iLevel is a joint venture between local FMCG investment Group, Fore Good and DotActiv, a category management company.
According to Jason Frichol, Fore Good's chief brand activist, “The decision to form iLevel was born out of a need to provide services around DotActiv's and the Group's existing merchandising and category management offerings.”
The company will provide a variety of services from basic planograms, ranging and reviews using DotActiv's platforms to facilitate category and channel management processes. iLevel will also provide shopper-based insights through shopper purchases & panel research.
Headed up by Etienne Beukes who has 17 years retail, category management and channel marketing experience, the new company will provide innovative services that are driven by a proven channel marketing approach.
Beukes comments, “Our aim is to assist manufacturers and suppliers to understand the different channels to market as well as consumers and their different shopping behaviours, with the end goal of enhancing the marketing process.”
He believes that many brand marketing campaigns fail because they don't follow a proven channel marketing process which amongst other processes clearly identifies why shoppers do the things they do in-store. “If you have a deep understanding of the consumer and their shopping behaviours within different channels, the results when implementing channel marketing campaigns rises substantially,” he says.
One of the new company's services will be to provide manufacturers with live local data on shopper purchases through local company Chain Research, which provides real-time shopping information on what consumers buy, when they buy and why they buy, as well as monitoring behaviour changes over time. By analyzing the research and pinpointing trends for manufacturers, the company believes it will be able to help manufacturers get the best from their often expensive marketing launches and in-store campaigns.
