Healthier Than Ever With Consumers.

A vital benefit of our work here is getting to be a fly-on-the-wall to one of the more interesting ongoing dialogues today: the one between Retailers and Manufacturers about who truly owns the hearts and minds of their shared Consumers; whom they really seek out and trust in purchase decisions, who truly owns their loyalty and preference, and what that’s worth in brand value and negotiating leverage between the two parties.

Not long ago people went to buy a nationally advertised brand like Tide at their local store–which then benefited from the traffic, sales and margins driven by carrying these preferred names. No need to advertise much if you were a store, just carry the right mix of stuff people want and let the manufacturers do the rest.

Today, of course, that’s shifted radically: stores are their own ‘brands’ and invest heavily in building an image, experience and loyalty with consumers around them equal to the biggest national brands. In turn, the mantra in many households has gone from “I need to pick up more Tide” to “I’m headed to Target, need anything while I’m there?”.

And if you ever needed more evidence of this phenomenon, just check out the success of those new in-store clinics populating Drug Store chains like CVS and Walgreens nationwide, offering basic services in lieu of a visit to the traditional doctor’s office.

Putting aside for a moment things like national healthcare debates and eternities wasted reading crappy magazines in waiting rooms, from a brand standpoint this is groundbreaking stuff. Whereas the old rule long held that consumer trial of a store brand was inversely proportional to its physical invasiveness or perceived risks (e.g. think paper towels versus eye drops) we’ve officially blown through that barrier to now trust retailers for injections, blood work and medical advice!

This all suggests two important things, to my mind:

1) Private Label brands have officially graduated from price-value propositions dependent on National Brands for context, to trusted and backed offerings from retailers about whom consumers have developed clear and (as beliefs and behaviors only grow more entrenched over time) lasting opinions.

2) Increased corporate transparency and consumer access to information are likely driving this (and Private Label trends generally) more than previously thought; that beautiful designs and strategies can connect consumers to PL brands in the store, but their growing consideration, relevance and esteem are primed long before through a mix of media, marketing and even word-of-mouth.

We’ll continue to watch these and other developments closely and update our perspective on them here. But for now, it certainly seems like Retailer and Private Label Brands are indeed more than just a fad or response to US belt-tightening– that we’ve entered truly new territory from which we won’t be going back again.