The Institute of Promotional Marketing (IPM) has announced the shortlist for The IPM Awards 2018, the promotional marketing industry’s most prestigious recognition programme.

Richard Pink, Head of Awards at the IPM, says: “We’re delighted to reveal The IPM Awards 2018 entries which have been selected by our first stage judging panels as being worthy of consideration for a Bronze, Silver or Gold trophy, or for one of our three special Awards. Our awards programme showcase the latest and greatest campaigns and work being delivered within the promotional marketing industry. We’re looking for those exceptional promotional campaigns that have displayed effectiveness, creativity and innovation in their field. We want to recognise and reward the blood, sweat and tears that go into delivering the best that promotional marketing has to offer.”

The IPM Awards 2018 shortlist – which can be seen in full on the IPM website – shows the breadth of mechanics, techniques and channels covered by promotional marketing, including classic promotions, shopper marketing, experiential marketing, partnership marketing, digital, and motivation and incentives.

The winners of the coveted IPM Awards – Bronze, Silver, Gold and the Specials, the Brand Owner of the Year, the Agency of the Year and the Grand Prix, for the best campaign of 2018 – will be revealed at The Awards Gala Dinner on 14th June 2018 at the London Hilton, Park Lane. Table Bookings are now open for what will be the biggest networking event for the promotional marketing industry in 2018.

The IPM Awards are the premier recognition platform for the UK promotional marketing industry and have been going for more than 40 years. The Headline Sponsor for the IPM Awards 2018 is Sodexo.

The post IPM Awards 2018 shortlist announced appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Independent shopper insights consultancy Shoppercentric has published its Shopper Stock Take Index for a third year, which reveals that 41% of consumers use store loyalty cards ‘a lot’ and 47% use them ‘occasionally’. Only 1% of survey respondents said they had never heard of loyalty cards.

However, Danielle Pinnington, Managing Director at Shoppercentric, warns: “Retailers and brands must keep a finger on the shopper pulse and appreciate that each customer is now using a range of strategies to cope with increasing pressures on household budgets. Which categories or sectors will suffer most this year is likely to depend on how they react to changing shopper needs.”

Pinnington adds: “With shoppers picking and choosing between stores for particular items based on their own experience of how well different retailers deliver, there is even greater pressure to differentiate and create memorable in-store experiences. Equally, avoiding or challenging misconceptions based on bad experiences has become more important. If, as our report shows, shoppers are actively widening their repertoires, loyalty as we used to know it is an outdated term.”

Shoppercentric collected more than a thousand online survey responses from shoppers, covering how they felt about the stability of their household budgets, how their shopping habits are changing, and what brands and retailers need to do as a result.

The 2018 Shopper Stock Take index reveals that while shoppers aren’t yet feeling the same pinch as in the worst of the recession, they are certainly starting to feel more pressure. Only one in four claims to be unaffected by the current economic situation, with a considerable proportion of UK shoppers having to make minor changes to spending.

The speed of change is rapid – just 12 months ago, the proportion of those making minor changes was just 16%, but today it stands at 44%. 26% of shoppers have noticed prices increasing a lot, and 56% have noticed small increases.

Shoppers primarily put these increases down to the state of the economy (54%) and Brexit (50%), although the exchange rate, cost of ingredients and greedy companies are also ‘blamed’ by a fair proportion of shoppers.

80% of shoppers are now “being careful to avoid waste”, while 75% are “avoiding being tempted to buy things I don’t need”. 50% are “going out of their way to find the best prices” and will “split shopping across different stores to get the best deals.” 60% are now buying “own label where I can to keep costs down” and 33% are now using “online shopping to check spending as I go.”

2017 saw a continued increase in the proportion of shoppers who had abandoned weekly main shops in favour of shopping little & often – rising from 11% to 16%. This year, however, there has been no change in that figure, suggesting this trend may have reached its ceiling.

Instead, shoppers are becoming more active as they make the most of the choice available. Shoppers’ average repertoire has changed to five stores or websites in the last fortnight, up from four in 2017. 26% of UK shoppers say that they fit their grocery shopping in where and when they can. 33% of shoppers switch stores based on what they need – to get the best places for what they want (versus 28% in 2017).

The biggest change in the five channels covered by the report was in the use of discounter stores – up 13% on 2017 figures to 57% of UK shoppers. Use of the Big Four supermarkets rose by four percentage points on 2017 figures to 83%. There was no significant change in convenience store or online grocery usage penetration – 49% and 30% of shoppers using those channels respectively.

With the exception of Smart TVs, all digital devices covered by this report saw increased usage by UK shoppers. Computers/laptops were cited as the most used touchpoint – up six percentage points on 2017 figures to 63%. In second place were smartphones with a huge 18 percentage point increase on last year to 45%.

Interestingly, despite a number of retailers and brands moving away from catalogues, usage by shoppers rose to 22%– up four percentage points on 2017.

There has been a seven percentage point increase to 58% in the number of shoppers that have been triggered to shop by content on their smartphone. Using a smartphone to carry out ‘research’ has remained on a par with last year at 61%. However, using the device to ‘find’ an item has risen from 56% to 60%, while the number of shoppers using smartphones to buy a product has gone up from 37% to 42% of shoppers.

However, despite the considerable shift in shoppers using their smartphones as they shop, particularly in relation to actual purchasing, there has been no increase in the uptake of mobile-based promotions, which remains at 20%.

The post Shoppercentric research: in tough times, consumers favour loyalty cards appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Promotions are complex processes, and to get them right you must impose rigorous control on all elements of the activity, says Neil Barnes of Enable Promotional Marketing

All it takes is one promotion to go wrong to seriously damage a brand’s reputation – even today, there are UK consumers who remember the Hoover Free Flights fiasco from 1992.

Currently, Cadbury is feeling the pain on their “Hunt for the White Creme Egg” promotion that is being widely criticised, where consumers are urged to find a rare White Creme Egg to win. Sounds simple; however, it has been widely reported that consumers and retail staff have been spotted peeling back the foil wrapper, then putting the egg back. Some claim the white egg has different ingredients listed to the standard one, which could give the game away.

This isn’t anything like the scale of the Hoover disaster; but it is a major embarrassment for the brand, with the potential for the risk of product recall on tampering grounds.

Nobody compliments brands, agencies and all the other service providers who work on a brilliantly successful campaign; but all it takes is one poorly executed campaign to create a social media storm and damage the reputation of all of us who work in promotional marketing.

Consumers used to complain to the newspapers and television consumer TV programmes; not any more. Today, the customers drive the news agenda, sharing their complaints not just with their social network in the UK but around the world via Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms to highlight faults with a promotion.

The truth is, no well-run promotion should ever lead to the product being compromised or complaints that the activation is vulnerable to the unscrupulous.

To run successful promotions, the devil is in the detail; and that detail involves an integrated approach which incorporates compliance, security and logistic tasks with capability and knowledge in all areas of expertise from initial print and production, supply chain, legal and on into areas such as digital.

At Enable, we’ve developed a process which we call Operational Management – other people will call it something else, but what you call it doesn’t matter, so long as you include it in your promotions.

Promotions are complex and involve many different tasks; to manage them properly you must start with an expert team that sees and understands the complete picture. A promotion must be planned in its entirety, not piecemeal. You can’t just take a few services and cobble them together.

If things go wrong, it usually stems from a lack of understanding of the complexities of the subject and of the rigorous management controls and monitoring necessary to achieve a successful implementation.

Work out what should happen in any promotion, and then look at everything that could go wrong. Explore even scenarios which are highly unlikely – it’s only by being prepared for the worst, not hoping for the best, that we can ensure a smooth path to success.

All stakeholders should be involved in the planning from as early as possible. Partnership and collaborative working are vital to success. This is even more important when a promotion is being delivered or supported via a variety of media channels and technical disciplines, when a promotion is being run with different retail partners (particularly if some of them have tailored versions of the promotion) and when a promotion is being run in more than one country.

You must bring in experts on compliance, security and logistics to work alongside the marketing and creative teams. In an ideal world, everyone working on a promotion should be a member of the Institute of Promotional Marketing and fully up to speed on promotional best practice.

The total collaboration of Operational Management and creative should ensure that attention to detail combined with the creative artistry works cohesively for the perfect promotion. Without these two in partnership, no matter how beautiful something looks, or how clever it is, if it doesn’t work or if it backfires, the creativity will be overlooked by disappointed customers.

We’ve helped run promotions where some of the ingredients were changed to indicate a winning pack. We engaged packaging and specialist legal experts and involved them from the start, providing a solution where you simply just change the wording on all promotional packs to include the details for the special ingredient as well as for the normal product.

Thankfully, many brands are becoming more aware of the risk to their reputations from poorly-executed promotions, and are seeking support from operational experts in order to protect the integrity of the promotion or the product.

However, for every brand that understands the need for the highest levels of operational control, there are still far too many that ask what they need this level of attention to detail for. Often, it’s only when a catastrophic failure is detected and prevented by following the right operational procedures that these clients understand the harsh realities of the marketing world today.

The goal should be to ensure that every promotion is enjoyed fairly and honestly by consumers, while protecting brands from the detrimental harm of ‘operational blunders’ and inexperienced or unconsidered implementation of a project.

Whether you are the marketing director, the brand manager, or work for the creative agency or a service provider, your goal should always be the same: to protect and safeguard the reputation of the promotion, the brand, the company, and the marketing industry.

The reputational and financial risk of a poorly executed promotion can be enormous. In some cases, in the past these have made a brand toxic and devalued it in the eyes of consumers.

It is only by meticulous planning, attention to detail and asking the question “what if?” when you consider every single stage that you will end with a promotion that works for all.

Neil Barnes founded Enable in 1993, and the company is celebrating its 25^th anniversary in 2018. Enable is acknowledged in the industry as expert in ensuring promotional marketing campaigns meet best practice, are legal and compliant with UK marketing codes, free from fraud or theft and are logistically sound.

Enable works with FMCG companies, suppliers, digital solutions agencies, printers, insurance companies, and creative promotional marketing agencies alike, assisting in the smooth running of their promotional marketing campaigns and helping implement protective measures against fraudulent entry or other activity which could damage the integrity of a promotion.

Enable is a member of the IPM, and is an IPM Education and Training ‘Module Hero’, supporting the IPM Diploma in Promotional Marketing.

The post In promotional marketing, the devil is in the detail appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Promotional risk management consultancy Umbrella has appointed Nicola Christie as its new Client Services Director.

Christie joins Umbrella from McCormick, the global leader in herbs and spices, where she worked across Brand Management, Category Management and Shopper Marketing for Schwartz.

Beth Johnson, Umbrella’s Founder, says: “Nicola’s skills and experience make her a perfect fit for Umbrella. Not only will she have first-hand experience of the hurdles our clients face, but her marketing expertise will really help steer their promotional campaigns in the right direction.”

Johnson adds: “Data analytics is a crucial part of our business and Nicola will really be able to add value in this area too, along with her understanding of the grocery environment, having worked with Tesco, Asda, Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and other retailers such as Toys’R’Us.”

Christie comments: “It’s great working across such varied briefs and brands. Umbrella, as a consultancy, are all about challenging the brief, so I’m pleased to be involved in a continuous flow of brainstorm sessions and creative proposals.”

The post ‘Spice girl’ joins Umbrella as Client Services Director appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

The entry deadline for the Institute of Promotional Marketing Awards 2017 is in less than three weeks on February 28^th – and agencies and brand owners who want to enter their promotional campaigns from 2016 are being encouraged to get their submissions together now.

The IPM Awards 2017 Call for Entries booklet plus top tips on how to write entries and examples of ‘best-in-class’ award-winning campaigns can be found in the awards section of the IPM website.

Richard Pink, the IPM’s Head of Awards, Judging & Entries, says: “Our judges are looking to reward campaigns that stood out in an incredibly competitive market during 2016, that worked hard for the brand and that delivered exceptional results. Tell us your stories and let us know why you deserve to win!”

The IPM is the industry body for promotional marketing, and its awards, which have been running for 40 years, have been created to showcase and champion the best work created in the previous year.

Any campaign which included a promotional element and which ran in the UK during 2016 is eligible for entry. Campaigns which ran outside the UK are also eligible, if they were created by a UK agency or for a UK-based brand or company.

To qualify, campaigns must have been running at some point during 2016; they can have started in 2015 and carried on into 2016, or they can have started in 2016 and run on into 2017. While the IPM would ideally like to see full results, Pink acknowledges that that may not be possible for campaigns which continued into 2017 (or which are still going).

He says: “Obviously, we’d ideally like to see full results, but we realise that, particularly with campaigns which are still live in January and February, that isn’t always going to be possible. In cases like that, we’re encouraging people to enter and explain clearly why they can’t provide absolute results. The judges will understand.”

Further information and advice on this topic is available on Richard Pink’s LinkedIn page.

The IPM also has its own YouTube channel, which features videos from a number of this year’s judges providing their Top Tips on how to create the best possible award entry.

Brands and agencies do not have to be members of the IPM to enter, although IPM members get discounts on their entry fees.

The trophies will be presented at the IPM Awards 2017 Gala Dinner on June 7^th 2017 at the London Hilton on Park Lane.

The headline sponsor for the IPM Awards 2017 is SODEXO and its subsidiaries Protravel, Filmology, Fotorama and Entice. Other partners include Promotional Handling Ltd, Sykes and i-movo.

The post IPM Awards entry closes in three weeks appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

The Institute of Promotional Marketing, the UK industry body for promotional marketing, has just celebrated the latest graduates on its key training courses, the IPM Certificate in Promotional Marketing, the IPM Diploma in Promotional Marketing and the IPM Incentive & Motivation Diploma.

Students on all three courses collected their certificates at a graduation ceremony at the House of Commons on Wednesday February 1^st 2017 from IPM President Lord Black of Brentwood and IPM Chairman John Sylvester in front of an audience of 120 people, including fellow students, family, friends and colleagues and course markers and mentors.

In her welcoming address, IPM Managing Director Carey Trevill stressed how important it is that marketers are fully grounded in all the skills, disciplines and mechanics that can be deployed in promotional campaigns.

Trevill said: “An IPM Diploma means expert. It means specialist. It means you understand your subject like no other and you have the right skills and grounding in the law, regulatory system and best practice to promote your clients and their brands effectively. It means that you are qualified to invest their money in activities that will grow their brands.”

In his speech, John Sylvester pointed out that the graduation was taking place on the same day as the historic vote in the House of Commons to trigger the Brexit process. “For marketers, expertise and professionalism have never been as important as they are in these historic times.”

The IPM Diploma is seen as the best possible grounding for anyone responsible for running promotions within the UK and mainland Europe. The course involves a series of assignments and a set brief that has to be completed within a six-month period.

Candidates leave the course with a foundation knowledge of promotional marketing necessary to understand the discipline’s role within integrated communications campaigns, including planning, instigating and managing effective promotional marketing concepts with confidence.

The IPM Incentive & Motivation Diploma is a qualification specifically designed for the reward and recognition industry. It takes the form of a distance learning programme with a range of modules covering different specialisations and a set brief, all of which have to be completed over a five-month period.

It provides a thorough understanding of incentive and motivation techniques and is widely recognised within the industry as the benchmark for best practice, ensuring that candidates are able to confidently plan, instigate and manage Incentive & Motivation campaigns.

The post IPM graduation 2017 appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

The entry deadline for the Institute of Promotional Marketing Awards 2017 is in just 40 days’ time – and agencies and brand owners who want to enter their promotional campaigns from 2016 are being encouraged to get their submissions together now.

The IPM Awards 2017 Call for Entries booklet plus top tips on how to write entries and examples of ‘best-in-class’ award-winning campaigns can be found in the awards section of the IPM website.

Richard Pink, the IPM’s Head of Awards, Judging & Entries, says: “It’s time for brands and agencies to submit their Awards entries and help us celebrate the amazing talent, the hard work and the promotional successes of 2016! As the industry body for promotional marketing, the IPM is here to proudly showcase and champion your work over the past year, and ensure you and your peers receive the industry-wide recognition you deserve.”

The IPM has just run an online Masterclass on crafting the perfect IPM Awards entry, hosted by Richard Pink, which attracted nearly 100 attendees from agency, service companies and brands.

One issue which the Masterclass highlighted was a concern over results from campaigns which started in 2016 but which continued on into 2017 and either finished close to the February 28^th entry deadline, or which will still be running after that.

Pink says: “Obviously, we’d ideally like to see full results, but we realise that, particularly with campaigns which are still live in January and February, that isn’t always going to be possible. In cases like that, we’re encouraging people to enter and explain clearly why they can’t provide absolute results. The judges will understand.”

Further information and advice on this topic is available on Richard Pink’s LinkedIn page.

The IPM also has its own YouTube channel, which features videos from a number of this year’s judges providing their Top Tips on how to create the best possible award entry.

Marketing campaigns which ran anywhere in the world are eligible for entry to the IPM Awards 2017, so long as they included a promotional element and they were created and run either by an agency based in the UK or on behalf of a brand based in the UK.

Brands and agencies do not have to be members of the IPM to enter, although IPM members get discounts on their entry fees.

The trophies will be presented at the IPM Awards 2017 Gala Dinner on June 7^th 2017 at the London Hilton on Park Lane.

The headline sponsor for the IPM Awards 2017 is SODEXO and its subsidiaries Protravel, Filmology, Fotorama and Entice. Other partners include Promotional Handling Ltd, Sykes and i-movo.

The post IPM Awards 2017 deadline just six weeks’ away! appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

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.

The post Four ways for brands to build trust with consumers appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Almost nine in 10 UK consumers will take advantage of a promotional offer when doing their Christmas grocery shopping this year, according to new research.

A survey conducted on behalf of Valassis Limited, the UK’s largest coupon and voucher services provider, found that:

• 88% of shoppers might be tempted to shop away from their main supermarket, based on a suitable promotion;
• 87% of shoppers will use a promotional offer when grocery shopping this Christmas season;
• 48% of shoppers might be persuaded to switch supermarkets based on a “two- for-one” offer; and
• 47% will use three or more mechanics.

Charles D’Oyly, Valassis’ Managing Director, says: “Supermarket loyalty is being challenged by consumers in search of the best deal and the rise of deep discounters is a noticeable trend in the UK grocery market.”

Deep discounters have grown UK market share steadily since 2011 and are in a position to attract more shoppers this shopping season. According to the 2,000 consumers surveyed, 28% said they are more likely to shop at deep discounters this season.

Shoppers cited an increased cost of living and increased cost of food as the two top driving factors impacting their desire to seek out promotions. The favoured consumer money-saving mechanic this Christmas is multi-purchase-based offers (two-for-one deals) followed by “everyday low price promises.”

These findings are based on an online survey of 2,000 nationally representative adults, conducted by GfK NOP from 10th – 13th November 2015.

The post Valassis: shoppers hungry for Xmas promos appeared first on IPM Bitesize.