Private Label: Turning the Retail Brand Threat Into Your Biggest Opportunity Book

Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction: the new privatization 1

Part 1 Understanding the opportunity 11

1 Private facts 13

The nature of the beast 13

The global facts 13

The local facts 14

The brand facts 17

The people facts 19

The dependence facts 19

The category facts 21

2 Private myths 23

Myth 1: Private Labels are for people who buy Private Label 23

Myth 2: We buy Private Label now and then 24

Myth 3: Private Labels are for people with no money 25

Myth 4: It can't grow any bigger 25

Myth 5: Private Labels are not business builders 26

Myth 6: People don't like Private Label 27

Myth 7: Let's call it anything except a brand 28

Myth 8: It's not profitable anyway 28

3 Private past 30

We've seen it all before! 30

But a funny thing happened 'on the way to the forum'! 31

The new old thing 32

Freedom brands - blame the French 33

4 Private present 36

The trends show the way 36

It's a brand, stupid! 39

The US experience 41

The UK experience 42

A closer look at some key brands 45

And the trend continues... 48

5 Private future 49

How big can it get? As big as you want it to get! 49

The volume versus value distortion 51

Heaven or hell, opportunity or threat 53

Will it continue to grow? 54

What determines the future? 55

Private Label drivers 56

The online driver 57

The Tesco effect 58

Part 1 summary and implications 58

Part 2 Identifying the opportunity 61

6 The S&S X Global Research Report 63

An 'all parties' perspective 63

7 The shopper perspective 65

Let's start with the shopper 65

Achieving product parity 68

Category differentiation 70

The shopper's Private future74

8 The brand perspective 79

The silent wall 79

The other side of the coin 82

9 The retailer perspective 86

Finally the retailers! 86

10 The overall perspective 90

We agree to disagree 90

Part 2 research summary: key points 90

Part 3 Retailizing the brand opportunity 95

11 For every threat there's an opportunity 97

Back to spiffing! 97

Redefining the brand 98

Better understanding the threat 100

12 The Private principles 104

The Private Label Way 104

The 10 principles 106

13 Private principle 1: Running the risk and living the reality 107

Headlines 107

Reorganize to reflect the future, not the past 108

Begin by asking three questions 110

Become PRIVATE CENTRIC 110

Why the conventional simply isn't good enough 111

Summary and opportunities 112

Actions to consider 114

14 Private principle 2: Retailize and be radical 115

Headlines 116

Avoiding the conventional 116

Question the status quo 117

Make sure you're not a commodity 118

Love me do, love me not 119

To supply or not? 120

Cut the tail 123

Develop a brand price architecture 124

Decide if you are 'in' or 'out' 125

Prove you still have a role 125

Summary and opportunities 126

Actions to consider 127

15 Private principle 3: Tomorrow's global, social and environmental issues are your opportunities today 128

Headlines 128

Trusting in the future 129

Greenwashing versus realizing the big issues 131

The big issues defined 134

Big global issue 1: health issues 135

And it's not just the small brands 142

Big global issue 2: participation issues 143

Big global issue 3: lifestyle issues 145

One for all and all for one 146

Summary and opportunities 147

Actions to consider 147

16 Private principle 4: Educate, navigate and inspire 148

Headlines 149

Become the educators 149

Ensure you have the armour to compete 150

How to build tomorrow's loyalty? 152

Get real! 155

Summary and opportunities 158

Actions to consider 159

17 Private principle 5: Winning 'mind shelf' is the name of the game 161

Headlines 162

The fight for space 162

A very new shelf of the future starts to emerge 163

Consistent, consistency 166

Category disruptors 166

Summary and opportunities 168

Actions to consider 168

18 Private principle 6: Innovate, imagineer and involve 169

Headlines 170

i, i and i 170

i number one... innovation 171

i number two... imagineer 177

i number three... involvement 180

Summary and opportunities 183

Actions to consider 183

19 Private principle 7: Restore and reinvent the store 184

Headlines 185

The retail store of the future and how it would look 185

Fresh every day 190

Really, really understand the shopper 191

Involvement retailing 195

Summary and opportunities 197

Actions to consider 198

20 Private principle 8: Catalyse your communications and brand from till to TV 199

Headlines 200

Creativity is all - but where should it be? 200

Build yourself a private room 204

Private creation 204

Customize the creative reaction 206

Keep them creatively surprised 207

Strive to improve your retail positioning 209

Get closer 210

Creatively extend in-store 211

Getting them to love you 211

Summary and opportunities 214

Actions to consider 215

21 Private principle 9: Collaborate and cooperate through co-opetition 216

Headlines 217

Co-opeteting 217

Brand co-opetition 217

Retail co-opetition 221

Summary and opportunities 222

Actions to consider 223

22 Private principle 10: Shopper solutions steal share of wallet 224

Headlines 225

Money, money, money 225

Ideas, ideas, ideas 227

Summary and opportunities 230

Actions to consider 232

Part 4 Retailizing the retailer opportunity 233

23 For every opportunity there's an even bigger opportunity 235

The rise of the responsible retailer brand 235

What's new and what's next? 237

WFM - a way forward 238

Traffic lights for health 239

What's the real benefit? 242

Summary 242

24 Retailer Private principles 1 to 5 243

Accept too 244

Changing the mentality 244

Embracing the big issues 246

Multi-tier Private Label strategy 248

Crowd clout 250

Summary and opportunities 252

Actions to consider 253

25 Retailer Private principles 6 to 10 255

The intention economy 256

Learning how to innovate 258

Learning to involve 262

Learning how to imagineer 264

Relationship marketing 265

Keep it simple 266

Learning how to brand 267

Dealing with change 268

Dealing with reality 268

Summary and opportunities 269

Actions to consider 270

Part 5 Conclusions 271

26 Realizing the opportunity together 273

Brand opportunity summary 275

Retailer opportunity summary 278

Postscript: Privatizing the brand 281

Appendix 1 Saatchi & Saatchi X Research Questionnaire 288

Appendix 2 Key references 291

Index 293