Background and Challenges
A leading ice cream manufacturer launched a new range of flavors across Australia, supported by national advertising, discounted pricing and branded point-of-sale (POS) materials. The brand invested heavily in both above- and below-the-line marketing to build awareness and drive in-store trial.
But despite strong media investment and promotions, early performance indicators hinted that something was off: conversion was lagging and internal teams lacked store-level visibility to understand why.
Three key challenges emerged:
- Time-to-Shelf Issues: The brand had no real-time insight into whether products were actually available in stores during the crucial early weeks post-launch.
- POS Compliance Gaps: Promotional materials, including price discount tags and branded freezer signage, were critical to conversion but the brand couldn’t verify execution at scale.
- Retailer Blind Spots: Without hard data, account teams were left guessing whether poor performance stemmed from in-store issues or shopper behavior.
The retailer faced several challenges:
- Lack of Market Visibility:
Without a clear view of competitor pricing and promotions across regions and categories, the retailer struggled to establish its brand position and seize growth opportunities. - Data Quality Issues:
Inconsistent pricing data led to errors, impacting profitability and customer trust. Ensuring the accuracy of this data was crucial for maintaining competitiveness. - Slow Data Collection:
Timely insights were essential, but the existing data collection process was too slow, limiting the retailer’s ability to make proactive pricing decisions.
The Solution
To diagnose and address launch execution issues quickly, the brand partnered with Wiser’s Retail Intelligence solution, powered by a crowd of Australian mystery shoppers.
Key improvements included:
- Real-Time In-Store Visibility: Shoppers visited 400 stores across Australia during the first two weeks of launch to report on SKU availability, pricing, POS presence, and planogram compliance.
- Quantified Execution Gaps: Wiser identified that 60% of stores didn’t display any of the new SKUs, and only partial distribution was observed in the remaining 40%. One SKU appeared in fewer than 1% of store visits.
- Promotional Material Tracking: 80% of stores were missing key promotional signage, including the discount tags. Where the promotional price was visible, shoppers were 1.2x more likely to try a new flavor, highlighting the impact of proper merchandising.
Proof of Value
Wiser’s data revealed two critical issues within the first two weeks:
- Distribution Delays: The data helped uncover a logistics issue on the retailer’s side, explaining the lack of product on shelves.
- POS Delivery Failure: Account teams, armed with real-time compliance data, reached out to retail partners and discovered a separate issue: POS materials had not been delivered to stores as planned.
By surfacing these insights early, the manufacturer was able to act fast:
- Investigating and resolving the distribution bottleneck with supply chain partners.
- Coordinating with retailers to ensure proper delivery and placement of promotional materials.
- Protecting the launch and giving the new range a stronger chance of success during its most critical window
With Wiser, the brand turned what could have been a missed opportunity into a proactive success, using data to identify execution failures, course-correct in real time, and set the foundation for stronger sell-through.
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