What does $200 billion get you?

Industry experts estimate that nearly $200 billion is spent annually on trade promotion activity. Grocers and suppliers have long struggled to develop collaborative strategies to make the most of that investment. Mostly, the analysis has been of the Monday morning quarterback nature, examining promotions after the fact to improve the next round but without much foresight or planning to ensure success today.

There hasn’t been much change, as far as I can tell, since I began covering this topic more than a dozen years ago. But some recent developments offer some hope of a turnaround.

“Trade promotion optimization (TPO) is an up-and-coming discipline,” says Michael Kantor, CEO of the Promotion Optimization Institute (POI). “While hindsight is great, today there is greater emphasis on foresight and planning. We’re coming out of a recession and trading partners are coming to the conclusion that they can’t do this alone.”

POI has put together an upcoming meeting—Charting Your Course to Trade Promotion Optimization Summit—to be held March 13-15 in Chicago. Executives representing such industry heavyweights as Delhaize America, Gartner, Accenture, Unilever, ConAgra Foods, Church & Dwight and Georgia-Pacific will be conducting sessions on retailer-supplier collaboration.

Another development giving credence to the renewed focus on trade promotion optimization is the fact that POI is launching a unique, accredited higher education program with St. Joseph's University that will certify retailers and manufacturers as Certified Collaborative Marketers.

Perhaps this time, collaboration will be more than just a buzzword.