When marketing to youth, who do you really have to understand? The consumer? Nah. The client? (well yes but…). The opinion-leading youth? Nup.
The person you’ve really got to understand and make love you is…. the surly teenager behind the counter at the local retail outlet, that is, the trade.
All those guys in the shops, bars and cafés that sell and distribute your brands—that’s where the deals are made.
Coke, with its extensive localised bottler network, built the world’s most powerful brand on the back of this knowledge, and youth brands in the know are now putting more and more bucks there.
It’s not as sexy, but per dollar spent it’s bloody effective. If you’re thinking ‘Shit, an article about trade marketing—boring’, then stop reading and remain nowhere.
Take a look at Billabong—these guys understand the trade—and that’s why (or at least largely why) they are still cool. They haven’t got a boat that transports surfers all over the world (like Quiksilver), they don’t benefit from being the latest (Hurley), and they don’t sponsor hardcore punk (Volcom). Billabong retains its cool by understanding and supporting the trade (and supporting surf from grassroots grommets to glitz and glamour via the Billabong Pro and Pro-Teen series).
Billabong uses the trade effectively at three levels:
1. It has bloody amazing distribution being (nearly) everywhere surf gear is sold, with a few flagship stores.
2. It has bought a series of other brands that it can also distribute through the same outlets—brands such as Von Zipper (surf sunglasses), Element (skate gear) and Kustom (footwear). All of these brands allow Billabong to get a greater slice of the consumer pie of the same distribution infrastructure.
3. Billabong understands that it is the trade, and trade outlets are the epicentre of localised opinion leaders. It is out from the trade (the local surf store) that influence spreads. The guys who work in and supply all the local surf stores and the ones who create talk in the market, and where the word-of -mouth marketing begins. Understanding and having credibility in each and every surf store in Australia is the surest way to achieve credibility in the market. Think of each trade outlet as a little fire out from which flames spread and before long, the whole country is ablaze with your brands.
An interesting fact is that geographically brands often do relatively better depending on where the brand is manufactured. Ford, it appears, outsells in Victoria vs. NSW—CUB too. This is due, in part to the trade links being strongest around where the brand is actually made. A number of clients I’ve worked for have instigated trade marketing initiatives—invariably stand-alone projects about how to understand the unwieldy beast. However, the projects are often one-offs without any real application—or integration into the brand and communications planning process.
So how do you do a trade campaign? You don’t. You do a brand campaign, you create a big communications idea and you make sure that the trade is considered a vital element within that communications idea. Ideally, it’s all part of the one piece of communication.
If you are a client ask yourself—is the trade considered as a target audience for every communications idea developed? Internally is trade and consumer marketing seamless and part of the same idea? Does your agency always consider how the trade will receive the message when developing ideas?
The traditional agency and client perspective of the trade marketing side of the equation being the unsexy, retail bit of communications has to change. They are the cornerstone of acceptance for any consumer-generate creative idea and for that reason must be considered as a vital part of the brand planning process—not a tack on.
Adam Ferrier is a consumer psychologist and partner at Naked Communications.
