by Herman Manson (@marklives) Y&R South Africa (part of WWP) has launched a new retail and shopper marketing specialist — Y&R Labstore — into the South African market. Labstore is Y&R Advertising’s new global retail and shopper marketing network that already operates in 20 markets.
The office in Johannesburg will be its first in Africa. Y&R took over independent shopper agency, SOAP, which had an existing infrastructure and client base, to launch Labstore in SA.
Management
The new agency will be managed by Carolyn White (regional business director), Sarah Britten (regional strategic director) and Brian Ferns (creative director).
White, Britten and Ferns met at Y&R South Africa in 2010 before launching their own shopper agency – SOAP.
Y&R Labstore has taken over SOAP’s clients and is now working on shopper and retailing strategies for brands in the Tiger Brands stable, Citroën South Africa and Sodastream. The new agency also successfully pitched with Y&R Advertising on three Distell wine brands: Two Oceans, Nederburg and Drostdy-Hof.
Jon Bird, global managing director at Labstore, is visiting the country 15–20 October 2014 to introduce the new agency. Bird used to run his own retail-marketing agency, IdeaWorks, in Australia and New Zealand, before moving to Labstore (Labstore still trades as IdeaWorks in these markets).
Increasingly personalised
Bird views the global retail market as increasingly globalised, digitised, polarised and increasingly personalised.
White, meanwhile, notes that more local marketing spend is shifting to retail marketing, and that the retail market is becoming more globalised, so both the local Y&R agency and the international network have reason to benefit from the launch of Labstore into the SA market.
Y&R Labstore SA, continues White, aims to effectively marry retail and shopper marketing, with an emphasis on strategy and data to offer clients a comprehensive strategy. The team will shortly consist of eight people, including staff skilled in digital, content, strategy and design, and a three-to-five-year expansion strategy into other African countries is already in place.
According to Ferns, through loyalty cards, retailers have gained significant insight into shopper behaviour and have adjusted their store design to shift from only moving product to also becoming experiential spaces. The agency will focus on data to better understand retail environments and consumer needs.
Social a key step
Consumer needs are exactly why shopper-marketing and social media can be aligned in a strategic way. Britten says that, while ‘omnichannel’ marketing has been a buzzword for some time, social has become a key step in the path to purchase. It’s one of various nudges that takes us into the retail environment and assists us in our decision-making in-store.
Even if retailers have limited direct engagement with social media, its role in consumer decision-making continues to grow (think peer reviews and endorsements).
Of course, to be talked about, brands need to be relevant. They also need to have meaning — especially if they want to stand out — which is one of the reasons private-label brands are behaving more like brands and less as ‘only’ competing on price.
Look how popular culture now embraces mobile devices, points out Britten. Think about how many retailers still have staff members freaking out when a customer pulls out a phone to take a selfie in-store — at a time when, globally, there are already moves to design stores that encourage use of platforms such as Instagram!
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