Honey, They Shrunk the Cranberries

Forgive me an Andy Rooney-like post here, but have you noticed the tremendous amount of shrinkage going on in packaged food products?

Next time you’re grocery shopping, or getting a meal on the table, note how many of your favorite brands are suddenly coming up short in terms of package size and/or product volume.

Must be a sign of the recessionary times. Corporate strategists deciding it’s OK to give consumers a little less than they’re accustomed to getting.

In fact, their reasoning probably goes, if we tweak the can or reconfigure the box just so — a little off the top, a little off the side, clean it up in back — they might not even notice.

I haven’t done a thorough study of this phenomenon, but I’m going to guess that in most cases of incredible shrinking packaging and product, the price is the only thing not shriveling. Wouldn’t be surprised, in fact, if it’s going the other direction.

As a big fan of potato chips, and long-time consumer of dry cereal, I’m used to food marketers playing fast and loose — or, more accurately, tall and mostly empty — with the package-product-price-value ratio. But now the “less is less” approach to packaging and marketing seems to be running rampant in all aisles of the store.

• Our favorite brand of jellied cranberries? The can is suddenly a lot shorter. Kind of cute and stubby, actually. But I’m going to guess it contains 2-3 fewer slices of the wiggly red jelly we used to get from each can.
• When I pull a sleeve of saltines out of the box, it looks like someone in Operations decided it would be a good idea to shut down the inserter 10 to 12 crackers early on each sleeve.
• Suddenly, I’m noticing ice cream containers looking oddly top heavy. About the same on top, but a lot smaller around the bottom. I can only assume it’s so people in white coats and hair nets can use the same size covers but throttle back just a scoop or two on the amount of ice cream being poured.
• Saw an orange juice carton the other day that seemed oddly tall and slender. I’m used to orange juice cartons being shaped like a middle linebacker. This one looked more like a volleyball player.

It doesn’t take a Nobel laureate economist to interpret what’s going on. We can safely assume these brands aren’t cutting back on packaging, product, or both to help us all stay on our diets and lose a few pounds.

Instead, they’re finding ways to cut a little volume here, trim a little packaging there, in hopes of making their bottom lines a little fatter. A perfectly sound business strategy.

But is it great brand strategy? Maybe not, but only time will tell.

Each of us — consumers and B-to-B decision makers alike – gets to judge whether brands we’ve come to trust and rely on, during good times and not so good, continued to live up to their end of the bargain during this recent and ongoing economic downturn.

Did they continue to deliver the price-value we’ve come to expect, even if meant a little less profit on their end.

If not, did they offer us a price break, along with an explanation?

Or did their price go up, but along with it came a higher level of value and service?

If it were my can, box, widget or framitz, when times got tough, I like to think we’d try and hold the line on price-value, even if it meant earning a little less near term. My hope would be I’d have customers continue to think fondly of my brand and products — or at least not have a reason to think negatively — over the long haul.

For 20-plus years I’ve pulled the same brand of cranberries, the same crackers, off the store shelf, never giving price-value so much as a thought.

Now?

They’ve got me thinking.

When Offers Cease to Be Special

Every few days I get an e-mail from a bookseller. Not just any bookseller, mind you. The biggest bricks-and-mortar bookseller of them all.

We’re talking more than 750 stores. Shelves upon shelves of literary treasures to browse. Inviting spaces in which to linger and loiter, scan dust jackets, sample music, even grab a cup of coffee and a scone.

And yet, after months of being peppered by these e-mails, not one has compelled me to visit the nearest store.

Why?

Because virtually every e-mail is dominated by a discount offer. I can’t recall the last time there was an announcement of an author’s reading, some other special in-store event, or even a snippet of information that inspired me around reading and learning.

Bang the Drum Incessantly
To give you a taste, here’s a sampling of 10 consecutive e-mails received recently:

8.11  This Week: Coupons, New Lower Textbook Prices, Pat Conroy…

8.6  10% Coupon Inside

8.4  This Week — Coupons, Richard Russo, Free eReader, Save up to 90% on…

7.30  Choose a CD for $8.99

7.29  This Week — Coupons, Save up to 90% on Used Textbooks…

7.23  20% Coupon Inside

7.21  This Week — Coupons, Summer Reading Picks, Daniel Silva…

7.17  Save 50% — Don’t Miss Out on Our Clearance Sale

7.14  This Week — Coupons, Harry Potter 7 in Paperback, 50% Off Select…

7.9   10% Coupon Inside

Looking for a Reason
What’s wrong with saving money on books? Nothing. But at least for this consumer, when a marketer beats the percentage-discount, dollars-off, here’s-a-coupon drum often enough — monotonously enough – they create dissonance and disaffection rather than resonance and motivation.

Granted, maybe that makes me an oddball in today’s marketplace, where boxes are often big, prices are so often pledged to be low, and brands hang their hat on shopping the competition so you don’t have to.

But marketing, in the end, is also about creating meaningful differentiation, not just about communicating price discounts and financial enticements.

Go through your own list of most valued brands to your life and business and there’s a good chance few, if any, are known as the price leader in their category.

FREE Advice (Regularly $.02)
If I were this big book retailer — or any marketer feeling stuck on a price treadmill — I hope I’d take a look at the competitive landscape and marketplace dynamics and decide that discounting my way into the hearts and minds of buyers might not be the answer.

Instead, I hope I’d rack my brain to think of ways to connect with my target audience around content – value-adding information, interactions and experiences that build affinity and drive engagement.

In fact, for inspiration, I might start by going to the Business section of my local bookstore and pulling a work on content marketing.

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Would welcome your take on discounting, coupons and other price-related incentives? Overdone? Unavoidable? Does it tend to compel you or repulse? Do you patronize brands primarily because of pricing or some other aspect of the value proposition?

Social Media “Crowds” Traditional News Gathering

Where there’s smoke…there’s Twitter.

At least that was the case this summer when a Gord Hotchkiss, president of Enquiro, a search marketing firm, began tracking a wildfire burning in the hills outside his hometown, Ketowna, British Columbia.

As Hotchkiss relates in an excellent post for Search Insider, he began watching the blaze from the deck behind his home, armed with binoculars, a laptop and Twitter. Meanwhile, his wife was inside, monitoring news reports on radio and TV.

Suddenly, Hotchkiss found himself in the midst of a spontaneous media experiment. Which channel — radio, TV, or Twitter — would be most effective at quickly conveying fresh updates on the fire’s progress?

I won’t give away his entire post, except to say the more venerable media venues did not fair well in this side, by side, by side comparison.  Instead, Hotchkiss’ experience is a thought-provoking case study regarding ways social media can dramatically change how — and by whom — breaking news gets reported and consumed.

Breaking News Becoming a “Crowded” Field?
As a former newspaper reporter, I’m not sure I can begin to imagine, much less list, all the implications here for professional news journalists. Except to predict one thing:

If (as) this type of of crowd-sourced, online local news reporting really catches on, the media likely to be challenged most by it will be broadcasters, less so than newspapers.

Newspaper reporters have already adjusted to having their stories come out on the back end of the news cycle. They know radio and TV can not only get to the scene, but be broadcasting to their viewers, with much more immediacy.

Thus, newspapers have had to add context and texture to their early reportage on a breaking event, knowing that the basic facts of the event are likely to already be in circulation by the time their coverage hits the streets.

Broadcasters, meanwhile, suddenly have a new, extremely nimble competitor for the immediate and evolving details of breaking news.

As Hotchkiss’ post points out: When a TV talking head is droning the same two-hours-old script, with the same from-the-scene-earlier news footage looping in the background, but meanwhile the event continues to unfold and be reported on social media in near real-time – well, that talking head starts to look and sound a little silly and outmoded.

If, indeed, anyone is still tuned in.