented, and usually includes high-volume products and multibrands. Like the influencer, it uses marketing to drive a sale, often relying on push marketing and promotions to get customers to buy online. E-commerce includes order management, catalogues, interactive selling tools, Web analytics, email marketing/email response management, and customer self-service, which are all important technologies in the seller's environment. Seller website examples include Amazon, Overstock and Newegg.com.

First, companies should determine which type of website they should be gravitating toward and whether it matches the company's overall value proposition. Second, they should identify which type of website they already have, and reconcile this with the type of website they want for future development. Finally, they need to audit current and future website technologies against the type of website and goal toward which they're gravitating. This will immensely help B2C companies with defining and selecting the technology and the business processes used to support it.

Customer Experience: Macy Tries To Bond With Customers

There are a lot of good examples of great customer experience marketing in the retail industry. Here is one of the newest I fond on the web, with Macy aiming to bond with its customers.

The "brow bar" in the newly reopened Macy's in Deerbrook Mall was a lively scene this week. . Over sounds of pop music, stylish black-clad estheticians were shaping the eyebrows of female customers seated on bar stools.
The brow bar seems to be the kind of thing that can create a bond between a customer and a store -- exactly what Macy's and other chains are trying to do at a time when the department store sector is struggling.

With the goal of tailoring all of its 800 stores to the needs of customers in their respective neighborhoods, Macy's is rolling out its "My Macy's" campaign.

The dramatically remodeled Deerbrook Macy's in Humble reflects some My Macy's initiatives, including a new cosmetics concept called Impulse and a women's shoe department that is 30 percent larger than before.

Macy's Deerbrook in Humble had its grand reopening Wednesday. The store had been shuttered almost 10 months after suffering heavy damage from Hurricane Ike. The three-level store is completely remodeled with a bright modern look.

In September, Macy's will reopen its remodeled Almeda Mall store, also ravaged by Ike. When the Almeda store reopens, Macy's will have 16 area locations.

A strategy like My Macy's is the "right idea, but it will all be in the execution," said Love Goel, chairman and CEO of GVG Capital.

Part of the My Macy's campaign will likely relate to the weather -- adjusting apparel assortments to a particular climate, said Steve Hoch, professor of marketing and director of the Baker Retailing Initiative at the Wharton School of Finance.

While department stores have been facing rough times, Goel thinks they will fare better over the next few years.

"Macy's and other surviving retailers have a tremendous opportunity in the short term," said Goel, who noted that other department store chains have either gone out of business or downsized significantly.

"If you're a 'last man standing' like a Macy's, you should benefit," he said. People still need to buy apparel and housewares, he said, although they are not spending as much.

In the long term, however, the department store sector faces major challenges as consumers spend less time at malls and more time at big box discount and specialty stores, Goel said.

The department store sector has been in decline for decades, Hoch said. For the first quarter ending May 2, same store sales at Macy's were down 9 percent.

Along with Macy's, other department stores are finding ways to localize their stores. At Dillard's, which has nine Houston area locations, "we've been tailoring our stores to the tastes and preferences of customers in a specific area, including Houston, for quite some time," said company spokeswoman Julie Bull. Such customizing includes keeping track of customers' size and color preferences at each store, she said.

The Deerbrook Macy's has a My Macy's concept in the cosmetics department called Impulse that affords the company the opportunity to bring in more up-and-coming brands, said Macy's spokeswoman Robin Reibel.

While the brow bar, which is adjacent to Impulse, predates the My Macy's initiative, it very much reflects the mission, Reibel said. The brow bar is run by Benefit, a San Francisco-based company. There is also a Benefit brow bar at a Galleria Macy's.

Macy's Deerbrook will continue to bring in more My Macy's elements, said Gary Hudgins, the company's division vice president.

In the women's apparel section, the store has already added Michael Kors, which the customers requested, and the men's department added Tommy Bahama, he said.

Macy's customer Laura Schauermann, a retired teacher, is impressed with the remodeled Deerbrook store. "It's exquisite," she said. "I love the layout with the wide aisles and color scheme."

Now, innovation seeks for customer experience, which leads to new concept stores. Here are more pictures about the new store.

Marketing And Packaging

I believe that packaging is a key medium for customer relationship management (CRM). In a slower economy, when marketing departments owns little money to spend on advertising, you need to be creative, and take every chance you can get to communicate, and create brand equity. As packaging is the first tangible brand asset a customer will touch, it is obviously very important to optomize it and turn it into a branding vehicle.

Packaging could be used in very different ways for branding purpose, but in this particular example, packages are used to bond with customers, and support good causes. Here is a short highlight of the article:

Cause marketing programs are taking on new significance in this economy, as brand owners strive to broadcast their corporate principles, create closer relationships with consumers and offer the idea of greater brand value.

In the current economy, people definitely “vote with their dollars,” says Sean Greenwood, Ben & Jerry’s grand poobah of PR (his actual title). Consumers may not be able to make financial donations to charities and other nonprofits as they have in the past, but they will make a conscious purchase, Greenwood says. “I don’t think that’s uncommon for people today.”

Whether you make it fancy or classy, make sure your packaging will provide to customers the right image of what your company is about.

Experience Marketing In The Retail Field

Experience marketing might actually be the definition of marketing for the retail industry. Customer experience is a key factor of success in the retail field. The product might be more complex that it seems in the retail industry. You are not offering a product, but more a service: finding the right product, at the right price, with the right advice.

There is actually two main component of experience marketing in the retail industry:

• The core, or the basic: Have a clean store, not much waiting line at the cashier, the right product displayed, available, and so on. This is probably the most important. Nevertheless, as competition is getting much harder, you can't rely on delivering the basics.
• The experience: The customer experience is a package that will encompass customer service, product range, access to information, and providing the little extra that will convince the customer to purchase at your store, and not the next block one.

Experience marketing implies to be creative, to find the new ideas, new services that will trigger the purchase, and also provide that famous "waow" effect, that will drive customer loyalty, and future purchases.

Experience marketing is probably a difficult art to master. Indeed, it is difficult to measure properly the effectiveness of the experience provided to a customer, and how much of it will drive the customer to buy. But the lack of it will ultimately turn stores obsolete.

Category Management To Provide High Quality Customer Experience

I have explained why retailers should focus on delivering a great customer experience. Customer experience is the key leverage of customer satisfaction and loyalty in the retail business, which also explains why I consider it is an art retailers should thrive on.

Now suppliers still have to take an important part in this effort. Category management has been designed for quite a while now and has always emphasis on marketing better the offer, to increase sales for both parties. Nevertheless, brands and retailers are still missing some marketing opportunities, which could raise from their collaboration.

Engaging shoppers in stores is more important than ever, but retailers and brands must team up or miss important perspectives their partners can provide, according to “Enabling the Shopping Process: In-Store Marketing for the Empowered Consumer” by Miami-based RSR Research. The report is based on a survey of 88 retailers and manufacturers this spring. It reveals that without working together, brands “get too promotional and miss the bigger picture of consumer engagement in the store, while retailers lack the more nuanced shopper insights that brands can provide.”

While creating targeted in-store offers and communications is a top priority, many retailers are too focused on optimization and offer-creation rather than promotion-delivery capability, noted Paula Rosenblum, RSR Research managing partner and co-author of the report.

Part of customer experience is indeed the collaboration between retailers and brands, that share a different part of customer knowledge.

I believe brands and retailers are missing great opportunities to get out of the promotional spins by improving customer experience and providing added value versus a competition centered on promotion making.

Social Media Metrics

It remains difficult so far to estimate social media metrics, as the topic has emerged recently, and that we have never seen anything comparable so far. I have already talked in the past about social media return on investment, inspired by the great work Safia Ouaissa on the topic. Now it is Christopher Carfi that explains us how to get metrics from social media efforts. People are working on this topic and we can see emerge clear tools and indicators to measure community management efficiency.

Online Community Metrics

View more documents from Christopher Carfi.

Facebook Evolution

It is interesting to see how Facebook has been evolving since its debut. I have been on Facebook since 2004, which was the very early stage of the social medium, as it was limited to college students. I was at this time a student at SUNY Oswego, part of an internatinal abroad program. Thus, in order to keep in contact with my international friends, it was important to be on Facebook, and that is the reason why I am still connected with them.

Facebook As A Network Management Tool
That was the first use of Facebook: Stay in contact with your college friends. You could in a glance know who was working where, organize events, and post pictures online. But Facebook has experienced major twists since then. It has evolved at the same pace than the Internet did.

Facebook Apps
That has been probably the major change in Facebook. In the early 2006, Facebook has decided to open its service to third party applications, which results in the creation of lots of different online games. Actually, at some point, it turned me down of Facebook: There were so many apps, Facebook personal pages looked like a mess. You had tons of applications that you could not even see what the person was actually doing. These facebook apps results of an effort to monetize the traffic generated, which was already huge at this time. But as we have seen recently with the launch of the new Facebook interface, things have once more changed.

Facebook And The Instant Web
Since then, Twitter has become the hottest hype on the web. Everybody is speaking about it, and instant web has become an important trend in social media. Knowing what your community is doing right now has become vital. And therefore Facebook adapted once more. They have removed all apps from the main personal page, to put it into a specific ones, and started creating status updates feed, as a "Friendfeed" would, in order to match with the new trend.

As a result, Facebook is evolving and isn't scared to see what are the new trends in the Internet to adapt their platform.

How To Use Social Score: Referral Marketing

I have talked this week about social score, which is one of the most important CRM concept that emerged for the web 2.0. Social score aims to identify the potential of one customer in regards of both his online community (in size and value) and activities (blog posts, number of tweets...)

But once you have identified its potential value, its ability to spread the word of mouth, you need to leverage your new abilities. Of course, you need to have set up a proper community management strategy, where you'll be able to interact with your customers, provide the appropriate response to their needs, but also survey what is said about your brand and products online.

Referral Marketing As A Community Management Tool
I believe referral marketing could be the best strategy to apply online. Indeed, you need to get a specific trigger, and to reward people that will bring you customers among their friends and community activities.

Referral marketing is commonly known in the real estate business, and helps agents to find new clients thanks to their existent network. Hence, referral marketing has developped a wide range of tips and techniques to trigger referrals at no cost. I think there is a lot to be learnt from it and to be adapted to community management.

The goal is to mix social score results (in order to identify the potential return on investment you could get on a specific customer) with referral marketing (that will enable you to reach new customers thanks to the one you already have).

And you what do you think about it? It will be interesting to speak with some already great experts of both worlds to see how they envision the concept.

Social Score: A New Marketing Concept

The concept of social score is emerging. New social media have changed interraction between people and hence, it implies a change in the way we consider customers values.

If in marketing an important concept was to reach early adopters, which influents the rest of customers, wouldn't it be great to know how much of an early adopter each of your customers are?

The social score aims to measure how influent someone is based on its social media activities. It could take into account:

• The number of services he uses (Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Gtalk among others)
• How often he uses (number of Tweets/day, time spent on Facebook, number of comments via Disqus)
• How implicated he is (does he post notes, or does he simply watch comments and status updates? Does he create events, groups, or tests?)
  
• Number of friends he owns
• How influent his friends are

On a customer relationship management point of view (CRM), we consider that a company own a customer equity, which is the sum of customer lifetime value. This customer equity is as important as the financial equity, as it is the base of future sales. Actually, this social score idea match perfectly with a CRM approach.

Now, thanks to social score, the customer equity concept must be revisited, to evaluate how your customers could spread your brand through social media.

To learn more about the topic (in French), it's here on the blog of Henri Kaufman.

Why I Like Customer Relationship Management VS CRM

You have probably noticed that on my blog, you'll find most of the time the term "customer relationship management" more often than crm. It might seem obvious that CRM are the initials of customer relationship management, but in fact, I like to dissociate both.

Gestion de la relation client
In French, we have two terms for customer relationship management. "Gestion de la relation client" litteraly customer relationship management, and CRM. CRM has in French a great connotation of IT, and are linked with CRM softwares. But Gestion de la relation client is a wider term that defines the whole customer relationship management strategy a company could have. It is the idea of the customer focused company, which has been organized to provide a great customer experience.

CRM VS Customer Relationship Management
In English, the difference might not seem that obvious, but I have noticed that most of the CRM blogs speak mainly of CRM softwares and CRM technologies. I'd rather focus on this blog about CRM strategy, and how it implicates different departments (such as sales, marketing, and IT), to have as ultimate goal customer satisfaction.

Don't get me wrong, CRM software have sort of the same kind of goal, but it is limited, as a CRM strategy implies branding and market research for instance.

Hence, I use both terms, but I wanted to make it clear that CRM must be understood as a whole enterprise strategy, and not only as defining a great softwared which would provide analytics to sales and marketing departments.

Vinci And Customer Relationship Management

This is a story that happened to me as I was looking for a parking lot. I was on my way to watch the basketball game France-Hungrary.

Of course, in this neighborhood of Paris, finding a parking spot a night game is a difficult task, and hence, I drove around the block many times to finally decide to get inside the Vinci parking. I get inside the parking and start driving around for about 10 minutes. As a matter of fact, there was no parking available in there. When I decide to get out of the parking, I had to p 2.5 euros, whereas I didn't even park, just for a minute!

Vinci's Park Problems
Vinci let me get into their parking whereas they couldn't deliver the service. They had no parking lot, that is fine, but they should alert about it. Also, I have to pay for a service that hasn't been provide. This is just a total ripp off. If I couldn't consume the product, I should be paid back.

On top of that, Vinci is proposing me a customer service phone number, to deal any kind of problems...

This is simply ridiculous. The company is not able to provide the service and require the customer to pay! This is obviously a complete ripp off. I am not used to use this blog for personal purpose, but I believe this has a complete link with the blog theme: customer relationship management.

This post is also a great way to see the community management strategy Vinci has established. Will they be able to get in contact with me to fix that problem (I have a pretty high reputation online now, and they shouldn't have no problems founding me)? Or will they ignore me on purpose, or simply will have no clue about this issue?

I'll keep you updated in case there is any kind of response.

Branding And SEM Don't Get Along Well

Branding is important for a company. It aims to give to stakeholders, customers and potential ones, a clear view of what the company offers, its position in the market and its values. Branding is a difficult exercise, especially for businesses that provides somehow the same kind of servies than its competitors. It is especially true in the business to business industry.

SEM is the art of buying keywords on search engines, in order to generate traffic on a website, and ultimately convert this traffic into customers. But sometimes, interests of both trades are hard to get along.

SEM takes into consideration web users semantic, and searching methods. If someone is looking for a video conferencing service, it will key "video conference". But branding aims to make a company and its product different. In that case, a company might establish itself as a video communication leader. Moreover, as brand specialist, they might consider the company is better off trying to buy keywords associated with the video communication terms than video conferencing words, which market is expensive and overcrowded.

SEM expert Ian Harris explains the problems he experiences to deal with branding consideration and SEO.

I believe the best solution is to brand yourself on the website as you like, but keep a search engine optimization strategy that would bring you the best results, taking into consideration web users terminologies. Also, with a microsite strategy or couple of landingscape, techniques that bring a high conversion rate most of the time with keywords campaigns, you could link both strategies without much problems.

Publicis Bought Razorfish

This is a great news. Global advertising company Publicis has purchased this week Razorfish, one of the finest web agency in the world. Previously owned by Microsoft, which didn't really want to get into the marketing and communication field, Razorfish has a great reputation, and works on all kind of Internet medium, from SEO to websites creation, but also, knows a lot about web 2.0 and social media.

I am glad and proud that Publicis, A French corporation, was able to make this smart move, which provides it a competitive advantage on other communication companies, as they have succeeded in diversifying its advertising offer on new media, meanwhile TV advertising is hit badly by crisis.

Very smart move, and looking forward how Publicis will leverage this new partnership to get even more into the Internet, but also in the US market.

Social Media To Provide A New 360 Customer Relationship Management

Social Media is a great new medium that has been emerging now for about 3 years. Marketers are still defining the use of it on the long term, but we can have a clear view that social media change dramatically the marketing approach of customers. Prior to social media, CRM was based on customizing a customer relationship management, based on company owned data. It was pretty difficult already, but the goal was to limit cost and have an appropriate message, upon customers needs.

But social media has open the picture and it is clear that it will have a great impact on both customer experience and service. Therefore, in a global customer relationship management approach, you could have different company's department that would use social media abilities to create this great online customer experience. I found that great article on line, which explains well how to use social media for a customer relationship strategy:

• SUPPORT DEPARTMENT: Strategic engagements in social media start therefor on the support side as we can see with companies like Comcast, Ford, Dell and many others.
• PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: A natural next step is to leverage the experience in the service and support departments to drive down product development cost, get early market feedback and in particular support during the product launch phase.
• LOGISTICS AND PROCUREMENT: Social media is probably the most effective and the least expensive early warning system for everybody involved in procurement, logistics and production planning challenges.
• SALES & MARKETING: With the experience from support, product development and logistics it is a natural to now leverage social media in sales and marketing. Why at last? Only happy customers become advocates, helper in the word of mouth campaign or any other function to help create buzz and become buzz drivers into a market. Frustrated customers do the other way around. So starting in marketing - while very counter intuitive - is probably the biggest mistake you can make when you engage in social media.

Of course such changes would drive a some major changes in business organization. Therefore, it is important to have a clear view on how companies are thinking about using social media to run their business. And that is also the reason why a community manager is important, as it could coordinate company's efforts.

Customer Relationship Starts Before Customer’s First Purchase

Customer relationship management (CRM) aims to manage customer experiences. This implies to take control over the whole relationship with a customer, from its first purchase to the next ones.

But the journey to provide a great customer relationship doesn’t start when the customer buys its first product. Indeed, if loyalty is engaged after the second purchase, the relationship a customer has with one company has already started prior that.

Customer’s decision making process
A customer has already established some contacts with the brands during his decision making process. Either he visited a website, or ask the opinion of some friends, but he already has a picture in mind of who you are. Even prior the decision making process.

I believe the decision making process is indeed not taking into consideration as much as it should. Analysing this key event is important, because it will probably determine how to market a product and adapt its communication.

Branding Is Key Prior To Purchase
Hence, your brand, the way you communicate on your customer service and experience, will help you to set up a particular customer relationship with customers. A company

Promoting Customer Service
Also, as customer relationship management is starting before the customer enter the retail, it could have a clear expectation of what the relationship will be based on. Indeed, most of companies now promote their customer service policy and strategy on their website. By doing so, it alerts the customer that it is entering into a clear relationship where he'll get in returns of his loyalty some rewards and advantages.

Some Potential Tools To Evaluate Pre-customer Relationship
I believe the topic of CRM before the first purchase hasn't really been developped so far. Actually, it is difficult to have clear measure about this step, as company's can't really get any data, but still, some tools could give a good outlook. For instance, branding surveys or focus group based on non customers could help you define what potential customers believe the relationship will be about.

Do you have any other ideas about the topic? Let's discuss about it.

Les marques nationales contre attaquent

La crise a profondément changer les stratégies de communication des enseignes de la grande distribution en France. Pouvoir d'achat en berne, moyens de communication revue à la baisse, et bien sûr changement profond dans les modes de consommation ont conduit les enseignes tels que Auchan, Carrefour ou Leclerc à revoir leurs messages publicitaires:

• Auchan communique sur leurs premiers prix: Ils les affiches sur les affiches, en parlent à la télévision, les incorporent dans leurs prospectus.
  
• Carrefour lance Carrefour Discount: L'enseigne ayant du mal à assoir son image prix, elle décide de lancer une nouvelle gamme de produits premiers prix, en lui assignant sa marque comme gage de qualité.
• Leclerc poursuit sa stratégie de comparaison de prix: Mais cette fois-ci, Leclerc va plus loin en mettant en avant le fait que ces premiers prix sont aussi moins cher que la concurrence dans des spots télévisées. Leclerc est le moins cher sur toutes les gammes de produits, grandes marques, MDD, et premiers prix, et le fait savoir.
• Intermarché invente le concept de Discount utile: les produits à bas prix sont sélectionnés en fonction des besoins du consommateur, et non en fonction de ceux qui sont le plus margés. Ainsi Intermarché a développé un concept qu'il explique sur les différents média (prospectus, télévision, radio etc...)

L'objectif de ces changements profonds de communication est bien sûr de proposer au consommateur des solutions par rapport à la période actuelle de crise, mais aussi pour partir à l'offensive des hard discounts, qui à l'heure d'aujourd'hui, gagnent des parts de marché.

Les marques nationales contre attaquent
Aujourd'hui, c'est donc les marques nationales qui se trouvent à mal, puisqu'ils avaient l'habitude d'être les rois de la communication en hypermarché. C'est pour cela qu'il y a quelques jours je viens de voir une affiche sur le Coca Cola Zero. Le texte (approximatif, car en voiture, je n'ai pas pu prendre l'affiche en photo): "qui mieux que Coca Cola Zero peut vous offrir du Coca Cola Zero?"

Et l'affiche renvoie sur un lien Internet: Les marques et vous. Ainsi les grandes marques nationales décident de se défendre et de mettre en avant son aspect qualitatif afin de pouvoir contrer l'offensive des MDD et autres premiers prix. De plus, certaines études aux Etats-Unis ont montré qu'avec la crise, les foyers vont moins au restaurant, mais ce rabattent sur des produits de marque pour avoir la même qualité.

Cette initiative montre bien que les grandes marques, plutôt individualiste dans l'esprit, montrent elles aussi des signes de faiblesse, et leurs problèmes actuelles. Voici l'édito du site.

"A quoi servent les marques ?

Une grande marque, c’est une marque de fabricant.

Elle affiche et engage la responsabilité du fabricant. Elle signe et authentifie son produit en rappelant qu'il a été fabriqué selon ses exigences et sous son contrôle. Elle assure un niveau de qualité.

Une grande marque, c’est aussi le signe d'une relation durable avec le consommateur : garantie, service après-vente, améliorations, innovations font partie de leur histoire depuis plus 150 ans.

Imaginiez-vous tout ce dont les marques sont capables ?

Une grande marque, c'est aussi un engagement : pour les consommateurs bien sûr, mais aussi pour la société dans son ensemble. En mettant leur nom au service de causes qui nous concernent, telles que l'écologie, l'innovation ou le développement durable, les marques participent directement à l'avancement de grands projets sociétaux.

L'objectif de ce nouveau portail est de mettre en lumière les initiatives, souvent méconnues, des marques qui vous entourent, et de vous faire découvrir leur face « cachée »..."

Dunkin Donuts Set Up An Iphone App For New Marketing Campaign

Dunikin Donuts set up a new marketing campaign. As the competition is getting tougher, with Starbucks being hit by the crisis and Mc Donald's entering the market with Mc Cafe, Dunkin Donuts created a new campaign, which invites customers to create Dunkin's next Donut.
This $10 million campaign has brought in the opinions of 130 000 participants.

Also part of the strategy the company launched a new Iphone app, enabling users to create shopping list with different co workers. That is actually very smart as it fits to customer's decision making process, since most of the times co workers of a company will share their orders.
To find out more, check here.