Thinking about the fetaure ad

The Feature Ad...the backbone of out-of-store communication (even if that upstart of web communication is making inroads, it still doesn't have the impact of a feature ad).  An incredibly powerful tool in driving consumers to your store and driving volume on key items...

As a recovering retailer I've seen the power of tabs with door busters on the front and back, so I know that ads can have a tremendous impact.  Oh, the case cuts I've built!

I've been out of the business for a few decades and much has undoubtedly changed.  In my current world, I spend my time working in and thinking about the deli, so the front page doorbusters are largely a thing of the past.   But I've recently been spending some time looking at and thinking about feature ads specifically in reference to prepared chicken items in the deli. 

There are a couple of pieces of work that have led me to my conclusions.  The first is some analysis we did on Perishables Group data.  We wanted to see if there was a correlation between change in feature ad activity (# of ads, not value or offer) and change in volume or change in retailer performance vs competition (again, on volume).  The quick answer as to whether or not there is a correltation is:  no.  Some stores who increased promotional activity on a given category gained volume, some lost volume.  The same was true for those who decreased ad activity--some gained, some lost.  So, change in ad activity has little or no predictive value in terms of volume change.  That's sort of remarkable, I think. 

Not connected to this work, was some analysis we did with a mjor regional retailer recently, looking at week by week volume of two different chicken categories.  We identified weeks that had a feature ad and weeks that had promotional merchandising in store.  The weeks that had a feature ad showed an increase, but the weeks with the in-store merchandising had a far more significant increase.  We had originally seen similar results in a study on promotional effectiveness that we conducted two years ago. 

So, does that mean we should abandon feature ads for deli prepared foods items?  To quote St. Paul, "By no means!"  Feature ads are a very important tactic in developing category awareness and preparing the shopper for in-store messages.  While in-store messaging clealry is more effective at triggering purchase (it is, after all, a message received at the point of purchase, or moment of truth), feature ads are important supporting player.

Continue the use of feature ads for deli prepared items--you've probably been doing it and you're right to keep doing it.  If you're not utilizing promotional displays and branded concepts that trigger purchase decisions at the point of purchase, you need to start.