Motorola Went From 40% to 60% Share in Two Retail Chains: Here’s How the Campaign Worked

In December 2004, Motorola had never run an incentive campaign in Argentina’s retail channel. It competed head to head with Nokia, Kyocera, Alcatel, Sony Ericsson and Siemens, and the retail channel accounted for barely 20% of total cell phone sales in the country, but two chains, Frávega and Garbarino, held 60% of that channel. That is where a disproportionate share of the business was at stake.

At AV Business & Communication we designed and ran the “Motofiestas” campaign for Motorola Argentina, combining a sales force incentive with a consumer promotion. In one month, Motorola’s share in those two chains rose from 40% to 60%.

The Challenge: Breaking Into a Channel You Had Never Played In

At the time, Motorola was one of the country’s five leading communications companies and the pioneer of Latin America’s first cellular network. But having a strong brand guarantees nothing at the counter of an appliance chain, where the salesperson has dozens of models from different brands to offer and no personal incentive to choose one over another.

The objective was simple to state and hard to achieve: get the salesperson at Frávega or Garbarino to tell an undecided customer “get yourself a Motorola” as naturally as they would say any other brand.

The Solution: Push Incentive and Pull Promotion, at the Same Time

We designed a combined campaign that ran during the year-end season, December 2004 and January 2005, simultaneously across three chains: Frávega (62 branches, around 650 salespeople), Garbarino (47 branches, around 1,100 salespeople) and Compumundo (11 branches, around 100 salespeople).

On the sales force side (push): salespeople competed in three categories by sales volume, with three prize levels.

• The best branch in each category won a group dinner.
• The top four salespeople in each category won a group trip with a companion to Iguazú Falls.
• The best manager in each category won a trip with a companion to the Conrad Resort & Casino in Punta del Este.

A Ford Ka, brand new, was also raffled off per chain among salespeople, based on first-month campaign sales.

On the consumer side (pull): anyone who bought a Motorola entered a raffle for 90 coupon-based prizes, or could call an IVR line with a “Motocódigo” printed on the receipt sticker.

To verify the promise was being kept on the sales floor, we added a Mystery Shopper audit across 66 points of sale in Greater Buenos Aires, in four rounds during the campaign.

The Results

Motorola’s share at Frávega and Garbarino grew 20 percentage points during the campaign, from 40% to 60%. In units, that meant 60,000 units sold through Garbarino and 55,000 through Frávega.

The Mystery Shopper audit confirmed the change was not a coincidence: 72% of salespeople spontaneously offered the Motorola brand during the program, compared with 9% for Nokia, 8% for Samsung and 6% for Siemens. And by the end of the campaign, 70% of the sales force at those chains personally used a Motorola phone.

It was Motorola’s first incentive campaign in the retail channel, and it gave the brand continuity of activity throughout 2005.

The industry took notice too: Motofiestas won the SITE Crystal Award 2005, the Silver Globe Award 2005, and the FIP 2005 award in both the Gold and Silver categories, making it one of the most awarded campaigns in AV Business & Communication’s history.

Three Lessons for Brands That Depend on a Channel They Don’t Control

The salesperson recommends what benefits them, not what benefits your brand. If you don’t give them a personal, concrete reason to choose your product, you will be competing on technical merit alone, which rarely wins at the counter.

Combining push and pull multiplies the effect, it doesn’t just add to it. Incentivizing the salesperson without generating consumer demand is pushing against a closed door. Generating demand without motivating the salesperson lets someone else take the credit. When both sides push in the same direction, the result shows up fast, in this case in just one month.

Audit what happens on the floor, not just what the sales numbers say. The 72% spontaneous offer rate is as important as the final share number, because it explains why. Without that audit, the brand would have seen the result without understanding what caused it, and without being able to repeat it.

The big prize matters, but the immediate prize is what sustains day-to-day motivation. The group dinner for the best branch is an achievable short-term goal that keeps the whole team motivated, while the trip to Punta del Este works as the aspirational target that crowns the month’s effort.

When a brand depends on sales channels it does not directly control, the question is not how much advertising budget it has, but what it is offering, today, to the person who decides which product to put in the customer’s hand.

If your company needs to gain ground in a retail channel that currently favors the competition, write to us at [email protected].