What does your role as marketing manager involve?
As Marketing Manager, I am responsible for all brand communication for the UK & Ireland, so everything that includes a Bunny more or less. This includes national media campaigns, online campaigns but also shopper marketing and activations. Working for and with a brand like Duracell is amazing, nearly everyone knows the Duracell brand and with our strong equity we show great performance in the market.
Can you talk us through your brand portfolio?
The battery category is a constantly evolving category driven by device innovation. It is one of our key objectives to support our customers in the best possible way to drive growth by investing into the category and enable them to have the right assortment.
Duracell offers a wide portfolio with a strong focus on innovation in alkaline and specialty.
Through wholesale we focus on Duracell Plus, UK’s best selling alkaline battery, which we recently gave the biggest performance upgrade.
The core of our assortment is and for the upcoming years will be alkaline, but we see strong year on year growth in the Specialty segment as well. Driven by the trend Internet of Things we see a significant rise of smaller interconnected smart devices that drive 2032 and 2025 sales continuously.
What effect has Covid-19 had on the batteries sector?
Covid has resulted in significant growth in the battery category with growth up to 9% full year. This is primarily driven by an increased use of devices at home such as game controllers (+16%), remotes (+22%), and wireless mouses (+14%). Duracell has regularly surveyed a panel of 3,000 UK consumers to better understand their buying and consumption behaviours.
Quite soon it became clear that consumers’ loyalty towards their favourite premium brands has grown during Covid. Secondly, we see that consumers shopped less frequently, but bought significantly more, impacting the sales of bigger and higher value packs. Even though consumers shopped bigger packs, this still resulted in immediate use rather than potential stock-up. 2020 was a record year for Duracell.
How do you anticipate the battery market will perform in the run-up to Christmas?
Christmas is the make-or-break period in the year. With 35% of the volume being sold in the last 2 months of the year we expect, especially this year with increased device penetration, that we will have a strong market.
How do you work with retailers to help them grow sales?
Duracell has recently launched a sales portal (salesportal.duracell.co.uk/login) where retail customers can access everything needed to get the best out of sales such as optimized e-content and innovation updates. The right assortment is key. UK consumers show Duracell = up to 2 x value per battery sold vs. competition.
Do you have any NPD to talk about?
Duracell is investing significantly in innovation around Specialty Batteries.
This year we have relaunched Duracell Plus with a New & Improved formula delivering up to 100% Extra Life*.
Apart from product performance upgrades Child Safety is a top priority. Duracell is the market leader in product innovations that prevent toddlers from ingesting lithium coin batteries with tamper proof packaging and Bittrex coating on the cell.
What marketing support do you have for your brands at the moment?
The Duracell brand is our most valuable asset that we support full year.
We support our brand through TV advertising and digital media to drive our awareness and equity. As market leader we see our role to invest as much into the category as possible. Driving sustainable growth is only possible with the right level of media support.
How can retailers maximise sales of your products?
• Batteries are impulse: remind the shopper, visibility is key.
• Open sale will drive sales significantly, the closer to check out the better.
• Go for premium: Duracell generates up to 2 x value per battery sold vs competition
• Duracell Plus AA4, AAA4, 9V and 2032 is your go to assortment!
* Price at sole discretion of retailer.
Comments are closed.