Breakout Sessions
December 8 & 10, 2009
Dec. 8 PM
Shopper Marketing for CPG/FMCG Suppliers
Led by Brett Stover of Glendinning Management Consultants
What’s next for this new core competency? Gain insight into what the work is, how it integrates with other functions, and where the opportunities to raise ROI lie. Glendinning uncovers international best practice:
- Strategic Direction—current state of the industry in the US and around the world
- Global Case Studies—successes and challenges to help you define what works and what doesn’t
- Organizational Design—pros and cons of different organizational structures and what people do about it
- Benchmarking—compare and contrast relevant, applicable learnings from around the world
Value Discounters: Finding Another Gear
2009 has been a year of major sales and comp growth with increases in profitability for Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar. In comparison to the rest of the industry a truly amazing year, but one that was the result of several years of gradual improvements in marketing, site location, product mix, and seasonal execution.
- What changes have occurred so far... and what will the effect be on vendors?
- How will 2010 be different?
- What will shape how value discounters do post-recession?
Digital Marketing In Grocery: The New Tool Box
Newspapers, radio, and TV—the traditional mass media—have been losing eyeballs and effectiveness as the business of marketing moves to a host of alternative ways of communicating with consumers. From web sites to social media, from cell phones to digital screens in the aisle—new marketing tools are popping up in supermarkets. They are still experimental and not always proven, but have significant potential. We will explore:
- What is the role of the retailer and store as a media outlet?
- What potential will new media have to supplement or even replace traditional promotional methods?
- How can a supplier create a road map for learning and assessment to guide investment and evaluate the value of the new marketing technologies?
Dec. 10 AM
Retailer Economics: The Art of Shelf Defense (AM/PM)
Dramatic changes in shopper behavior and instability in the capital markets are forcing retailers to focus their strategies inward to comp store sales (versus store expansion) for growth. This step-change in the amount of risk tolerated by retailers requires new levels of financial understanding and skill by supplier account teams. MVI presents a special SkillBuilders course on Retailer Economics:
- Raise your Financial Acumen—learn the language of finance and metrics across different retailers, formats, and channels.
- See problems before they become reality—identify opportunities of financial return.
- Set strategies for results in an environment of rapidly changing retailer requirements.
- Gain a working understanding of the basis, elements, and drivers of GMROII and other return-based financial measures. These will become part of everyday conversations as item margin and velocity become critical to success on the shelf.
- Private label delivers value to cash-starved shoppers while providing increased margin opportunities to retail operators. It has and will put increased pressure on brands to perform over the next 12-18 months—identify the implications to your brand and how to manage them.
Target: Driving Relevance within "Expect More. Pay Less"
As the economy strengthens, Target will likely perform better relative to its recent struggles—which means that the next few months represent a unique opportunity for suppliers to map out the areas where they can distinguish themselves and strengthen partnerships.
- Discover how certain departments within the store are performing well despite sub-optimal sales trends for the total store
- Consider the steps that Target has taken to become more practical as it clarifies its value proposition and improves its price perception among guests
- Discuss a number of efforts underway—including PFresh, pharmacy, and multi-channel marketing—that suppliers can align with in the coming months.
CVS: From Acquisitions to Implications
After a decade of acquisition-fueled growth and innovation in the retail and healthcare space, CVS is taking share in a challenging environment. MVI outlines the path forward for national brands at CVS in the face of further SKU rationalization and private label expansion.
- Take a look at Longs one-year out and walk away with insights into the unique opportunities and challenges these stores represent
- Arm yourself with a deeper understanding of the rapid growth and integration of CVS's healthcare agenda into the retail setting
- Gain insight into CVS's latest innovations in health and beauty, including MinuteClinic and Beauty360
- Walk through CVS's four-part shopper marketing and merchandising strategy and evaluate the evolving ExtraCare program and LIFE format
- Find out what's next as CVS navigates through today's reality while building the capabilities necessary to be successful tomorrow
Clubs: Member Value On A New Scale
As consumers curtailed spending in 2009, club retailers benefited from renewed attention. MVI delves into each club retailer's strategy for retaining that attention, gaining market share, and enticing additional spend as the economy resets heading into 2010.
- Assess the recent performance of Sam's, Costco, and BJ's to understand their current position and fine tune forecasts of future performance.
- Learn more about new market, format, and infrastructure investments each retailer is making to anticipate their future positioning.
- Identify what levers (including increased promotional and membership marketing activities) each club retailer is using to drive member interest and the resulting supplier opportunities and retailer operational challenges.
- Outline the broader, multi-channel competitive set of each club retailer to better understand new member expectations and needs.
Kroger & Its Real Competitors: The Cross-Channel Battle for CPG
Kroger competes directly against other supermarkets—but also against club stores, supercenters ,and everyone else who sells consumer packaged goods. Kroger has learned what suppliers already know: what you sell to customers and why they buy is changing more rapidly than it has for a generation. Kroger no longer even identifies itself as a supermarket—is it leading the channel to a new level of relevance or is it pulling away to a new relationship with its shoppers?
- Discuss how Kroger is changing how it thinks about itself and its mission, and what that means for the supermarket channel
- Explore the future for major grocery operators and those who call on them—what are the new business capabilities required for retailers and their suppliers?
- How can a supermarket retailer leverage its strengths and compete against the fundamentally different business models of other channels?
CPG 2015: What Will The Best Companies Be Best At?
This session investigates the market dynamics that will shape retail's future—all through the lens of what is required for a best-in-class CPG company to win in that changed environment. The conversation will center on the capabilities, tools, strategies, and work the customer-facing part of the organization will be focused on, as well as the changes we see in total organizational capabilities and "wiring" to meet the needs of tomorrow's sophisticated and demanding customers.
Key takeaways will include:
- Branding in "uncontrolled environments"—how I bring my brand to life when I don't control exactly how it will be represented
- Taking off the rear view mirror—how all of our shelf analytics need to be more predictive, and less reactive
- Shopper insights—when the retailer has the "what happened" data, what happens to us?
- Communicating a complex financial sell simply—how we get better at putting ourselves in our customers total economic shoes
- Operational flexibility—as our customers seek to simplify, we ironically need to manage complexity more effectively
Dec. 10 PM
Walmart: Partnering with A Leader on the Move
The effects of Project Impact are already being felt by Walmart's suppliers... and the industry as a whole. Gain the insight necessary to allow your team to embrace change strategically.
- Review the current state of Project Impact's Merchandising, Operations, and Marketing initiatives.
- Foresee and evaluate the direction this effort is headed, including the High Efficiency Prototypes, Online assortment expansions, and more.
- Share, compare, and contrast approaches and best practices to learn what others are trying, what's working, and what doesn't.
- Anticipate the range of challenges Project Impact's changes will create both between your company and Walmart—and within your organization:
- Product development
- Promotional planning
- Multichannel marketing
- Assortment and SKU rationalization
Walgreens: Retooling for Growth
The past 18 months have not been easy for the nation's largest drugstore chain—but the supplier opportunity has never been greater. MVI outlines how suppliers can align with Walgreens' new corporate, customer-centric marketing and merchandising strategies—and discusses ways to elevate the retailer/supplier relationship and grow with Walgreens.
- Consider how Walgreens' new initiatives have fundamentally reshaped the path to partnership for supplier partners.
- Walk away with MVI's latest near- and long-term growth projections and familiarize yourself with the implications implicit with a slower pace of new store openings and square footage growth.
- Deepen your understanding of Walgreens Customer Centric Retailing (CCR), including plans to optimize assortment, enhance the shopping experience, offer effective pricing and promotion, and amplify vendor relationships.
- Gain insight into Walgreens' new shopper segmentation program and consider different strategies to help your customer better understand and serve its core shopper
- Examine Walgreens "Rewiring for Growth" strategy—including recent organizational changes—and evaluate how these changes will impact your business with the retailer.
Walmart's Challenge to Grocery: Avoiding the Impact Crater
Suddenly, Walmart woke up and realized it was primarily a grocery store—and the result was Project Impact, a collection of actions and strategies that will fundamentally remake the world's largest retailer. This clear focus on the grocery trip and the supermarket shopper promises to shake up the world of post-recession CPG retailing more than any other factor. Vendors that call on the grocery channel cannot afford to ignore the changes it will make to their business.
- Find out what Project Impact is, and its implications for your strategic business development in grocery
- Learn how Walmart is becoming a radically different customer—and how it these changes are designed to affect traditional grocery competition
- Explore both the opportunities and potential pitfalls these dramatic changes may open up, both for your supermarket customer's response and for the role of "traditional" channels in your strategic business plans