How jem & fix eliminated errors from their marketing collateral

Errors in the final advertising assets is a core challenge when you produce a campaigns and promotions. Getting the price wrong just once can be a costly affair.—if the promotion says 9.95, the signs in the shop and in the cash register need to show the same price. Anything else is an invitation to poor reviews and a lousy customer experience. Usually, ensuring 100% accuracy takes more time, so how did jem & fix manage to both eliminate errors and reduce the time spent on reviewing marketing collateral?

IT is a core driver for jem & fix’s efficiency, and they want to make sure they can offer competitive prices to customers and sustain a highly profitable business. So while campaigns and promotions are planned for several months in advance, and the production of all marketing collateral, TV commercials, online banners, radio spots, mail leaflets and newspaper ads still need to start as close to the campaign week as possible so the team can respond to changes in the market both in terms of what is offered and at which price.

When the production staff at jem & fix’s external agency gets the brief, everything included in each promotion needs to be 100% correct and proofed.

This way, jem & fix category management and marketing can spend their time making decisions about product selections, setting the right price, and advertising to maximize revenue every week – rather than doing proofreading and worrying about errors slipping through yet another proofing round.

"Four weeks in advance of coming campaigns, the jem & fix stores across the country can dive into the system and get all the information they need. We have saved a lot on production and can switch agency if we need to, and we definitely have a shorter time to market"—Claus Petersen, CEO at jem & fix

The proofing process is a core efficiency driver in the Encodify solution, and jem & fix uses the online proofing tool to review and approve everything from TV and radio commercials to leaflets, catalogues, banner ads etc. It all starts with “Proofing Round 0” where jem & fix visualizes the ad in Encodify based on product images, prices and texts to catch errors before they even go into production. The later proofing rounds are then focused on the creative advertising product rather than correcting any product or brand related errors.

In addition, the system alerts buyers and the marketing team if a promotion price has been entered above the regular price, which is especially important because European marketing law strictly prohibits dubious promotion pricing. So, this way jem & fix prevent any unintended price discrepencies.

When planning a product promotion in Encodify buyers are presented with a revenue estimate generated by hem & fix's ERP system. That way the buyers can adjust the forecast in Encodify to match their expectations. Additionally, Encodify sends data to the ERP platform, automatically generating the POS shelf edge labels and an integration with the shop floor management system enables the shelf edge labels to be sequenced in the optimal order for placement when walking around the shop. The integration with the ERP system also eases communication with suppliers by automatically emailing them with information about upcoming campaigns.

The system helps local stores get an overview of campaign information. Four weeks in advance jem & fix stores across the country can dive into the system and get all the operational information they need for a campaign, and store managers receive an automated alert when the next campaign is ready.

Among the core strengths of the jem & fix IT setup is the way master data is managed. Tight integrations between the ERP system, the image database, creative production systems, and Encodify eliminate mistakes caused by manual errors.

And lastly, Encodify automatically calculates the freight prices for the 700 products on the jem & fix webshop. This calculation is more than just fetching prices from a delivery service, as the calculation involves bothvolume, weight, the type of delivery, and other criteria. Before they implemented Encodify, jem & fix had a dedicated employee who sometimes spent up to three weeks doing this manually.