The Shelf Potato

Assuming you have a product that has become a shelf potato and it looks like you can bring it alive, how do you get past the politics?

One general theme affects politics of potatoes: perspectives about money. On the one hand, companies easily minimize development costs when they are excited about a new product. Meanwhile, the marketing costs required to redeem a shelf potato flash onto everyone’s radar screen. So overall, your biggest challenge is shifting the corporate eye from the fresh, new thing to the reality of finding the highest returns for the lowest investment.

And now, more thoughts about the politics…

1. Know that anti-potato politics work against the corporation’s best financial interest. That means you have a strong position – by staying focused on the money. If a spud can be redeemed, you monetize a past investment in product development. And that can be done for dramatically less money than creating a new product.

2. Watch the politics within marketing. Sadly, politics is a fundamentally human tendancy and disruptive politics can even drive small organizations. So be ready. Be patient. But don’t back down from your fundamental truth: If you’re right and the potato comes alive, it’s a massive financial win for the company at lower risk than any new products.

3. Know that politics aren’t just the one’s in marketing. For example, finance teams are often paid to be conservative – to challenge assumptions. I don’t resent this kind of pressure. Since you can discuss potatoes with firmer financial reasoning, you can win over the finance team if it’s a solid proposition. And if its not a great proposition, then you’ve built credibility with the finance team by engaging in reasonable discussion.

4. Retailer politics are often most critical. Once a product has been on the shelf and failed to move, it’s hard to regain trust. Your ability to make it past these politics is a matter of trust and your history with the retailer. It’s also helped if the retailer has experience with similar challenges in the past. (BUT, this is also why its so critical to succeed out the door.)

5. With consumers, you have the least problems. You might wonder, won’t consumers have a bad taste? Not in my experience. Most Shelf Potato stumblings have all been in your company and the channel – below consumer radar. Even in the case of what we’d all consider a massive high-profile failure like Microsoft’s Kin, mass consumer perception isn’t likely to have turned against the product. Mass attitudes take years to build. So even though negatives generally build quicker than positives, consumers are the least of your worries.

6. “But Brand X tried this product, too, and theirs failed”. I’m fascinated by this type of discussion because it shows the danger of perspective within an industry. Major releases from competitors can easily dominate our view of the business. But we must remember that a failure that appears large in our minds probably didn’t even reserve a flea-sized spot in consumer minds. It’s possible that your failure and your competitors failure are critical red flags. But I’ve found it much more likely that both companies failed to execute well enough for the product to succeed – most often by failing to invest in the consumer communication required to make the product thrive.

If the politics in your operation are thick, you might wonder whether the potato has come out of the ground and into the french fryer. But, don’t let this stop you unless it’s a fundamentally un-redeemable situation.

After all, your product’s potential may be massive. George Foreman style grills sat on shelves for decades before launching into the retail stratosphere. Your company might might have a similar gold mine already sitting on the shelf.

Copyright 2010 – Doug Garnett

A shelf potato has failed in its first attempt to make a first impression. And that means that corporate and retailer politics may be stacked against efforts to make them come alive.

So, the most important Shelf Potato lesson is that AVOIDING them in the first place is your best way to success.

How can products avoid becoming potatoes? Learn from the lessons here. Know when you need communication to drive a product and either supply that communication or don’t proceed with introduction. Use research (and honest introspection) to detect problems ahead of time. Negotiate carefully with retailers to ensure the right placement. And, avoid putting a product at mass retail before you’re ready. Quite often, retail merchandisers will love a product but not be the best judges of the challenges it will face on the shelf.

From the School of Hard Knocks… Unfortunately, this simple idea turns out to be much harder in the reality of company operations.

I once dealt with a classic shelf potato – a product where people who owned it loved it. But, without communication the product sat on the shelf.

We knew communication was critical from early research. And, in a key 8 hour strategic meeting, the entire team (marketing, finance, sales, development, production, advertising) concluded that this product should be introduced slowly – not with big box retailers until we had the right communication in place. Except, one week later, the sales team sold the product into big box with an agreement to put it on their shelves day one.

Despite this violation of management trust (another issue entirely), the company let the product hit the shelves without communication and without a strong plan for getting that communication out. It took 4 more months to get good communication in place. But by that time, the big box stores decided the product was a dud and kicked it out. Then, the client cancelled the product because of big box experience (and some uncontrolled costs from over-design).

I know there’s no guarantees in the world of new products, but this one would have sold with the communication. (My team has had superb results using a strategic and sales-oriented research approach to figure out how to create success.) Instead, the sales team got greedy and that led to the failure. (It’s a rare corporation who is willing to walk away from a big box order – even when it’s against the their best interest.)

So, always care about that first impression with your team and at your retail partners. But worry less about consumers who are much more forgiving – and often never even hear about these products because they fail so quickly.

All too often, great products who have a poor first rollout descend into Shelf Potato status and never get the second chance that might bring them alive.

Copyright 2010 – Doug Garnett