Today, in-store is no longer just the final step in the shopper journey. It is the moment where digitally influenced intent converts into revenue. Where strategies are tested in real time. And where competitive advantage is either won or lost.
The opportunity isn’t simply to execute better on the shelf, it’s to treat it as a source of untapped intelligence. And that requires a shift how we think about Field Activity, and combine its insight into thoughtful strategic plans
Understanding brands in real-world context
At the outset of my Planning career, one piece of advice I was given has always stuck with me:
“Don’t just try and understand a brand or product through its positioning, advertising, or its ‘reasons to believe’. You need to see and understand it in context”.
There’s a difference between reading about something in a book (or on a brief) and observing it out in the world.
On paper, it’s easy to look coherent. In reality, context can change everything.
Walk into any store. Look at your product. Look at the shoppers – those buying, and those walking past. Look at the store colleagues. Look at the competitors competing for attention. Look at the promotions. The messaging. What works, what doesn’t.
Immerse yourself in the environment, because the shelf is where strategy stops being theory and instead becomes reality. Where planning cycles collide with real life.
And most of the time, people aren’t looking at it closely enough.
Seeing the Shelf Differently
Contrasting my time in advertising with that in Field Sales, one thing has remained consistent. Field is still often viewed by many as the execution layer of commercial, marketing and sales strategy. Necessary, operational, and tactical.
We send people into stores. We merchandise. Audit. Train. Demonstrate. Optimise.
All important, and as relevant today as it has always been. But here’s the challenge: the commercial environment we, and our clients operate within, continues to fundamentally change.
A changing retail landscape
We often operate on annual, or periodic cycles, basing expected future behaviour on previous experience. Yet every year (and more recently, even month) introduces new complexity and new challenges to navigate.
Complexity isn’t the same as decline, however, In fact, there has arguably never been more opportunity concentrated in physical retail than there is today.
And 46% of retail executives identify enhanced omnichannel experiences as their top growth priority (Deloitte).
For all the headlines to the contrary of the past few years, the store isn’t declining in relevance, but becoming more integrated, more influenced by digital, and more strategically important than ever.
It’s moving beyond just a point of sale, and becoming the conversion point for digitally influenced intent, the physical manifestation of omnichannel strategies, and the place where media, messaging, pricing and availability collide.
I believe, today, there has never been more potential sitting on the shelf.
But with greater opportunity comes greater choice, and more decisions to make.
More channels, more formats, more data, more metrics, more levers to pull.
And that’s where we often now see the real tension.
The Intelligence sitting in plain sight
In shopper marketing I used to speak often with clients about the paradox of choice.
In short, the more choices we have, the higher our expectations, and the harder it typically becomes to decide.
It can be paralysing for shoppers, (and overcoming it is where marketers truly earn their money), but it is as true for brands today as it is for the people they’re trying to influence.
With no shortage of things to focus on, knowing and understanding which matter most becomes the key question. Which stores, and regions to prioritise. Which behaviours to address. Which data signals to amplify or ignore.
As the eyes and ears for our clients, our job today is as much about continued excellence in execution, as it is in helping them to learn, identify and prioritise where they should be focusing, and what they should be doing differently.
At CPM we see the shelf as not just a place to execute, but a source of infinite intelligence. Every day, revealing patterns that don’t always make it into reports.
It tells us:
In other words, the difference between activity and impact.
Field teams often see reality before it appears in dashboards, but intelligence only creates value when it’s used to inform decisions. Creating clarity on where to focus, what to change, or leave alone, with an integrated structure that enables the ability to turn that proximity into priorities.
A Shift in Posture
In recent years, we’ve seen a subtle but meaningful shift in the conversations we’re having with clients.
“What can we learn from your work in other markets?”, “what should we be doing differently?”, and “help us redefine what success looks like.”
One of the reasons Strategic Planning is now a central component of our Liquid Approach™, embedded alongside our Data Science teams in markets, is it enables us to continually identify and ask the right questions based on the signals we see each day.
Our Planners act as the mechanism for connecting category trends, cross-market learnings and structural shifts with the nuance of day-to-day execution.
Outside of our markets, our Group Strategic Planning function was also created to help collate, create, and embed, the learnings we capture through a more systemised approach across the group. Things like:
Together, by connecting Global and Local insight and experience, our understanding of the shelf is now informing how we shape strategy and execution for clients across the group.
From Strategy to Shelf (and back again)
To summarise, the organisations that win in future won’t be the ones who just execute better. But the ones able to learn faster. Who see the shelf differently. And use what it tells them to shape smarter, more confident commercial decisions.
From Strategy, to Shelf, and back again.
Through our Liquid Approach, our Planning Teams are now building a more connected, globally consistent way of sensing and seizing opportunities for our clients, ensuring what we see in one market strengthens performance in others.
So whether it’s a question, an opportunity, a challenge, or just inspiration, our CPM Planners are helping turn what’s happening on the shelf, into what happens next.