Martin Glenn, CEO, Iglo/Birdseye, revealed three key elements for clothing today’s naked shopper at Summit 2006
In today’s world, and no more so than in the FMCG world, there is a paradox of choice. More options can actually be less satisfying if only because there isn’t sufficient time in the day to properly register all the information being thrown at us as consumers.
So clothing today’s naked shopper requires the manufacturer to consider three key elements: excellent delivery of core benefits, a holistic consumer understanding, and perhaps most crucially, a passion for execution.
In delivering core benefits, being better is much more important than being different. As consumers, we can receive up to 3000 advertising messages every day but we will only act on three of them. The shopper has, through necessity, become an excellent editor so it has become increasingly important for manufacturers to innovate.
A good example of this has been the growth since 2000 of one the most mature markets – bread. From revitalised packaging through crustless to ‘best of both’, the packaged bread category has restored price points to what had tuned into a price led market, and provided significant share gain by leading brands.
Meanwhile, there has been a revolution in people’s attitudes, in terms of food, health concerns, the environment, and charities and causes, such as PCs for schools at Tesco. Understanding how the consumer is thinking and tapping into the zeitgeist goes a long way to finding out what they are likely to want in the store.
Finally, there is execution. All too often the ‘missing link’, poor execution is the main reason why companies fall short of their promises and their targets. It is the gap between the plan and the results and a vital discipline for meshing strategy with reality. It’s also a mindset, realising and believing that execution is indeed a big part of the answer. The simple fact of the matter is that an okay plan executed well will always beat a brilliant plan executed poorly. A basic truth, but the truth nonetheless.