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BILL FISHMAN

Bill Fishman & Affiliates 11650 lberia Place San Diego, Ca.92128

Al our retailer workshop last week, I./bund myself talking about an experience that demonstrates the e/lbcts of misleading advertising. I ran this story as a rclumn almost l0 years ago. It's worth repeating.

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Fl srve anq leasr prooucuve cure Ior a sick store. I've been witness, and sometimes party, to increasing an ad budget in the attempt to bring the volume and margins up to a store's projections. Alone, an increased ad budget never worked!

Many retailers look upon advertising as chicken soup, penicillin, the wonder ingredient that's going to bring in traffic and make customers buy. lt won't. Advertising is the vehicle that carries a message about merchandising and services. No matter how fancy or powerful that vehicle, unless the store realistically pre- sents those products and services, the advertising alone won't cure the ills.

During my days as director of sales promotion for a home center chain in the midwest, the fifth store we opened in town missed our first year's goals substantially. A task force moved in to uncover the problems. We lound the manager was a close-minded, iron-fisted, doit-my-way personalityand the rest of the store's management team was ineffective. There was much employee dissension. Customers felt uncomfortable shopping in the store. The out-ofstocks were at two or three times that of the other stores in the chain. And. we were not as competitively priced as the market area demanded.

Immediately we replaced the store manager with the best "people" man we had in the bull pen. Next we instituted a special promotion program in the immediate shopping area of the store. The finest sales letter I have ever written was part of that campaign. It was a simple letter. The top was adorned with a photo of our new, smartly attired manager. Over his signature was an invitation to come in, see the changes, and shake his hand. The letter was warm, sincere and inviting. But it was also too soon! The letter was a cure for the traflic ailment - but the patient almost died.

Our campaign brought back many customers who had previously committed themselves never to shop there again. They shook the manager's hand, and then proceeded to seek out the promised changes. They couldn't find'em. Instead they laced the same disgruntled sales staff, the same poor housekeeping and merchandising and the same noncompetitive prices.

The store eventually made it. It's now doing very nicely, thank you. But it took the third time around for us to realize that it take more than words. It takes merchandising action. In-store merchandising. In-store action.

Most importantly we learned that we had to be specific in telling the sales force what is expected of them and how they can meet our expectations. Our ads talked about our "friendly, knowledgeable sales help." Too many times, however, our customers recognized that the guy behind the counter wasn't the guy who wrote the ad.