Cheesecakes.
If one cheesecake is good, two is better!
While consulting at Rich Products, a $4B multinational food products corporation, I was called into the office for a very “important” customer. Walmart, another large corporation, you may have heard of them.
Topic: “Cheesecakes.” That was all I was told prior to going into the meeting. Cheesecakes.
When I got to the meeting room, the conference table was surrounded by chairs filled with people staring at and fondling cheesecakes. Dozens of cheesecakes. Six-inch cheesecakes to be specific. Yet every flavor imaginable was represented: standard vanilla, chocolate, raspberry swirl, marble, strawberry, peanut butter and so many more. (It seemed that these meetings always went better when people had the products to hold, touch and eat. I thought so anyway.)
The client was on the phone, as everyone knows flying to and from Bentonville is a pain in the butt. I’m pretty sure they had just as many cheesecakes on their conference table as we did. The usual introductions of the people on both ends and project went on for fifteen minutes, then the whole thing boiled down to this sentence from someone at Walmart, “We’d like to increase the number of six-inch cheesecakes sold at Walmart.”
Silence took over the phone line. Panicked and stumped looks came across the faces I could see.
“Increase?” What does that mean, I thought.
As if everyone took one step back from the line, leaving me standing there, I was obviously nominated to ask. “Increase? What kind of increase are you looking for?” I asked boldly.
“12 to 15 percent.”
“If you’re going to be bold, be bold big!”
Now here’s my thought: 12 to 15% may be a lot when you are looking at your expected earning growth of your salary year over year, but that percentage seemed way low to me when it came to my expected sales growth of cheesecakes at the largest retailer in the U.S. And it was at that moment that I decided to throw it all on the table and see who was playing cards with me. I blurted out, “That sounds rather low, don’t you think?”
I’m pretty sure I didn’t just upset the apple cart, I flipped it over and lit it on fire. To add fuel to the fire, someone from Walmart asked what I thought would be an appropriate goal and I responded, “Why don’t we shoot for 100%.”
While the place roared in laughter (on both ends of the call) this is what I knew…if I had a customer already buying one cheesecake, all I needed to do was get them to buy two.
Two is always better than one, right? I just needed to figure out how to get people to think that way. I also was interested in who was buying cheesecakes and why they were buying cheesecakes. Was there a reason or could we create a reason? It was time for analysis and market research.
“Change the way you approach the solution. Change your perspective. Change your everything.”
I’ll make this short for the sake of reading - Walmart was selling A LOT of six-inch cheesecakes, yet it seemed like it was more of a random purchase than a planned purchase. Something to note is the cheesecakes were less-than-visible in coffin cases, therefore it seemed like more of an item that was “found” by someone passing by, grazing, than a destination. When the analytics came in there was no standout demographic or reason for purchase. CRAP! This product and size of product actually fell into the category of “vanilla” (pun intended.)
That was the really short version of the research done. Now, I really needed to change the way I was thinking of this. I needed a creative solution to the puzzle in front of me.
Then it hit me, the answer wasn’t to find or capitalize on WHY people bought cheesecakes, yet HOW they bought cheesecakes. This took me back to my days in supermarket retail design and marketing where we analyzed everything; movement, trends, habit, traffic flow, customer counts, psychology, patterns and how all of these attributes affected the bottom line. I was part of the renaissance thinking that increased the size of the shopping cart which was proportionally related to the size of the overall spend at the register. BINGO!! That was the answer to my puzzle!
I developed a program that psychologically manipulated (not in a negative way, but in a positive way), hanging the success of this concept on the fact that humans “like to do what is expected of them, by following the rules.” I designed, developed and prototyped a carrier for TWO cheesecakes. The carrier pictured below (with mock-up graphics) was created from craft board, sized and shaped to accommodate two six-inch cheesecakes that locked into place through cut-outs and a pop-up handle for ease of carry.
The cheesecakes fit perfectly…two of them. A simple graphic element “2 to go” was created to consistently make the suggestion of “two.” “Take two.” “Buy two.” “Two fit in this carrier.” I needed everyone to think two!
It was agreed that we would perform a four store test (remember, these big companies test everything) to see how the concept would be accepted.
A signage package was created to highlight the cheesecake case, a holder was designed to hold the flat carriers and implementation was commenced in test markets. We made a couple of decisions based on retail forecasting and pricing protocols. It was decided the carrier would have a single UPC printed on it which offered a slightly lower price point for the “volume” purchase.
After a period of a few months the data was gathered for analysis and, unfortunately, we did not reach the 100% increase in six-inch cheesecake sales, yet we did achieve over an 80% increase. 80%!!!!! That’s HUGE and a lot more than 15%!
The data showed that we still had customers purchase single cheesecakes, which could be due to a myriad of reasons, including portion control, not fully understanding the value of two, lack of refilling carrier stock at store level, etc.
It is my understanding the client never decided to roll this program out chain wide. I was not privy to the reasoning yet I might suppose it was a supply-chain issue, the difficulty in assuring product at store level. Regardless, I couldn’t be more thrilled with the test outcomes. Achieving an 80% increase in sales is apparently a dream and nightmare all in one. : )
“Did I manipulate the buyer with this type of carrier? Maybe. Or did I employ my understanding of how a consumer shops to reach a goal? Definitely.”
What I continue to take away from it is to constantly change the way I look at or approach a solution in order to be wildly successful.