AVBM’s Kate Morris has John White in the hot seat
By Alan Wolf, YSN
In AVB Marketing’s latest installment of MTEQ Talk — the five-minute video clips that help demystify the group’s digital retail technologies — Product GM Kate Morris got to quiz her boss, AVB’s CMO John White, on the nature of MTEQ itself.
In deconstructing the acronym, which is the combination of marketing and technology, White explained how both became increasingly complex in recent years as AVB’s innovation stack grew. “There’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle,” he said, “so what we’ve done is bundle things together to make that solution very simple for members and easy to plug in to.”
Asked by Morris to specify how MTEQ can simplify members’ businesses, White noted that the digital suite is designed so that individual features can be tiered together in a custom package based on each member’s budget and needs. “It allows us to say, ‘Here are all the tools that will fit in this budget range, and here’s what you need to do not only to drive your business but to simplify things, help your sales people, and help your store run.’”
Pressed to explain the benefits of bundling multiple products into a single digital toolbox, White reiterated that it’s all about making things simple. “Every piece of that technology has a place in a member’s business, whether it’s a salesperson’s tool [HUB], a backend tool driving pricing and price tags [LINQ], or a website,” he said. “But it’s been getting harder and harder to implement because there’s a lot of things going on.
“With an MTEQ package, it’s on us to help implement them,” he said. “We will train your store manager, your sales manager, your salespeople on how to use HUB; we’ll manage your pricing; we’ll manage your price tags in LINQ; we’ll do the sort weights; we’ll do all of the technology pieces. A member doesn’t have to do anything except tell us they want [us] to do.”
Similarly, on the marketing side, AVBM will utilize the most effective platforms and adjust expenditures for holidays and busy shopping periods, based on the budget set by the member.
“The member doesn’t have to think about it,” White said — which, given the demands of running a modern retail business, is what MTEQ is all about.
Click here to see Morris’s full chat with CMO John White.
YSN publisher AVB BrandSource is the nation’s largest merchandising and marketing co-op for independent appliance, mattress, furniture and CE dealers.
