SHOPPER MARKETING
Shopper Marketing:
Things To Celebrate And
Change
By Tekisha Harvey
T
here are many attractive qualities
about the shopper marketing
career path, but there is room for
improvement. Those opportunity areas
contributed strongly to my decision
to leave the industry. I’m calling out
the good and bad with the hopes that
companies will celebrate with me and
work to minimize the issues. Leaders of
both shopper marketing and other matrix
functions should drive change.
Budget Empowerment
What Needs To Be Celebrated
The first thing to celebrate? Shopper
marketers HAVE THEIR OWN
BUDGET TO CONTROL (I had to shout
that in all caps because it’s a BIG DEAL)!
“He who holds the purse strings”… holds
the power. Being responsible for a budget
to drive marketing activity to influence
shopper behavior is very empowering. It
instantly gives you a level of autonomy and
control to develop and execute programs
to achieve your objectives. This is part of
what attracted me to shopper marketing.
I was the expert on specific retailers, and I
was empowered to use company funds to
develop programs that worked best for my
brands and their shoppers.
What Needs To Change
Unfortunately, funds are often “on
loan” to shopper marketing from other
stakeholders, including Sales and Brand
Management. These stakeholders often
want final say in how funds are used.
The “on loan” concept relegates shopper
marketers to order takers.
I often wasted precious time developing
internal sales presentations on numerous
occasions to get stakeholder alignment
on how to spend my own budget dollars.
While alignment is valuable, it shouldn’t
result in too many cooks in the kitchen.
Shopper marketers should have th