Front line personnel from store managers to field marketing directors agree that marketing support materials are big contributors to the selling process. There is still, however, a massive amount of waste and obsolescence due to poor tracking, provisioning and just in time delivery of sales and merchandising materials to the field, reports the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.

According to a new survey by the CMO Council's Marketing Supply Chain Institute, some 68% of frontline, customer-facing executives have experienced difficulty using marketing systems for replenishing critical consumables, making it difficult to meet the needs of those engaged in the conversation, conversion and closure process. In fact, just 6% give access to the ordering of marketing consumables an excellent score.

In the Promotion Commotion Study, sponsored by NVISION®, in-store and front line resources believe that simple profiles that collect critical information ranging from square footage of stores to demographics and makeup of customers could help tailor the specification and delivery of promotional materials to the requirements of each location. This customization and optimization of the Marketing Supply Chain would maximize the potential for impact while also eliminating waste and over-spending.

Marketing is investing billions in the production of point of purchase displays, sales collateral and brochures, and in-store materials, with little regard for the actual targets, locations and resources required to turn these displays into demand creation assets, noted the CMO Council. Its Executive Director, Donovan Neale-May, believes marketers should profile the literature and sell-in needs of customers, prospects and sales locations as a way to better forecast demand for brand logistics and material support.

"Understanding the needs and requirements of different selling environments and situations should be an integral part of marketing's field and channel provisioning process," noted Neale-May. His Council surveyed more than 100 stores, branch offices and dealer sales managers across leading industry sectors in North America.

According to 51% of those surveyed in the second quarter of this year, location-based marketing consumable forecasts, predictive analytics and automated fulfilment are rarely in place.

However, most believe that this level of insight would allow marketing to:

  • Get the right number of items and do not need to store/toss excess (30%)
  • Notify store or field assets as to new material arrival, allowing the front line to plan accordingly (23%)
  • Localize and personalize materials to best reach the locations target market (19%)
  • Get the right number of items required to properly cover floor space (14%)

"As we have seen before, oversights in the Marketing Supply Chain are resulting in over-spending and missed opportunities to make a real impact on the sales and demand process," said Mike Perez, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for Marketing Supply Chain experts, NVISION. "While the economy has improved and marketing has started to reinvest in demand generating programs, we are not in a position to ignore the staggering amount of waste that is being created by unchecked and unmeasured marketing supply chains. Customers demand a flawless experience, and now, as we see from these results, our front-line resources are looking to marketers to deliver the materials and consumables that will advance that experience."

Asian e-Marketing is proud to continue and even intensify its partnership with the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council this year, presenting more of the CMO Council's assessment of global marketing trends, reports and best practices.The appropriate complimentary white paper is available for download (click the image)

The CMO Council comprises 6,000 top marketing decision makers that control around $200 billion in aggregated annual marketing spend. The global organization is inviting senior marketers across Asia to join the CMO Council at no cost and become active contributors and participants in thought leadership programs and networking events. You may register yourself or nominate others by clicking the following link: http://www.cmocouncil.org/registration.php

The CMO Council invites you, in addition, to submit information on your branding and campaign marketing successes for peer review. The global organization will select the very best marketing innovations, success stories, best practices and market insights for inclusion in its growing regional knowledge base, which will be only accessible to Council members, associations, business schools and media across Asia. If you are interested, please submit a short one-page description to Matt Martini at mmartini@cmocouncil.org. You can also suggest Asia-specific themes, topics and subject areas for further discussion, discovery and debate by the 6,000 CMO Council members worldwide who are particularly keen to gather more knowledge and insight into the rapidly evolving Asian dynamic - they would most welcome your contributions.

Last but not least, please feel free to purchase CMO Council’s valuable report “The 2011 State of Marketing Report” that provides detailed insights into how marketers across all regions are allocating funds, evaluating programs and utilizing internal and external resources to the industry here: http://www.cmocouncil.org/resources/forms/outlook-report/index.php

Knowledge is power! Make it yours!

By Daniela La Marca