CPGmatters: Dannon Expands Dairy Space With Mobile Display Cooler
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt of a current article from the monthly e-zine, CPGmatters.
To find shelf space for retailers to sell its fast-selling DanActive and Activia brands, Dannon USA recently formed what it calls a "Shelf Obsession Team" that came up with a mobile cooler that organizes and promotes the health benefits of yogurt products. The Proactive Health kiosk has already been rolled out to more than 2,500 participating stores.
Both DanActive, the probiotic yogurt-based "daily-shot" beverage, and Activia, a probiotic yogurt, have been so strong, Michael Neuwirth, marketing communications manager for Dannon USA, recalled, "that it was growing faster than the linear footage of the shelves. So we were leaving uncaptured growth in the stores - both us and the stores themselves."
Dannon USA constructed a shopper decision tree to identify the No. 1 drivers when people shop, as well as what are the second-level decision-makers and the third-level ones.
"With yogurt," Marc Jove, senior vice president of marketing for Dannon USA, said, "consumers typically enter by benefit, sort of, 'Help me with my issues.' Once you're in the category, the next decision level is brand, then flavor, then format."
Because of the capital involved in establishing and maintaining refrigerator space in stores, the dairy sector tends to be one of the most fixed spaces in any supermarket.
"But we had to get some reallocation of space to faster-growing areas - yogurt - so what loses?" Mr. Neuwirth said. "We helped stores to understand that it didn't have to be a single section as much as some from a combination of categories, butter among them."
Where retailers agreed with their objective, however, Dannon USA still had to take maximum advantage of the opportunity both for sales of their products and for their retailer partners. The solution devised by the Shelf Obsession Team was a dedicated, refrigerated display unit that it calls a Proactive Health kiosk.
"These go in or around the dairy section," Mr. Neuwirth said. "They help shoppers and become disruptive in the store from a traffic perspective. They invite shoppers to stop and look inside." And, he added, the kiosks don't necessarily have to take space away from other dairy categories; they can be "incremental" for the overall dairy segment.
But the kiosks are reserved for dairy products that have promoted and acknowledged "functional benefits." Sections of the cooler are color-coded to help consumers quickly identify the benefits provided by a given product: green for digestive benefits, yellow for immunity benefits. "It helps the shopper understand what's in there," Mr. Jove said.
Dannon has been renting the coolers to retailers for "a limited period of time," Mr. Jove said, and the company moves some of them from one store to another. "If the retailer decides that we're there to stay, we end up reaching an agreement with them," he said. "It depends on the partnership you have with your customer."
Discussion Question: What do you think of Dannon's Proactive Health kiosks? How open do you think grocers will be to such kiosks? Can many other categories benefit from educational/promotional kiosks in grocers?