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Episode 126

The Forgotten Half of Growth: Physical Availability Explained

75% of shoppers say they go to Amazon to find new products, even if they saw the brand elsewhere. Yet many companies still resist being there, missing massive opportunities for growth.

This week, Elena, Angela, and Rob dive into physical availability, the often-overlooked "place" in the marketing mix. They explore why D2C brands are rushing back to retail, share real campaign examples where distribution made the difference, and discuss what physical availability means in an AI-first world.

Topics Covered

• [02:00] Why "place" is the forgotten P in the marketing mix

• [06:00] How D2C brands discovered the limits of digital-only strategies

• [10:00] Real campaign examples where physical availability made the difference

• [15:00] Brands doing physical availability right today

• [19:00] Expanding your thinking about "place" beyond shelf space

• [23:00] Brands we'd buy more if they were easier to find

Resources:

2025 WARC Article

2025 AdAge Article

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

Chief Marketing Officer

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

Angela Voss

Chief Executive Officer

Transcript

Angela: Where does your brand surface when the need arises, and why does that matter? Because to a brand without physical product, I think Place can more easily be forgotten.

Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.

I'm Elena Jasper on the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects. And Rob DeMars, the Chief Product architect of Misfits and Machines.

Angela: Hey guys.

Elena: We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results. Today we're talking about physical availability. We spent a lot of time on this show talking about mental availability or how to make sure your brand's top of mind, but today we're going to give physical availability the spotlight it deserves. What does it mean in a digital first world, and why does Ehrenberg Bass teach that it's one of the keys to growth? I'll kick us off as I always do with some research, and I actually have two articles to cover today.

They're both published in March of this year. The first is "Four Ps: Place, Physical Availability: The Marketing Factor You're likely overlooking" by Mark Binkley of the Sleeping Barber podcast. This was published by Chronicle. Mark makes a compelling case that place, which is often the forgotten P in the classic marketing mix, is actually the invisible thread connecting product, price and promotion. He revisits Target's failed expansion into Canada, showing how distribution missteps, poor location strategy, and mismatched brand promises can unravel even the strongest retail brand.

Physical availability isn't just logistics. It's central to delivering on your brand's value and harvesting the mental availability you've worked so hard to build. The second article's from AdAge, this one's titled "The State of D2C, how the category has shifted, what's working and what's ahead." This is by Adrian Paselli. It charts the evolution of direct to consumer brands from their early digital native success to their post pandemic reckoning. D2C Brands have learned that being physically present, whether it's in pop-ups, wholesale partnerships, or flagships, isn't optional anymore. Brands like Glossier and Warby Parker are proving that strategic physical presence builds awareness, lowers acquisition costs, and sustains growth.

In other words, being digital first doesn't mean you should be digital only. So in this episode we're gonna ask what does physical availability look like today and how should marketers think about it in a world that's still obsessed with digital? Let's get into it and start by getting on the same page with some definitions. What does physical availability mean to us in 2025?

Angela: I think in my view, this is just how do I ensure my brand can capture the share of market I want given the minimal thought some consumers are willing to put into their buying decisions, right? System one thinking mode. We've talked about just how do I reduce friction in the path to purchase by being in the right place at the right time and being in stock. I think is the most simple view for me. What do you think Rob?

Rob: You know, it's funny, I didn't intend to do this, but I realized today that I put on my Piggly Wiggly t-shirt, you know, 'cause I just really like this brand. It's so fun. I don't know if you can see it, but it is like, it's so cute. It's got like a character on there. I just, I think this is, it's such a great brand. There are no Piggly Wigglys in Minnesota. I'm like, this is kind of ironic 'cause we're talking about physical availability. I'm passionate for this brand. I looked it up in my maps. There's one in Wisconsin, three and a half hours away. This is the reason why physical availability is - you have passionate consumers, people that are willing to wear your fricking t-shirt and your logo, and I can't go there.

Elena: I think that's the second time on this podcast you've brought up the Piggly Wiggly.

Rob: Yes it is actually.

Angela: Love the Piggly Wiggly.

Rob: Did they rip off Porky Pig? Or did Porky Pig rip off the Piggly Wiggly? I'm gonna have

Angela: We're getting tongue twisters going here.

Rob: There we are.

Elena: I'd agree with both of you. To me, physical availability is if we had to really simplify it - I love the phrase, "be first to mind and easy to buy." Physical availability is the easy to buy piece. Is it easy for people to find your products and service? Are you available where you can show up in their buying cycle?

Rob: Remove the friction.

Angela: Remove it. Slippery. We need slippery surfaces.

Elena: So Mark, in that article that we opened with, he talks about how he thinks that place is overlooked compared to the other Ps in the marketing mix. I think we, on this show before, we've talked about product being overlooked by marketing, but why do we think place is also overlooked?

Angela: Well, even just thinking about, I'm curious to your guys' take like where place lives within an organization - whose single job is it to ensure that our product is easy to buy? Everywhere a customer expects it to be? Like sales owns retail relationships, usually product or ops handles the supply chain and the logistics. And then marketing owns messaging and media and marketing's responsible for awareness and engagement in ROAS, but not necessarily responsible for in stock rates. Share of shelf, fulfillment, speed, like all are in other places. So that's hard when you don't have someone that's going, "How am I easy to buy? That's my job."

Rob: It's not sexy to go "I wake up in the morning and my job is to make sure we get some good shelf space." When was the last time a Cannes was awarded for best shelf talker?

Angela: Yeah. But it's a really fun challenge though, too. Like it could be a really fun challenge if you just think about like, how do you stand out? How do you ensure that, I mean, you think about the biggest brands - you walk into a store and just run into Tide and Coke, and you're like, it's everywhere.

Rob: You wonder if it's one of those, like if everybody owns it, nobody owns it, and like everybody just assumes like, of course shelf space is critical. Like we're in business, we have to sell stuff, so therefore you just think it's so obvious that you don't really pay the attention it deserves.

Elena: Yeah. I think it probably suffers from what product suffers from from marketers, which is, it's often not something that marketing has a hand in or is expected to have an opinion on, but it's very important. I know we're gonna talk about how we've seen this impact the advertisers we've worked with. But if you don't have any control over that place part of the equation, it could be detrimental to the rest of your marketing. Speaking of place being very important, why do we think, speaking of the second article, why do we think so many D2C brands have reversed course? I mean, when D2C became very popular, it was almost a bragging right that I'm only online, everyone's gonna go direct, like stores are over. Why do we think that has changed? And more of them are moving into retail now?

Angela: It was so hot, wasn't it? I mean, I remember even as an agency, we're like, oh, the D2C craze and how many could we get? And then we were like, ooh, how many do we have? Like how do we get back to retail? I think in the 2010s, brands could grow on the back of underpriced digital media, but then iOS 14.5 came and CAC started climbing and ROAS was in decline. And brands are discovering more and more every day how hard the loyalty game is and how important light buyers are.

There's virtually no pain for the consumer if they can't find the specific product they're looking for - there's a very suitable replacement readily available to them. So if you're losing market share to convenience or you're not there to pick up where another brand is losing to convenience, that's a tough battle. I think we're seeing that more and more, and I think that's why we have D2C brands course correcting back into the retail world.

Rob: It's also influenced in recent years by people recognizing that the pandemic isn't a business model. And at first it was like, holy smokes, amazing. But then people start getting out of their house again and they're like, oh, we're not available in all the places that - and quite honestly, also the economics of some of those D2C channels cost so much. It's like here we can have physical availability and we're getting all this foot traffic and stores come with foot traffic. Facebook doesn't.

Elena: Yeah, I agree. That feels like it's definitely part of the equation. If you're not easy to buy, you need to drive someone somewhere else to buy a product or service - that's gonna come at a cost. And I agree that just changing behaviors too during the pandemic. It's no wonder people were more likely to go to different websites when you're not leaving your own house. And what you said also reminded me of what Dale said when he was on the show a couple weeks ago, which is that I think another reason why D2C brands have realized we need to be in retail, we need to be easy to buy, is because, like you said, if you're not available in the store, when people are in that buying mode, they're probably not going to wait and buy you later because we are not as loyal as we think we are. And we usually, like Dale said, we buy from a repertoire of brands and you will easily be replaced with somebody else that's right in front of their face.

Angela: I just had this happen. I use a Klorane dry shampoo that I've used for years and went to Target. They didn't have it. They had a lot of other options, like the one that I use is - we're getting into details here, but it's a brunette version and I didn't even default to their non brunette version. I ended up with a different brand entirely that also was non brunette and I love it - smells -

Rob: Dry shampoo?

Elena: We don't have time for that.

Rob: I just use body

Elena: Yeah, you're a man and you're bald, so don't worry.

Angela: Yeah, probably, but like, that's just simply how it happens, you know? And now you're like, oh gosh, I really like the smell of this new one. And it's like, boop. Lost customer, yep. So quick.

Elena: Definitely. I bet everybody can think of an example like that. I think about like the egg shortage. Recently I've done like three or four different egg brands. Just whatever's available. You're not just gonna not buy what you need. You're just gonna switch to something else. Totally. Definitely. All right. I said earlier that I wanted to cover some examples of when physical availability really mattered to a campaign. And I was hoping you could help us out with this. Have we ever worked with a brand, and we don't need to out anybody here, but have we had a moment where we really thought that place, physical availability, it made or broke that campaign?

Angela: Yeah, many cases I would say, more than we want. An example would be working with a brand that was just very principled about not wanting to be on Amazon. They felt like it would dilute their brand. It would drive down price integrity. It could hurt their D2C margins, and I get it, but the problem is that's not how real people buy. I think something like 75 to 80% of consumers go to Amazon when they're ready to buy a product, regardless of whether or not they saw the brand elsewhere. So it's just you're working against the force - major macro forces just in terms of how consumers buy.

And it becomes really problematic when you're like, oh, I gotta go directly to a client's website. I have to order, I have to wait for that shipment to get here. That takes three days, which we, I mean, we're a very impatient culture when we've got Amazon showing up on our doorstep in two hours. So those are major things to consider.

Elena: Right. We've probably had other examples too, where it's not as obvious, but you've gotta wonder if you're online only, how much is that hurting you, not being in retail. And how many more sales might you have gotten if you had been there? We've been a brand ourselves. I know we've talked about Stuffies using Hurricane a lot on the show before, but those are two products that we did bring into retail. Rob, could you tell us a little bit about what that experience was like?

Rob: Yeah, absolutely. There were really three big takeaways, probably more, many more, but three big takeaways that I think we learned being a D2C brand that moved into retail. The first was right now we're talking about "you should be in retail," but guess what, it's actually not super easy to be in retail like that. We launched in television and built a brand first. And I do think that gave us an unfair advantage into fast tracking into retail. It was like having a Disney fast pass - straight to the head of the line so much. So I think within less than a year for Stuffies, we secured the end cap at Target during Christmas, and that's some serious physical availability. And we would not have been able to do that had we not built a brand that all of the retailers had heard of and were now actually seeking to put into their stores. So I think the fast tracking was a big one.

The second one - I already mentioned, it's helpful when you eat your own dog food because we are very passionate about telling our advertisers you need to be in Amazon. But that was because we refused to be on Amazon at first. We did not wanna play ball with Bezos for all the same reasons. They're in control. Does it impact your margins? The reality was we were building a brand on television and our customers were going to Amazon and they were using Hurricane and being found in search were all the competitors because the name was in Amazon, so there was no choice. We had to be on Amazon and it turned out to be the right move. As much as we resisted it, it was a huge channel for us. So reason why Amazon is - and through our own stubbornness that they are, they're right - need to be there.

The third thing I would say is that packaging is a channel in and of itself, and you need to spend the time making sure that when they get to where it's physically available, that it's still as persuasive as possible. That's still an opportunity to make sure it stands out from your competition, whatever that might be like. Make sure that the benefits and the features are coming through, that if it's a demonstrable product, is there a way to demonstrate that in retail as well. So just a lot of creative opportunity that you can invest in your packaging just to make sure you pop.

Elena: That's a great point about packaging and making sure that you have clear, distinctive assets and you can be found easily 'cause it's not enough just to be on the shelf. Someone needs to see you and recognize you right away. So that's a great point. Seems like Amazon's just a necessary evil at this point. Alright. Speaking of examples, I wanna ask, who's a newer brand that we think is doing a great job with physical availability today? And Ang, why don't you start us off?

Angela: Sure. Sorry Rob, we're back in the hair care space again, but I thought about Function of Beauty. They're a D2C brand and they offer hyper-personalized hair care through this quiz based model. So whether you need, like Rob, I think you'd be like a frizzy hair guy. Probably, I would imagine. Yeah, or you have color needs or oily, whatever. And they found success early on, but as a lot of brands experience in the D2C world, they're limited by high fulfillment costs, retention issues, and so they started to expand into Target. You can see the challenge. You're like, we're custom hair care. How do I move into a retail environment without taking exorbitant shelf space, which would be really expensive and hard to convince retailers to do that as well.

So they've got a modular approach, which I think is cool. They offer these base formulas and then you can buy these mix-in boosters. So they're trying to simplify customization in the mass retail space. And I think this is a good move to broaden reach and ensure that they can compete with the challenges of physical availability as women and men have a lot of haircare options, and still try to retain that brand DNA in what they're doing. So I think that's cool that they're not abandoning that customization. They're really trying to modularize it for mass availability. So that's cool.

Elena: That's a great example. You can see how a lot of other D2C hair care brands just never made it, but they did. It's probably a reason. Rob, have you got one?

Rob: Yeah. Non-alcoholic beer is really transitioning from kind of a novelty to more mainstream. And I think it's hard though for those brands to - in situations like in a bar and where are you available for those non-alcoholic beer? And Athletic Brewing, I think is doing a really great job. I think they've gone into - I think they've got a great brand. First of all, they've positioned themselves in a way where they actually win international beer festivals against alcoholic beers.

And yet you'll see them show up at marathons, you'll see them show up at your local pub - now offers Athletic Brewing. It's, I swear to you, go to any restaurant. They're like, yeah, we have two options like Heineken Zero and Athletic Brewing. It's a new category, trying to get restaurants to be able to carry you is a huge investment on the restaurant's part. And for some reason, they're cracking the code.

Elena: Love it. That's a great one. They've got a first mover advantage too, it seems like in the category.

Rob: And they don't - I think they feel like they do, 'cause they've done such a good job, but non-alcoholic beer's been around for a long time. It's just, they are feeling like they're owning the category because they're showing up. They're different. They feel good.

Angela: They have like a microbrew feel. There was like you always had the watered down, like you said, the Heineken Zero or whatever, but they've got an IPA and they've got this and they got that, and

Rob: Product, right? They nailed the P and now they're nailing the Place. And it's a company to watch.

Elena: Mine is - I compete in triathlons, and so when you're training a lot, you need stuff to eat on the bike and when you're running. And one of the things that I don't use as much anymore, but I started using are those Honey Stinger waffles. I don't know if you've ever seen those - yeah, they're good. They're kind of crumbly, but they're basically like a snack you could have on the bike and they give you quick sugars and carbs and things to help you build up your glycogen stores and stuff like that.

Angela: Okay. So it's more like a granola bar or?

Rob: It's not - it's for athletes though, right? Because I've seen those showing up, but are they like showing up for kids too?

Elena: Okay, no, where I saw them the other day is in the energy aisle at a gas station.

Rob: Ah.

Elena: So smart. I've never seen another - there's a ton of these brands that offer - Rob, you just ran a marathon, so you know, that's the GUs and Goos and chews and like all these delicious things that makes it fun to work out - things that you can eat. And I thought, that's so smart because I've never seen another brand like that expanding. And it makes so much sense to go into gas stations when somebody's looking around, they need a quick pick me up, they don't know the brand 'cause like you said, it's targeted at athletes, but it seems like they're trying to link themselves just to energy in general, which I think is a seems pretty smart as a way to expand. That's something I've seen. Very cool.

All righty. What is one way we think that marketers could expand their thinking about place or physical availability today?

Angela: Yeah, I was thinking about this and having a focus - ensuring that P shows up in your mind, I think regardless of the brand you work for, is important. So how do we do that? I think thinking about place as not just shelf space - how do you think about place as a surface? Where does your brand surface when the need arises, and why does that matter? Because to a brand without physical product, I think Place can more easily be forgotten. How do you surface still really matters to your brand?

So places in the environment where your solution becomes accessible, so for a telehealth brand, that might mean showing up inside an employer's benefits portal, or for a SaaS tool it might mean integrating with the platform your customers already use. For a home service brand, it could be ensure that you're a top result on the local search and being bookable, right? Then that's the inventory. So if your buyers can't find, choose, and act in the moment, you're not available to them and that really matters. So surface versus place, I would say.

Rob: The one thing I would think about as well is how is technology impacting the way consumers can buy, specifically in ads. How do you start to look at what's going on in streaming? There's just so many different new types of ways to interact with the ads. Can the ads become the place themselves and going beyond what we've traditionally seen as direct to consumer advertising, to almost more of these shoppable experiences with checkout and everything baked into the ad units within a streaming TV format and variety of other ones that are just starting to pop up now where you're like, that opens up new doors.

Angela: Have you bought any product through shoppable ads, Rob?

Rob: I haven't. So that's a big wah wah - I should. It's like, yes, I've actually bought Athletic Brewing through a shoppable ad. No, that's a really good point. I think it's so new and it's so interesting. You see them appear, we've all seen them and they're like, oh, I haven't seen that version of it before. It's like a choose your own adventure. It's like a different type of use of a QR. All these different new ways of connecting with people. Are they as persuasive as they need to be is a good question. It's still advertising at the end of the day, but it's certainly a new -

Elena: I'm surprised, Rob, I thought you were definitely gonna say showing up in LLMs as part of physical availability. Gosh.

Rob: That is a great one. I was just thinking about that today. Not for this, so yes, you're absolutely right. It is becoming our new search engine, right? No one argues with that. And how do you show up? And gosh, that's such a great point, Elena. 'Cause then you think about the agents, right? The agents can buy the product for you. So how are you making sure that you're found by agents and interact for the agents?

Elena: How are you physically available for AI? A good question. And you sort of actually not sort of, you stole mine, which was, I was thinking the same thing. Thinking about linking place to your category entry points as well. And that could expand to a whole bunch of different things. But if you have your CEPs and you could be thinking about, alright, when someone's in this needs state or they're thinking this, where could I show up? And sometimes that might expand you, like there might be more opportunity beyond your traditional retail store. We were talking about Athletic Brewing, showing up at events and stuff, like there might be more options than you think.

Angela: Yep.

Elena: Okay. To wrap us up here, is there a brand that you'd purchase more if it were just easier to buy? We'll go Ang first.

Angela: Yeah. And I feel terrible for this one because they're -

Elena: Is it another -

Rob: No, this one, you know, Rob, you've purchased - Elena's purchased. I've purchased, but it's been a while since I've purchased. And it's the ROAR bars, R-O-A-R, ROAR Organics. And they're local. They're right here in Rogers, Minnesota. But gosh, website - it takes a while to get 'em. I wanna buy them in Target. I wanna order 'em on Amazon. I'd be ordering more. Just saying.

It's so weird. I picked a bar too. That's so funny. Did you pick up a bar, Elena?

Elena: I picked ROAR bars.

Angela: Did you?

Rob: You did not.

Elena: I did because the other day I was completely out of them. And then it takes so long to order. Like if I could order them easier, I have a lot of lapses, not by intention, like I - so I had the same one.

Angela: I know. And then I feel bad and I'm like, and then I drop off and it - sometimes it's a year, and then I'm like, oh my gosh. Like I gotta order some more bars.

Rob: Well, I picked the bar that Elena's gonna shame me for. But I just really like the Quest Crispy Protein bar. It's a particular version of the Quest Bar, and it is better than a Snickers. It is just, it's so good and they've just really perfected the bar. And I can't get 'em in a movie theater. I would buy 'em if they were in a movie theater. I can occasionally you'll see it in a gas station, but usually they carry their lesser delicious bar version of the Quest Bar. So I have to go on a quest to get a Quest Protein bars. Isn't that funny. Three bars. What? What in the world? We must like our protein that's in form of a bar.

Angela: Yeah. It's a little bit of a specialty and you're like, I love what you're doing, but it's just a little hard to get. Yeah. At least -

Elena: At least Quest is in the store.

Rob: That's true. And I think in a lot of cases we're thinking about physical availability - like a gas station, right? Like a gas station owns physical availability. 'Cause you have to go there generally speaking to fuel your car. You're impulsively in the need for your own kind of fuel, snack, soda, whatever it is. It's just, it's the epitome of it. And for them, they probably have very limited shelf space, so they're like, sorry y'all, but protein bars aren't what many people are going for.

Angela: Clearly we need to spend less time together 'cause the three of us are like lost.

Rob: That's weird.

Elena: Yeah. I'm telling you, Rob, those are bad for you, but I'll let it go. But you really should consider something different if you're trying to be healthy. If you're trying to have a sweet treat, fine, but if you're trying to use it as like an actual protein bar - it doesn't matter.

Rob: 20 some grams of protein. How is that bad? And it's delicious.

Elena: It's - he's eating 20 White Castle burgers once a month.

Rob: Right? I mean, I am anchored to my -

Elena: This is the least of Rob's problems.

Rob: I'm anchored. It's like it's a vast improvement over 20 White Castles. Can we all agree on that?

Angela: I'm gonna go with you on that one, Rob.

Rob: All right.

Elena: I will say I think that your eating habits helped you in your marathon because you didn't have any - people often have gastrointestinal issues and you were fine, right? You were just chugging along. You've been training your whole life for that.

Rob: I just start taking those goos.

Elena: Yeah. Your body loved it.

Rob: It was like, oh yeah, no problem. Where have these been?

Elena: Yeah. That's a huge - Rob, what was -

Rob: These are just like your melted Jolly Ranchers.

Elena: Yeah, Rob. What was the longest you ran before your marathon?

Rob: Before that, the longest was about 10 miles.

Elena: It's amazing. It's amazing that you finished that marathon in such great shape. I just can't believe it. White Castle might be the secret to Marathon success.