The triumph of promotions

Trade magazin organised ‘The most successful promotion of the year’ competition for the sixth time in 2013. The award ceremony was held on 10 April 2014 in the Királyok Room of Fortuna Restaurant in Buda Castle.

Ágnes Tóth, Nielsen’s client business partner manager was the first speaker of the event, who gave an overview of ‘Domestic promotion trends’ and highlighted the fact that Hungary’s retail market stopped contracting in 2013. In the last four years the proportion of promotion-sensitive consumers grew from 61 to 70 percent, and that of price-conscious consumers climbed from 55 to 65 percent. Win-Store managing director Judit Molnár’s presentation was titled ‘Tricks from Las Vegas’ as she spoke about her experiences at this year’s GlobalShop trade show. At the trade exhibition monumental combined solutions dominated, together with the mix of various ideas featuring 3D elements, LED and digital tools. Ágnes Csiby, managing director of In-Store Team Kft. and president of the POPAI Hungary Association spoke about the EuroShop trade fair, using lots of photos and video footages. She told that stores seem to win back shoppers from online retail in both Western Europe and the USA. Máté Somogyi, client service director of Neo Interactive gave an introduction into the world of successful online promotions. He mentioned a 2013 survey, according to which the majority of Hungarian consumers think one can follow a diverse and healthy diet by buying promotional products only. He also stressed the importance of database building and spoke about the necessity to be constantly in touch with customers, e.g. when organising prize games. Dávid Kétszeri, partnership director of GS1 Magyarország Non-profit Zrt. gave an in-depth account of steps in multichannel marketing. The company’s experience is that going online isn’t enough any more: Multichannel marketing has to use real-time and customised messages optimised for the online channel. For instance this can be done by putting various types of codes on product packaging and this is exactly what the company’s SafeBrand service does. Szilvia Brodár, customer marketing leader with Unilever Magyarország and winner of ‘Trade Marketing Manager of the Year 2013’, told that the award belonged to the company and the customer marketing team too. Despite difficult market conditions they managed to realise sales growth in the last 3 years. They placed special emphasis on the in-store implementation of innovations. ‘Trade Marketing Team 2013’ became Bunge Zrt.’s collective. Trade development manager Judit Bibók called the 2-member team a bridge connecting the sales and marketing divisions. The team’s strategy is to use innovative and involving in-store solutions. After lunch Zsuzsanna Hermann spoke about ‘The most successful promotion of the year 2013’ competition, telling that there had been 23 entries in 7 categories. Mónika Szaller, head of qualitative research at Nielsen introduced the evaluation method used in the competition and talked about research results. It turned out that young people don’t read retail chains’ promotional leaflets but are open to in-store ads and information they get online. Older consumers and those living in families do read leaflets, actively searching for promotions.