We know how important data is to emerging brands, and that data can be expensive and difficult to obtain and understand. FMI Emerge is proud to partner with retail data and insights powerhouse, Nielsen, to help growing brands navigate through point-of-sale analytics and consumer sales insights. We are pleased to share the following customer testimonial from an Emerge subscriber company, showing first-hand how they are benefitting from our partnership with Nielsen.
“My firm, Gatherer’s Granola, took the opportunity to access Nielsen POS and Panel data through the FMI Emerge program in Q1, 2019. The data included was immediately surprising and instrumental in course correcting our business strategy. The Panel data demonstrated that we had misunderstood where the majority of demand in our product category came from in terms of consumer demographics. For years we had been convinced that our target customer was one type of person, but we were quite wrong and spending too much money and effort in the attempt to bring in consumers who were not primed to desire granola. Since we received the data, we have redeveloped our marketing strategy to focus on appealing to those customers for whom granola is already a must have item.
On the point of sale (POS) side, data from the trade areas we specified gave us our first look at how we stack up in our category relative to our competitors. To our delight it demonstrated that our sales efficiency performance was far better than we had anticipated, relative to other brands in our category. That data set has become a key tool in our sales arsenal and is arguably the most powerful element in our efforts to win over buyers to expand or onboard our brand’s items. We now know which brands and items are vulnerable to being knocked off planograms in favor of our items, what the trends are among our competitors, both regionally and nationally, and how different trade areas express different demand attributes in our category, influencing where we direct our efforts. Going forward, the sales data and measures available in the POS set will be among the most impactful KPIs in evaluating the efficacy of our sales and marketing strategies. Operating a CPG brand without access to this type of data and an understanding of how to use it is roughly equivalent to flying an airplane without an instrument cluster. It’s possible to pull it off running a company that way, but it is so much less likely to produce successful outcomes.
The people at Nielsen, connected with the Emerge program participants, were exceedingly helpful in instructing our management team on how to read, understand, and act upon the data provided to Gatherer’s. Without their active hand holding, we wouldn’t have been able to make the best use of the information. They proved to be accessible, responsive, and interested in helping.
Many managers of emerging brands discount the opportunities to work with Nielsen as too expensive to consider. I used to count myself among that population. Now, I feel confident in saying that it’s far more expensive not to work with access to the data they provide.”
– Alessandro Gerbini, Founder and CEO, Gatherer’s Granola
Learn more about the benefits of being an FMI Emerge subscriber here.