Monday, December 2, 2013

Progressive Grocer's 2013 Category Captain Winners: Knowing Your Shopper


PG's 2013 Category Captains winners leverage insights to deliver sustainable growth across the store.

2013 Category Captains
Selling groceries isn't getting any easier, with new products competing for shelf space and alternate channels expanding their food offerings, further splintering the public's grocery dollar.
And with prices on the rise, it's all the more important for retailers and their trading partners to work together on ways to emphasize the values that can be found at the shelf. According to a new Nielsen study released last month, 85 percent of global consumers participating in an online survey said rising food prices would impact their choice of grocery products.
"With the global middle class growing by 70 million each year and food prices expected to more than double within 20 years, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies in many markets are preparing for an unprecedented period of rising demand, economic pressures and aspirationally driven buying behavior," says James Russo, SVP for global consumer insights at Schaumburg, Ill.-based Nielsen. "FMCG companies focusing solely on consumer income as a barometer of spending habits, however, are unlikely to fulfill their business growth expectations, because this is not a middle-class-only trend. Food inflation impacts all consumer incomes. By looking instead at consumer diversity, spending flexibility and the consumer demand landscape, FMCG companies can better understand real-world buying potential and more accurately scale goods and services to meet the needs of consumers in both developed and developing markets around the world."
All the more reason consumers need to feel comfortable that the products they're buying at the grocery store are delivering on their promises. To that end, savvy category managers are employing all of the merchandising and shopper insight tools at their disposal to drive sales across the store, boost basket rings and ensure return visits.
In their 17th year, Progressive Grocer's Category Captains awards honor CPG companies for their category management prowess, demonstrated through their partnerships with grocery retailers. This year, there were 99 total winners: 58 Category Captains and 41 Category Advisors.
From perimeter to center store, suppliers continue to demonstrate their understanding of retailers' goals and offer innovative ways to achieve them, elevating the visibility and relevance not only of their own brands, but also of their categories as a whole. Historically, our winners know category sustainability is less about whose name is on a package and more about what's inside and how it can deliver solutions to consumers.
Top category managers also understand how shoppers think. Case in point: Faced with a new generation of web-centric consumers, E&J Gallo launched an initiative to better understand these shoppers and the barriers to wine consumption. Based on the results, Gallo created a new wine navigation platform, tailoring the section based on retailers' respective goals, shopper preferences and priority segments. Retail partners reported significant increases in category sales and item velocity.
Other standouts this year: Kraft's "Be Your Own Barista" coffee program, Coca-Cola's Sustaining Snack Rack, Hormel's efforts to broaden chili's seasonality, Progresso's "Soup's On" initiative from General Mills, the Bird's Eye meal solution matrix from Pinnacle Foods, Freshpet driving grocery pet care traffic, CSM's in-store bakery gains, Tyson Deli's prepared food solutions, and companies like Green Giant Fresh, Dole, Frieda's and TotalFloral boosting excitement and traffic throughout the perimeter.
Only by working together to understand consumer behavior can retailers and manufacturers deliver sustainable, brand-blind category growth, and as you'll see on the following pages, plenty of these partnerships are getting it right.
Methodology
Progressive Grocer's annual Category Captains competition applauds the outstanding category management initiatives implemented in the retail grocery sector over the 12-month period ending Sept. 1, 2013. The list of winners reflects some of the best strategic thinking and execution in the category management field, as revealed in the winning companies' summaries on the following pages.
Our Category Captains awards program is predicated on the accuracy and completeness of the entries submitted for consideration, all of which are weighed on an equal footing. As such, the best entries not only deliver a selection of facts relating to a manufacturer's or a brand's most recent category management achievements during the specified measuring period, they also tell a compelling story of challenges confronted, strategies developed and implemented, and the collective results of trading partners working together toward a common goal.
In essence, the actual entry submitted is the key to the judging process in this competition. In winning entries, a company's importance and influence in a given category are represented as comprehensively as possible. This keeps the awards process dynamic from year to year, as well as leaving open the possibility that up-and-comers can be recognized alongside well-established players.
The award criteria factored into the judging of the entries were as follows:
  • Product innovation
  • Creativity in merchandising, marketing, promotion and advertising
  • Consumer insights
  • Innovative, dynamic category management tools
  • Demonstrated commitment to meeting retail customers' specific needs
  • Effectiveness at differentiating a line or brand within the category
  • Effectiveness at lifting sales for a brand's products in the category
  • Effectiveness at lifting an entire category's sales for a retailer or retailers
  • Fact-based evidence of market-specific or account-specific sales results that support the vendor's claims of excellence
To win the premier Category Captain award, contestants were required to demonstrate excellence in all of the above criteria in their entries. Category Advisors also exhibited excellence, but ranked lower overall than the threshold set for Category Captaincy. Both designations reflect outstanding contributions to the industry at the category level.
PG extends congratulations to all of our award-winning Category Captains and Advisors.
INDEX OF WINNERS
GENERAL MERCHANDISE
Seasonal
Category Advisor: Signature Brands
GROCERY – FOOD & BEVERAGES
Alcoholic Beverages: Beer
Category Captain: Anheuser-Busch
Category Advisor: MillerCoors
Alcoholic Beverages: Wine
Category Captain: E&J Gallo Winery
Baby Care: Diapers
Category Captain: Seventh Generation
Baby Formula/Toddler Nutrition
Category Advisor: Abbott Nutrition
Baking Ingredients 
Category Captain: Pinnacle Foods (Baking Mixes)
Category Advisor: General Mills (Baking Mixes)
Category Advisor: General Mills (Flour)
Category Advisor: John B. SanFilippo & Son Inc. (Nuts)
Breakfast Foods
Category Captain: The Kellogg Co.
Category Advisor: General Mills
Category Advisor: Post Foods
Confectionery
Category co-Captain: The Hershey Co.
Category co-Captain: Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co.
Category Advisor: Mars Chocolate North America
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Coffee
Category Captain: Kraft Foods
Category Advisor: The J.M. Smucker Co.
Category Advisor: Starbucks Coffee Co.
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Ready-to-drink Tea
Category Captain: PepsiCo
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Soft Drinks
Category Captain: The Coca-Cola Co.
Category Advisor: Zevia
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Energy Drinks
Category Captain: Red Bull North America
Canned & Packaged Foods
Category Captain: Hormel Foods (Canned Meat/Chili)
Category Advisor: Red Gold (Tomatoes)
Category Advisor: Musco Family Olive Co. (Olives)
Category Advisor: Pinnacle Foods Inc. (Pickles)
Canned & Packaged Foods: Dry Packaged Dinners
Category Captain: General Mills
Canned & Packaged Foods: Dry Packaged Potatoes
Category Captain: General Mills
Canned & Packaged Foods Shelf-stable Vegetables
Category Advisor: General Mills
Canned & Packaged Foods: Soups
Category Captain: General Mills
Canned & Packaged Foods: Spreads
Category Captain: Ferrero USA
Category Advisor: The J.M. Smucker Co.
Commercial Baked Goods
Category Captain: Flowers Foods
Convenient Wholesome Foods
Category Captain: General Mills
Category Advisor: The Kellogg Co.
Cookies
Category Captain: The Kellogg Co.
Crackers
Category Captain: The Kellogg Co.
Desserts
Category Captain: General Mills
Ethnic Foods
Category Captain: General Mills
Category Advisor: MegaMex Foods LLC
Infant Nutrition
Category Captain: Nestlé Infant Nutrition
Natural & Organic Foods
Category Captain: General Mills
'Free-From' Foods
Category Advisor: Enjoy Life
Salty Snacks
Category Captain: The Kellogg Co.
Category Advisor: General Mills
FROZEN FOODS
Baked Goods
Category Captain: General Mills
Breakfast
Category Captain: The Kellogg Co.
Category Advisor: General Mills
Entrées
Category Advisor: General Mills
Ice Cream & Novelties
Category Captain: Unilever
Meat Substitutes
Category Captain: The Kellogg Co.
Pizza
Category Captain: General Mills
Smoothies
Category Captain: General Mills
Snacks
Category Captain: General Mills
Vegetables
Category Captain: Pinnacle Foods Inc.
Category Advisor: General Mills
GROCERY – NONFOODS
Household Maintenance
Category Captain: Henkel North America (Air Fresheners)
Category Advisor: Procter & Gamble (Fabric Care)
Category Advisor: Procter & Gamble (Quick-clean Products)
Category Advisor: Seventh Generation (Detergents)
Pet Care: Refrigerated
Category Captain: Freshpet
Pet Care: Shelf-stable
Category Captain: Nestlé Purina Petcare
HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS
Adult Nutrition
Category Captain: Abbott Nutrition
Antiperspirants/Deodorants
Category Captain: Procter & Gamble
Foot Care
Category Captain: Merck Consumer Care
Hair Care
Category Advisor: Unilever
OTC Analgesics
Category Captain: Bayer Health Care
OTC Upper Respiratory Products
Category Captain: Pfizer Consumer Healthcare
Skin/Sun Care
Category Captain: Merck Consumer Care
Category Advisor: Unilever
Vitamins/Supplements
Category Captain: Pharmavite
Category Advisor: Bayer HealthCare
PERIMETER
Baked Goods
Category Captain: CSM Bakery Products
Dairy
Category Captain: Kraft Foods
Category Advisor: General Mills
Dairy: Eggs
Category Advisor: CCF Brands
Dairy: Refrigerated Baked Goods
Category Captain: General Mills
Deli
Category Captain: Dietz & Watson
Category Advisor: Hormel Foods
Prepared Foods
Category Captain: Tyson Foods Inc.
Variable/Fixed-weight Meat
Category Captain: Hillshire Brands
Category Advisor: Butterball LLC
PERIMETER – VARIABLE/FIXED-WEIGHT PRODUCE
Overall
Category Captain: Green Giant Fresh
Bananas
Category Captain: Chiquita Brands
Category Advisor: Del Monte Fresh Produce
Celery
Category Advisor: Duda Farm Fresh Foods
Fresh-Cut Fruit
Category Captain: Del Monte Fresh Produce
Fresh-packed Vegetables
Category Captain: Dole Fresh Vegetables
Fruit
Category Advisor: Stemilt Growers LLC
Mushrooms
Category Captain: Monterey Mushrooms
Packaged Salads
Category Captain: Dole Fresh Vegetables
Category Advisor: Apio Inc.
Category Advisor: Chiquita Fresh Express
Pineapple
Category Advisor: Del Monte Fresh Produce
Potatoes
Category Advisor: Idaho Potato Commission
Specialty Produce
Category Captain: Frieda's Inc.
PERIMETER – OTHER
Floral
Category Captain: TotalFloral
Front End Services
Category Captain: Outerwall
GENERAL MERCHANDISE
Category Advisor
Seasonal
Signature Brands
Two of Signature Brands' leading seasonal brands – Paas and Pumpkin Masters – have been a part of consumers' holiday celebrations for a collective 150-plus years. The company is sharing its expertise with retailers to help liven up seasonal merchandising and boost sales.
Paas, which now offers dozens of egg-decorating kits, recently conducted a segmentation analysis to help define prospective growth areas. The brand team found that while Color Cups are a top-performing SKU, the segment has seen little innovation in recent years. The team developed a next-generation Color Cup with a dye pad at the bottom, which provides instant results and eliminates the need to wait for dye tablets to dissolve. Meanwhile, it developed Egg Artist and Clay Creations, two kits that help foster more creativity. This product innovation, combined with consumer support programs, helped grow the egg dye category by 24 percent from Easter 2012 to Easter 2013.
For the past several years, the Pumpkin Masters brand team has been developing merchandising solutions to capture consumer interest outside of the seasonal aisle. It launched spooky "Beast" and "Mini Beast" displays, containing a variety of best-selling kits and accessories, in select grocery stores nationwide. From Halloween 2009 to Halloween 2012, the pumpkin-carving category in the grocery channel grew by 69 percent, thanks in part to these new eye-catching displays.
GROCERY – FOOD & BEVERAGES
Category Advisor
Alcoholic Beverages: Beer
MillerCoors
As the grocery channel faced increased pressure from other channels growing their beer selections, MillerCoors looked for ways to help its retail partners more closely connect with consumers. Recognizing the popularity of digital tools such as smartphones, the company helped develop "Pints & Plates," an innovative solution with an online component to help people pair beer with food. The alcohol and food trip mission was worth $14.5 billion, according to MillerCoors' estimates; however, beer was under-shared in this space, especially when compared with wine.
Supported by a small media buy, as well as an in-store point-of-sale display that catches the shopper's attention in the store, the Pints & Plates program was designed to reach the shopper along the entire path to purchase. The Pints & Plates website suggests meal plans and also gives consumers the chance to customize their searches, either by beer or ingredient. MillerCoors, which worked with Tenth and Blake Beer Co. to develop Pints & Plates, joined forces with Allrecipes.com to get initial recipe content, and the site now includes more than 200 recipes.
As an added bonus, retailers can customize the Pints & Plates solution to align with their own strategies and initiatives. The new program has shown exciting results so far: At one major chain, test stores saw dollar volume lifts ranging from 5.5 to 7.0 points when compared with control stores.
Category Captain
Alcoholic Beverages: Beer
Anheuser-Busch
In the past year, Anheuser-Busch has focused its category management efforts on price optimization to help retailers tackle pricing challenges in light of the significant proliferation of SKUs in the beer category. Anheuser-Bush's goal: to maximize both profit and foot traffic from the beer category.
The company's research revealed that as the high-end segment has grown, some retailers have treated high-end SKUs similarly to premium and value, using comparable strategies for pricing, promotion and ad features. Retailers promoting inelastic SKUs through ad features with hot price points (to drive foot traffic) were leaving significant margin on the table. Anheuser-Busch found that retailers can optimize margin contribution by setting higher prices on inelastic SKUs. With this strategy, volumes will stay consistent at higher pricing because consumers don't choose these products based on price. Meanwhile, retailers can optimize foot traffic by maintaining price competitiveness on high-elastic SKUs. Volumes will significantly decline at higher pricing, because a significant number of consumers choose these products based on price.
Beginning in 2013, the Anheuser-Busch category management and sales team, along with the supplier's wholesaler network, communicated this platform to its grocery retail partners. Several retailers have adopted and implemented the strategies, and are yielding significant performance increases, according to Anheuser-Busch.
Category Captain
Alcoholic Beverages: Wine
E&J Gallo Winery
Surveying more than 3,000 wine consumers, E&J Gallo identified several key trends: Consumers are overwhelmed by wine shopping and seek recommendations, most shop within a comfort zone rather than exploring the section, and they're afraid of making the wrong choice.
Gallo developed a "Wine Navigation" platform targeting specific concepts to simplify the shopping experience. It created clearly identified 4-foot sections within the existing wine aisle. All new items were grouped together in a "What's New" section. To meet its retail partner's specific goals, Gallo developed a menu of options, including "Today's Trends," "Expert Picks," "Best Sellers," "Sweet Spot" and "Wines You'll Like." Each section was strategically placed based on the retailer's goals, shopper preferences and priority segments.
Retail partners reported significant increases in category sales and item velocity. Meanwhile, households shopping the category increased 15 percent during the program, and households purchasing the focus items grew by more than 40 percent.
Category Captain
Baby Care: Diapers
Seventh Generation
Beginning in late 2012,
Seventh Generation joined forces with a major national retailer to test and launch Free and Clear diapers, which contain no fragrances, latex, petroleum-based lotions or chlorine processing. The retailer saw an opportunity to grow the overall diaper category by focusing on green diapers, which are growing 2.3 percent annually, driven by Seventh Generation, versus a 1.9 percent decline in overall diapers.
The test used branded merchandising assets, including a dedicated end cap and merchandising trays, as well as signage. Furthermore, Seventh Generation worked with the retailer to build awareness via the Internet and significant couponing.
The results have been impressive: In the most recent 52 weeks of data ending Aug. 11, Seventh Generation saw its diaper sales nearly triple, while total green diapers grew 15 percent. This in turn drove the overall diaper category, bucking a downward national trend in the food/drug/mass channels. Most crucially, the retailer grew its market share versus its competitors and helped position itself as a destination for green baby items.
Category Advisor
Infant Formula/Toddler Nutrition
Abbott Nutrition
In 2012, Abbott Nutrition's Similac brand team helped one of its retail partners reset its infant and toddler nutrition aisle, which ultimately resulted in an additional $3.6 million in captured growth versus the prior year.
Initially, Abbott created a new merchandising flow for the retailer's 9-foot and larger sets in about a third of the retailer's stores. The team also recommended that key, high-indexing infant formula stores with smaller sets also be increased to at least the 9-foot size. The new sets incorporate a 3-foot section dedicated to kid/toddler items, as well as brand blocking of infant formula types. With the new changes, the retailer was able to better capitalize on the fastest-growing segments in the category – toddler nutrition and oral electrolytes – by giving them additional space and improved visibility.
In an additional example of category management leadership, Abbott is using its shopper insights to create a new kid/toddler planogram for another retailer, with the goal of helping to establish the kid/toddler category as a key retention point for the baby care aisle.
Category Captain
Baking Ingredients
Pinnacle Foods
With an 82 percent household penetration, the baking aisle remains a vital category for center store. Yet too many grocers have resorted to temporary promotions and hot pricing as short-term strategies. Pinnacle Foods' Duncan Hines team saw an opportunity to capitalize on the aisle's popularity, while building new consumer excitement, by introducing a premium product with a higher price.
Recognizing that cake mix is the largest segment within baking – but sometimes not the most profitable – Duncan Hines created a decadent Red Velvet Cupcake mix with real cream cheese frosting. Since the product launched in July 2012, the single SKU's new base sales have totaled $4.6 million. The product has also driven 80 percent of base dollar growth for the decadent segment, the most profitable price tier of all cake mixes. Results at one leading national retailer showed that up to 35 percent of all Duncan Hines Red Velvet Cupcake purchases were incremental to the category.
Category Advisor
Baking Ingredients: Mixes
General Mills
Baking/pancake mixes remained a popular category, contributing $565 million annually, with a 3.9 percent three-year dollar volume compound annual growth rate. As the leader in dollar share, General Mills continued to provide category growth through aisle insights, product versatility and consumer investment.
The company's research arsenal resulted in the Baking Aisle Platform, a guide for optimal category adjacencies and aisle flow, as well as the "Baking Aisle Path to Purchase," a study of consumer attitudes, decisions and behaviors throughout the purchase cycle. To help drive incremental growth in 2013, the Bisquick team focused on uses beyond pancakes. Bisquick also continued to communicate the message, "Pancakes plus _____," showing some of the other uses for the product. The brand additionally debuted updated packaging and was actively involved in meal solution displays and special merchandising ideas for its retail partners.
Category Advisor
Baking Ingredients: Nuts
John B. Sanfilippo & Son
The past year has been one of innovation and category leadership for Fisher Nuts, as the brand owned by John B. Sanfilippo & Son successfully launched its standup bag in the recipe nut category. The resealable bag features an expandable bottom that opens into a flat base, allowing it to stand upright on the retail shelf. The new bag, combined with an integrated marketing campaign, helped Fisher secure distribution among several leading retailers.
To help support its growth, Fisher Nuts launched a 360-degree national marketing campaign in 2012. Working with Blue Chip Marketing Worldwide, the company partnered with Food Network and "Iron Chef" winner Alex Guarnaschelli to promote new recipe ideas for the holidays. In addition, Fisher Nuts joined forces with Karo Syrup during the holidays for an in-store promotion that featured a "Buy 2 Fisher Nuts, Get 1 Karo Syrup Free" tearpad offer.
The campaign resulted in sales lifts for both brands and incremental in-store shipper placement. After the introduction of the standup bag and its innovative partnerships, Fisher Nuts' share of the category continued to grow, and it's now the No. 2 brand in the recipe nut category, according to the company. For the fiscal year ending in June, Fisher Nuts grew 20 percent in dollar sales and 16 percent in pound sales versus the same period a year ago.
Category Advisor
Baking Ingredients: Flour
General Mills
The flour category yielded steady returns, with a three-year dollar volume compound annual growth rate of 3 percent. General Mills, maker of leading flour brand Gold Medal, continued to work with its retail partners to maximize this growth. Its major research projects included the "Baking Aisle Drivers Study," Baking Aisle Platform, "Baking Aisle Path to Purchase," and Nielsen Flour Category Audit.
Meanwhile, the company's Flour Category Platform is in the process of being updated to a more streamlined "101" format. This year, General Mills focused on consumer investment to help drive relevance with millennial consumers. Its work paid off, with increased baseline dollar sales versus last year.
In the area of new product innovation, General Mills recently launched Betty Crocker Gluten Free Flour, expanding the iconic brand's presence in gluten-free beyond dessert mixes. Last but not least, General Mills updated its Gold Medal packaging with a more contemporary look.
Category Captain
Breakfast Foods
The Kellogg Co.
Kellogg has continued to leverage insights-driven proprietary tools, custom/syndicated data, consumer/shopper research and differentiated innovation to help its retail partners grow the ready-to-eat cereal category. Additionally, the company has entered a new segment in the breakfast aisle: drinkable breakfast.
While the ready-to-eat cereal category is down 2.8 percent year to date, Kellogg is performing better than the market and developing growth in two key areas: new aisle merchandising recommendations and innovation. The company has positioned cereal as the building block for an aisle concept called "the evolution of morning foods." This concept, based on learnings from Kellogg's research, emphasizes cereal organized by target age, a granola section and an on-the-go cereal section. Granola, one of the hottest areas of the business, is projected to continue growing. Meanwhile, on-the-go cereal speaks to the needs of versatility and health concerns.
As for product innovation,
Kellogg's biggest success of 2013 has been Special K Chocolatey Strawberry. The item has already reached a 0.3 share in the category. Froot Loops Treasures is a new item just launched in June, but it promises to bring in new sales as well. Also in 2013, Kellogg introduced a character-based WIC-compliant SKU: Scooby-Doo.
In a new area of the business, Kellogg launched its first drinkable breakfast SKUs across two brands: Special K and Kellogg's To Go (an entirely new brand for the company). Kellogg's To Go has been 41 percent incremental to the breakfast aisle.
Category Advisor
Breakfast Foods
General Mills
General Mills worked to provide differentiation and thought leadership via its category management initiatives. The company's latest shopper-based research confirmed a high need for variety in ready-to-eat cereal. Grocers that have increased their cereal distribution versus decreasing distribution in the past year saw dollar sales trends that were 4 percent better. General Mills used its demand transfer tool to help identify the optimal distribution for its individual retailer partners.
Meanwhile, the company's Smart Bundler tool helped optimize merchandising across manufacturers. Last but not least, General Mills helped retailers evaluate their shelf productivity, including forecasting, and employed tools to help with optimal pricing and display strategies.
Category Advisor
Breakfast Foods
Post Foods
Post Foods wanted its retail partners to know that the breakfast food category has a lot of growth potential. Fewer people were skipping breakfast, and more were eating at home, resulting in 13.5 billion incremental eating occasions. Yet there was plenty of work to be done. Two-thirds of dollar sales loss was going to other at-home breakfast foods, namely fruit, yogurt and eggs. The cereal shopping experience was becoming increasingly frustrating as the category became more complex, and some retailers were relying too heavily on deep-discount promotional strategies, which led to a decline in promotional effectiveness.
Post's "Breakfast Breakthrough" program addressed retailers' concerns and suggested best practices to ignite growth. Its "B.E.S.T. Principles" were Broaden category appeal, Educate and knock down myths about category value and nutritional profile, Simplify the retail environment to make it easier to shop, and Target promotional programs that ensure success. The program included assortment and promotion guidelines that could be tailored for each individual retailer. Since its launch, Post's program has already helped several major grocers make significant inroads in boosting ready-to-eat cereal sales.
Category co-Captain
Confectionery
The Hershey Co.
In just one example of its category management success, Hershey this year focused its efforts on in-store execution to help a leading grocer improve poor seasonal and event execution. The Hershey category management team leveraged a cross-functional analysis of business drivers at the retailer, including insights, planning, supply chain and merchandising activities. The process included gathering and analyzing key insights through POS and retailer loyalty card data, conducting seasonal focus groups and store intercepts with shoppers, and developing shopper marketing concepts.
Hershey and the retailer jointly established shoppers' expectations in-store and discovered what the retailer could do to better execute programs. Through collaboration with the retailer's sales, marketing, merchandising and planning departments, the Hershey team was able to demonstrate to the retailer that it had the right mix of insights and actionable solutions to improve event execution at store level.
The retailer has implemented several of Hershey's activation ideas over the past year. For Easter, several of the ideas contributed to seasonal growth and improved sell-through despite a shorter season. These included a solution center end cap focused on basket building; an improved aisle-merchandising set by usage occasion, identified by colored shelf strips; and incremental lobby displays to drive impulse purchases. These merchandising principles have now expanded beyond seasons into everyday events such as year-round confection end caps, improved everyday aisle merchandising and "push" item lobby displays.
Category co-Captain
Confectionery
Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co.
Wrigley, maker of gum, mints and confections, has spent the past year focusing on increasing category penetration. As Wrigley sees it, penetration is a "leaky bucket"; the rate of growth depends on how many new consumers enter the category versus how many exit. To grow the business, companies must fill the leaky bucket faster than it empties. Four barriers to penetration stand in the way: 1) not relevant for, 2) don't think of it, 3) can't afford it and 4) can't see it.
With category growth as the chief principle, Wrigley's strategies and tactics launched from this platform. "Not relevant for" was addressed through product performance and market coverage. Wrigley continued to develop new items and packaging to meet consumer needs. An example is the recent introduction of Starburst Minis. "Don't think of it" spoke to media reach, copy effectiveness and distinctiveness, areas in which Wrigley intensified its efforts. "Can't afford it" was addressed through pricing accessibility and SKU optimization. Wrigley pursued new pricing and pack types that work for consumers, but at the same time recognized the need to ardently manage against meaningless SKU proliferation. "Don't see it" was a barrier addressed through item placement, as well as distinctiveness and shelf pop. Shelving best practices laid the foundation to overcome this barrier.
Another area of focus for Wrigley was self-checkout, particularly for the grocery and mass channels. Robust testing and research resulted in cross-category solutions to capture lost impulse purchases and quantify dollar opportunity at retail. In the aisles, Wrigley partnered with Mars Chocolate to develop a holistic cross-category approach to best practices.
Category Advisor
Confectionery
Mars Chocolate North America
Mars Chocolate North America worked hard to help retailers find ways to sustain long-term front end success. By leveraging the global resources and learnings of its parent company, Mars Inc., Mars' category management team invested more than a year in researching and developing strategic front end merchandising principles, spanning multiple channels and markets.
These guidelines were then tailored to yield customer-specific action plans. A large portion of Mars' research explored technology, including self-checkout, and recommended the right merchandising solutions for this growing area of the store. Self-checkout could grow 63 percent by 2015, according to one study cited by Mars. Since young shoppers will likely drive growth in this area, Mars advised using eye-catching merchandising techniques, with an emphasis on grab-and-go items.
The company shared its so-called "front end growth laws" with major retailers, and many had success implementing them. One major chain inspired front end sales through leveraging category management best practices, elevating its shopper marketing focus and increasing in-store availability.
Category Advisor
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Coffee
The J.M. Smucker Co.
Given the uncertain state of the economy, during the past year Smucker focused its efforts on developing new ways to analyze promotions to grow category sales in the limited-assortment channel. Smucker, maker of Dunkin' Donuts packaged coffee, reviewed coffee ads from the past two years to determine the optimal price point, brand and time of the month to run promotions.
The company's initial hypothesis was that lower price points, regardless of timing, would lead to higher sales for both the brand and the category; however, the results indicated that brand and time of month had greater influence on the event's success. Smucker also sought to gain insights and a better understanding of the impact of the brand market leader versus the secondary market leader. In addition, the team looked at the impact of promoting a brand and private label together. Interestingly, it found that private label performed 25 percent better when promoted with the secondary market brand.
After reviewing the results with one of its limited-assortment retailer partners, Smucker created an ad calendar for the upcoming year based on the sales trends and insights that were uncovered. The retailer saw increased sales in both the brand and overall coffee category. Now Smucker is working with other limited-assortment retailers to help boost their sales.
Category Captain
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Coffee
Kraft Foods
Product innovation and the ubiquity of coffeehouses have turned up the heat on America's love affair with coffee. As grocers felt the effects of percolating demand, many turned to Kraft Foods to understand how to take advantage of this growth opportunity. In response, the Kraft team came up with an entirely new vision to help retailers capitalize on short-term drivers while creating plans to propel long-term growth.
Employing retailer and shopper/consumer insights, the company created an aisle redesign inspiring consumers to "Be Your Own Barista" (BYOB). The BYOB program spanned the essential aisle design dimensions of assortment, configuration and space, yet also provided a pathway for retailers to evolve their sets along a "good-better-best" continuum. The program's main steps were 1) Optimize assortment within current space, 2) Configure coffee by need states, and 3) Increase space to heighten category growth trajectory behind variety seeking and on-demand success.
Retailers adapted BYOB one building block at a time, with Kraft customer teams creating recommendations that reflected account-specific shopper preferences and constraints. One East coast retailer, for instance, made assortment changes that optimized mainstream and premium mixes while increasing on-demand space by eliminating bulk. This retailer's 2013 year-to-date coffee category results have bubbled over: a 12.4 percent rise in dollars, 19.8 percent growth in units, and increased household penetration of 5.9 percent.
Category Advisor
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Coffee
Starbucks Coffee Co.
While grocers' perimeter sections continued to thrive, center store was all too often unexciting. In 2011, Starbucks sought to elevate the coffee category within grocery. This effort was the culmination of extensive in-store research affirming that the presentation of both Starbucks and coffee in general wasn't meeting shoppers' expectations. To breathe new life into the aisle, Starbucks looked to its own cafés for inspiration.
Armed with the knowledge of what works well in its cafés, Starbucks' goal was to inspire the grocery coffee experience by infusing it with the iconic sensorial retail elements that generate moments of connection with its customers. The company worked with a major national retailer to design the Starbucks Signature Aisle, a Starbucks-branded fixture and total coffee-at-home solution. The fixture showcased Starbucks' entire multiformat CPG coffee assortment, including packaged coffee, Starbucks K-Cup packs and Starbucks Via Ready Brew, as well as Starbucks Hot Cocoa and merchandise. Positioned at the end of the regular coffee aisle, the Signature Aisle held a permanent end cap, side cap, and 6 to 9 feet of in-line shelving.
In late 2012, Starbucks installed 20 Signature Aisle test store locations throughout the chain. Polled Signature Aisle shoppers offered positive feedback on the fixture. Their high impression ratings were substantiated on the sales side. Signature Aisle test stores delivered three times the growth rates for total coffee over control stores – with growth realized across all national packaged coffee brands, in addition to Starbucks. The grocer also achieved household growth, increased trips per household, and increased dollar spend per trip. Not surprisingly, the solution is now being expanded to additional stores.
Category Captain
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Ready-to-drink Tea
PepsiCo
Over the next five years, ready-to-drink tea is expected to be a key driver of volume in liquid refreshment beverages. PepsiCo worked with its retail partners to optimize the category to capture this growth.
Working with a leading conventional grocery chain, PepsiCo laid out a learning agenda to address the on-shelf set flow, as well as navigation challenges. The company tested brand- and occasion-/package-based shelf sets versus the current base set. The results were that the brand-based set drove incremental purchases for new users, while the occasion-based set drove incremental purchases for new buyers to the category.
The subsequently proposed set was a hybrid. When tested along with new signage, the hybrid performed even better than expected: Sales jumped 16 percent, and household penetration increased by 1.3 points. Given these results, the partnership is now going further, as PepsiCo dives deeper into how customers view the category.
Category Advisor
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Soft Drinks
Zevia
With industry-wide wellness initiatives emerging at a furious pace, Zevia presented an admirable challenge to the elephantine legacy players in category management of the soft drink aisle. The first brand to deliver a naturally sweetened, zero-calorie carbonated soft drink, Zevia has created a niche for itself that's poised for mainstreaming as health-conscious consumers seek alternatives to sugar and artificial sweeteners in a mature category looking for new direction.
Zevia began with research on shopper preferences and category dynamics. Using retailers' loyalty card data and consumer panel studies, the brand identified a new branch in the decision tree: choosing between artificially sweetened and naturally sweetened items.
Zevia partnered with key grocery retailers to develop and anchor sections of highly differentiated zero-calorie, naturally sweetened CSD items; its 15 flavors were merchandised as a naturally sweetened, zero-calorie solution. Using in-store signage and on-pack messaging, Zevia helped shoppers "find their flavor." In-store sampling events and dietitian-led education programs helped to spread awareness, while coupons, social media and print ads drove awareness and trial.
For a 12-week period last summer, Zevia was the No. 17 low-/zero-calorie CSD brand, with dollar sales growth surpassing 75 percent over the prior year. Additionally, Zevia ranked seventh and climbing among its category peers at a major Southeastern retailer.
Category Captain
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Soft Drinks
The Coca-Cola Co.
Responding to the growing trends of snacking and grab-and-go eating, Coca-Cola sought to drive traffic and sales across several categories by partnering with Mondelēz International (Nabisco) on its Sustaining Snack Rack Program. The effort aimed to offer complementary products in a single spot, increase purchase points in high-traffic areas and impulse zones, build shopper loyalty, and grow basket size.
Coke tapped its shopper insights showing consumers want "value solutions" that align with how they purchase beverages and snacks for morning, lunchtime and at-home entertaining. The program partnered with three Eastern grocers that agreed to activate and sustain snack racks year-round. The variety of display sizes enabled the racks to be placed in strategic locations; for example, the deli cheese area prompted home-entertaining purchases, while perimeter placements grabbed shoppers who didn't venture into center store. Year-to-date results show significant volume growth, and there are plans to expand the program next year.
Coke additionally saw ongoing success with its "Give it Back" sustainable merchandising equipment program. To date, Coke has shipped more than 400,000 of the recyclable merchandising racks and reports highly positive retailer and consumer feedback.
Category Captain
Canned & Packaged Beverages: Energy Drinks
Red Bull North America
Leading energy drink brand Red Bull worked to
elevate the entire category, delivering insights complemented by turnkey ideas to help its retailer partners reach optimal sales. The company was
appointed
category captain at key convenience and grocery
accounts in 2013 by delivering trendspotting reports, scorecarding, merchandising and assortment recommendations, and shopper insights and actions.
Red Bull's category management team used a space and assortment program at several key grocery and convenience retailers, where category space was underdeveloped and over-SKU-ed. SKU rationalization and total beverage category space optimization resulted in volume growth, offsetting the negative trends of other beverage categories. Red Bull's front end cooler program placed the top-performing beverages at the front end, regardless of manufacturer affiliation. Retailers that implemented the program experienced healthy growth across the packaged beverage single-serve business.
Red Bull also identified a significant sales opportunity for one of the country's largest retailers. The addition of coolers with the top two energy drink brands at the most frequented checkout is likely to increase impulse purchases significantly, translating into incremental sales in 2014.
Category Advisor
Canned & Packaged Foods: Tomatoes
Red Gold
Between December 2012 and June 2013, Red Gold worked with a major retailer on an all-compassing category review. The companies had numerous meetings to share category expertise, insights and expectations.
The category information that was presented included trends such as package types, low-sodium and organic. Historical category performance was also reviewed to get a better sense of the national and regional markets, as well as competition. Finally, an in-depth look at the four Ps (pricing, products, promotional activity and placement) was completed.
Red Gold and the retailer also conducted an e-survey with loyal shoppers to develop a tomato consumer decision tree. Two distinct types of consumers appeared: those who shop by tomato type/form first (the cook), and those who shop by price first (the value shopper). Red Gold identified that the retailer's current placement system could be changed to a brand block to better accommodate both types of consumers.
The manufacturer additionally conducted a best-in-class review of retailers to recommend the optimal planogram layout and flow. The team found again that a brand block by segment achieved the most desirable results. While the retailer has implemented the changes, the program is still too early in development for Red Gold to report the expected category growth.
Category Captain
Canned & Packaged Foods: Meat/Chili
Hormel Foods
Hormel Foods, a manufacturer known for its strong portfolio of canned and tray products, was busy this year working in two important categories: canned meat and chili.
First, the company was tasked with growing a key retailer's market share in the canned meat category. Due to the highly commoditized and mature nature of the category, as well as the retailer's high existing market share, the Hormel team knew it needed a fresh approach. Through the implementation of a segment-centric strategy informed by growth analysis, Hormel was able to garner up to 18 percent growth for the retailer in target segments, driving overall category growth and addressing the partner's sales priority.
In the chili segment, Hormel worked with another leading grocer to tackle declining sales. As the retailer's category manager, Hormel quickly identified the cause of the decline: Key chili events just weren't as effective as they were during the previous year. Thinking outside the box, the manufacturer chose an ideal time frame to initially reach price-sensitive households: Halloween. Further, the new merchandising plan included strategic events that would extend the seasonality of chili into nontraditional spring and summer months, and tie into popular cultural events like March Madness, showcasing innovation in the segment. The opportunity opened the door for incremental key events for all manufacturers to participate in throughout the year. In the past 52 weeks, chili has reversed negative trends from the last season and increased sales, units and visits.
Category Advisor
Canned & Packaged Foods: Olives
Musco Family Olive Co.
As a leading supplier of California black ripe olives, the Musco Family Olive Co. aimed to reverse declining sales in the canned olive category while building consumer usage occasions. The company used its innovative packaging and marketing to persuade a younger generation of consumers that olives can be healthy, convenient and portable.
Its new "no-mess" olive snack packs took the convenience factor a step further by featuring cups with no brine or oily residue. Musco tested the new brand, Pearls Olives to Go, with a retail partner in the Northeast and received stunning results: Consumers' purchase frequency was more than 3.5 times that of traditional pitted ripe olives in a can. The product also yielded high satisfaction scores with consumers: 95 percent indicated a strong likelihood to repurchase Pearls Olives to Go snack cups, and 65 percent anticipated repurchasing the product at least once every two weeks. In addition, the store's basket size increased at least 7 percent when Olives to Go were present.
As part of launching the new product, Musco provided and continues to provide retail partners with strong support in regard to supply chain information, merchandising options, pricing and promotion optimization. This comprehensive support grew sales with Musco's current retailer partners, while also attracting new retail accounts.
Category Captain
Canned & Packaged Foods: Dry Packaged Potatoes
General Mills
General Mills' Betty Crocker brand led profitable growth in the dry packaged potatoes category by offering a broad portfolio of SKUs while providing innovation, more convenience and high-impact promotional strategies to engage consumers. Aligning with the needs of today's time-strapped consumers, the $505 million category grew 3.1 percent versus last year in dollars. Not only is Betty Crocker an iconic brand that's easily recognizable, it also has a strong rate of interaction with other brands.
Last year, General Mills conducted a full category shelf audit with Nielsen and leveraged Willard Bishop activity-based costing into total category profitability to validate the company's shelf-set recommendations and help it partner more effectively with retailers. The company's research indicated continued opportunity for increased growth in the category by adopting shelf best practices. General Mills advised retailers to maintain a 4- to 8-foot base section comprising five shelves that contain 33-38 SKUs, with a higher share of space dedicated to flavored pouch mashed, skillet and microwave potatoes.
The company's tradition of innovation continued in 2013, with a total of seven new items. Additionally, to build the category, General Mills reached out to consumers through a variety of promotional efforts, including the BettyCrocker.com website and a campaign with CafeMom.
Category Captain
Canned & Packaged Foods: Dry Packaged Dinners
General Mills
Dry packaged dinners fared well during recent economic conditions, experiencing a 3 percent increase in dollar sales. Currently valued at around $2.41 billion, this vital center store category includes macaroni and cheese; main meals/add-to-meat meals, noodles and sauce; and dry packaged salads. As a category leader, General Mills helped its retail partners by delivering consumer path-to-purchase insights, category best practice shelf recommendations, assortment guidance and merchandising bundling guidance, and differentiated consumer support.
From its path-to-purchase work, General Mills identified strengths, opportunities and future growth strategies to maximize category performance. The company found that consumers are buying dry packaged dinners because these products offer multiple benefits and satisfy different needs. General Mills also discovered that these shoppers are generally risk-averse; they're on autopilot when shopping and remain loyal to their preferred segment.
In partnership with Nielsen, General Mills developed a Gold Standard Planogram. This defined the optimal shelf configuration to maximize category sales. It included the consumer need continuums of "casual family meal" and "kid-driven meal." General Mills also provided retailers with merchandising best practices to maximize lifts on ads and displays. Last but not least, its consumer support included cause marketing initiatives such as "Bonus Box Tops" and "Pink Together," along with new packaging for the Helper product line.
Category Advisor
Canned & Packaged Foods: Pickles
Pinnacle Foods Inc.
Despite 80 percent household penetration, the shelf-stable pickle category was experiencing declines in household penetration and repeat purchases. With little visual product differentiation in the pickle segment, the consumer was faced with rows of similar-looking jars, perceived as boring and uninteresting.
Pinnacle Foods aimed to jump-start the category by launching a premium line of shelf-stable pickles under its Vlasic brand, made with specially selected ingredients and no artificial colors or flavors, packed in a Mason-type jar that conveyed a "farm" look and feel delivering on product authenticity, with a simple label providing great product visuals.
For bringing innovation into a dull and mature category, Pinnacle received significant positive feedback and results from retail partners and consumers. Since launching in July 2012, Farmer's Garden has generated $19 million in new base sales to the shelf-stable pickle category, with two-thirds of sales incremental to the category and solid rates of trial and repeat since launch.
Category Captain
Canned & Packaged Foods: Soups
General Mills
General Mills focused on investing resources to understand the soup category and drivers of growth. Since 2010, its "Transform Soup" growth story has turned a negative trend (down 4 percent in 2010) into growth (up 4 percent in 2013).
To keep that momentum going, General Mills' Progresso brand released its "Soup's On!" growth story in 2013. Macro trend insights such as growth in boomers/millennials/Hispanics, demand for healthy meal choices, and increased focus on family meal solutions inspired a three-point category growth plan toward a $2 billion category opportunity by 2020: better shelf variety, better shopability and bringing new users to the aisle with new meal occasions. The top 10 retailers that led the activation against these growth drivers experienced differential growth of 5 percent.
Progresso continued to partner with retailers on delivering taste plus health, improving shopability and growing consumption. The relaunch of its low-sodium line as "heart-healthy" was paired with a 50 percent increase in consumer investment focused on bringing heart-conscious consumers, such as boomers and Hispanics, to the soup aisle. Shelf sets were customized for regionality and store format. Launching a premium line narrowed a dinner consumption gap. Progresso's Recipe Starters line of cooking sauces targeted millennials who do more cooking at home but lack confidence in the kitchen.
Category Advisor
Canned & Packaged Foods: Shelf-stable Vegetables
General Mills
General Mills continued to focus on better understanding the meal aisle, including one of its most important categories, shelf-stable vegetables. The company headed up a project called "Meal Aisle Vision," which resulted in best-in-class findings and strategic thought leadership. The insights gleaned through its research helped retailers better understand all categories within the meal aisle, how the categories interact, how consumers shop the aisle and what the optimal aisle layout should be.
The $3.6 billion shelf-stable vegetable category was important to retailers and consumers because of its broad reach (83 percent household penetration), frequent trips (seven purchase frequency), and larger baskets (units purchased per occasion at 3.5 units per trip). Since General Mills' Green Giant brand spans three distinct vegetable segments in the supermarket (fresh produce, frozen and shelf-stable), the company was uniquely positioned to provide retailers with insights to maximize not only canned vegetable sales, but also total vegetable sales.
This year, Green Giant released a category management platform featuring information on how retailers could maximize their performance regarding SKU optimization, best practice shelving, and merchandising effectiveness during holiday windows. The category management team leveraged multiple resources to secure best practices, which included a Nielsen 3,000-plus store audit; Demand Transfer, a tool that allows the user to optimize distribution through incremental SKU additions or potential deletions; and analysis from Willard Bishop that aligns the most profitable segments with allocated shelf space.
Category Captain
Canned & Packaged Foods: Spreads
Ferrero USA
Hazelnuts proved to be the superfood of the $3.7 billion spread category, and Ferrero USA showed itself to be a category leader beyond the sales prowess of its own Nutella brand.
Ferrero conducted consumer research and shopper studies to provide learning on how to maximize sales by leveraging shopper insights, best practice analysis and control-store test results. The company also commissioned a category management shelf set study to identify best practices to drive hazelnut sales growth. The key learning from the study was that the top barriers to hazelnut spread growth were lack of visibility and consistent placement within bread spreads.
Category sales grew through allocating sufficient facings, improving presence by shelving at eye level and center of set, and managing as mainstream by shelving adjacent to PB&J. According to Ferrero, retailers that adopted these principles enjoyed higher sales rates.
Category Advisor
Canned & Packaged Foods: Spreads
The J.M. Smucker Co.
As a leader in fruit spreads, Smucker acted to reverse category declines by working to better understand consumers' shifting needs.
The company took a two-pronged approach to understand what was driving declines in the category, through a combination of custom proprietary reporting and custom research.
Smucker leveraged its learnings to help retailers re-engage consumers in the category. In one example, Smucker helped one retailer partner simultaneously address usage/relevancy and economic challenges. Leveraging Smucker's custom fruit spread consumer segmentation, the retailer found that a significant percentage of its fruit spread shoppers were monitoring their sugar intake and were interested in flavor varieties. This enabled Smucker to show the losses the retailer would experience if better-for-you offerings were reduced. The space necessary to maximize sales was then allocated in a variety of both sugar-free and low-sugar options.
Category Captain
Commercial Baked Goods
Flowers Foods
Flowers Foods' Nature's Own brand, now available to about 77 percent of the U.S. population, offers the top three best-selling loaves of premium bread in the country. The brand also has a legacy of product innovation: Its most recent rollout, Nature's Own Oatmeal Toasters, launched in July 2012, continues to deliver triple-digit growth, up more than 100 percent this year over last.
The company also saw success in the loaf bread subcategory and the occasion-based subcategories of breakfast, sandwich buns/rolls, dinner bread/rolls and sandwich rounds/thins. The occasion-based subcategories provided growth to the overall category.
In the past year, using automated scripts and analysis tools, Flowers efficiently optimized retailers' store-level shelf configuration and assortment. Pulling consumer insights from loyalty card programs, IRI panel and scan data, trip mission studies, and other sources, the company gave its retail partners impartial business assessments and recommendations, as well as offering such retail solutions as dedicated, on-site category analysts; benchmarking; promotion analysis; assortment studies; and new product analysis.
Flowers' total U.S. multi-outlet retail sales of fresh packaged bread were up 24 percent and its fresh-baked sweet goods sales increased 38 percent versus the previous year, outperforming the category year-to-date through Aug. 4.
Category Advisor
Convenient Wholesome Foods
The Kellogg Co.
Kellogg's focus was on what the future state of the category would look like, identifying a taste-to-nutrition continuum. The company identified three areas of focus for category success: investing with purpose, broadcasting a clear message and segmenting intentionally.
Kellogg surveyed consumers about how they would design their "center store," providing guidance on creating total aisle solutions. The company developed a research project to better understand how the consumer shops the wholesome snack set by evaluating the retail shelf decision-making process. Its wholesome snack audit and sales rate tool was designed to determine ideal shopability and provide retailers with recommendations for optimal placement, segment flow and adjacencies.
A market preceptor study provided a better understanding of the satisfaction level of the current product. A future-of-snacks study helped create a framework for growth over the next three to five years. A global snack shopper segmentation identified seven segments differentiated by behaviors, motivations, lifestyles and beliefs that predisposed them toward certain shopping behaviors. A consumer-based "Snackscape" study provided clues about how interchangeable snack options were.
Leveraging assortment tools, Kellogg showed retailers how best to optimize their toaster pastry portfolios. This allowed Kellogg category management to work directly with the retailer to make decisions that grew the category.
Category Captain
Convenient Wholesome Foods
General Mills
General Mills drove growth in the $5 billion convenient wholesome foods category (grain, fruit and toaster pastries) through objective category insights, product innovation and brand support, and fact-based shelf strategies that its retail partners leverage to enhance category and aisle sales and profit growth.
General Mills developed a proprietary Grain Smart Bundler tool that helped retailers optimize merchandising of key products, allowing them to pick brands that will minimize steal within a manufacturer ad block or across separate manufacturer ad blocks. It also controlled the base business that's exposed to merchandising through cross-purchase interactions, and improved the performance by measuring the exposure of each segment and brand while increasing household reach.
Retailers that followed General Mills' expansion initiative to boost space from 12 feet to 16 feet saw significant increases in grain category sales. Further, flowing the set from adult/health items on the left to kids/treats on the right yielded higher category sales results.
New products focusing on fiber, protein and whole grains, along with promotions surrounding nature conservation and kids' movie tie-ins, further boosted a category that's projected to grow by $1.2 billion over the next five years.
Category Captain
Cookies
The Kellogg Co.
A $5.7 billion category, cookies grew 3.1 percent over the past 52 weeks. Kellogg led that growth with several innovative products and thought leadership that have helped its retail partners approach the cookie aisle from a fresh perspective.
The company introduced two new products over the past year: Keebler Cinnamon Roll and Keebler Sandies Toffees. Both items delivered significant sales boosts. Meanwhile, Kellogg completed its "Future of Snacks" study, demonstrating that snacks are omnipresent and fast-growing. Its Snacking Segmentation study identified seven segments differentiated by behaviors, motivations, lifestyles and beliefs that predispose consumers toward different shopping behaviors and retailer/channel choices.
Last but not least, Kellogg's "Snackscape" study identified how consumers choose which snack they consume. In addition to these new research initiatives, which are now being customized for Kellogg's retailer partners, the company has leveraged Nielsen tools, including Answers and Assortment, to put fact-based category information in the hands of its customers.
Category Captain
Desserts
General Mills
Showing its leadership in a $1.2 billion category, General Mills released a March 2013 update to its dessert aisle growth story. "Inspire 365" was developed using insights from a path-to-purchase study of consumer attitudes, decisions and behaviors throughout the purchase cycle in the baking aisle. The study highlighted the five-year growth opportunity possible by inspiring the millennial baker (who will represent 63 percent of households with children by 2020) to bake one more time each year, and optimizing ingredient categories.
To support the idea of baking year-round, General Mills released an asset guide, complete with inspiring recipes, attractive product photography, seasonally relevant fun facts and recipe creation step shots, for each month of the year.
Also this year, General Mills partnered with Nielsen on a baking aisle drivers study to identify which categories can best drive aisle performance. Key among them: ingredients, since they are purchased with other items, driving basket ring.
With an occasion-based shelf set that has been implemented in about 75 percent of planograms, General Mills continued to influence retailers to optimize the baking aisle, key adjacencies and aisle anchors. Coupled with product innovations, including pouch-size packaging for value consumers, General Mills' retailer partnerships, aisle insights and seasonal solutions will inspire future category growth.
Category Captain
Crackers
The Kellogg Co.
Kellogg helped take the mature cracker category to the next level via game-changing, form-differentiated innovation and intentional shelving arrangements. Estimated at $5.6 billion, the cracker segment grew an impressive 5.4 percent in 2012.
With the Special K brand, Kellogg led the way with an entirely new product line called Cracker Chips. These airy chips earned numerous awards, including Nielsen's Break Through Innovation Award and IRI's New Product Pacesetter recognition, but more importantly, helped add fuel to the category. For the 52-week period ending
Dec. 29, 2012, the category finished with top-line growth across all channels. The company also continued to create innovation in the salty snack segment via its warehouse snack brand, Pringles.
At the same time, Kellogg continued to support a number of its retailer customers across the country with executional plans while creating financial headroom in their businesses. Other internal tools benefiting the category include Kellogg's completion of the "Future of Snacks" study, a global snack shopper segmentation study, and the consumer-based "Snackscape Study," which identifies how consumers choose which snack they consume. Meanwhile, Kellogg leveraged Nielsen tools such as Answers, which puts syndicated and panel data at the fingertips of the entire salesforce, and Assortment, which helps Kellogg show retailers how best to optimize their cracker portfolios.
Category Captain
Ethnic Foods
General Mills
In a $4.4 billion category with 79 percent household penetration, General Mills continued to be a Mexican food leader. Last year, the company updated its "Explore Mexican" five-year category vision with new insights and strategies based on key trends and findings. Through a Nielsen shelf audit and usage studies, General Mills implemented a single Mexican destination with a vertical occasion-based set that yielded strong results at several national retailers.
In a category aligned to Hispanic population density, General Mills developed a distribution tool providing optimal space assortment by Mexican segment. Retailers could customize the tool to their geography and current set size to determine the ideal mix of space. Further, General Mills uncovered key factors in the ongoing success of Mexican meal solutions: family appeal, convenience and value, and freshness.
Beyond insights, General Mills supported the category through new product innovation, most recently its Old El Paso Stand ‘N Stuff Soft Tortilla & Dinner Kit, which showed double-digit incremental category volume, and three new Old El Paso cooking sauces, which are expected to appeal strongly to millennials, with clean ingredient decks and complex flavors.
Category Advisor
Ethnic Foods
MegaMex Foods LLC
MegaMex Foods LLC is a joint venture of Hormel Foods and Mexico City-based Herdez del Fuerte S.A. de CV, serving the full spectrum of Mexican food consumers, from first-generation immigrants looking for traditional flavors to mainstream consumers, with a wide portfolio of brands covering everything from cooking sauces to chips and salsa.
To further understand its end user, MegaMex invested in consumer segmentation research that pinpointed cooking and consumption behaviors. This research looked at spending habits, time spent preparing food, age, gender, ethnicity and income levels. MegaMex shared these research insights with strategic retail partners, along with a salsa market structure and shopper optimizer, tortilla shopper behavior, a detailing of the impact the recent recession has had on Hispanic shopper behavior, and a community alignment overview study.
As a result, MegaMex was able to segment planograms that tie all of these key insights into action at shelf level. Several retailers have either implemented these planograms or are currently testing the concept, making the company the go-to category advisor for many grocers, and earning their high praise for analytic insight, breadth of resources and innovation.
MegaMex boosted traffic and sales for Mexican cooking sauces, salsas, and such salty snacks as tortilla chips and chicharrones.
Category Captain
Infant Nutrition
Nestlé Infant Nutrition
As the market leader in infant nutrition, Nestlé continued to bring relevant innovation to the category, as well as helping retailers provide the education shoppers seek on early childhood nutrition.
Recently Nestlé introduced Gerber Good Start Soothe formula, a product designed to reduce excessive crying and colic by 50 percent. Additionally, the brand continued growing the pouch segment with new Fruit & Yogurt and Fruit & Grain pouches.
Using its vast consumer insights and knowledge of the business, Nestlé worked one-on-one with leading retailers to help reinvent the total baby aisle and educate new moms, among other initiatives. As a result of this hard work, Nestlé helped boost the total infant nutrition category an impressive 3.4 percent in the 12-week period ending July 13.
Category Captain
Natural & Organic Foods
General Mills
Consumer awareness, increasing demand, expanding distribution and greater availability across channels all helped natural/organic category growth, with General Mills brands at the forefront of these trends. The company's retail partners and its Small Planet Foods (SPF) categories benefited from the use of consumer insight tools allowing for identification of key consumer groups and volumetric tools to help optimize category mix, maximize section sizes and identify the most productive natural/organic in-store placement.
For instance, during this past year, Cascadian Farm Berry Cobbler Organic Granola Cereal surpassed all acceptance targets during its introductory period and is expected to attract new buyers to the already strong granola segment; SPF conducted many category reviews to enable retailers to capitalize on growth opportunities in the nutrition bar category (its Lärabar brand continued to expand flavors and sizes) by expanding space, adjusting mix or placing new category offerings; and retailers that shelved organic/specialty brands like SPF's Muir Glen – the top brand in the natural channel – in their main tomato sections saw increased sales and productivity.
As a result, SPF brands outpaced the 8.6 percent growth of categories in which General Mills competes, finishing the year with 10.3 percent growth, according to Nielsen data.
Category Captain
Salty Snacks
The Kellogg Co.
Kellogg incorporated consumer and shopper research to design a product flow to meet the needs of 21st-century shoppers. This "aisle of the future" incorporated proprietary research across salty snacks and the entire snacking spectrum, employed need states and occasion drivers, and identified strength of relationship within and across snack categories. Recommending aisle changes to enable retailers to capture growth across all segments in this $6.7 billion category put Kellogg in a strong position of thought leadership across the entire category.
This year, Kellogg completed a global snack shopper segmentation study that identified seven segments differentiated by behaviors, motivations, lifestyles and beliefs that predispose shoppers toward different behaviors and channel choices. Kellogg further studied how consumers choose their snacks, and how interchangeable they consider their options to be between categories. Kellogg further completed a deep dive of buying behavior in the area of planning styles, shopping experiences across channels, buying occasions, and the role packaging and flavors play.
Nielsen data and other tools helped Kellogg to show retailers how best to optimize their snack portfolios, and to work directly with them to make decisions that grow the category.
Product innovations focused on Kellogg's Pringles line, delivering a healthier profile with baked, multigrain and new flavor options that brought new users to the category.
Category Advisor
'Free-from' Foods
Enjoy Life
Products in the so-called "free-from" category – estimated to reach $20 billion by 2020 – are typically spread out over several existing categories such as RTE cereal, snack bars, cookies, salty snacks and candy. As such products have caught on with a greater number of consumers, they've gradually been mainstreamed into typical category sets from their initial isolation at natural food stores and separate sections at traditional grocers. However, therein lies the challenge in evaluating related category management efforts that historically focus on a single aisle.
Enjoy Life, which manufactures more than 40 free-from products sold across eight categories, has taken on a category leadership role. Focusing on taste as the key to driving growth across the category, Enjoy Life worked with major retailers and distributors to develop true free-from sets, in both 4-foot and 8-foot configurations, implemented by multiple retailers throughout the country. Additionally, the company provided POS material that helped educate consumers as to how to shop the stores for their special dietary needs. These programs were developed in collaboration with specific retailers to customize the programs for particular markets.
Enjoy Life reports that its sales were up more than 50 percent in the conventional channel.
Category Advisor
Salty Snacks
General Mills
With a strong focus on exciting new items, creative brand support and enhanced shelf presence, General Mills led innovation in contemporary salty snacks (CSS).
With snacking on the rise and projected to continue increasing, CSS has strong category growth potential. To help retailers capitalize, General Mills brought capabilities and excitement to the category through many avenues, including the recent launch of Green Giant Veggie Snack Chips, which attracted new consumers to the veggie chip segment. Through category research, consumer insights, shelf enhancements and great new products, General Mills was positioned for growth in the CSS category and profitable growth with retailers.
General Mills worked to give customers the fresh new ideas they demanded and improve speed to market by experimenting with different packages, sizes and flavors across channels. The company determined that best-in-class shelving also enhanced the shopping experience and drove category growth; for example, snack mixes and potato snacks should be the bookend brands, with the variety section in the middle.
General Mills continued to provide innovative support for its brands. Chex Mix was fully engaged in the social sphere, with more than 1.8 million Facebook fans and 13,000 Twitter followers supporting the brand.
FROZEN FOODS
Category Captain
Breakfast
The Kellogg Co.
Frozen breakfast continued to be one of the few shining stars in grocers' frozen cases, with the segment growing 7.4 percent in dollar sales versus last year. Within this successful category, Kellogg provided leadership and growth with its flagship brand, Eggo. The brand's waffles contributed a 24.2 share to the total category and provided 3.9 percent dollar growth.
In 2013, Kellogg introduced Special K Flatbread Breakfast sandwiches, which drove more than 43 percent of the total growth for the entire frozen breakfast category. The brand also grew incremental unit sales, capitalizing on white space in a growing segment.
Beyond product innovation, Kellogg continued to offer insights to its retailer partners, coordinating efforts to understand both shopper and consumer dynamics and applying those learnings to help localize merchandising and assortment at store level.
Category Captain
Baked Goods
General Mills
In this mature $1.2 billion category, General Mills leveraged best-in-class category insights, consumer trends and proprietary capabilities to help retailers maximize performance across the frozen department.
The company leveraged leading-edge third-party insights with internal expertise to provide powerful recommendations that delivered maximized results. Through shopper segmentation studies, point-of-sale analytics, Willard Bishop ABC analyses, DemandTec, Nielsen Shelf Audit Tool, Demand Transfer, consumer research and virtual store technology, General Mills ensured that its recommendations optimized department and category performance.
The company continued to develop national and regional recommendations based on the strategies and tactics of its retailer partners. Proprietary capabilities enabled it to deliver retailer-specific counsel on layout, space and adjacencies that maximize sales rates. By aligning categories that promote cross-purchase and by separating high-penetration categories, retailers create a push-pull effect through the aisle to encourage impulse purchase and build the basket. The General Mills Virtual Store capability tested and showcased these insights and recommendations visually.
General Mills used Demand Transfer, Nielsen assortment and segmentation studies, custom shelf audits, and internal consumer insights to ensure current and proposed distribution would maximize incrementality and sales, thus arming retailers with unique competitive advantages tailored to their shopper bases.
With these competencies, along with multimedia support for new product innovations, General Mills continued as a player in, and a steward of, the frozen baked goods category.
Category Advisor
Breakfast
General Mills
Managing sweets and savories within three subcategories of a $2.8 billion category that grew 7 percent in the past year was a forte for General Mills. Steering continued growth of breakfast sandwiches and entrées, syrup carriers and toaster pastries, and breads and muffins, General Mills employed customized assortment and segmentation studies, shelf audits, and consumer insights to maximize category incrementality and sales for retailers.
Extensive merchandising and pricing studies helped the company develop strategies that were most effective and realistic for each of its customers. With DemandTec, shopper marketing studies, and price and shelf audits, General Mills identified price perception, price sensitivities and merchandising/pricing levers that were most influential in maximizing category performance. An expansive independent team dedicated solely to pricing analytics furthered General Mills' insights to ensure quality, results-driven recommendations.
In addition, General Mills brought excitement to the category through product innovation, addressing key trends with offerings like Heat-N-Go Minis and seasonal flavors for its popular Toaster Strudel line. Supported by a kitschy new media campaign for the frozen breakfast treat, aimed at attracting new blood to the aisle, General Mills offered data showing basket rings were significantly higher when toaster strudel was in the cart.
Category Captain
Ice Cream & Novelties
Unilever
In a $9.3 billion category with 93 percent household penetration, growth was still basically flat, leading Unilever to seek innovative ways to drive new traffic to the aisle.
Citing a need to improve shoppability, Unilever advised retailers to create a "Premium Plus" door to make a home for the explosively growing gelato segment, causing sales of this premium frozen dessert to double over the past year. The company's flow recommendations for packaged ice cream and novelties were based on 2012 research of more than 1,200 shoppers across the United States.
Unilever generated further excitement and growth in the category through new product development under its Breyers, Ben & Jerry's, Magnum, Popsicle and Fruttare brands. Eleven packaged ice cream products Unilever introduced in 2013 accounted for almost $27 million in volume in the most recent reported 24-week period. Among frozen novelties, items like Unilever's premium Magnum line, youth-targeted Hello Kitty co-branded Popsicle items, and Fruttare frozen fruit and milk bars helped boost this category segment by nearly 9 percent, yielding nearly $40 million in sales of these 15 new items.
Category Advisor
Entrées
General Mills
Frozen prepared foods is the largest category in the frozen department, generating more than $14 billion in annual dollar sales, with multiserve entrées contributing 16 percent of total dollar sales. General Mills introduced innovative items, comprehensive consumer support and category management capabilities that drove the entire category.
New brand launches like Wanchai Ferry Frozen Asian Entrees, Macaroni Grill Frozen Italian Entrées and, more recently, Old El Paso Frozen Mexican Entrées enhanced overall sales and drove traffic to the category. A multimedia consumer campaign provided active support for these brands.
General Mills brought a full suite of tools, capabilities and insights to its customers, positioning itself as the go-to manufacturer for category management. Through a partnership with Nielsen, annual shelving audits were conducted in 3,000 stores nationwide, giving retailers quantifiable opportunities and actionable go-to-market strategies, thereby benefiting retailers and overall category health. General Mills partnered with Kantar to develop a SKU optimization tool; Demand Transfer provided the ability to model the category impact of changing item mix, optimizing distribution for retailers.
Consumer-driven insights like Shopper 360 provided loyalty and trip driver insights, while "Share of Wallet" reports quantified where shoppers spent their dollars across channels and retailers. Using these insight-driven tools, General Mills worked with retailers to identify specific opportunities to drive loyalty, increase trips and retain more dollars.
Category Captain
Meat Substitutes
The Kellogg Co.
Kellogg's MorningStar Farms is the brand leader within frozen meat substitutes. With a 70 percent share of the category, the brand is the most productive in the category on a dollar-per-SKU basis. On top of that, MorningStar Farms is considered the point-of-entry brand and also has the highest brand loyalty with shoppers.
Kellogg used a shopper segmentation method to merchandise the frozen meat substitute segment. This leadership gave retailers the necessary insights to provide their shoppers with an easy way to navigate and understand the segment.
In 2013, the company introduced three new products: Mediterranean Chickpea Burger, Buffalo Chik'n Patty and Garlic Parmesan Wings. These three items together drove more than 23 percent of total growth for the MorningStar Farms brand and generated an additional $4.5 million for the entire frozen meat substitute category.
Category Captain
Smoothies
General Mills
Committed to the $875 million frozen fruit/smoothie category, General Mills invested heavily in bringing innovative items to the marketplace, a consumer plan that drove shoppers into the category, and state-of-the-art capabilities to its retailers, contributing to the category's 17 percent growth over the past year.
Much of the total growth in smoothies could be attributed to the consumer support offered by Yoplait, which drove heightened levels of category awareness for consumers by investing in radio, digital, coupons, sampling, in-store point-of-sale advertising, and media promotions with relevant high-profile platforms like "Box Tops for Education" and "The Biggest Loser" TV series. A robust consumer support plan brought new consumers to the category and ultimately drove its overall growth and health.
The primary decision factors for the frozen food consumer are taste, health and convenience, and smoothies deliver on all three. With new items, strong brand-building support and a comprehensive category-wide consumer plan, General Mills is a leader. Varieties like Chocolate Strawberry and Greek Yogurt attracted new users to the category.
General Mills brought a full suite of tools, capabilities and insights to its customers, including annual shelving audits. By providing such rich insights, General Mills positioned itself as the go-to manufacturer for category management.
Category Captain
Pizza
General Mills
With frozen pizza-driven shopping trips down this year despite high usage, retailers relied more heavily on category management. Stepping up to offer a variety of insights for retailers during a turbulent time, General Mills helped provide value for consumers in an increasingly competitive environment for the $4.3 billion category.
With quick-serve restaurants (QSRs) still posing a threat to frozen pizza, General Mills provided insights on how the category delivers great value. Fixing the mix and recommending optimal assortment were two ways General Mills advised retailers to position the category for growth.
As QSRs inundated consumers with value messaging in response to increased deals and focus on single price points at retail, General Mills highlighted these trends for retailers to provide insights into the category's current contraction and provided clarity on how to reposition stores for growth.
General Mills created a three-step process to help retailers ensure that they carried the most productive assortment to drive category growth: understanding regional demand, with an assortment tool to help retailers make regional distribution decisions; optimizing the shelf, with recommendations based on Nielsen audit data; and stocking the most incremental SKUs to guarantee the best items were on the shelf.
Multimedia value messaging and leveraging key Hispanic consumer insights into overall consumer plans further exhibited General Mills' skill at driving profitable category growth.
Category Captain
Snacks
General Mills
Incorporating learnings from the path to purchase, General Mills provided thought leadership on, and growth strategies for, the $4.5 billion frozen snack category, with 74 percent household penetration. Through top-tier performance, innovative value generation and best-in-class capabilities, the company drove profitable growth.
Last March, General Mills released its "Fire Up Frozen Snacks" category growth story featuring insights gained from a path-to-purchase study that looked at consumer attitudes and behaviors, shopper surveys, in-depth interviews, shop-alongs, and Nielsen purchase segmentation. These insights helped General Mills give retailers the ammo they needed to ignite growth within the category.
The key strategies were driving shopper engagement through better merchandising that promotes cross-purchasing; pursuing consumer growth targets, particularly Hispanics and millennials; and increasing category productivity, a challenge in an arena that includes three subcategories, eight segments and more than 250 brands.
Further, General Mills offered new products aimed at the key growth areas, particularly in the popular hot snack subcategory, which is particularly strong among Hispanics. Its Totino's brand launched Pizzeria Pizza Rolls with restaurant flavors, and Bold Rolls, including Buffalo Chicken and Jalapeño Popper.
Category Captain
Vegetables
Pinnacle Foods Inc.
Several major challenges affected the frozen aisle and in turn resulted in moderating growth trends in the frozen vegetable category for retailers: "just in time" shopping; younger, perimeter-focused shoppers; poor quality perception; and an unpleasant, confusing shopping experience.
Pinnacle's Birds Eye brand aimed to accelerate category growth through expanded usage of core vegetables; by exploiting the fact that 47 percent of vegetables are used for ingredients, but only 39 percent of frozen veggies are so used; targeting harried, time-starved meal preparers; and leveraging the fact that consumers are looking for ways to make their family's favorite dinners quickly, inexpensively and without guilt.
Pinnacle collaborated with its retail partners to identify the top home-prepared dishes among shoppers, develop simple family recipes and a veggie blend for each in one-meal packages, and create a kid-oriented marketing campaign to attract younger shoppers.
This collaboration gave birth to a meal solution matrix that delivers on the need for simplicity, convenience and quality while tapping into the need for ingredient veggies. Feedback from retailers and consumers was overwhelmingly positive, with significant core category sales growth.
Category Advisor
Vegetables
General Mills
With a strong focus on enhanced shelf presence, purposeful new items, far-reaching consumer investments and tailored retailer solutions, General Mills is a leader in frozen vegetables.
In October 2012, General Mills released "Vitalize Frozen Veg," a category growth story that equips retailers with shopper insights and key action steps to unlock growth. Insights were gathered from a six-month path-to-purchase study of consumer attitudes, decision-making and behaviors throughout the purchase cycle. By leveraging this data, General Mills provided a tailored approach to retailers to accelerate category growth via three key strategies: driving greater usage, enhancing shopability and optimizing shelf. Further, General Mills conducted annual shelving audits and developed a SKU optimization tool for frozen veggies.
Addressing consumer concern for confusing shelf and packaging, General Mills redesigned its Green Giant package to enhance shopability, and assist shoppers in selecting their favorite vegetable variety and discovering new ones. Responding to a call for variety, General Mills developed its flavored, quick-prep Seasoned Steamers line.
Green Giant consumer spending has increased significantly between 2009 and 2013, serving as a traffic driver to the category for both current and new users. Support included dedicated endorsements, proprietary platforms, TV, digital, online, FSIs, in-store sampling and impactful on-package messaging.
GROCERY – NONFOODS
Category Advisor
Household Maintenance: Fabric Care
Procter & Gamble
The fabric care category was affected by technological improvements such as high-efficiency machines, as well as demographic changes. Procter & Gamble (P&G), maker of Tide, aimed to boost growth in this mature category by finding ways to increase fabric enhancer and laundry additive household penetration. Today, only 15 percent of shoppers purchase more than one form on a shopping trip; increasing this by 3 percent represents a $150 million opportunity.
To achieve its goal, P&G encouraged its retailer partners to redesign the fabric care aisle. One idea was to include particular elements encouraging the shopper to pause and re-engage with the products. Adding a second location of a top fabric enhancer SKU within the detergent section drove increased awareness and sales. Using a frame to highlight the multiple items on the shelf further increased sales. These frames provided messages/claims to help the shopper understand the benefit of using multiple forms and also reinforced the laundry regimen via the "Complete the Cycle" message. Vertical dividers were added to the aisle, making it easier to navigate the different categories.
While it's still too early to measure results of the full execution across the market, retailers that executed dual-placement vignettes realized a 45 percent to 60 percent lift on those items, according to P&G.
Category Captain
Household Maintenance: Air Fresheners
Henkel North America
The air freshener category needed some serious freshening up – the segment had been in a steady penetration decline for five years, during a time when there was a record number of new product introductions and fragrance enhancements. Henkel North America, maker of Renuzit, delved into a mountain of research and also came up with new analysis to understand what was going on in the category. Its work included past and current decision trees, a virtual planogram, detailed consumer shopping research, POS promotional analysis, and more.
The company analyzed all retail channels, along with the top five retailers. Its new discoveries included several important points for retailers to digest. First, lapsed air freshener shoppers could be brought back into the category at a high usage level, but knowing what product provides the re-entry gate was critical. Renuzit Adjustables is the No. 1 product for re-entry, as it provides high value and low risk to the shopper. Second, displays out of the aisle were the only effective way to re-engage consumers. This is important to note, since air fresheners are typically an impulse buy. Next, heavily discounted pricing wasn't necessary to drive re-entry.
A major retailer implemented Henkel's suggestions in 2012 and into 2013, and noticed a significant boost in sales. Now other major retail accounts are in the midst of launching the company's recommendations.
Category Advisor
Household Maintenance: Quick-clean Products
Procter & Gamble
Swiffer was an instant hit when Procter & Gamble created the quick-clean category with the brand's introduction in 1999. Since then, however, the product's penetration has flattened, particularly since the business model focused on driving trial use of Swiffer starter kits.
Procter & Gamble (P&G) turned things around by focusing on a package redesign for the starter kits, while also improving the in-store experience. The new packaging better showcased the sweeper/duster units, and the sweepers were now partially assembled and arranged on pegs so that shoppers could clearly see the differences between the units and how the products worked.
This past summer, P&G introduced phase two of its project to further address consumer and retailer needs. The Swiffer starter set packaging was compacted to further increase consumer appeal; it still allowed the shopper to see the product, but made for easier handling in-store. The compaction also enabled retailers to add a shelf into the section, allowing for more refill SKUs and enhanced profit margins. Compaction also supported the introduction of new technologies (e.g., Swiffer Bissell Steam Boost) to improve category sales growth. As a result of the in-store changes, Swiffer's household penetration moved up 13 points, and retailers executing the new solution realized average lifts of 25 percent, versus those that didn't.
Category Captain
Pet Care: Refrigerated
Freshpet
The past seven years have been a difficult period for the dog food category at grocery retailers, with consumers turning to specialty stores or mass merchandisers for higher-quality offerings. Freshpet aimed to innovate supermarkets' way out of this slump by leveraging two significant consumer trends as a growth opportunity: the humanization of pets by their pampering owners, and a healthy eating halo that extends from consumers to their pets.
While the Freshpet brand itself showed significant growth, the best news for grocers was that the brand's efforts actually drove new consumers to shop for pet food in the grocery channel. Freshpet offered data showing that almost a third of all Freshpet shoppers didn't previously shop in grocery for pet food.
By bringing new consumers into grocery to shop for pet food, Freshpet grew grocery's entire pet category. The positive impact was seen across all segments of the category, including high-profit treats and supplies.
Category Advisor
Household Maintenance: Detergents
Seventh Generation
Seventh Generation provided its retail partners with an expert understanding of the green shopper based on extensive research, including consumer studies from the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI), EcoFocus and Mintel, as well as household purchase dynamics and syndicated POS data from IRI. The manufacturer recently partnered with a regional grocer to accomplish three important objectives; 1) drive sales, share and profit of the grocer's laundry and dish detergents; 2) provide solutions for the increasingly important green consumer; and 3) educate consumers who are interested in transitioning from mainstream to green products. Seventh Generation was able to accomplish these objectives through joint planning with the retailer, leveraging its knowledge of the green consumer, and collaboratively designing a plan to engage shoppers throughout the store.
The retailer was merchandising its green household products with conventional household products, which has proved successful for the category and Seventh Generation. However, for food products, the retailer maintained a dedicated natural food section. The objective of the program was to add dual placement for Seventh Generation household products within the retailer's natural food section.
Seventh Generation provided a customized permanent rack, which enabled natural food shoppers to find and purchase natural/green household products. In addition, in the conventional section, Seventh Generation provided in-store signage that drove awareness and educated shoppers on the benefits of green products and making eco-friendly choices.
As a result of the program, Seventh Generation drove segment sales and profit for the green dishwashing and liquid laundry segments. Moreover, it helped natural food consumers find leading green household items, while at the same time educating mainstream consumers on the benefits of green household products. This approach not only drove green sales (three percentage points for liquid laundry and 48 points for dish detergent), it also encouraged existing green consumers to meet more of their green share of category requirements, while prompting conventional consumers to go green.
Category Captain
Pet Care: Shelf-stable
Nestlé Purina Petcare
As a member of FMI's Center Store Task Force, Nestlé Purina Petcare was deeply focused on enhancing the pet care shopping experience and, by extension, elevating the importance of center store. In the process, the company created a uniquely differentiated approach to improving center store performance through renovation and reinvention of the pet care department.
The concept was based first and foremost on a deep focus on the shopper; research indicated that few retailers have been successful in connecting to their shoppers in an emotional way, and shoppers' perception of their pet departments is that they're "cold," with assortments lacking. Nestlé Purina set out to revamp the aisle's visuals, create a more shopper-friendly environment, reinforce shoppers' emotional bond with their pets and make it intuitively easy to access needed products.
By leveraging a deep understanding of the shopper, retail environment, supply chain and virtual technology, Nestlé created four fundamentally similar designs to fit within virtually any store. With departments in more than 200 stores launched to date, each result was outstanding. Post-installation research indicated that acceptance of the new departments has significantly improved: Sales consistently outpaced prior category performance, with many stores' sales significantly exceeding performance of the entire center store, and department profitability was also up significantly.
HEALTH, BEAUTY & WELLNESS
Category Captain
Antiperspirants/Deodorants
Procter & Gamble
In response to flat household penetration, trip consolidation and an increase in purchases on deal in the antiperspirant/deodorant category, Procter & Gamble (P&G) leveraged two commercial innovation pillars to accelerate dollars per trip.
The first was driving trade up to the clinical tier. Increasing clinical's household penetration by 2 percent represents a $33 million opportunity, but a key trial barrier is consumers' belief that clinical strength is only for "problem sweaters." To battle this perception, P&G launched a commercial campaign across digital and print media, as well as on packaging, to educate consumers on stress sweat and the benefit of clinical strength. As a result, P&G clinical grew 17 percent over last year and the overall clinical segment grew 9 percent nationally.
Second, to drive dollars per purchase while offering value to shoppers, P&G deployed 32 twin-pack offers on current high-performing single items. At some retailers, twin-packs were blocked deliberately to trade shoppers from singles. The company also focused on merchandising demand drivers such as national coupons on twin-packs. As a result, P&G twin-packs have grown 21 percent over last year, and category dollars are up 1 percent despite a 2 percent unit decline.
Category Captain
Adult Nutrition
Abbott Nutrition
Abbott Nutrition worked with a national retailer that was experiencing high spikes of Ensure volume during the first week of each month, resulting in out-of-stocks in many stores during this time period. Moreover, its stores with smaller adult nutrition set sizes couldn't meet shopper demand during these high-selling weeks.
In providing merchandising recommendations to help drive trial, awareness and household penetration, as well as to help reduce out-of-stocks, Abbott recommended an off-shelf merchandising vehicle to provide visibility, in addition to secondary placement outside of the HBC section. In keeping with this strategy, the retailer implemented an out-of-aisle Ensure display in the HBC section to raise brand and category awareness, and help drive cross-category purchases, as well as incremental displays with dual placement of two Ensure SKUs. The retailer also offered Ensure regular SKUs at a temporary price reduction to coincide with the display activity.
The "First of the Month Display Program" aided in reducing out-of-stock levels, which dramatically improved from 11 percent in 2012 to 1.1 percent in 2013. As a result of this success, the program, which started as a test in a single market, has since expanded nationally to more than 700 of the retailer's high-volume stores.
Category Captain
Foot Care
Merck Consumer Care
Aiming to kick-start a mature, moribund $1.2 billion category, Merck Consumer Care invested in new consumer and shopper research to better understand barriers to use, shopper frustrations and new merchandising opportunities. The goal was to ensure that the shopping experience matched the changing dynamics of how consumers managed and perceived overall health and wellness, including their feet.
Merck identified several ways to improve the shopping experience to take advantage of a large growth opportunity. The company and its Dr. Scholl's brand reshaped their new product development priorities and created a new positioning and communication strategy, as well as new merchandising strategies.
Merck also invested in developing the foot care category through a better understanding of the shopping experience, new products (including the successful Active Series, and additions and product improvements to Dr. Scholl's For Her), and building upon new technologies such as its Custom Fit Orthotic kiosk. These initiatives are supported by the brand's "I'm A Believer" media campaign.
Merck reports double-digit growth in insoles and devices, a boost in household penetration and a 3 percent boost across the category.
Category Captain
OTC Analgesics
Bayer HealthCare
Disruption and uncertainty continued to plague the analgesics category during 2012, due to a series of recalls affecting Adult Tylenol, Motrin and Excedrin products. Given the dynamics of such a challenging environment, many retailers turned to Bayer HealthCare to provide perspective, insights and solutions for a range of category issues.
Bayer developed a comprehensive platform, "Focus on Five," to help retailers ensure long-term category growth, outlining the health conditions driving purchase, key ingredients, strong brands and future opportunities in the analgesics category. Integral to the initiative was the introduction of a shelving configuration designed to meet retailers' short-term needs and set the stage for long-term opportunities. The objective was to establish allocation and configuration of the set so that it aligned with category dynamics, based on the insights and approach of Focus on Five.
Bayer's efforts allowed category volume to remain flat in 2012, despite the continued absence of key items. In addition, Bayer HealthCare performed significantly better than the competition and the category in 2012, with total Bayer internal analgesics dollars up 4.9 percent in 2012, versus a category decline of 3.6 percent, according to IRI. A major driver was the performance of Bayer's Aleve, which grew 8.3 percent.
Category Advisor
Hair Care
Unilever
Unilever aimed to drive more traffic to the hair care category by addressing specific needs of men and women.
Addressing the unmet needs in the anti-dandruff segment of scalp dryness and itch/irritation, Unilever in 2012 launched its Clear Scalp & Hair Therapy brand with specialized ranges for men and women. For women, Clear was the first brand to deliver on scalp benefits, rather than just the ends of hair. For men, though itch is this demographic's second most relevant condition, fewer than half use an anti-dandruff shampoo on a regular basis, so Unilever developed a two-in-one dandruff preventer for men. Clear soon became a leading growth brand, delivering significant category dollar gains and leading consumers to trade up within the category.
To encourage trial and drive awareness of this new brand, Unilever used "always on" social media (249 million impressions, 1.4 million Facebook fans), trial-size/teaser packs, sampling, television, print, sponsorships, and best-in-class in-store activation. Excitement continued in 2013, with retailers adding incremental SKUs as the line expanded.
Category Captain
OTC Upper Respiratory Products
Pfizer Consumer Healthcare
The $7 billion upper respiratory category is large, fast-growing and dynamic, with different products for different segments to alleviate different consumer symptoms. From solutions for cold and flu, to sinus, to lip care, finding a manageable and strategic way to make the shopping experience easier is challenging for all retailers.
With more than 300 products on 25 feet of shelf, and most products treating two to three symptoms, shopping the category can be overwhelming. To help give shoppers back a sense of control, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare, in partnership with Edgewood Consulting Group, fielded a research- and shopper insights-driven study aimed at helping retailers create a shopper-centric destination.
The strategy focused first on understanding what drives and resonates with shoppers to and at the shelf. Second, through proprietary research, Pfizer discovered how best to organize the shelf and ease the shopping experience by helping shoppers find what they need to treat their symptoms quickly and easily. The last step assessed differing shopper mindsets to provide retailers with merchandising best practices to deliver a better shopping experience.
As a result, Pfizer reports that the total upper respiratory category was up 9 percent in annual sales, while its Robitussin and Dimetapp brands outpaced the category.
Category Advisor
Skin/Sun Care
Unilever
In 2013, Unilever determined to lift the stagnant men's face care category by introducing the Dove Men + Care line, with the aim of bringing first-time users into the category. Since the primary shoppers, and communicators to men, are women, by marketing to female consumers, Dove Men + Care was able to initiate trial.
To encourage trial and awareness, in February and March 2013, Unilever offered 2 million trial-size bottles as part of a bonus pack on top-selling items in Dove's male and female lines, and placed national displays in secondary locations to help drive awareness and visibility of the brand. In select accounts, trays and signage educating consumers on the men's regimen were placed in the actual home location of the planogram. Also, regimen packs rolled out in May to create further awareness and drive excitement of the newly offered market segments.
Within 24 weeks of the launch, the combined increase of category sales equated to 22.3 percent, according to Nielsen, with all three key segments – men's cleansers, moisturizers and post-shave balms – posting double-digit growth. Further, Dove Men + Care is the brand driving category growth at the fastest rate, contributing $6 million in absolute dollar growth to the category.
Category Captain
Skin/Sun Care
Merck Consumer Care
Merck Consumer Care, maker of the Coppertone, Solarcaine and Bain de Soleil sun care brands, developed a new go-to-market strategy that included teaming with retailers to optimize their merchandising strategies based on shopper needs and attitudes to drive growth of this complex and dynamic category.
A partnership with Edgewood Consulting Group to synthesize research insights combined learnings with a comprehensive best practices assessment of category merchandising performance to create a go-to-market sun care strategy encompassing account-specific assortment, shelving, signage/education and promotion recommendations. The strategy was designed to build upon itself year after year, ultimately optimizing the sun care category at key retailers and making it easier to drive category cross-purchases and a larger share of wallet.
As a result, Coppertone in-basket dollar growth surpassed the $100 mark at leading retailers. Additionally, sun care has grown 11 percent in the past three years, and the category is projected to grow even faster, since four in 10 consumers today still don't wear sunscreen.
Coppertone has continued to drive the sun care category through investment in research, innovation (such as relaunching the line with enhanced packaging, and a new Dry Oil Tanning offering), and engaging consumer activation strategies to drive summer sales.
Category Captain
Vitamins/Supplements
Pharmavite
To create a more satisfying sensory vitamin experience and boost penetration among younger consumers, Pharmavite introduced NatureMade VitaMelts, a flavored fast-dissolving mini-tablet line. Consumer research showed that 47 percent of VitaMelts buyers were new to the vitamin category, and that they were significantly younger than the category's typical over-55 buyer.
As well as launching VitaMelts, Pharmavite continued its expansion into the gummy form, which now accounts for 32 percent of total vitamin category growth dollars. As with VitaMelts, gummy purchasers are primarily new category buyers from a younger demographic than the category norm.
Since the gummy form is the single largest source of growth in the category, Pharmavite, leveraging qualitative shopper insights and quantitative loyalty card insights, worked with retailers to create gummy sections where all gummy vitamin products are merchandised together to create an easy-to-shop "bullseye" that draws gummy consumers and stimulates multiple-product gummy segment purchases versus single-product segment purchases when gummy products are spread across the entire vitamin section.
For the 52 weeks ending Aug. 3, in retailers where Pharmavite is the category advisor, vitamin category dollar sales grew 9 percent, while rising at a 4.4 percent rate in retailers where Pharmavite isn't the advisor.
Category Advisor
Vitamins/Supplements
Bayer HealthCare
Growth trends over the past several years have revealed the importance of the vitamin, mineral and supplement (VMS) category, with dollars up 5.6 percent in 2012, more than any other major OTC category. Additionally, recent years saw the tremendous growth of new forms like gummy products, especially within the adult multivitamin segment.
Bayer HealthCare's detailed road map to ensure continued gummy growth recommended blocking gummy products within established segment blocks to raise awareness and securing incremental space for adult gummies within the current section. In terms of assortment, retailers were advised to critically evaluate gummy SKU performance to guarantee an optimal product mix, and only add innovative and/or well-supported gummy products.
Bayer also undertook a comprehensive path-to-purchase study, at the same time evaluating the effectiveness of retailers' various tactical programs. The research found that retailers should pursue touchpoints in such areas as online, for product information and availability; mobile, for coupons, store locations and hours; and in-store media, to deliver purchase reminders and special sales.
Through such efforts, Bayer helped ensure continued VMS growth: 5.6 percent dollar sales growth in 2012 came on top of 2011 and 2010 gains, while its adult multivitamin gummy brand, One A Day VitaCraves, grew 33.1 percent.
PERIMETER
Category Captain
Baked Goods
CSM Bakery Products
Armed with Nielsen Perishables Group data, CSM Bakery Products helped drive profitable top-line growth for a major retail partner. To grow in-store bakery traffic and increase basket size, the retailer adopted many of CSM's recommendations, including the rollout of a successful $5 club store-style promotion, and differentiation through offering the highest-quality perishable products.
Noticing that the retailer's cake category was losing dollar sales, volume and market share, CSM developed planograms for a "crème island" featuring assorted cake slices, recommended a rollout of cake slices in trending Italian Crème and Red Velvet flavors, created a promotion offering a 4-pack of cake slices for $5 on Fridays, worked up store-level merchandising schematics, and devised refreshed signage.
After the retailer followed these recommendations, total individual dessert identical sales grew 11 percent in dollars and 6 percent in volume, with the 4-count individual cake slices contributing 43 percent to the total gain. The retailer now sells 3.5 times more individual desserts per million ACV than total U.S. sales, and has gained 1.5 percent market share in a maturing category. CSM was able to help the retailer change 4.7 percent declines into 11 percent gains, a 16 percent dollar spread.
Category Advisor
Dairy
General Mills
In March 2013, General Mills released the latest yogurt category growth story version, including new assortment and merchandising insights while building on key messages from previous releases. The merchandising insights focused on a balanced merchandising strategy to maximize annual yogurt category sales and drive customer loyalty for retailers, while the assortment insights delivered guidance on segments and brands that maximized dollar and unit volume.
In recognition of the need for competitive pricing, General Mills continued to merchandise the Yoplait core cup at a 10-for-$5 price point, while the Yoplait Trix 4-pack retailed at a suggested everyday price of two for $4.
Further, as innovation plays a big role in boosting yogurt consumption, Yoplait launched a wealth of new items in 2013 to build on the momentum of its highly popular Greek 100 line, including a Greek single-serve line with fruit blended into the yogurt; Go-Gurt Protein; Fruitful, offering a third of a cup of real fruit in every serving; and limited-edition in/out seasonal products. Yoplait anticipates that the category will continue its strong growth through 2017, and Nielsen expects the yogurt category to grow by nearly $2 billion dollars over the next five years, reaching $8.1 billion across all channels.
Category Captain
Dairy
Kraft Foods
When distribution on some Philadelphia brand product innovations exceeded their potential, displacing stronger core cream cheese items, Kraft Foods rethought the shelf through the consumer's eyes to optimize shopability, selection and volume.
Accordingly, the company developed three principles for its "Silver Wall" initiative:
Refocus Cream Cheese on Cream Cheese: By moving complementary and related products out of the set and streamlining snacking SKUs, space is opened for new, on-trend varieties in the growth-driving soft segment.
Shelve the Category in Vertical Brand Blocks: Vertical blocking disrupts peripheral vision, establishing a distinct category presence within dairy, and also encourages discovery and purchase of new items within a preferred brand.
Anchor the Set With Philadelphia Brand: Few brands are as iconic in their categories, even for shoppers who prefer other brands or select cream cheese based on factors other than brand.
With Silver Wall in the field since the beginning of 2013, year-to-date soft cream cheese was up 1.1 percent in dollars and 3.7 percent in units, driving the category to overall increases of nearly 1 percent in both dollars and units. Philadelphia led the category, with soft cream cheese growth of 1.8 percent in dollars and 5.4 percent in units.
Category Advisor
Dairy: Eggs
CCF Brands
Aiding in the continued rise of the $5 billion egg category, total sales of which for the 52 weeks ended July 6 were up 8.43 percent, according to Nielsen, CCF Brands' category management team collaborated with retailers to identify opportunities for growth. In the past year, the team worked with a major retailer on optimizing assortment and space within stores.
Using a proprietary consumer and product segmentation study and available syndicated data, the team was able to cluster store types and banners to maximize available space for products targeting the stores' respective shoppers. CCF then recommended product placement and building all planograms based on assortment recommendations for each store cluster grouping.
CCF also invested in its category management and shopper insights team by ensuring that all team members undergo the Category Management Association's certification process so that they're qualified in the roles of advising, developing and evaluating strategic category plans, assortment optimization, space management, market structure and segmentation, as well as being able to understand shopper purchasing trends and consumer insights.
Category Captain
Deli
Dietz & Watson
Working with a major Midwestern retailer on a pricing and promotional strategy to gain trial and drive premium meat sales, Dietz & Watson recommended aggressive promotions at $5.99 per pound for deli bulk turkey, ham and chicken from January to May 2013. The price point was chosen as one at which customers would be more willing to purchase, as well as to gain brand loyalty.
After the promotion's success, Dietz & Watson suggested upping the price to a $6.49-per-pound promotion in June 2013. Due to steady growth of baseline dollars, more Dietz & Watson product was sold at the higher price. The promotions also aided the retailer's strategy to trade consumers up to a premium product while gaining incremental volume.
The promotions led to 4 percent year-over-year volume sales growth and 2.2 percent dollar growth at the retailer across total deli bulk meat from January to July 2013, outpacing national trends in which, according to Nielsen Perishables Group FreshFacts, deli bulk meat volume declined 1.2 percent and dollars rose 0.6 percent. Dietz & Watson accounted for 14.4 percent of deli bulk meat sales at the retailer during the promotional time period, up 6.3 percentage points from the prior year.
Category Advisor
Deli
Hormel Foods
Hormel Foods collaborated with a major retailer to grow the declining service deli category, aligning such strategies as shelf optimization and consumer analysis to build overall category sales while improving consumer shopability, driving sales productivity and lowering shrink.
The Hormel team began by reducing assortments to include only "power" segments, brands and items. This resulted in improved inventory holding power, reduced labor and increased departmental efficiency. The opportunity to optimize assortments through item reduction and power product focus was particularly beneficial because of the labor intensity of the service deli category, in which increased departmental efficiency strongly correlates with customer satisfaction.
Further, by aligning segment space with sales, Hormel created brand blocks that improved the category's in-store presentation and helped manage inventory. The team also addressed customer needs through an analysis of shopping drivers and consumer decision trees, helping the retailer address key concerns and optimize category flow.
Hormel's innovative work with the retailer invigorated the overall service deli category, both growing the retailer's market share and improving efficiency in stores. While assortment was reduced by 10 percent to 15 percent, sales trends climbed to a range of -2 percent to 2 percent (flat). Additionally, shrinkage improved by 100 base points.
Category Captain
Dairy: Refrigerated Baked Goods
General Mills
As the dollar share leader in the refrigerated baked goods (RBG) category, General Mills' Pillsbury brand provided retailers with industry-leading insights and capabilities to accelerate customer growth. The insights from its path-to-purchase study led to the creation of "Re-Fresh Dough," a category growth story reinforcing the importance of RBG while demonstrating that significant growth was possible by focusing on three key areas: the holidays, every day and the shopping experience.
To drive traffic to the section during the all-important holiday season, Pillsbury is increasing its digital advertising by more than 21 percent and boosting by 600 percent its presence on YouTube and other websites. Ads will focus on inspiring consumers to make what they love at the holidays.
In the realm of product innovation, Pillsbury is working toward eliminating trans fats from products and reducing sodium by 20 percent. Additional innovations included gluten-free items, cookies co-branded with Disney, special-edition Hershey's and Cinnabon products, and two new Homestyle biscuit flavors.
The brand's dollar growth in the bread, biscuit and sweet breakfast segments contributed to total category dollar volume growth of 6 percent versus last year, according to Nielsen, which Pillsbury attributes to its focus on meal solution advertising and execution.
Category Captain
Prepared Foods
Tyson Foods Inc.
Tyson Deli's category management success was evident in several stellar examples:
To a major retailer losing business by not always having rotisserie chicken stocked during peak purchase times, Tyson recommended signage guaranteeing that rotisserie chicken would be available between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., or it was free. After installing the signage, the retailer experienced a sustained 17 percent growth in rotisserie chicken sales.
After being advised by Tyson to reinstall hot mobile merchandisers to increase awareness and impulse sales of hot prepared foods, a major retailer saw a sales increase of more than 20 percent in stores with these merchandisers.
Tyson recommended that key retail customers carry newly developed fried tortilla chips, which were operationally easy to prepare and offered high margins to help make up the decreased margins in rotisserie chicken sales. Creative display suggestions boosted awareness in the deli prepared food section, increasing impulse purchases of other items.
With the creation of a full complement of point-of-sale material to shoppers in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Tyson increased the category's shopper foot traffic and engagement, and increased deli prepared food sales in the cold case.
Next for Tyson is a formal shopper marketing expertise development program.
Category Captain
Variable/Fixed-weight Meat
Hillshire Brands
This year, Hillshire Brands introduced Category Leadership Platforms (CLP) for the breakfast sausage category and five other categories. Designed to be one-stop shops for all insights related to a category, the platforms were structured to understand shoppers throughout the entire shopping experience: pre-shop, shop and post-shop.
Each platform consisted of purchase structures that led to best-in-class merchandising principles, primary shopper insights, macro trends and how they affect the category, proprietary segmentations, and all necessary syndicated point-of-sale and consumer panel insights.
Hillshire used the CLPs as foundations, further customizing for each retailer and leveraging syndicated partners, advanced assortment tools, and retailer-specific data, both shopper and POS. With its knowledge and expertise derived from the CLPs, the company was appointed category captain at some of the biggest U.S. grocery retailers. The results were great for both the category and Hillshire: At total U.S. multi-outlet stores, the category grew 3.7 percent in dollars and 5.6 percent in units, with Hillshire Brands, up 3 percent in dollars and 3.5 percent in units, a big contributor to that growth.
For the future, the company has developed a learning agenda to further expand the CLPs and introduce department leadership platforms for fiscal 2014.
Category Advisor
Variable/Fixed-weight Meat
Butterball LLC
Random-weight point-of-sale data is notoriously tricky, especially when tracking a category like whole turkeys. Price look-up codes (PLUs), often called "system twos," change from year to year; holdover retailer turkey inventory from the previous Thanksgiving holiday season clouds the product assortment picture; and pricing and promotion strategies are among the most aggressive and complicated in the industry. With this as a backdrop, retailers must decide each year how to purchase and price more than 410 million pounds of turkey for America's oldest national holiday.
Working with its sales and brand management teams, research vendors and retail partners, Butterball LLC crafted the Butterball Blueprint, a Thanksgiving plan for grocery retailers. Butterball Insights looked beyond the usual demand-and-supply issues, incorporating pricing and price gap findings, product assortment suggestions and holiday feature ad ideas to create the first holistic holiday management story. To implement the blueprint, Butterball built retail profit and pricing tools and distributed them freely to retailers.
The outcome of this approach was extremely positive: Last year, retailer dollars grew $10.6 million and profit increased $11 million, with the Butterball brand playing a critical role in the improvement. In 2012, Butterball's Thanksgiving sales grew more than 7 percent.
Variable/Fixed-weight Produce
Category Captain
Bananas
Chiquita Brands
Beginning in March 2013, Chiquita Brands teamed with a major retailer to pilot the "Better Banana Program," which put the company's employees in charge of the sourcing, shipping and fruit-ripening process to ensure consistent delivery of superior-quality bananas.
Since the rollout of the program, participating divisions of the retailer outpaced the remaining divisions by 1.1 percentage points in dollars and 1.2 percentage points in volume over the previous year. Chiquita and the retailer are now expanding the program to all divisions.
In another example of Chiquita's category management prowess, a Midwest retailer that wanted to make bananas a destination category in produce, but whose banana sales were down because of higher prices than the competitive market and national trends, followed the company's advice to increase promotions and educate shoppers on its newly implemented reduced pricing.
During April 2013 alone, banana volume sold on promotion at the retailer grew from 0.75 percent to 24 percent, versus the national average of 3 percent. Since adopting the strategy, the retailer experienced banana volume growth for the first time since September 2012, and this growth outpaced the competitive market from April through July 2013, growing 24.5 percent, compared with 8.5 percent.
Category Advisor
Bananas
Del Monte Fresh Produce
In 2012, Del Monte set out to help a West coast regional retailer increase its banana sales and tonnage over the previous year.
First, FreshLook Marketing syndicated data was used to compare the retailer's banana sales trends with those of surrounding markets. Market Track Ad Data reports were then run to compare the retailer's ad frequency with the prior year and that of its competitors, and to evaluate featured price points and promotions run by the competition throughout the year. Finally, Spectra data was used to determine the retailer's potential banana sales and tonnage by store, based on shopper demographics, store size and potential.
Most beneficial to the retailer was Spectra demographic data highlighting consumer banana demand by individual store, followed up and supported by a Del Monte retail merchandiser's audit of the retailer's major markets' stores, as well as competitors' stores, to determine best handling and merchandising practices in the field.
After the retailer adopted this course of action, its dollar sales and tonnage saw double-digit growth versus the same period a year ago, outpacing its corresponding market and region trends for the same time period.
Category Captain
Overall
Green Giant Fresh
Green Giant Fresh's combination of category management support and in-store solutions drove retail sales and profit over the past year. In early 2012, a retailer swapped in the brand's 12-ounce broccoli florettes with a competitor's like item, and dollar sales for 12-ounce broccoli florettes increased 50 percent for the 52-week period versus the year-ago period. Additionally, the retailer's entire packaged broccoli segment grew 25 percent, driving total broccoli sales up 6 percent.
At the same retailer, packaged green bean sales had been steadily rising since 2009, but jumped 74 percent in dollars following Green Giant Fresh's 2012 entry into the category. Subsequently, packaged green beans grew from a 3 percent share of the retailer's total green bean sales in 2009 to a stunning 69 percent in 2013.
Further, Green Giant Fresh brand extensions helped drive strong growth in the sugar snap pea segment at another retailer, where the brand increased its share from 25 percent in 2010 to 80 percent in 2013.
Additionally, Green Giant Fresh saw great success with customized in-store demos of Little Gem lettuce at several retailers. Program participants realized retail dollar sales that were more than 100 percent higher than stores that didn't offer the demos.
Category Captain
Fresh-cut Fruit
Del Monte Fresh Produce
In 2012, a key regional Northeast/Great Lakes retailer looked to Del Monte to increase its fresh-cut fruit sales after a stagnant 2011. The program needed new items to compete with growing demand for larger club packs, in addition to an improvement in overall shrink.
Using FreshLook Marketing syndicated data to create item rankings for the respective regions, the produce supplier pinpointed larger pack-size items to find the right product mix, while a Del Monte category manager analyzed the retailer's sales and shrink data on a quarterly basis to identify best-sellers, slow-selling items and shrink by store.
The company also employed Spectra and the retailer's sales data to generate an analysis of stores' potential versus actual retail sales dollars, with the goal of finding the disparities in store performance that were causing the sales gap. Along with its sales merchandisers' observations, Del Monte used this information to ensure handling and merchandising best practices to reduce shrink or out-of-stocks.
Quarterly meetings between retailer management and Del Monte account managers to review sales trends and store-level performance allowed for thorough and regular program maintenance, resulting in a 41 percent gross profit dollar increase in the retailer's third quarter versus the year-ago period.
Category Advisor
Celery
Duda Farm Fresh Foods
Duda Farm Fresh Foods is the world's largest grower and processor of celery, with its Dandy brand contributing 38 percent to national fresh-cut celery sales, a 3 percent increase from the prior year.
In November 2012, a major Southeast retailer followed Duda's advice to introduce 1.25-ounce bags of celery sticks to further drive category growth. Between that time and July 2013, Duda's fresh-cut celery's dollar contribution to value-added vegetables increased from 2.7 percent to 3.5 percent, while overall value-added vegetables at the retailer rose 7.8 percent.
Outside of the store, Duda invested in consumer promotions that brought new attention to the category, such as its partnership with the $150 million lifestyle brand "The Biggest Loser." In 2013, Duda's Daybreak brand 1.25-pound packaged celery sticks were branded with "The Biggest Loser" logo and images of the show's trainers and host, to be carried exclusively at Walmart stores nationwide.
The co-branded snacking celery was not only the leading snacking celery item at Walmart, but also nationally, growing volume and dollar sales 38 percent and 32 percent, respectively, during the 52 weeks ending July 27.
Duda's investments in innovation, assortment optimization and consumer marketing breathed new life into the celery category.
Category Captain
Fresh-packed Vegetables
Dole Fresh Vegetables
An in-depth study revealed to Dole that shoppers who purchase on freshness shop more frequently while spending more, as well as the fact that for such items as lettuce, mushrooms and peppers, shoppers were five times more likely to be driven by freshness than price, while for other categories, including melons and potatoes, the opposite was true. Dole's subsequent recommendation to its retail partners to emphasize key pillars like price and promotion led to year-to-date results that outpaced trends across the rest of the market.
Over the past year, as well as developing the "Full Service Solutions" program to deliver the freshest produce anywhere in North America. the company continued to hone such proprietary tools as its DART platform, which enabled it to establish co-existence between lettuce and packaged salads to maximize profit and sales, optimize promotion across complementary vegetable items, and trade consumers up from commodities to value-added products. In fact, Dole's category management integration of fresh-pack vegetables and value-added salads provided greater opportunity across both segments.
The result of this strategy is that Dole's top five customers continue to outperform across all key performance indicators on the top three vegetable items.
Category Captain
Mushrooms
Monterey Mushrooms
Monterey Mushrooms advised a retailer experiencing strong competition within its market to adjust its assortment slightly and set everyday retails based on market competitive analysis. Following these recommendations, the retailer achieved a 15.4 percent net profit increase versus last year.
Another retailer tried to grow the category by being the low-cost leader in its market, but wasn't selling enough to break even compared with the year-ago period, and its profit growth was almost three times worse than its sales growth. After Monterey suggested tweaks to its everyday retails and promotional calendar, the retailer changed its sales trend from -6.7 percent to 2.6 percent and its profit trend from -16.2 percent to 12.7 percent.
With Monterey's help, a third retailer, which was attempting to grow the category, updated its assortment to include larger packs of the grower's most popular items, with new everyday retails put in at the same time assortment began shipping. A plan was developed to support the new assortment's item variety, and store sets were updated to include days of supply and promotional support. The retailer subsequently saw 13 percent sales growth – versus just 3.3 percent in the rest of its region – and net profits of 16 percent.
Category Advisor
Fruit
Stemilt Growers LLC
Stemilt Growers LLC's Lil Snappers packaging program for "kid-sized" apples and pears not only increased volume, but also returned higher value to retailers and growers. The program not only sold well, but also invigorated the pear category to the point where the company sold out of small pears, which are normally a harder sell because of a lack of a defined market. Lil Snappers added a dimension to the category that didn't cannibalize the bulk category and built some incremental sales.
The company also found promotional value in special buys on larger bagged fruit that was then placed in bins, larger fruit sold in bulk, and new variety development. Stemilt additionally focused more on bulk ads with four items on promotion, highlighting the more popular varieties in the region of the country where a particular retailer was located, and brought back the classic merchandising tool of display contests to fire up store employees, offering prizes for the most impactful displays. Further, Stemilt University courses educated 12 retailer employees at a time on merchandising, advertising and selling fruit.
According to FreshFacts, an Eastern retail partner of Stemilt experienced an astonishing 30 percent dollar sales lift of its total apple category.
Category Advisor
Packaged Salads
Chiquita Fresh Express
In keeping with Chiquita's objectives of refocusing on its core businesses and emphasizing quality, Fresh Express overhauled its three Caesar salad kits, improving the structure of the film used in the bags, as well as the taste and quality of the kits' components. The products rolled out at the end of February 2013, leading to a 19 percent rise in overall consumption, driven by the core Caesar kit's 33 percent improvement and achieved with virtually no change in marketing, promotions or distribution.
Additionally, at a particular retail account, quarterly business reviews showed continued trends of declining unit sales and margin, and increased shrink, so Fresh Express created the long-term "Buy More, Save More" program, which reduced the everyday price on a single unit purchase while offering an incremental discount for multi-unit purchases. This eliminated many weekly promotions, improved inventory controls and minimized shrink. Profits from higher velocities and reduced shrink more than offset reduced margins from lowered prices.
As a result, multiple purchase per transactions were up four to 13 points, depending on the product line; unit shrink declined five points to less than 6 percent; unit sales grew 20 percent; and dollar sales rose 12 percent.
Category Captain
Packaged Salads
Dole Fresh Vegetables
A study by Dole's category development team conclusively quantified a potential annual sales increase of up to $500,000 per store for an average produce department if a retailer were to make a full investment in freshness. The top three Dole customers that executed based on the study outpaced the rest of the market in value-added salads and the total produce department.
Dole's integrated team developed marketing plans to communicate the freshness message to consumers. This holistic approach focuses on shopper card analysis allowing retailers to pinpoint key areas of opportunity at the household level, and shrink management optimization combining shipment data with internal scan information at the store/SKU level.
The company also developed a line of salads that maximized taste and nutrition, starring the hottest-trending ingredient, kale. After research found chopped salads to be the fastest-growing casual-dining salad segment, the company launched a segment within packaged salads, Chopped Blends, enabling consumers to top salads with their own dressings.
Dole retailers showed a second consecutive year of positive trends. What's more, trends for the company's salads have accelerated since the deployment of its proprietary category management platform, and Dole was the only top brand with organic growth, according to IRI.
Category Advisor
Packaged Salads
Apio Inc.
With rising consumer demand for convenient superfoods in mind, Apio created a unique ready-to-eat product: The Eat Smart Sweet Kale Vegetable Salad Kit launched in October 2012 to 147 grocery stores. By the end of July 2013, the product was selling in more than 2,700 stores across the country. Nationally, the average packaged salad kit sold eight units per store per week where in distribution, while the Sweet Kale Vegetable Salad Kit sold 11.
At one Southeastern retailer, the kit was introduced in January 2013, and by July, it accounted for 7.3 percent of salad kit sales. Apio supported the kit's launch with point-of-sale danglers to draw attention to the section, and the item was promoted to support trial usage.
Since the introduction of the product, the salad kit category at the retailer saw dollar growth of 17.7 percent from the prior year. Of that growth, 35.7 percent came from the introduction of the Eat Smart Sweet Kale Vegetable Salad Kit and 17.3 percent came from growth in the other Eat Smart kits, accounting for a total of 53.1 percent of the growth in salad kits.
Category Advisor
Pineapple
Del Monte Fresh Produce
When a major Midwest regional retailer's fiscal 2012 whole-pineapple category dollar sales decreased by nearly 4 percent versus the previous year, Del Monte performed an analysis of the retailer's shipments and point-of-sale scan data to identify sales patterns and areas of opportunity. Additionally, a Del Monte category manager used syndicated FreshLook Marketing data to evaluate the retailer's sales over the past year compared with those of its competition.
Del Monte also used FreshLook data to monitor retail pricing by period for the retailer and its competition, undertook quarterly pricing reviews, and relied on FeatureVision ad-tracking software to monitor the market's promotional activity and pricing. Finally, a Del Monte sales merchandiser submitted periodic reports on merchandising activity in the retailer's and its competition's stores.
Acting on the information that its whole-pineapple average price hadn't been competitive for most of the first half of fiscal 2013, the retailer lowered its everyday price to be more in line with the market and ran hotter ad prices. As a result, the retailer turned around its whole-pineapple category business, with dollar sales improving nearly 20 percent over last year and finishing at 15 percent, and outperformed the competition, which saw a comparatively minimal sales gain.
Category Captain
Specialty Produce
Frieda's Inc.
Frieda's continued to offer retailers world-class integrated promotions in 2013, beginning with a Chinese New Year program showing produce teams how to display a wide selection of specialty Asian fruits and vegetables in a dynamic Year of the Snake display. Some retailers also took part in Chinese New Year display contests, which further fostered store-level engagement while creating camaraderie and friendly competition among stores. Not least, the program also invigorated sales during the often dull months after the holidays.
Among Frieda's other successful promotions were the "Year of Purple" campaign highlighting sweet potatoes, artichokes, kohlrabi, cauliflower and other items in this trending color, and Hatch Green Chile roasting programs at retailers across the country, all of which reported sellout sales during such events.
In addition to promotions, Frieda's category management offering included product mix optimization, merchandising recommendations, sales analyses, business reviews, and marketing support to increase foot traffic in clients' produce departments. Frieda's team also offered seasoned, experienced professionals in sales, procurement and marketing to provide clients with well-rounded, comprehensive support in the specialty produce category. These efforts were in keeping with the company's belief that investing in a robust specialty produce category is a win-win for retailers.
Category Advisor
Potatoes
Idaho Potato Commission
The Idaho Potato Commission (IPC) presented any retailer interested in improving potato sales with an in-depth analysis, asking the appropriate category manager for at least five stores with preferably five distinct potato sets to be studied with an eye toward best practices. Using proven statistics and pictures from these stores, IPC analyzed the layout and prepared a report that additionally included its impressions of the potato category at competing retailers within a five-mile radius of each store being analyzed.
Upon the completion of all of this analysis, IPC created a PowerPoint presentation with a comprehensive confidential category review for the retailer, along with recommendations on how to improve sales in the entire potato category, not just Idaho potatoes. Recommendations that were put into practice met with positive results, according to the commission.
In addition to this comprehensive category analysis, IPC continued to offer merchandising recommendations through its quarterly Potato Retailing Today publication. For instance, the last issue featured the first charts showing seasonality of potatoes by variety by month, to better assist retailers in enhancing their ad plans.
PERIMETER – OTHER
Category Captain
Floral
TotalFloral
TotalFloral joined forces with Delhaize America's Tampa, Fla.-based Sweetbay Supermarket division to transform its floral program into an eco-centric, sustainably focused platform. TotalFloral saw this as an opportunity to showcase eco-friendly floral as the embodiment of the retailer's overall commitment to sustainability.
As such, TotalFloral transitioned a "me-too" conventional program to one centered on sustainable, eco-friendly products, with in-store signage highlighting the change. Then, with its sister company, Organic Bouquet, TotalFloral provided the retailer with an entirely new business segment: an eco-centric e-commerce solution, with special discounts and in-store promotions providing incentive for customers to use the service.
The company also teamed with Kathy Ireland's brand of "Gracefully Green" floral products, with cross-promotion between the store and online to build business in both segments, and developed the Just Because brand, which "gave permission" to customers to "treat themselves or someone else" to flowers.
This multipronged approach resulted in a consistent 3 percent comparative-sales gain in floral performance.
Category Captain
Front End Services
Outerwall
Outerwall – formerly known as
Coinstar Inc. – continued to prove itself adept at putting otherwise empty front end space to work, delivering solutions to consumers and profits to retailers.
The latest addition to the Coinstar platform is Alula, an automated kiosk for exchanging unwanted gift cards. Outerwall reports that Alula is performing well on both a face-value-per-gift card and a transaction-per-day basis, indicating that consumer interest is high and the potential opportunity remains attractive.
Meanwhile, the company continued to enhance the Coinstar system, offering consumers the opportunity to load funds, withdraw and send money to PayPal users right from the kiosk. Additionally, a new partnership gave birth to Redbox Instant by Verizon, a subscriptionservice allowing users to watch entertainment on the device of their choice. This past summer, Redbox reached 3 billion movie and video game rentals.
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3 comments:

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