What separates good shopper marketing from great?
Strategy? Insight? Creativity? Execution?
While there is no denying the importance of each, you can nail all and have your work still be ineffective at shelf.
There is something missing in most shopper marketing.
Deselection.
It is the essential element that happens before shopper selection.
If you want a shopper to find you, help them navigate the category.
If you want a shopper to buy you, help them narrow the category.
Deselection.
We as marketers don't talk about deselection as much as we should. Yet the best shopper marketing helps shoppers deselect as much as it helps shoppers select. In today's retail environment, lack of choice is not the issue. Too much choice is. As Barry Schwarz famously argues in his book The Paradox of Choice, less is more. This is especially true at shelf.
If your shopper marketing does not enable shoppers to deselect, you are missing the point. To drive sales, you need shoppers to select. In order to get shoppers to select,you need to help them deselect.
It takes courage to adopt a different starting point, yet the payoff can have categoric implications. Need a partner in taking a different approach? Give Theory House a call. Our name actually means courageous deselection in Mandarin.
