BREWING THE RIGHT STRATEGY: HIPERCOM'S TREND BOOK CAN BE EYE OPENER FOR BEER BRANDS

25 October 2015

The best way to boost brand's or producer's promotional strategy is to get more than a sneak peek into its competitors' game plan. Easier said than done? Not necessarily, if you reach for one of HiperCom's trend books that unveil the secrets of other market players' promotional tactics. Briefly, they contain all the information you may need to build an effective promotional strategy and outsmart your market rivals.

The beer trend book that we present to you below features a variety of beer brands, along with specific promotional supermarket-based activities that they opted for in recent years. It offers a great insight into other brands' action plan which can be useful in formulating your own approach. Simply put, you can analyse your competitors' to-date promotional tactics and leverage this knowledge to reach out to larger numbers of consumers.

Promo pressure, SOV, Virtual Price and more

Our analysis of beer brands promotional strategy involves several key terms. First, there is promotional pressure (Promo Pressure) which indicates the visibility of a given promotion in a retail chain, category, brand or retail format. The number of promotional leaflets or number of promotions per leaflet is the primary promo pressure metric. HiperCom uses Share of Voice (SOV) to demonstrate the intensity of promotional efforts, as measured by the number of promotional leaflets, SKUs and WUs. We also take into account such factors as the retail space in square metres, period of promotion and the number of days when such promotion was available. By using SKUs in relation to each product and its variants in a promotional leaflet, we are able to monitor closely the products featuring in the promotional offer. We often apply the term of Virtual Price, i.e. the price that takes into account consumer benefits.

These metrics help us compare the effectiveness of brands' promotional strategies by means of benchmarking. Consequently, you get invaluable information on what works and what does not in terms of brand promotion, which can be used for the benefit of your own brand.

See through your rivals' grand design

Our reports demonstrate strategies of other market players, with emphasis on efficiency of their promotional actions. Some players may turn promotions into one of their key strategic mechanisms, while others tend to stick to cost-oriented policies. By means of charts, we compare brands against each other in terms of applied tactics. We also assess their game plans in a qualitative manner. For instance, some strategies are great for leaders, but may be risky or harmful to small-time market players. Analogically, strategies for fledgling brands will significantly differ from tactics adopted by big players.

The report, which is available for preview below, features a variety of beer brands/producers that compete against each other in a supermarket environment. We attempted to benchmark their promotional strategies in terms of SOV, Promo Pressure, Virtual Price and other KPIs that can help you learn from your competitors' mistakes and improve your own promotional plan.

For instance, our report demonstrates that Heineken is the leader of the beer category with a Share of Voice of 28.3 percent, followed by Starbev and Ursus with a Share of Voice of 16.7 percent. URBB (12.5 percent) comes third. By taking a closer look at the promotional patterns displayed by these four producers, they all reported positive Promo Pressure, with Heineken adopting the most aggressive approach (an increase of +72.1 percent). Interestingly, Heineken, Carlsberg and Beck’s turned out to be the most expensive brands, because they were promoted with multi-pack.

By highlighting links between some KPIs and effectiveness of adopted promotional strategies (as in their impact on overall business performance), we enable report readers to fully grasp the mechanisms of their market rivals' promotions. Only then can they develop truly effective, robust promotional strategies of their own.