7 Tips For Effective Visual Merchandising Execution At large Scale

Think you are a marketing manager of a company which wants to execute its PoSM deployment at outlets across the country. Effectiveness of the campaign depends upon strong planning & resource utilization. However, In-spite of all the planning managers take into account, there are chances of goof ups & delay in timeline achievement of the campaigns which results in loss of opportunity. Here are few tips for your reference which will help you in effective execution.

1. Have a target retail list ready with you approved by stake holders: I have came across multiple brands who wanted to initiate a campaign for a specific period say 45 days in MBO outlets but they don’t have an approved list by stake holders. This results in following issues:

A non-approved list may be outdated & can be refused by regional stake holders at the time of campaign execution. This will result in change of outlets on field & will create chaos between regional teams & corporate marketing teams.
Distributors/Channel Partners also have their own opinion in terms of which outlet should deployed with PoSM & where not. This should be discussed with Channel Partners in advance to avoid issues which have been mentioned in point 1.
Outlet details should be correct before planning on execution. It should have correct cities mentioned with addresses. It will help in avoiding last minute issues when FOS visits the markets.

2. Get Your Outlets Enrolled Before Execution: Normally, brands want to deploy the campaigns on main outlets which have a major business impact on the sales & revenue. Which means those outlets are already doing business with the brand. Now, getting acknowledgement from those outlets in advance before execution will result in effective merchandising. Following issues may occur without this:

Retailers may not allow visual merchandisers to deploy any PoSM by saying they don’t have any information related to the campaign.
Any Communication on PoSM material which is not applicable with the dealer can lead to refusal.
At the time of visits outlets may refuse execution to FOS on account of any other business related issues they have with local brand teams.

3. Cost & Benefits Analysis on Location of Production of Material: Brands tend to hire central vendors to maintain the uniformity in quality of PoSM produced. They plan to produce the PoSM centrally & dispatch it to different locations. However, it may lead to many issues in case of large scale of deployment. We need to plan our production well in advance basis media specification fixing & freezing production rate cards. Followed by audit plan & supply chain plan for the PoSM material. Failures in this may lead to following:

Higher Cost of the couriers & dispatches.
More number of dispatches will expose the risk of loss in transit or damage of PoSM in transit.

4. Effective Backward Planning: I have seen plans getting failed at last hour due to inefficient backward planning for campaign deployments. It is majorly because of artwork rejection by authorities, delay in Production by vendors, no manpower planning, intervention from stakeholders on outlet lists, delay in delivery of PoSMs, etc. We should plan day wise working in advance to avoid such issues in future. To ensure this we should have target campaign active date town type wise. Basis this we can plan backward from the start.

5. Set Material/PoSM Deployment Guidelines: As a brand custodian no-body wants to deploy PoSM material at a place which have low visibility or relevance. A poster deployed outside of the store but at an eye level will have no impact for brand. Simultaneously, a poster deployed inside store but not on an eye level will be with a least relevance for brand. So, freezing guidelines for the deployment of PoSM material are of utmost importance. We can plan guidelines in two ways:

Deployment Grid: This talks about, planning number of PoSM to be deployed in an outlet different type wise.
Deployment Guideline: This talks about where to deploy which PoSM.

6. Training: Before execution in market FOS should be trained well in advance about the deployment & the reporting procedure. In marketing everything is depending upon presenting what is executed on ground. Any miss in this will lead to many issues which may create chaos later at the time of execution.

7. Have Strong & Authenticated Reporting Mechanism System: Brands usually face issues in terms of real time reporting & authenticity of reports shared with them by field teams. Sometimes it may happen that reports are forged & not validated to show extra covered numbers of outlets. It happens to cover up the goof-ups done by field team or to earn extra without actually visiting those outlets.
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