Agencies go wild for shopper marketing

Shopper marketing is the next big thing for Middle East agencies, it seems, with the launch of two new units within the space of a couple of months.

This week JWT announced the launch of JWT Experience, describing it as “an experimental arm” dedicated to destination and shopper marketing. Back in October, Saatchi & Saatchi launched Saatchi X in the region, with a similar brief.

JWT’s experimental approach certainly seems to have filtered through to its press release writing: the Experience release said the new unit would be working “through an activation led touch point neutral platform”.

Did someone just call “house” on Buzzword Bingo? Also, we hate to get all grammar-nerd here, but we do have one word of advice regarding that sentence: hyphens. Not a big deal, we’re just saying.

(Not that AdNation is much in a position to talk when it comes to syntactical and spelling excellence at the moment. If you don’t know to what we are referring, then good. And if you do know, sod off.)

In any case, beyond the jargon, shopper marketing is a fascinating area, ripe for development by agencies facing clients who are increasingly uncertain about the effectiveness of old-style above-the-line advertising. Speaking of which, JWT certainly seems to be looking to the long term: see the end of the page for details.

JWT’s release talks about focusing on the “last moment” when people make decisions, adopting in the process a particular role for that particular moment – and not necessarily the role which they might normally describe for themselves.

The release explains: “The last moment is when business executives step into a shop and become shoppers, when mothers become wives and daughters students, it’s about the moment of transition between your perceived role in the community and your acquired role driven by needs, habits, hobbies, chores… etc.”

The catch, of course, is that if individuals really are that changeable in their roles from moment to moment, it makes them a pain in the backside to target, outside of the environment in which they make that transition.

“Understanding the difference between these roles and the state of mind each individual is in when they transit through these last moments will allow us to better deliver experiences in a way that favourably impacts their ultimate purchase decisions,” said Eddie Maalouf, CEO of JWT Experience, in the release.

“Experience-based marketing platforms allow us the freedom to operate in a touch-point-neutral zone, which on its own opens unrestricted opportunities for engagement with consumers,” he added, lapsing back a little bit into those buzzwords again.

We’ll forgive him, though, because it’s a genuinely interesting exercise to try and figure out what makes people tick at a precise moment – if not perhaps more than a little creepy. But hey, we’re all in marketing here; when did creepy ever bother us?

Saatchi, too, is getting in on the act – but offered less in the way of insight, but perhaps more direct explanation, in its October press release.

“Dubai is a city synonymous with shopping, and at Saatchi & Saatchi X we understand the value that deep shopper insights have on a client’s business, especially in this challenging economic and retail environment,” said Richard Nicoll, MD of Saatchi X Dubai, in the release.

“It is an extremely exciting and important strategic move for us to be launching our services in Dubai, which is one of the world’s most dynamic consumer markets. We are keen to grow quickly and are excited to already be in discussion with many major brands in the region,” he added.

We’re sure Saatchi X also has lots of useful and interesting insights into shopper mentality – just that it didn’t feel like shoving them in the press release.

Beyond these two agency units dedicated to shopper marketing, many regional outfits are placing more emphasis on activation marketing, with increasing numbers of dedicated divisions springing up.

Which is nice.

Now if they’d only let us inject shoppers with psychotropic drugs at the point of purchase...

EXTRA... EXTRA... EXTRA... JWT goes extreme-long-term

Also in the JWT MENA release is this quote from chairman and CEO Roy Haddad: “We are excited about the launch of JWT Experience, as it perfectly fits with our 2065 vision and adds a new dimension to our brand offering.”

What caught our eye was the “2065 vision” – when we rang and asked, we were told this is something that’s been announced internally within the last couple of months, and is indeed a long-term plan to chart the agency’s path 55 years into the future.

We’re all in favour of companies taking a long-term view, but more than half a decade is a hell of a stretch of time.

We’ll hopefully bring you more on this in the future. The near future.