STORE FOCUS CALLED VITAL TO VIDEO TIE-INS

DAN ALAIMO

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. -- In a candid critique of video tie-in promotions, Kirk Mueldener, director of video operations at Hy-Vee Food Stores, West Des Moines, Iowa, said many cross-promotions fail to create excitement because they don't address the needs of individual stores.

Cross-promotions fall flat when retailers cannot get information from tie-in partners or point-of-purchase materials from studios on a timely basis, and when the tie-in products are either slow movers or unavailable in local areas, he said. Mueldener was the keynote speaker at a supermarket video conference held here July 20 and 21. "Cross-Promoting Video Titles in Supermarkets" was the title of the first conference sponsored by Supermarket News and Brand Marketing, a monthly supplement to SN, in conjunction with Aim Promotions, Astoria, N.Y. It attracted about 100 executives from retail chains, movie studios, video distributors, brand manufacturers and related companies. It is "event marketing" when a title like "The Lion King" is effectively cross-merchandised with Pillsbury products or when the sale of "Forrest Gump" is coupled with a park bench giveaway, Mueldener said. Mueldener urged the suppliers in the audience to be more open to working with retailers on store-specific displays. "We want to be able to offer our stores a unique opportunity that they can offer their customers for shopping at Hy-Vee Food Stores," he said.

For example, the customers and store employees could see and touch the "Gump" park bench and know that one would be given away at each store. Hy-Vee gave away 190 of the benches. "You can get a lot more response out of the store managers if you can come to them with something that is specific to Hy-Vee, something that is going to offset us from the mass merchants and the other competitors down the street," said Mueldener. "Getting the store personnel excited is the key to making these promotions fly," he said. Individual stores in a big chain have little interest in a promotion that involves a single, more valuable prize given away at a remote location, he said. A lead time of eight weeks is needed to ensure cooperation from all departments for big event video sell-through titles, he said. This is especially true when major packaged goods companies like General Mills are involved. "We need to know what the deals are going to be and what products are going to be offered on the rebate because we have pre-orders that need to go out to the stores for the ad merchandise. If we are looking at a palletized program, we need to present that to the stores. Then General Mills needs time to manufacturer the required number of palletized programs," said Mueldener. Many video promotions fall short in the types and amounts of POP materials, he said.

"Make sure you have POP available before street date," he said. Hy-Vee has a total of 222 stores that will offer major sell-through titles. "It takes about a week and a half to make sure that all of our stores are covered with POP material," he said. "We also need lots of POP materials. If it is just a poster and a standee, that is not going to work if it is going to be used on an endcap display and on a front-end display. We need a large assortment and a large quantity of materials to create an event in our stores," Mueldener said. Besides shippers, posters and standees, these materials should also include mobiles, banners and talking signs, he said. "Anything to assist the stores in merchandising the product, building awareness and getting excited about presenting the product to the customers," he said. Mueldener used Hy-Vee's experience with past video sell-through titles to illustrate what worked and what didn't in cross-promotional programs. With the release of "101 Dalmatians," Disney and Nabisco sales representatives did a good job of making joint sales calls, he said. "The Disney rep took the initiative to meet not just with me and our marketing people, but also with the Nabisco sales reps that call on the stores. They met with the regional Nabisco people and provided them with good information, which boiled down to the fact that our stores were well informed," he said. This also happened with "Jungle Book," he said. Nabisco products are serviced on a direct-store delivery basis. "That is a big advantage from my standpoint because we have the sales force out in the stores getting the store people in tune with what is coming up," he said. Other Disney cross-promotions with Pillsbury and General Mills also were very successful, he noted. While the products for the Nabisco tie-ins, and later Disney promotions with Pillsbury and General Mills were fast-movers, that was not the case with the Colgate products offered with "Pinocchio" and "Aladdin," said Mueldener. "The problem was that in our stores, toothpaste and toothbrushes are generally very slow-moving items, and they are very difficult items to display and merchandise," he said. "We wanted to make the title an event in the store and try to build excitement with consumers and store personnel. But we just didn't see a lot of the stores making displays," he said. But, speaking from the floor, Max Goldberg, vice president of promotions at Buena Vista Home Video, Burbank, Calif., said the Colgate promotions were the company's most successful. "From a consumer point of view, they completely out-distanced any other program that we have ever done, by almost two-to-one," he said. Movement on Pillsbury and Nabisco items increased 40% to 70% when the promotion hit, Mueldener responded. "But on Colgate, we just didn't see that." Mueldener said the cross-promotion partners for "Free Willy" did not lend themselves to chainwide advertising because Bumble Bee was not in Hy-Vee's market area and the Kid Cuisine products were not carried by many of its smaller stores. The Pepsi tie-in with "Home Alone" was problematic because not all of the 27 different Pepsi bottlers serving Hy-Vee cooperated with the promotion. Also, no advertising funding was made available, he said. "'Jurassic Park' was the most difficult title we ever worked with," said Mueldener. POP materials arrived very late and Jell-O sales representatives did not provide Hy-Vee's grocery buyers with sufficient information, he said. "We felt that with the time between the theatrical release and the home video release, there should have been a better program put together on that title." The information should have been disseminated a lot better than it was, he said. Two very successful cross-promotions for Hy-Vee were ones that the retailer created itself, said Mueldener. Because there was no national tie-in promotion on "Forrest Gump," "we worked pretty hard with Paramount" on developing the park bench contest promotion, he said. The studio had provided retailers with an extensive list of "Gump" licensees, with products such as shrimp, hats, T-shirts and candy, he said. Other movie-related merchandise was displayed on or near the benches, Mueldener.

"Mrs. Doubtfire" had a national tie-in with FTD, but Hy-Vee made its own floral promotional, he said. A floral distributing company owned by the retailer created "The Doubtfire Bouquet," which retailed for $4.99. There was an instant $1 off coupon with the purchase of the video.

"That went over very well. Our floral departments were excited about it and the floral bouquets were easily merchandised on the front-ends." The retailer sold more than 4,000 bouquets, said Mueldener.