Aliya Ladha, Marketing Executive at TCC Global, shares her experience of this year’s IPM 30 Under 30 programme.

To anyone thinking about applying for the IPM 30 Under 30 programme, I highly recommend it. To say that the programme has been a fantastic experience is an understatement. It has given me the opportunities to stretch myself and offered me learning experiences that will be vital not only in my career but also in the personal decision-making process.

I was totally over the moon when I found out that I was chosen as one of the 30 candidates to participate this year. There were hundreds of applications from candidates with some of the best credentials and from all walks of life. Hence, you can’t help but feel a little lucky even though candidates are picked on merit. Only 30 special unique candidates progressed through to the programme for 2018 making us the 30 Under 30 young future leaders of the promotional marketing world.

The application process: I submitted my application in time for the October 2017 deadline and by mid November I was notified of my successful offer of a place on to the programme. It almost felt like a validation of my future ambitions because the programme recognises you as a young future leader of the promotional marketing world. Your employer could nominate you or you could nominate yourself for the application process. The wait for the results felt long but was well worth the wait once the 30 names were announced online! To celebrate we had a special awards evening where for the first time the 30 Under 30 cohort met, mingled and celebrated our first step into the programme with receiving award certificates which took place in December.

Before joining the programme I attended the webinar where the team answered valuable questions like if moving employer/ cannot make a session etc. What happens if you are unable to make a session and so on? This really got me excited about being part of the programme and showed how much the IPM 30 Under 30 cared for us on such a strong programme.

The IPM 30 under 30 programme has opened myself to so many opportunities and I have met some of the brightest people in the industry. I am sure I will be able to establish professional relationships with most of these people and collaborate in exciting projects in the future. Any person to be on the programme or thinking to be on the programme would learn lifelong skills to put into practice at any time in their careers. So on a cold evening I travelled to central London to attend my first session just to receive an warm welcome by the participants and the IPM hosts. It really makes you feel included from the word go.

The sessions: The programme involved 4 sessions throughout the year led by industry experts, which added real value to every session we attended. These covered: Career and Personal Development; Client Development and Negotiation; Smarter Working and Managing Stress and IP Mythbusters.

The sessions were very informative and gave us the chance to ask the experts about their experiences, challenges and solutions to problems they have faced within the sector. I could not believe that I would have the opportunity to share the same platform with the best and brightest in the industry without IPM 30 and 30. The whole programme is designed to take your imagination, thoughts and capability to the next level.

Networking drinks after each session were another great additional aspect organised by the IPM team after each session. This gave us another opportunity to interact with the industry leading experts. It also allowed our group of peers to mingle and share experiences, journeys and grow our network. In a nutshell, the programme really does instil the belief in you that the sky is the limit.

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The IPM’s 30 Under 30 programme, sponsored by Sodexo, is aimed at identifying some of the brightest and best young talent in the UK promotional marketing industry. The 30 successful candidates are then offered access to a an extensive professional development programme to enhance their capabilities and to provide them with skills and knowledge which they can share with their colleagues in the organisations they work for.

Every year, IPM Members are invited to submit the names of suitable candidates. They can be from any role, any level – as long as the person concerned is under the age of 30 before the closing date of entry and works for an IPM Member.

Submissions are then assessed by a panel of independent professionals and senior IPM Members, who select the 30 successful candidates who are then offered access to a suite of learning experiences to enhance their capabilities and to provide them with skills and knowledge which they can share with their colleagues in the organisations they work for.

Over the next few months, www.promomarketing.info will be featuring comment from selected members of the 2018 30 Under 30 programme on a range of topics relevant to promotional marketing. The first topic is the impact of digital marketing and online shopping on the traditional retail industry…

Alice Hennell

Alice Hennell is client manager at secure digital voucher system provider, i-movo

In this connected, digital age it is true to say that the impact of digital on the shopper journey has been incredibly disruptive. What is less certain, however, is exactly how this disruption will play out in the retail sector in the long term.

You could argue that the prevalence of digital is proving detrimental to our traditional bricks-and-mortar retail industry. Shopping Amazon from your office desk with an abundance of choice and free shipping to your home address is an easy option for most consumers, and it’s one that doesn’t make bracing the high-street on a chilly December evening the most appealing alternative. But the impact of digital on the shopper journey has also resulted in opportunity and growth for retailers, and it is this that I find incredibly exciting.

The grocery convenience market is vast: over 60,000 stores across the UK trade as independent businesses, providing access to essential products for communities. These convenience stores aren’t listed on Amazon, the majority don’t have an online presence or use e-commerce platforms, and a marketing budget is not a common allocation of business funds.

Yet from my viewpoint, the ever-increasing impact of digital on the shopper journey can be leveraged to the advantage of these convenience retailers, leading to increased footfall, basket spend and, overall, profit margin.

In the FMCG sector, brands are increasingly using digital channels to serve consumers with promotional offers and vouchers, and it is this brand behaviour which will support and grow traditional smaller retailers in the foreseeable future.

Digital promotions can drive in-store visits, offering a life-line to sectors like the grocery convenience model, where innovation is required to stay competitive in the ever-changing retail landscape. A free chocolate bar voucher can be the trigger to getting a consumer to visit their local grocery store — and this is the point retailers can use to their advantage.

Publications like Retail Newsagent report on a weekly basis the innovations that independent retailers are employing to delight and retain the customers that visit their stores.

Customer service is key, as is following customer-led demand, driving the creation of extensive ranges of food-to-go, fresh produce and quality frozen meals. Cross-merchandising is another favoured technique for up-selling, while stand-alone services like coffee, fresh juice and ice cream machines are becoming more regular within a convenience store setting. Retailers are adapting to the changing climate and focusing on a more customer-centric approach.

What may seem at first seem like a one-time promotional voucher for an FMCG product can in fact lead to long-term shopper loyalty not just for the brand being promoted, but also for the retailer fulfilling the promotion.

As long as retailers can be agile in their responses to their market’s needs, there is scope for both bricks and mortar and e-commerce retail environments to thrive.

The impact of digital on the shopper journey may be substantial; but with the right strategy, it can actually aid retailers, both on and off the web.

Amber Morin-Farraway

Amber Morin-Farraway is a planner with agency whynot! thinkpeople

There’s a reason why people have been driven to online retailers; with convenience at its heart, it’s a tempting, straightforward path to purchase that you can complete in the comfort of your own home.

This shift from bricks and mortar to online purchases, as well as the rise and spread of social media, has meant that the traditional shopper journey has gained many more touch points throughout the years.

Digital has given us a wonderful and fun opportunity to speak to consumers across a new platform, allowing us to add value along the way by creating content built around the customer experience that supports the physical retail environment.

Bridging the gap between these offline and online worlds is of course our mobile.

It can function as a seamless link between multiple touch points, acting as the glue that holds it all together. It has the potential to be the hub for multiple functions, such as data collection, product availability, in-store experiences, purchases, payment, loyalty schemes etc. Encouragingly, a recent report from Mindshare titled Future of Retail CX, stated that 65% of consumers could see themselves using mobile more in the future to improve their in-store experiences. Therefore, it is vital for retailers to understand at which touch points they can utilize and optimize mobile for the best shopping experience possible.

And let’s not forget the prospect of personalisation.

Although shoppers are visiting a general store environment, there are opportunities throughout to take all of the data points collected and make something truly useful and personalized for shoppers.

Imagine a couple walks into a store, and floor staff is armed with their personal details.

Do they have any un-purchased items in their online basket that you can provide information for? Can you offer advice or guide them to relevant areas or brands based on their previous browsing history? Can smart shelves be utilized to deliver real-time information to their in-store location? Or perhaps to tell what items they have picked up in order to offer personalised incentives to purchase?

Such an integrated system can only offer more exciting and tailored shopping experiences in store, helping to create a richer and more immersive experience.

In my opinion, disruption, evolution and adaptation will continue to drive the shopper journey forward, becoming a frictionless and rewarding experience for the individual, whether making their full purchase online, in store, or a combination of both.

As Trevor Edwards, president of Nike brand, recently stated: “undifferentiated, mediocre retail won’t survive.”

Therefore, digital will not be the death of retail, but second-rate offerings will be its ultimate demise. No matter the platform, we should always be trying to create the feeling of a meaningful relationship between buyer and brand. In the end, the digital and physical environments can live independently from one another; however, when they’re used together, you’ll find you’ve hit your sweet spot.

Fiona Tindall

Fiona Tindall is Head of Domestic Retail at staffing solutions, travel retail and experiential specialist Blackjack Promotions.

The rapid rise of online retail and the continued growth of digital technologies had many people predicting the rapid demise of the high-street store. But like the years before, 2017 proved that this was far from the case. Bricks and mortar stores are likely to be more important than ever this year, as more and more online retailers get physical. The flip side is that high street outlets will increasingly embrace digital technology as they learn more and more from online retailers.

The explosion of online retail has resulted in a rush to create increasingly personal experiences for consumers as each strives for that key point of differentiation to help it stand out from the crowd. Key to this is mining customer data to help retailers get to know their audiences as deeply as possible to better understand their needs and preferences. This is also being used by physical stores to deliver more immersive and engaging in-store experiences.

Meanwhile, consumers are now carrying multiple smart devices which they are increasingly using to conduct their own price comparisons in-store with the likes of Google and Amazon. These are key lessons for physical retailers when creating in-store customer experiences and trying to push the ‘value’ message.

More and more, retailers are also thinking not only about how to create bespoke brand interactions in the physical space, but also how to reach out to consumers through their own devices in the digital space and how to bring the physical and digital worlds together.

Something few experts would have envisaged is digital retailers invading the physical world, yet this trend grew in 2017 and will continue to flourish this year. Amazon’s Christmas truck sent shockwaves through high street brands this Christmas as it set up (mobile) shop in the real world. But, of course, this was just one example of the increasingly popular pop-up retail outlet.

Although used by brands that don’t traditionally have their own retail outlets, as the year goes on, we will see more and more online retailers using them to deliver a physical experience to consumers to create a greater point of differentiation by immersing people more deeply in their brand.

Online beauty retailer Birchbox, for example, opened its first pop-up in London on the famous Carnaby Street not so long ago. Its mission has always been to “offer women a personalised way to shop for beauty” and the brand feels connecting with them face to face will help deliver further on this promise. This followed the opening of two permanent Birchbox stores in New York and Paris earlier in 2017.

What’s interesting is that Birchbox’s stores mirror the online experience putting a more intuitive twist on the traditional store environment, which predominantly physical retailers can learn from. Online retailers’ invasion of the high street – both temporarily through pop-ups and via permanent stores – will continue.

To keep shoppers coming back in a digital world, physical retailers will increasingly turn to presenting real theatre in store. The more advanced ones will lose some of their shelving and convert it to experiential space where brand ambassadors engage with shoppers. Racks of products are becoming less important than telling an engaging brand story and allowing people to experience it.

Furthermore, one of the biggest trends in retail at the moment is instant personalisation, with brand ambassadors actually creating something unique while the shopper waits. At Christmas, for example, you’ll see an outbreak of customised Christmas stockings, names engraved on perfume bottles, even consumers’ own personal messages on food or drink packaging. This makes consumers part of the brand and will be a growing trend.

To further improve the physical experience, this could be the year that augmented reality starts to realise its full in-store potential. Increasingly, customers will be able to use AR to scan a product in a high street outlet using their smart phone, then select the product they want to buy and place the order online. Apps, such as IKEA Place, will grow in popularity, and as AR technology matures, more retailers will explore ways to use it.

Robots are also on the rise. As more consumers embrace instant messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, both online and bricks-and-mortar retailers will use these platforms to talk to customers and streamline communications. For instance, if a shopper wants to track their order, they can just “ask” the retailer on Messenger, and a chatbot can automatically retrieve the shipment information. The use of chatbots will develop further, with retailers widening their use. Victoria’s Secret, for example, is already using chatbots to showcase its product lines.

It’s going to be some time yet, however, before robots replace people in stores – if it ever happens at all. Nothing can offer a more personal service than an actual person. The rise in retail theatre and the growth of pop-up stores means brand ambassadors who truly represent and embrace both retailers and the products they stock will be more important than ever this year.

So from data, chatbots and AR to pop-ups, retail theatre and brand ambassadors, 2018 will see the line between the physical and digital retail world becoming more blurred than ever before.

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The IPM has announced the results of its IPM 30 Under 30 2018 search for emerging talent in the promotional marketing industry.

The chosen candidates will now be officially welcomed to the 30 Under 30 2017 programme at an event to be held on December 14th 2017 at The Arch in Marble Arch.

The IPM 30 Under 30 2018 programme was launched on September 26th 2017, with a call for entries from IPM Member companies. Candidates could be of any level and any role, so long as they were under the age of 30 before the closing date of entry, which was 23:59 hours on Tuesday October 24^th 2017. They also had to work for an IPM Member.

The IPM is dedicated to championing professional development for the up-and-coming in the promotional marketing industry. Candidates were asked to state clear reasons why their inclusion on the programme would make a difference to their professional and personal development, together with evidence and endorsements.

The judging panel consisted of Chris Baldwin, Sodexo; Jill Lorimer, Account Management Skills; Mark Pavlika, Lucid Consults; Richard Pink, Pink Key Consulting; Jenny Plant, Account Management Skills; Tony Spong, AAR; Victoria Walsh, The Believe Consultancy; and Dan Wilks, Advertising Association.

They sifted through a massive number of submissions to find the winners and their choices can now be viewed on the IPM website.

The candidates chosen for the programme will now be offered the chance to participate in a range of learning experiences to enhance their capabilities and to provide them with skills and knowledge which they can take away and share with their colleagues in the organisations they work for.

The next call for entries, for the 30 Under 30 2019 programme, will open in September 2018. If you are an IPM Member and would like to register interest for the next intake, please contact the IPM team. 

The IPM 30 Under 30 2018 programme is sponsored by Sodexo.

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Blackjack Promotions, one of Europe’s leading airport staffing, travel retail and experiential marketing agencies, has promoted two members of its team to senior positions – both within a year of joining the business.

Andy DeVito has been appointed Head of Experiential while Fiona Tindall becomes Head of Domestic Retail.

DeVito returned to Blackjack last year as Account Director. He has extensive experience in travel retail marketing, having joined Blackjack initially in 2010, leaving four years later, but returning to the fold to focus on the integration of creative, design, planning and logistics, along with the agency’s award-winning staffing service. In his new role as Head of Experiential, DeVito will continue to oversee this work, while also managing Blackjack’s entire experiential operation.

“Experiential activations are a key part of the overall marketing mix and with more and more new exciting technology coming to market, the potential for brands is incredible,” said DeVito. “This is a fantastic opportunity and I’m truly relishing the challenge to drive our experiential activity forward.”

Previously working on the expansion of Local Market Retail at Blackjack in her role as Account Director, Tindall also joined the business in 2016 from World Duty Free, where she was Customer Service Manager at Heathrow Terminal 5.

In her newly-created role as Head of Domestic Retail, Tindall will draw on her considerable retail expertise, which includes working for leading fashion retailer Gap, to oversee the growth of Blackjack’s Domestic Retail division.

Tindall was recently accepted on the IPM’s 30 under 30 scheme, a year-long programme designed and delivered to enable personal and career development for the best emerging talent in the promotional marketing industry.

“Retail is my passion and being promoted to head up our domestic team is a dream come true,” said Tindall. “Using my extensive experience in this space, the new division will focus on securing new retail contracts and working in collaboration with Andy and the experiential team to deliver exceptional events and experiences for our clients.”

Sally Alington, Managing Director, Blackjack Promotions, said: “I’m delighted to be able to acknowledge Andy and Fiona for their fine work since joining Blackjack. The appointments show the depth of talent we enjoy across the business. I wish them both every success in their new roles.”

Blackjack Promotions is the leading staffing solutions, travel retail and experiential specialist, with operations in the UK and the Middle East. Its core service offering falls under three headings: travel retail, experiential and logistics. It also works hand-in-hand with agency partners and media owners using its experiential expertise to bring brands and briefs to life.

The company was founded in 1995 and acquired by OmniServ Limited, the European division of Air Serv Corporation, owned by ABM, in 2013. Blackjack is a member of the Airport Promotion Agencies (APA), of which Blackjack MD Sally Alington is joint-chairman, and the Institute of Promotional Marketing (IPM).

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Research shows that the key to successful promotions is whether consumers trust a brand, argues Ben Craker of Fotorama PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

Supermarkets these days are like Aladdin’s caves, filled with thousands of different products. The shelves are groaning with promotions, prizes and chances to win. It can be mind boggling enough for a consumer to make the right decision – but for a brand, it’s absolutely crucial.

To try and establish what consumers are thinking during those critical decision making moments, we recently conducted some research which highlighted the existence of a group we have dubbed the Savvy Cynics, which we have explored in a new report.

Our research found that 70% of consumers have entered a free draw as part of an on-pack promotion.  A third of respondents in the Savvy Cynics shopper marketing report stated that promotions were more likely to make them purchase a product.

But the question in every brand manager’s mind is how to make sure their promotion is chosen? Our experience and research suggests it’s about more than having the best prize or even the best product — it’s about trust.

In 2014 the Guardian asked the question what factor influences customers to make a commitment to your brand and keep coming back for more? And the answer was trust.

Trust takes time to build but it can be broken in an instant. Our research revealed that 95% of ‘Savvy Cynic’ participants share their bad experiences with a company or brand.

Based around the research we have identified four ways that brands can build trust in their promotional marketing, so helping cultivate brand loyalty, confidence and campaign success.

1 Simplicity

Is the campaign clear? Is the benefit clear?

Do consumers understand exactly what they’re getting, whether it’s a prize entry or a money-off coupon?

Shopper marketing can be challenging, and it’s a complex balancing act between ensuring that consumers are satisfied while brands see return on their investment. Campaigns need to be simple and fun. Sometimes the easiest, oldest tricks in the book win out. A third of people like to get a money off coupon for their next purchase, on their packaging… could it get any easier than that?

2 Language

Does the language a brand uses make them more trustworthy? They must be clear and concise about what customers will get by using language carefully throughout their promotional marketing campaign.

Clarity is key. Don’t try and ‘trick’ people with complex language and expressions or complicated offers. That just generates confusion, creates reservations in consumers’ minds about your brand and ultimately may turn them off your product altogether.

Where brands ‘guarantee’ something in a promotion, they must actually ‘guarantee’ it! Be careful what you say: in a prize promotion, you should be offering a chance or an opportunity to, and you should make it clear how many prizes there are in total – so you can mention the big headline prize but qualify it with something like ‘or win 1 of 100,000 other prizes’

3 Clear Instructions

Maybe it’s a gift with purchase or maybe it’s a competition involving tricky questions that test brand loyalty; but whatever form the promotional campaign takes, it must be clear to the consumer what the ‘added value’ for them is and what they have to do to qualify for the chance to enjoy it. Downloading receipts, collecting coupons, entering codes online or aligning with events — whatever the mechanic it needs to be clear to the consumer what steps they need to take.

4 Joined up marketing for brand stability

Brand stability refers to the steadfastness of a brand in the face of social and market changes and influences. It is, of course, important to roll with changes in the big, wide world; but it’s just as important to stay steadfast to who the brand is and what it stands for. From everyday marketing communications to one-off campaigns, messaging needs to be consistent in order for consumers to truly get to grips with who you are.

It’s not rocket science. By breaking down the promotion into its simplest fundamentals you can keep your message clear and deliver against your objectives for each campaign. Think about the basics: audience, objectives, measurement and your brand’s USP.

When the face and future of a brand hangs so precariously on maintaining trust with consumers, it’s imperative that each and every sales promotion is neat, simple and by the book, to ensure no brand value is lost through any ‘dubious’ promotions.

Customers will vote with their money and one iffy campaign lasts long in the memory. The 2016 Walkers ‘Holiday’ campaign was splashed all over the press this year for example.

Deliver on your promises!

As the experts at trustedadvisor.com, who understand well the importance of trust to businesses, explain: “credibility is probably the most commonly thought-of trust component, but it is only one… Believable, credentialed… and having a track record… are traits we most consciously look for when screening vendors.”

A track record is hugely important and every campaign speaks volumes about your brand. Done right, each campaign is a step towards greater trust between brand and consumer. As The Guardian said in the article that accompanied its 2014 research, “for those brands trying to win trust, it is a step-by-step process; but the pillars of credibility – reliability and intimacy – are a good place to start.’

So get personal. Create intimacy with your consumers by targeting their needs and preferences and rewarding their loyalty. Why not develop a campaign around repeat purchases? Or target the likes of particular demographics?  Even as early as the planning phase, brands should think about what part trust plays in their campaign – and how they can improve it at every stage.

Ben Craker is Head of Risk at Fotorama, part of the Sodexo family. Fotorama are Promotional Marketing specialists with over 30 years of experience in planning and launching campaigns that help clients to increase profit, brand awareness and customer engagement. Its dedicated team is equipped with creative talent and industry knowledge which helps them handle everything from mechanic creation and sourcing to winner management, in order to produce spectacular promotions that deliver on budget from brief to purchase. To find out more contact ben.craker@fotorama.co.uk

Fotorama (part of the Sodexo Family) is headline sponsor of the IPM 30 Under 30 Programme 2017.

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Carey Trevill, Managing Director of the Institute of Promotional Marketing, says: “Amongst our Membership, we see emerging talent that creates success and innovation at every point. And we’re not just talking financial success – we’re talking about teams being built, lives shaped and hearts won in the pursuit of promotional expertise. Recognising this next generation of leaders is crucial to the creativity, success and tempo of the promotional marketing industry.”

The chosen candidates will now be officially welcomed to the 30 Under 30 2017 programme at an event to be held on December 8th 2016 at The Hospital Club in Covent Garden.

The IPM 30 Under 30 2017 programme was launched on September 27th 2016, with a call for entries from IPM member companies. Candidates could be of any level and any role, so long as they were under the age of 30 before the closing date of entry, which was 23.59 hours on Friday October 28^th 2016. They also had to work for an IPM member.

The IPM is dedicated to championing professional development for the up-and-coming in the promotional marketing industry. Candidates were asked to state clear reasons why their inclusion on the programme would make a difference to their professional and personal development, together with evidence and endorsements.

The judging panel consisted of  Chris Baldwin, Director of Consumer Programmes at Fotorama; Victoria Walsh, Founder, The Believe Consultancy; Richard Pink, PinkKey Consulting; Hina Parmar, Legal Counsel AB InBev; and Sam Jones, Founder, TwentySomeone.

They sifted through a massive number of submissions to find the winners and their choices can now be viewed on the IPM website.

The candidates chosen for the programme will now be offered the chance to participate in a range of learning experiences to enhance their capabilities and to provide them with skills and knowledge which they can take away and share with their colleagues in the organisations they work for.

The next call for entries, for the 30 Under 30 2018 programme, will open in September 2017. If you are an IPM Member and would like to register interest for the next intake, please contact the IPM team.

The IPM 30 Under 30 2017 programme is sponsored by Fotorama, part of the Sodexo Family.

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