Scotts Miracle-Gro 21st Anniversary Project

by Tony J

Fifth Dimension’s Tony Jerodiacanou interviews Jonathan Bunbury on the impact of presenting “Best Practice Shopper Solutions” using Virtual Stores and Stereo 3D Presentations.

What was your challenge?
We had experienced success at GLEE 2010, an annual trade show, with our merchandising displays, but immediately began to think about how we could improve on our previous, static, stand alone fixture displays. We wanted our ideas to come to life whilst introducing the concept of “Best Practice Shopper Solutions” into the Garden Care industry. We were keen to consolidate our position as market leaders and felt that this was an ideal opportunity to reinforce our position as a forward thinking manufacturer; people who could pass on their expertise. ‘Category Captains’, if you will.

Why did you choose Fifth Dimension?
I attended Fifth Dimension’s ‘Art of the Possible’ workshop back in March, held at Northampton University There, I saw first hand, Fifth Dimension’s ability to deliver the type of impact that we were looking for. I was also looking for a company that had a successful track record in delivering shopper-focused in-store solutions.

What did you want them to do?
We were looking for a 3D stereoscopic movie, which would define us as innovative market leaders, whilst demonstrating our knowledge and expertise to our retailers, whether they be nationwide or stand-alone garden centres.

scotts-miracle-gro-21st-anniversary-stereo-3d-presentation
How well was it received?
Because this project was quite different from anything that we had done, or that our industry is used to seeing, I was initially apprehensive as to how it would be received. However, all of the feedback was very positive. When I presented the movie to our French office they broke out in applause, which is very rare!

How was it working with Fifth Dimension?
Well the pressure was on and the deadline was very tight, but it was delivered on time and ‘personally’ by one of Fifth Dimension’s Associate Directors, Ann-Marie. One frustration we encountered was not being able to “see” the progress as it happened, but I understand that, unfortunately, this is the nature of the movie business. In future, I would insist on more time to review last moment changes, in order to manage our high expectations.

What are your plans for the future?
We are already looking to GLEE 2012 and I have some ideas which will require further development. I have no doubt that Fifth Dimension will be able to help! Unfortunately, your readers will have to wait until the event to see what we are planning. One thing is for sure, we will be continuing with our core messages of “Best Practice Shopper Solutions” to ensure that Scotts continue to be seen as category leaders in the Garden Care industry.

Did you get any additional business from this?
The shopper marketing methodology we demonstrated in the film has already achieved growth for both the wider category & for our business. Reaching out to a wider audience with this film, with its focus on the Garden Care shopper will, I’m sure, continue to grow sales for both us and our retailer partners.

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First Drinks Brands becomes Retailer’s First Choice

by Tony J

Spirited Innovation in Category Management

Category management and space planning often go hand in hand. All of the major FMCG manufacturers have committed to the concept of category management, so what chance does a smaller player in the market have? Very little you, may think?

As it turns out, the opposite is true – as the premium spirits manufacturer First Drinks Brands (FDB) has proven. By combining their deep market knowledge with the very latest Merchandise Planning technology, First Drinks Brands has leapt from number five to a highly competitive number two spot in the Spirits category; in record time.

Other Category Managers, of small to medium-sized manufacturers or suppliers, are probably asking how they managed such a leap in market positioning? The answer is quite simple; knowledge, commitment and industry leading tools.

Three years ago FDB were like many medium sized manufacturers; they were “playing” on the fringes of Category Management, but a change in management resulted in a step change in approach. They decided to build a strong, customer focused Category Management team whose first challenge was to source high quality key account data that would give FDB the insight necessary to be a credible force in the Spirits market. That was a key decision because, before that, FDB were buying ad-hoc data only when it was deemed necessary.

Fifth Dimension and Virtual Shelf: a Perfect Fit

Next, with the new team in place, they reviewed the software tools they were using. Their existing space planning supplier was not providing the level of service expected of an industry leading supplier. The Category team evaluated the space planning software providers and decided to partner with Fifth Dimension.

Their Category Development Manager said “We were looking for a supplier that offered the latest thinking in Category Management, coupled with leading edge software. Fifth Dimension was the perfect fit. Their ‘Virtual Shelf’ software has many innovative features, and the support they gave us while we were getting up to speed was nothing short of exceptional.”

First Drinks now had the perfect combination: a strong team coupled with leading edge software. It was now time to go to the trade. As part of the retailer planning sessions and ‘top-to-top’ meetings, FDB talked about their capabilities, explaining how they had the knowledge and the technology to make a real difference in store.

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Bringing Ideas to Life and Improving Collaboration

First Drinks’ Category Development Manager recalls “We generated high quality imagery, directly from the ‘Virtual Shelf’ software. This really brought our ideas to life. It also meant we could make changes during the planning sessions and, ultimately, streamline the process. With our customers always being ‘time poor’, the key benefit was a huge reduction in the time we needed to spend in our customers’ merchandising centres”

This new approach allowed First Drinks to lead the discussion with retailers and the other spirit manufacturers; ultimately enhancing the partnership and relationship between FDB and their customers.

Great Results for Retailers and First Drinks Brands

FDB’s Category Development Manager adds “We’ve been really pleased with the results. In the retailers we’ve worked closest with, the category performance is looking very positive, with share of trade showing significant growth. Shopper data adds to this positive picture with the new ranges, which we’ve created with our customers, encouraging existing Spirits shoppers to trade-up, whilst also driving new shoppers into the category”.

Their Head of Category Management said “I’m really pleased with how things have progressed; we’ve managed to help our retail customers and our shoppers to drive category growth. We’ve also been able to use the visuals from Virtual Shelf to communicate best practise with the Independent trade”

FDB’s story proves that excellent market knowledge coupled with the latest merchandise planning technology is a hard combination to beat.

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Virtual Stores for Real World Training

by Andy Harris

Virtual reality has many retail applications; helping visualise new concepts, showing NPD to a wide audience without the need for physical mock ups and visualising a variety of store environments without the bricks and mortar.

Reckitt Benckiser, the company behind major brands such as Finish, Vanish and Dettol are adding a new use for virtual reality technology by working closely with virtual reality experts Fifth Dimension to create a virtual reality store visit.

Why a virtual store visit? Mark Sidey, Global Sales Director for Reckitt Benckiser, explains:-

“We wanted to create a virtual movie depicting a typical store visit to train our Sales Teams globally in what they need to be looking for in store. It’s not just about our brands and the categories that we operate in, its about understanding the retailers Core Benefit Proposition so we can deliver more targeted in-store activity that is aligned to their strategies.

It’s practically impossible to take live footage in store and even if it was feasible it would be impossible to fully control the environment to show all of the necessary touch points.
What the virtual world does is offer us a completely controllable environment that we can use as a training & development tool where the various touch points are highlighted and explained.

We approached Fifth Dimension because they have worked with us for a number of years and we can be sure of the most realistic imagery and the best service in the industry”.

reckitt-benckiser-virtual-stores-for-real-world-training

As you can see, Reckitt Benckiser are not only innovators when it comes to consumer goods, they are also innovators when it comes to applying virtual reality technology to modern day challenges.

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Major Brewer’s Virtual Movie Wins Top 4 Retailer

by Andy Harris

Recently, a leading brewer was invited to demonstrate how they could re-vitalise the Beers, Wines and Spirits aisle in one of the top 4 UK retailers. Such an invitation is rare these days, so given the opportunity, they executed a thorough review of the BWS category, gaining key insights into the current aisle layout’s performance. These insights led the brewer to recommend several in-store innovations which, when fully implemented, would potentially generate some £105 million of extra revenue for the retailer.

The category was heavily driven by promotion, but the placement of these promotions, on stacks outside of the aisle, meant that footfall down the aisle was limited – with less than 50% of beer shoppers actually purchasing beer in the BWS aisle. The brewer believed that bringing the promotions right into the aisle and also improving the category’s segmentation, would create a big win for the supermarket. But how could they grab the retailer’s attention and prove their strategy?

Well, they came to Fifth Dimension for help! By creating a virtual beer aisle, bespoke to the supermarket, with clear, accurate planograms showing the ‘before’ and ‘after’ segmentation, the brewer was able to visualise their proposed changes in a creative, impactful and innovative way.

improved-beer-aisle-segmentation

The movie formed an integral part of a larger presentation describing their vision for the category. The brewer was delighted with the end result. The movie really pulled together their key messages in a way that traditional PowerPoint just couldn’t achieve.

Suffice to say that, according to the brewer, the retailer was also ‘blown away’ with the results. Seeing the proposed fixture ‘come to life’ in an animated movie really brought home the potential for the store. Persuaded by the successful presentation, the retailer had no hesitation in trialling the category recommendations in a test store.

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Following the huge success of this trial, the retailer’s now rolling out the brewer’s strategy into 300 stores, nationwide. A true testament, not only to the expertise of the brewer’s category management and insights teams, but also proving that high quality visualisations are vital to the successful communication of complex in-store innovations; providing clarity, eliminating ambiguity, maximising understanding and, ultimately, strengthening the relationship between the manufacturer and retailer.

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Sainsbury’s Open Largest Store Ever!

Retail Industry News and Comment

The 28th September saw the grand unveiling of Sainsbury’s biggest store ever. Tesco and ASDA already have a large number of supersized stores so, with a sense of great excitement, Fifth Dimension went to East London’s Crayford to review the new store and see how Sainsbury’s is shaping up to their competition. First impression? WOW, very impressed! Great visual impact and a busy, exciting atmosphere. The feel of the store was typically Sainsbury’s though with their trademark, orange livery spread far and wide. We all know how it feels to walk into an unfamiliar store for the first time – [...]

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Major Retailer and Global Manufacturer Collaborate to Raise Millions for Charity

Retail Communications

Corporate Sponsorship is the Key We all like it when someone does us a good turn and likewise we revel in the warm glow when we do a good deed for someone in need of our help. Good deeds are not only within the gift of individuals though since very many large companies feel it’s important to do charitable work or to raise funds to support good causes. For example, major manufacturers in the retail world have done their part for the greater good by supporting the Sport Relief charity in 2010.  The money raised by Sport Relief helps fund [...]

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Next Generation Retail Summit – San Fransciso

Retail Communications

Earlier this year Fifth Dimension had the opportunity to co-sponsor the Next Generation Retail summit in California. It was an excellent opportunity to network with retail colleagues and understand what challenges they’re facing, especially in the current climate. Among the many one to one meetings and workshops we engaged in, the standout for me was the ‘behind the scenes’ discussion on the first evening between the CIOs and CTOs who attended. I had the opportunity to be involved and the theme that emerged was quite surprising. Almost every delegate in that discussion was concerned with the impact the the internet, [...]

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Insights In Retail – Back Online

Retail Communications

Well, it’s been some time since I last settled into writing the first series of articles on this blog. Since then I, and our whole team, have been involved in many new and exciting retail initiatives, encompassing macro and micro space planning optimisation, assortment planning, virtual store research, aisle management and many innovative shopper insights projects all around the world, all of which have added enormously to our experience and breadth of retail knowledge here at Fifth Dimension. Our software development teams have also been busily building new generations of our advanced software for release this coming year, and so [...]

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Virtual Shelf – Advances Visual Merchandising?

Visual Merchandising

Visual Merchandisers Need New Planogramming Software This past two years we’ve seen traditional planogramming systems come under heavy scrutiny. These older systems were originally marketed, in the main, by data companies. This background, coupled with pressure from particularly influential clients, led to applications which were primarily optimised for analytics and overburdened with extensive but little used functionality. The net effect was software which was hard to learn and difficult to use. Today, clients have new requirements, which these older systems have difficulty in fulfilling. In our detailed surveys of both manufacturers and retailers, it emerged that they want a new [...]

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Marks and Spencer Goes Mobile

Category Management

Last week saw the expansion of Marks and Spencer’s Mobile ‘Food To Go’ service in Milton Keynes. It seems that the ‘new’ service has been run in pilot mode for some time in Milton Keynes and in Swindon with two mobile units in each town. According to our local man there are to be two more units regularly servicing MK offices and another sixty across the country by the end of this year. Our two M&S associates say that the service has been an ‘instant’ hit. The most popular purchase being fruit. They also carry more exotic items such as sushi, which is also very popular. What a great idea! It brings the all the convenience and quality of their packaged lunch foods right to the doorstep of your offices.

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Wilkinson’s Animated Store Briefing Packs

Retail Communications

Earlier this year Wilkinson commissioned Fifth Dimension to help them with the launch of their new Home Living range, which they had re-branded with a more modern design. To implement the new range they had also developed new display equipment that included a bed, curtain displays, carpet plinths etc., all of which would be new to the store staff.


To ensure a successful roll-out to the stores, Wilkinson asked Fifth Dimension to create highly visual Store Briefing Packs to show the store staff how to implement the new range most effectively. The goal was to achieve the highest standards of compliance with the guidelines and so create the best possible presentation of the new range, consistently, in all stores.


We first created a Virtual Store from which we then created detailed animations showing how to implement the new equipment, how to “dress” the product on each type of fixture and how to maintain the display each day. [... ]

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New Future for In-Store Marketing’s $500Bn Spend?

In-Store Marketing

Trade Promotion – the King is dead; long live the King!? Or so some would have you believe. Trade Promotion or In-Store Marketing – The King of Prising Open the Retailers’ Iron Grip on Shelf Space – is perhaps still well and truly alive and kickin’; even in the depths of the deepest recession we’ve seen in decades. But, what if Joe Mandese’s prediction had been right in his article ‘Fast Forward: Is Mass Marketing History About To Repeat Itself?’, just over two years and a bold, ‘booming’ economy ago? Who knows what would be happening now in trade spending? [...]

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