The following is the third post in a three part series written by Eric Ashworth, Chief Strategic Officer of Anthem Worldwide for the package design website Popsop. Manutailing is a great concept that should be tested, the real question is are there great retailers and manufacturers willing to test it?

Manutailing: Part III – CPG/Retailer Partnerships
CPGs need retailers – the top ten retailers now generate an average of 30 to 45 percent of a given manufacturer’s global sales. And retailers need CPGs, not only to allow for well-known national brands among their selection but also for their ability to keep incumbent product categories relevant through innovation and line extensions.

Quite simply, this calls for the marriage of CPGs’ new product development expertise and retailers’ access to customers and ability to execute. In an era marked by constant questions about traditional media’s effectiveness, a distracted customer base, and a vast majority of purchase decisions being made at the store shelf, who can justify the traditional brand development cycle?

What about new ways of combining specific attitudinal learnings from research with the behavioral trends of real shopping activity? What about creating brands that consumers truly need and want – and having the ability to modify learnings in a fraction of the time based on real consumer behavior? What about taking the best practices of manufacturing brands and blending them with best practices of retailing brands? This is manutailing.

Read the entire post

Eric Ashworth is Chief Strategy Officer for Anthem Worldwide where he leads large-scale branding initiatives for major retailers and CPG companies across the globe. Eric has held senior brand and marketing management positions at global branding agencies and consumer product companies. Eric has served as a guest lecturer on brand strategy at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.