Magazine: We rewarded the best promotions

There were 27 entries in our magazine’s ‘Most successful promotion of the year’ competition. A jury of experts and consumers both evaluated works and 19 of them went home with an award. A trade day preceded the award ceremony, which took place in the Kings’ Room of Budavári Fortuna Restaurant.

Trade magazine’s managing director and editor-in-chief Zsuzsanna Hermann welcomed participants and told that there had been a record number of entries in this year’s contest. Then she gave the floor to Nielsen’s client service director Mónika Barta. She spoke about how the global Nielsen consumer confidence index has been above the pre-recession level for more than a year now. The positive change in consumer confidence is also reflected in buying habits: although 48 percent of consumers are still saving money, already every 3rd consumer would like to spend more on enjoying life. In Hungary 2014 brought a 5.1-percent growth in FMCG spending (volume sales growth was 3.4 percent). Sophistication, quality and good service are very important these days – they are already among the top 5 store choice factors. At the same time 92 percent of purchases are planned in advance. Hungarian consumers are open to buying private label products: in 2014 they spent HUF 464 billion on them. In the top 10 grocery categories that Nielsen audits 46 percent of sales were realised in promotion. The same proportion in the so-called ‘drug’ category is 54 percent. Ágnes Csiby, the president of POPAI Hungary Association was the next speaker. She brought video footages and photos to talk about the GlobalShop trade fair of Las Vegas. Dr István Réti, the strategic director of ETresearch shed light on some of the results of the Shopper and POP study conducted with the help of POPAI Hungary. The study combined POPAI’s North American methodology with ETresarch’s know-how and the results, in the form of a 100-page study, can be bought. Annamária Goldschmied, the business development manager of ESRI followed next. With the help of a video she explained how Geographic Information Systems can be used in the business world, for instance to analyse the efficiency of promotions before implementation. Anna Südi, communication and client service manager with Neticle Technologies used the startup’s new method to analyse what kind of messages influenced internet users in the Easter period. The innovative company examines the opinion of internet users on campaigns and brands. They primarily analyse Hungarian content with the ‘social listening’ method. For instance this time they found that NIVEA, No Salty, Tesco and Spar were successful online partly because they were focusing on Facebook content this spring. Krisztián Király, the first male winner of the Trade Marketing Club’s ‘Trade marketing manager of the year’ title and trade marketing manager of Pick Szeged Zrt. introduced the company’s Quality Deli Counter project. Within the framework of this activity PICK set out to make the deli counter the island of happiness and smiling faces in 325 grocery stores all over Hungary. News of the success of the PICK island built in Budapest Airport even reached the offices of the campaign’s co-organiser, Hamburg-seated company Heinemann. Krisztina Antal, category manager of Nestlé spoke about the ‘Trade marketing team of the year’, the 15-member Category Channel Sales Development (CCSD) division. The CCSD team not only deals with brands, partners and channels but also takes care of in-store and shopper marketing tasks. They give special emphasis to finding new business opportunities. The team is especially proud of the 28-month COMEX programme, in which the practical education of newly recruited colleagues is carried out. In 2014 the team implemented a new generation of successful promotions: in these educating consumers about eating healthy was in the focal point, e.g. the Maggi campaign in Spar stores concentrated on the importance of fresh ingredients and light suppers. The second half of the day’s programme started with Zsuzsanna Hermann talking about the difficult task the 10-member jury had to face when evaluating the entries. Eszter Boczán, consumer insights leader at Nielsen followed her with a presentation of the latest research results, revealing that in addition to rational factors emotions and the subconscious also influence shoppers when making decisions. Consequently, market players need to pay attention to these too – and the so-called metarules can help them in this: 1. Tangibility – consumers can try products and prizes, 2. Simplicity – using points of reference which a given target group can easily understand and interpret, 3. Managing the trinity of safety, autonomy and excitement. The day’s programme ended with the award ceremony. Ms Hermann and Ms Boczán handed over the prizes to the winners. Just like in previous years, winners introduced their projects in short presentations – you can read more about these in the next issue of Trade magazin.