What is in this article?:
- Supplier Leadership Award 2012 Winner for POS Merchandising: Mars
- Cross-Merchandising M&MS
Mars Chocolate North America pushed its point-of-sale merchandising to new heights this year, earning SN's Supplier Leadership Award for POS Merchandising.
• Mars M&M’S newest character, Ms. Brown, was introduced nationwide in all channels with everything from people-sized standees to danglers.
• Building on past success led by customer insights, Mars cross-merchandised M&M’S with private-label and national-brand popcorn.
• Mars spotlighted its new-sized Dove chocolate bar with a bundled promotion that combined it with graham crackers and marshmallows, tying into the summer popularity of s’mores.
Mars Chocolate North America pushed its point-of-sale merchandising to new heights this year, with both nationwide promotions and theme-promos customized to particular grocery chains.
The year got off to a big start with the introduction of the new M&M’S character, Ms. Brown, during the Super Bowl.
“We worked closely with our sales and retail teams to ensure that once Ms. Brown was revealed during the Super Bowl, stores across the country were ‘Painted Brown,’” Timothy LeBel, vice president, sales-grocery/value/military for Mars Chocolate North America, told SN.
“Our grocery retail coverage teams secured placement of high-impact, point-of-purchase materials — ranging from plastic Ms. Brown standees to danglers.” The POS materials pointed out that M&M’S brand candies and Ms. Brown are “not your average chocolate.”
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Some of the Ms. Brown POS sites included a “Find an All Brown Bag” contest. Customers who found a bag of all-brown M&Ms got a chance to win a grand prize of $100,000 cash, and more than $220,000 in instant-win prizes featuring M&M’S characters.
Giving customers a chance to enter to win a variety of prizes, from Texas-style boots to a year’s worth of movie tickets, were incorporated in many of the company’s POS merchandising and cross-merchandising efforts.
For example, in a collaborative effort with San Antonio-based H-E-B, Mars created an offer that gave shoppers chances to win Texas-style prizes like boots and hats, and football tickets. The all-encompassing promotion at H-E-B included displays that provided recipe ideas, recipe booklets, custom headers and an M&M’S brand FSI for the chain. Ms. Brown character standee bins and Ms. Brown character walk-abouts were featured at selected stores.
In another give-away tied to POS merchandising, Mars, in its national Summer Movie Mania promotion, gave customers a chance to win movie tickets for one year.
In a similar promotion, customers purchasing three bags of Mars brand products could mail in for $9 in movie cash.
