Marketing ROI or DIE! » Consumer Goods

L’Oreal Maybelline The Eraser Product Launch Fail

Rebekah — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:46:02 +0000

Recently, I saw a television ad for a new women’s makeup foundation by L’Oreal Maybelline, but only caught part of the name as “Age Eraser.” Out of curiosity of how effectively L’Oreal spends its marketing dollars, I grabbed my smartphone to search for the product. What I found is a good lesson for marketers everywhere.

The first result that came up is Maybelline’s website and is titled Maybelline New York: Products: Age Rewind The Eraser Treatment Makeup. First of all, the name is just way too long. I found out that “Age Rewind” is the collection name and “The Eraser” the product name. Why not just say “The Eraser” and drop “Age Rewind” for simplicity?

The Maybelline website is not optimized for phone viewing, which is important these days especially for a consumer goods company. Instead, the site comes up as several large buttons:

Find Your Mascara << I was looking for The Eraser, not a mascara.
Find Out More About Great Lash BIG! << I have no idea what this is and I don’t care.
Wallpapers & Ringtone << What, are we in high school?
Great Lash BIG Takes NYC: Watch The Video << I don’t yet have a phone that supports video, and I still don’t care.
Sign Up for Text Alerts << There are no compelling reasons to sign up for text alerts.

On my desktop, the website does show information about the product but some of it makes me laugh and some things I would like to see aren’t there.

They boast a “patented Micro-Corrector Applicator.” The bottle looks like one of those glue bottles you get from an office supply store, that you squeeze to wet a sponge on top. You know marketing has gotten a little out of control when a sponge is now a “Micro-Corrector Applicator.” Just call things what they are and don’t get silly about it, please. There is some concern about the sponge getting gross, but apparently most reviewers are satisfied by the “antimicrobial fibers” in the sponge. I still would be concerned.
On their site, they offer a “MyColorAdvisor.” I simply click on my skin shade (light) and eye color (hazel), and (gasp!) they suggest my best color tones as all of the light tones. What amazing powers of insight they have!
I wanted to know the ingredients of the makeup but this is nowhere on their site. I went to Target to see the product in person. Looking at the ingredient list was like reading another language. The only thing I noticed that is natural is water, and it was the second on the list. It’s amazing what women will put on their face.
It’s a “breakthrough formula with active ingredients!” I looked at what “active ingredients” there are, and found it said 7% Octinoxate, an organic compound found in some sunscreens.
The site could be more interactive. Something that makes more sense than MyColorAdvisor? Please?
Where can the product be purchased? I found it at Target, but where else? Why don’t brands tell people where to buy their products?
At Target this product is $8.99 on sale but $10.99 regular price. The exact same product in a regular bottle is $6.09 on Amazon and in a pump for $2.49 – $5.98 on Amazon. Instead of paying such a premium for packaging, I’d rather go buy some good applicator sponges.

The next search result was a review of the product by Elke Von Freudenberg, who says the sponge doesn’t cover well and is too small. She said the product has an oily feel to it, but after setting it with a powder this goes away. On the positive side, she likes the coverage and long-lasting results. A few more results down, another review of the product at Frugirl said she likes the product’s coverage also, and felt it absorbed into her skin rather than sat on top.

I then looked at their Facebook page. Despite taking time to scroll all the way to the bottom, which wasn’t difficult as it was only a month old, there is nothing said about this product.

In summary, were I in the market for The Eraser, I would have been turned off when I couldn’t access the Maybelline website on my smartphone, by the price when the same product is available for much less in different packaging, by the lack of information on the brand’s Facebook page, and lack of interactivity on their website. The couple of reviews I did see, however, might have made me reconsider. It would be in Maybelline’s best interest to address these Fails and send influential bloggers in the beauty space a free sample for review.

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New Marketing Program May Increase ROI for Retailers

Rebekah — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:14:53 +0000

I learned today of a new marketing program targeted to retailers called CREDITZ (using “Z” in your name seems to be the “new black” these days). They claim their program increases marketing ROI because it is a trackable method to “increase sales, enhance brand loyalty, acquire new customers and strengthen customer relationships.” In a nutshell, they are trying to entice consumers to change their shopping habits so that they use a CREDITZ card, instead of a debit/credit card, with registered online and brick-and-morter merchants who have signed up for the rewards program. The consumer gets points for the amount of money spent on their purchases, which translates into CREDITZ-back that can be then spent on those same merchants.

The upside for consumers:

Earn 100 CREDITZ points for signing up, 100 points for taking their survey, and an unknown amount for referring friends and family.
Manufacturers may provide digital coupons for their products.
CREDITZ contributes 15% of their transactional revenue to widows and orphans because of aids, and micro-loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries.
Purchase gift cards from retailers.
Send CREDITZ to friends and family, even if they don’t have an account.
Combine household member purchases into one account for a one-time $10 fee, as long as you have more than 10,000 points combined.
At brick-and-morter retailers, look for the “GET PAID HERE” CREDITZ sticker on site.
“CREDITZ Digital Currency may be inherited through a valid legal will.”

The downside for consumers:

If you don’t read the below carefully, you may think that you earn 10 CREDITZ for every 10 cents that you spend, but that is not the case.

How long before I can start spending my CREDITZ?
Your initial redemption of CREDITZ is a minimum of 500 or more. Thereafter, you can spend any amount of your CREDITZ on goods or services at participating merchants and online sites.
10 CREDITZ = 10 Cents ––100 CREDITZ = $1.00 – – 1,000 CREDITZ = $10.00 ––10,000 CREDITZ= $100.00

The Ts&Cs state, “Merchants will typically pay you one (1) unit of CREDITZ Digital Currency for every one or two dollars that you spend with them, after discounts and before taxes.” Not only that but, “Each unit of CREDITZ® Digital Currency has a digital currency value of 0.01 of a US Dollar when you spend them.”

So what does this mean? If you spend $100 before taxes, you may earn 50-100 CREDITZ according to the Ts&Cs. Taking the conservative figure, 50 CREDITZ, if you try to spend them right away you can’t. You have to have earned a minimum of 500 points (for your first spend only) to start using CREDITZ points to shop…meaning that you have to spend $1,000 before taxes to use your first $5 in CREDITZ. That’s conservatively a 0.5% return for your money and effort.

When registering, they ask for all kinds of personal information: the kind of phone you own, who your carrier is, who your Internet provider is, what kind of pets you have, do you give your pets Christmas gifts (?!), what kind of music you listen to, what types of movies you like, where you buy books, what is your favorite color (seriously!), and it goes on and on.
There are spelling errors all over the site, which irks me.

Evaluating the ROI of Your Trade Relationships

Rebekah — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:20:27 +0000

Channel development is being increasingly scrutinized to evaluate its marketing ROI. As in other marketing departments, automation is being put into place and more emphasis is being placed on research and analytics. According to Newsfactor, “Trade spending [in Consumer Packaged Goods] ranks second only to the cost of goods on the balance sheet.”

So what is channel development? Channel development is about creating partnerships upline and downline that bring greater influence, strength and sales to those participating. Channel marketing is creating propositions to potential partners, marketing to them, and then motivating/incentivizing them. Channel Marketing Partners are typically vendors, manufacturers, distributors, resellers and retailers, working in cooperation. They start with a deep understanding of their specific target market. They identify the customer’s business issues and develop an approach to addressing those issues, cooperatively building programs from the ground up. They then assemble the necessary pieces and package them into a solution. The goal is to get customers to buy into the total vision of the Channel Partners.

Designing a system that can manage the complex relationships in channels is no small feat. In 2004, CRM Today said that most PRM (partner relationship management) tools out there were like “putting wings on a bus.” They tried to re-purpose the CRM and it simply did not work. They share why:

“CRM is fundamentally designed to manage direct sales engagements between a sales representative and a buyer. This mode revolves around collecting and sharing data throughout the customer lifecycle. PRM, on the other hand, is designed to manage a complex ecosystem comprising legally independent partner organizations. This one-to-many model revolves around aligning business processes across the entire value chain, from vendor, to partner, to customer.”

Today, there are a number of PRM options that are much more sophisticated and designed from the ground up to work for channel managers. And somewhere along the way, PRM became TPM (trade promotion management) and the term “trade funds” became used for co-op marketing.

A 2008 study by the Consumer Goods Technology group finds that “While only 52 percent of companies in 2008 evaluated trade spending, more and more companies are attempting to implement trade promotion management (TPM) applications to improve TPM analysis in 2009.” The reason that more companies haven’t taken on a TPM application is due to their complexity and cost.

Oh, and did I mention cost? NewsFactor suggests that “Because trade promotion spending can reach 20% or more of sales, a very minimal percentage of improvement [from a TPM] can justify an entire project without reaching too far.”

They then go on to detail ways to lower the cost: Roll it out slowly and to those who can benefit most, first. Get sales buy-in and usage early in the process. Use an SaaS. Build real metrics. Eliminate your desire to build unique processes into the system. Talk with other companies (i.e. software vendor user groups and references) who have implemented a TPM and learn from them. Don’t wait until it’s too late and you make mistakes.

“Many growing CP manufacturers can quickly get inundated with unexpected deductions or make poor decisions about promotions due to a lack of centralized visibility. Many growing manufacturers start facing challenges associated with managing trade promotions when they reach a dozen or more SKUs, or when they start negotiating with their first national retailer, or when they surpass the $10M mark in sales.”

Here are several offerings by TPM vendors to get you started:

Purplewire’s ChannelSUITE
Adesso Solutions’ TradeAdvantage™
The Synetics Group’s TPM
The MEI TPM
The SAP TPM

The Channel Champion recently attended a TPMA conference (trade promotion marketing association) and found that the key metrics to evaluating channel effectiveness are:

Budget to spend
Net incremental sales
ROI – consumption or shipment based
ROI – variable and fixed margin
Incremental spend

Add to that list those NewsFactor recommended:

Promotion effectiveness
Lift improvements
Reductions in stock-outs.

As an aside, the company that I work with, C.A. Walker, can support marketing’s efforts in channel development in the following ways:

Profile partners to identify new contract opportunities
Measure partner “brand fit,” awareness, satisfaction, usage
Test partner communications, incentives and promotions

I look forward to learning more about channel marketing developments and sharing them with you here.

trade promotion management (TPM)

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