The promo review most suppliers never run

Ask most commercial teams how last quarter's promotions went and you'll get an answer about volume. "The half-price event did 4x baseline." "We hit our share target during the feature week." Volume is easy to see, easy to report, and it makes everyone feel like the money worked.

Here's the review that almost nobody runs: take your ten biggest promotional events from last year and work out, honestly, what each one returned after you count everything. The funding you paid. The margin you gave away on every unit, including all the units you would have sold at full price anyway. The dip in the weeks after the event, when shoppers who stocked up at the deal price simply stopped buying.

When we run this exercise with suppliers, the pattern is remarkably consistent. A handful of events genuinely build the business. A larger group roughly breaks even. And a meaningful chunk — often a quarter to a third of the calendar — actively destroys money. Not underperforms. Destroys.

Why doesn't anyone notice?

A few reasons, none of them stupid.

First, the numbers that would tell you are scattered. Scan data sits in one place, funding in another, cost of goods in a third. Nobody's job is to join them at the event level, so nobody does.

Second, the incentives point the other way. Account managers are measured on volume and share. The retailer wants the event. Pulling a promotion feels like going backwards, even when the maths says it's the best decision available.

Third, there's history. "We've always done the February deal" is one of the most expensive sentences in FMCG. Events survive for years past the point anyone can explain what they're for.

What the good version looks like

The fix isn't complicated, but it does require being systematic:

• Measure incrementality, not volume. The question is never "how much did we sell on deal?" It's "how much did we sell that we wouldn't have sold otherwise?" Those are wildly different numbers.
• Load in the full cost. Funding, margin give on baseline units, post-promo dips. If the event only looks good when you leave things out, it isn't good.
• Sort the calendar into three buckets. Events that grow the business: protect and extend them. Events that break even but matter strategically — defending a shelf position, supporting a launch: keep them, but know why. Events that lose money and do nothing else: these are your negotiating currency for the next retailer conversation.

That last point matters. The goal usually isn't to slash promotional spend — in the New Zealand market, with the retailer concentration we have, that's rarely realistic. The goal is to move money from events that don't work to events that do. Same investment, better business.

A place to start

You don't need a big project to test whether this is worth your time. Pick your single biggest promotional event from last year and cost it properly — a spreadsheet and an honest afternoon will do it. If the answer surprises you, the rest of the calendar deserves the same treatment.

In our experience, it almost always surprises people.