New Merchandise Framework

There you are, the New Marketing Leader. You just inherited a hot mess of a brand. And within a few months, it's gonna be your fault that the wheels are coming off the bus ... even though the wheels have been coming off the bus for a half-dozen years or more.

It's been my experience that marketers have minimal experience dealing with merchandising folks. I'm on Twitter last month and a marketing executive tweets this to me ... "I always go under the assumption that the merchandise is awesome and it's my job to use the tools in my toolbox to get merchandise in front of people."

You're not going to make that mistake.

You are going to understand "why" your business is struggling. How can you possibly apply the right marketing ideas to your problem if you don't know whether merchandise is a problem?

This week we're going to talk about the long-term value of new merchandise. This is important, because if you don't know the long-term value of merchandise then you don't know how much new merchandise you need to be successful, and if you don't know how much new merchandise you need to be successful then you'll be the first one fired when merchandising issues spill over into marketing productivity.

The table above shows us how much downstream demand we generate by quarter, based on the quarter the new item was introduced. Tomorrow we'll convert the table above into something more useful.