January is always showtime for marketers selling weight loss products and services -- but this year, it looks like they are taking a closer look at men. Nutrisystem recently named NFL great Terry Bradshaw as its “marquee spokesperson” in launching its new Men’s Success program, which it describes as its “most comprehensive weight-loss program to date and its most substantial reformulation in years.” And Weight Watchers is blanketing the airwaves with its new spokesjock, the NBA’s irrepressible Charles Barkley. The shift toward men, experts say, is due to slower growth in the industry overall. John LaRosa, research director for Marketdata Enterprises, tells Marketing Daily Americans spent an estimated $62 billion in 2011, up just 2% from the prior year and well under its historical 6% annual gain. That certainly isn’t because Americans are any slimmer, or less worried about their weight: In fact, Marketdata says the typical American dieter now makes four weight-loss attempts per year -- the highest number in 15 years. Instead, he says, it’s due to the recession and the increase in do-it-yourself dieting, which he estimates to be about 80% of all dieters, up from 70% before the recession. So it makes sense that companies hope to grab the love handles of any new demographic. LaRosa estimates that men’s weight-loss efforts account for roughly 15% of the market, or $9.3 billion. Nutrisystem, which also uses quarterback Dan Marino as a spokesperson, “has a higher share of male clients than most diet companies -- about 25%. For Weight Watchers, Jenny and other commercial programs, the men's share is between 10% and 15%.” And meal replacement company Slim-Fast has also scored well with men, he says, selling about 25 to 30% of its shakes and powders to guys. But it’s a tough sale, he says. “Men tend to try to lose weight on their own, by working out at a health club and using a do-it-yourself program,” he says, “and they are also more likely to use a medical program supervised by a doctor. They shy away from group meetings where you have two men and 30 women in the room.” Testimonial ads featuring Bradshaw, who has lost 32 pounds on Nutrisystem, began airing this week. And Weight Watchers’ “Lose Like a Man” program broke Christmas Day, featuring 27 pounds less of Barkley, and is running in print, broadcast, and online.
What does the auto market hold for 2012? In this two-parter, Marketing Daily speaks with Jeremy Anwyl, vice chairman of auto shopping and research company Edmunds.com, about the year to come, the year just past, and which players are best positioned for the vicissitudes of the U.S. economy and consumer sentiment. Q: After the disasters this year in Japan and Thailand, the Japanese automakers are getting close to being "back." Will they be able to grab back market share as well? A: Well, once they build [vehicles], they have to ship to dealers, so it's not quite "normal" yet, but getting close -- by the January time frame. The "not normal" situation is, with Toyota, the ability to regain lost ground. Toyota will be looking to regain, as will Honda, but it won't be easy. Volkswagen has been on a tear recently and they have very ambitious targets. And Hyundai will certainly try to maintain their momentum, and they are aggressive. Ford and GM will be on the defensive. The question is, if you talk competition, how that plays out in terms of pricing. This past year, automakers have done a good job of maintaining pricing discipline, but I think in this next year that will be challenged. Q: If you see more incentives next year -- is the issue structural -- given the saturated auto market -- or is it purely the economy that will force pricing? A: It's both. During the downturn we actually did see production capacity taken out. But we are seeing production ramp up again now. If you were to add up total volume based on what manufacturers say they will deliver next year, you are looking at 30% more than what the market will support. As sales rebound, we could see incentives increase and profitability decline. Q: General Motors, Ford, and Hyundai have rolled out smaller cars. Superficially, historically high gasoline prices have justified that tactic, but are automakers bringing in customers with these cars or cannibalizing their own larger vehicles? A: Buyers of Chevy Cruze are not buying (Chevrolet's subcompact car) Sonic, they have been moving up to Malibus. Yes, fuel prices are at a high level, but big price increases are a thing of the past, so we're seeing a migration of consumers back to the mid-size segment. There will be relatively small volumes for Sonic and (the forthcoming Chevrolet) Spark because even though gas prices are high, stability is the key: consumers are getting comfortable with these prices and shifting back into larger vehicles. Q: Does that bode poorly for hybrids?A: At the Los Angeles Auto Show, Ford introduced the New Escape, and they didn't have a hybrid version, but an EcoBoost version. That's the sweet spot. So more companies are tweaking internal combustion engines. It doesn't cost a lot of money because the technology is familiar. And it lets consumers have their cake and eat it, too. Frankly, when you get into EVs and hybrids, they are stuck, or going in reverse. Q: But Toyota has been putting quite a bit of focus over the past year and in coming months as well on Prius, expanding the portfolio and boosting marketing to support the cars. Is this stability bad news for them?A: You are talking about 1% to 2% of the market, but Toyota has the technology in place and what they have done with Prius is make it not just "a" hybrid, but "the" hybrid. They dominate like Apple with iPod. No, Prius is not huge volumes, but it is the default choice and they are stretching that into other segments. If you talk to a lot of Prius buyers, they don't consider anything else. They buy it because it's a Prius.
Cox Communications is raising money for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America through a Facebook social giving campaign. The effort consists of a Holiday Digeez Snow Globe that allows Cox’s 250,000 Facebook fans to place their favorite photos into a holiday-themed snow globe. Fans can then customize their snow globe with a variety of different holiday designs, such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Winter Wonderland. Once completed, fans can share their personalized snow globe with Facebook family and friends, as well as through email. Atlanta-based Cox is a longtime supporter of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. In addition to the company's ongoing financial and in-kind contributions, Cox will donate one dollar to the organization for each snow globe created this holiday season, up to $10,000. The Holiday Digeez Snow Globe allows Cox customers to share a creative holiday greeting with friends, family and business colleagues. The campaign is running alongside the Holiday Sweepstakes on the corporate and local Cox Facebook pages through the start of the New Year. Via the Holiday Sweepstakes, Cox is giving away a selection of prizes including an iPod Touch, PlayStation 3 and a Dell Streak Tablet. People can visit Cox's Facebook page to make their own Holiday Snow Globe. The project is being promoted on Twitter with the hashtags #CoxSnowGlobe, #DigeezSnowGlobe and #Cox_BGCASnowGlobe.
Women, you are all supposed to be a Sarah Jessica Parker-type of perfect mom -- effervescent presence, Miss Personality, and all-around success -- and if you're not, there's something wrong with you. That might be prima facie rather extreme, but it's pretty close to where a lot of marketers go when trying to ingratiate themselves to their female consumer base. Unfortunately, while that might be what women think is expected of them, it is at odds -- not surprisingly -- with what women actually want. A new study, “Today’s Women: Newfound Power, Persistent Expectations,” performed by Ipsos for Schawk's brand-development division, Anthem Worldwide, looked at Millennials, Generation X and Baby Boomers, and found that women are aware of external expectations around "doing it all" and looking good and acting nice in the process, regardless of their generation or their age, but that their internal motivations do not, by and large, reflect those ideas. The study, which examines external (what women feel is expected of them,) and internal (their own motivations) drivers, is based on findings from a sample of 1,033 females from Ipsos’ U.S. online panel. Women rated factors around “Do It All,” “Look Good” and “Be Nice.” And the study asked for responses around statements like “I believe I’m expected to ‘have a career’ and ‘make sure the household runs smoothly,’” to “I believe I’m expected to ‘be attractive’” and “I believe I’m expected to ‘be nice.’” Other personally driven factors ranged from “be happy” and “be healthy” to “follow my own personal motivations” and “have balance in life.” For the majority of the factors, 50% or more women said they were expected and motivated to do them. And 86% of female respondents thought women should both pursue their own personal motivations and be able to make their own choices and not be judged by them. There are more women motivated to have balance in life (75%) and be fulfilled (73%) compared to those motivated to do it all (44%). Seventy percent of women are motivated to be financially independent, compared to 49% who are motivated to have a career. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they felt expected and 59% motivated to be attractive. Over 80% of women feel both expected and motivated to be nice. The biggest expectation/motivation gap is with Generation X women, 61% of whom said they feel expected to do it all versus 49% who said they were motivated to do so. Almost 50% of Generation X women agreed, “I wish companies provided services that would help me fit everything into my day,” and almost 50% of these women also said they would pay more for products that make their life easier. And 60% of women in the survey said media, entertainment and marketing advertisements do not accurately represent women of today. Kathy Oneto, VP, brand strategy at Anthem’s San Francisco office said in the study that marketers should be more authentic with women, "Based on a foundation of deep, empathic understanding rather than ... simply an informed vantage point that is often out of sync with women’s true motivations."
The buying power of Baby Boomers and the increasing roles of men in food preparation and shopping are among the trends that will most affect food makers and retailers in 2012, according to “Supermarket Guru” Phil Lempert. Here are some highlights from Lempert’s 2012 top 10 food trends, as summarized in his Food, Nutrition & Science blog, with links to recent, relevant Marketing Daily articles:
ComScore recently reported that the first 34 days of the 2011 holiday shopping season reached $20 billion in online sales, a 15% increase from last year. This good news has many marketers dancing with glee, knowing they are well positioned to take advantage of the flurry of e-commerce activity. Others, however, spent the days leading up to the holiday anxiously wondering how best to capture their share of the growing online retail pie. For many, their anxiety is well placed: although brands have long talked about getting serious about online commerce, they have only recently begun to put their money where their mouse is. Take Target for example. As recently as late 2009, a Conductor study found Target acquired nearly half its online search traffic by purchasing it from Google: 47% of online search traffic came from paid search at an exorbitant cost of nearly $300,000 per day for that traffic. This, while comScore states up to 92% of clicks occur in natural search (not Paid) and studies by The Center for the Digital Future say half of Internet users never even click on Web advertising. (By way of comparison, Target's nearest brick-and-mortar competitor, Walmart, obtained 91% of its traffic from natural search traffic while spending less than $25,000 per day for the nine percent of their traffic that is paid.) To make matters worse, analysis at the time showed Target was wasting up to $10,000 per day on Google Adwords advertising for products it didn’t even carry. Primed for Change Blindly throwing money at the e-commerce problem is a tactic that is increasingly falling out of favor with most major brands. With the explosive growth of online commerce, the stakes have never been higher for retailers. According to comScore, between 2004 and 2010, U.S. retail e-commerce spending grew from $66 billion to $142 billion. This year, the total is expected to jump to $162 billion. Perhaps the most sobering statistic has arguably been the strongest catalyst for change -- forcing brands to view the online channel on equal terms with its brick-and-mortar counterpart and take e-commerce seriously. According to Deloitte, one-third of U.S. shoppers' holiday purchases will be ordered online this year. In the last two years, the separation in growth rates between online and retail sales has continuously widened, as e-commerce growth rates trend up while retail trends down. The era of e-commerce has arrived. So How are Brands Getting Serious About E-Commerce?Dedicated Resources The first way brands are showing they are finally taking e-commerce seriously is by the resources they are devoting to it. No less than The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the phenomenon of retailers bringing on executives to head their e-commerce initiatives. Wal-Mart plans to announce a new CEO of global e-commerce in January, and Kohl’s is bringing on a new senior vice president to head e-commerce. “For us to be successful, we have to increase the amount of dedicated executives devoted just to the digital world pretty dramatically,” says Kohl’s CEO Kevin Mansell. The rush to bring on e-commerce executives, the article goes on to say, has been so dramatic that e-commerce heads that once earned $50,000 to $100,000 and were relegated to the back office or tech support are now commanding between $300,0000 and $500,0000 and have joined the C-suite. E-commerce superstars can earn more than $1 million in annual compensation. (Go ahead. I’ll wait while you check to see if there’s any way your resume can be tuned to reflect e-commerce experience.) Focus Extends Beyond the C-Suite … From CEO to SEO The increased emphasis on e-commerce has brands giving attention to more than just the executive suite. In focusing on natural search engine visibility -- the online channel that offers the largest potential for organic, recurring traffic -- brands are increasingly devoting resources focused entirely on growing natural search as a channel. A recent study we did found that companies with in-house SEO resources among the Internet Retailer 500 grew by 24% in the second half of 2010. Brands Move to Mature Tools In addition to growing resources devoted to e-commerce, brands are also reaching for the tools that will equip them to become serious players in the e-commerce arena. As a SEO company, we have watched brands evolve over the last 12-18 months from managing their most important online channel in an Excel spreadsheet to utilizing a full-featured, automation-enabled SEO platform. Today, more than 500 brands use an enterprise SEO platform of some kind to manage the most important online channel in their e-commerce efforts. Conclusion: Get Serious, Or Get Left Behind Clearly the writing has been on the wall for some time now: much of consumer purchasing is moving online. If the staggering growth in online sales we’ve seen so far this holiday season is any indication of what’s to come, we are headed for another record-breaking year online. So while it may have been okay for brands to dabble in e-commerce until now, 2012 will prove itself to be the year brands start taking e-commerce seriously: by getting themselves the resources, the tools, and the education they need to succeed. Remember our major national retailer? Today, its Paid search spend is one-tenth of what it was in late 2009, they no longer throw away money advertising on products they don’t stock, and their online traffic acquisition is a far more proportioned 80/20 natural/paid split. It is also hiring a new president of its .com division to stabilize e-commerce after a recent painful Website crash. So if you are a brand or a retailer and are not yet taking e-commerce seriously (and for many, it may take some real soul-searching to determine if that is, in fact, the case), make a decision to start doing so in 2012. Or you may soon find yourself left behind by your more mature competitors.