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Marketing To The Middle

As Associated Wholesale Grocers, this community of more than 3,800 grocery stores in the “middle” of America, I would wager that over the years, many of us have had a good pulse on who our customers were. Many of us still know very well who our customers are, but not everyone truly gets the essence of what motivates their customers and what they’re looking for in a shopping experience. Given the current political climate and the election results, it has many questioning if we really know what we’re dealing with in our country. AdWeek has recently published a cover story (http://www.adweek.com/agencies/marketers-everywhere-are-rethinking-middle-america-post-trump-inside-one-effort-to-help-them/) about marketers rethinking their strategy for middle America and it’s a fascinating look at how companies, their agencies, and marketers are trying to figure out who middle America truly is and how they can deliver their message to consumers. It’s a tricky subject and there’s not one easy answer. But let’s take a quick look at some of the themes of the article. Brands don’t understand the middle American shopper. The article tells of tours of the midwest by those…

The Battle of Big Game Ads

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default”][vc_column_text] In the grocery industry, the week of the biggest game in the NFL season is a HUGE week for retailers. Second only behind Thanksgiving in terms of a “food holiday,” this week has, in essence, become another holiday week in the grocery world. From an advertising perspective, we like to take a look at the competitive landscape and see what other retailers are doing both within AWG and throughout the country. This gives us a chance to see what retailers are pushing and also how they are flexing their creative muscles. As someone who pays close attention to branding intensely, it’s a very interesting case study. As you can see, many retailers go all out for the big game ad. There are a lot of ways to show off the top items and creativity can run wild. What sets some retailers apart is how they show similar items in new and different ways. It’s important to remember that enticing customers to open an ad is important…

Two By Two presentation

Fuse Marketing With Marriage Of Data, Creative

In the business, marketing and advertising world, we are often lumped into one of two silos – creative or numbers. Those two silos seem like they shouldn’t mingle very often, but as explained recently at the AAF-KC’s Atomic Fusion Lab, those two key focus areas are not mutually exclusive and shouldn’t be. Suzanne Van Cleve and Wayne Kaufmanschmidt led the presentation and workshop and showed how these two disciplines inform each other and can be essential in today’s marketing world. Van Cleve has worked mainly on the client side with leadership roles at Intuit, Oracle and Adobe. It was at Intuit, working for TurboTax, where she worked together with Kaufmanschmidt, one time creative director at VML and current head of digital strategy at Trozzolo. Van Cleve said she has always been interested in how to measure the results of marketing efforts and how to draw creative strategies from data and analytics. Kaufmanschmidt worked with her to understand the key metrics that she was looking to meet at TurboTax and together they worked on ways to deliver on the needs. In…

presentation on the generations

Talking ‘Bout The Generations

These kids these days, they just don’t do it the same as I used to. Regardless of generation, older generations have always said that about younger generations. That’s no different in today’s society and it provides us with challenges both internally and externally as marketers and advertisers. During the annual FMI Connect and FMI Future Leaders Conference, Cam Marston of Generational Insights gave one of the most engaging and insightful talks of the entire conference, when he laid out the opportunities and challenges of communicating with each generation. First, it’s important to break down the generations: Matures 70+ Baby Boomers 51-69 Gen X 36-50 Millenials (Gen Y) 15-35 iGen 14 and below Marston talked about how affluence impacts societies. It delays adulthood in many ways, because children are not forced to be a part of the working class to earn a living. We also see that in times of affluence, Marston said, the individual becomes more important than the group need – or at the very least it’s OK for people to think about individual achievements and promotions before thinking…