Steady erosion of trade promotion effectiveness has become a clear and present danger to manufacturers in the FMCG industry.

Today, while some retailers (clearly, the more successful among them) remain largely collaborative, most now receive input from manufacturers with a degree of scepticism and only the biggest and best resourced manufacturers get meaningful, regular access to the top decision-makers. Yet, even in these cases, and certainly for the more adversarial retailers, the commercial pressures of the day have made them all extremely tactical. By this we mean that most commercial decisions are made with singular focus on this week’s or even this day’s sales results and a preoccupation with price.

In a recent Masterclass in Barcelona with the same title as this paper, the FMCG Institute unveiled its EQUIP model to a senior group of international and local Sales executive, to very positive acclaim. 

EQUIP proposes a whole-system rethink about how manufacturers organise and build capabilities to lift themselves out of this debilitating, downward spiral. Figure 4 illustrates how the model looks. It proposes five pillars on which a more robust approach to customer/trading strategy is build.