Trade Marketing

Turn advocacy into measurable growth.

Turn your advocacy team into a measurable growth engine — from account education to menu placement to depletion impact. PINATA connects every account visit, every staff training, and every placement to the sales outcomes they drive.

Advocacy Performance

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342 account visits this quarter — +14% avg depletion lift in visited accounts

• 342 Account Visits
• 76% of 450 goal
• 87 Staff Trainings
• +22% vs. last quarter
• 156 Menu Placements
• +18% vs. last month
• +9.2% Predicted Lift next 30 days

Visits vs Depletion Lift — every account, 24 months

R² 0.81 · PINATA AI MODEL
Advocacy visits →↑ Depletion lift
+14% avg lift

Advocate Leaderboard

Your advocates visit 50 accounts a week. Can you prove it's working?

Trade advocacy is the most relationship-driven work in beverage. Your advocates visit bars, restaurants, and retail accounts every day — educating staff, presenting portfolios, securing menu placements, negotiating back-bar positions, and building the relationships that keep your brands pouring. It's high-skill, high-touch, and incredibly valuable.

It's also nearly impossible to measure. Most teams track advocacy through CRM call logs or weekly email recaps. An advocate says they did 12 account visits and 3 staff trainings this week. But did those visits drive menu placements? Did those placements drive depletions? The connection between activity and outcome is invisible — which means advocacy budgets are constantly under scrutiny and hard to defend.

Worse, the data that does exist is scattered. Call reports in Salesforce. Training logs in spreadsheets. Depletion data in VIP. Placement records in email threads. Pulling together a picture of advocacy ROI requires weeks of manual analysis — and by the time you have it, the data is stale and the quarterly review is over.

PINATA connects every touchpoint to every outcome — automatically.

From account visit to depletion lift — one system

PINATA manages the full advocacy lifecycle and connects it to business outcomes.

Target

Build account universes by market, channel, and priority tier. Define target accounts for each advocate based on territory, brand focus, and opportunity. Set visit frequency goals — weekly, monthly, quarterly — by account tier. Your team knows exactly where to spend their time and how often.

Visit

Advocates check into accounts with GPS verification and log structured call reports — who they spoke with, what they presented, competitive observations, placement opportunities identified. No more freeform CRM notes. Structured data from the moment of capture means every visit is queryable, comparable, and measurable.

Advocate

Track every advocacy touchpoint — staff trainings conducted, portfolio presentations delivered, menu features pitched, back-bar placements secured, tasting events hosted. Each activity type has its own structured template so the data is clean and consistent across your entire team.

Measure

Connect advocacy activity to depletion data. PINATA shows whether accounts that received staff trainings saw depletion lift compared to accounts that didn't. Measure the actual ROI of menu placements, back-bar positions, and portfolio education — by account, by market, by advocate. Turn advocacy from 'we did 342 visits' into 'our visits drove +14% depletion lift at activated accounts.'

Optimize

Identify which advocacy activities drive the most impact. Are staff trainings more effective than portfolio presentations at driving placements? Do accounts visited weekly outperform accounts visited monthly? Data-driven optimization lets you focus your team's time on the activities and accounts that actually move the needle.

The Advocacy Dashboard

Real-time visibility into advocacy activity, team performance, and business impact.

Account Visit Tracking

Track every account visit with GPS-verified check-ins and structured call reports. See total visits against goal (342/400), visit frequency by account, and coverage gaps. Visit data is structured from the moment of capture — not freeform CRM notes that nobody ever reads.

Staff Trainings & Portfolio Education

Log every staff training with attendee counts, topics covered, and photo documentation. Track which accounts have been trained, which are due, and which brands have been presented. See training volume by market and by advocate. Connect training events to subsequent placement and depletion outcomes.

Menu Placements & Advocacy Wins

Track every menu placement secured — cocktail features, well pours, back-bar positions, wine-by-the-glass programs, shelf placements. See placement trends over time (+18% month over month). Attribute placements to the advocacy activities that drove them. Know exactly which advocate efforts are converting to distribution wins.

Advocate Performance

Individual advocate scorecards show visits completed, trainings conducted, placements secured, and goal attainment — side by side across your team. Identify top performers and coach underperformers with data. Set individual goals and track progress in real time. Your team sees their own metrics; you see everyone's.

Depletion Lift Correlation

The metric that justifies your advocacy budget. PINATA connects account-level advocacy activity to VIP depletion data and shows the lift. Accounts with advocacy visits show +14% average depletion lift vs. non-visited accounts. Slice by activity type, by market, by brand, by advocate. Present ROI with data, not anecdotes.

Account Visits by Market

Stacked bar chart shows advocacy activity distribution across markets — account calls vs. staff trainings vs. events. See which markets are getting the most coverage and which need attention. Compare market-level activity to market-level depletion outcomes to identify where advocacy investment is paying off.

Every advocacy touchpoint. Structured and measured.

PINATA captures every type of advocacy activity with structured data — not freeform CRM notes.

Account Visits & Call Reports

GPS-verified account check-ins with structured call reports. Who you met, what you discussed, competitive observations, and follow-up actions — all queryable.

Staff Trainings

Log training events with attendee counts, topics covered, brands presented, and photo proof. Track which accounts have been trained on which brands.

Menu Placements

Record menu features, well pours, cocktail inclusions, wine-by-the-glass, and seasonal features. Attribute each placement to the advocacy effort that drove it.

Portfolio Presentations

Track brand education sessions — which brands were presented, which accounts received presentations, and whether presentations converted to placements.

Competitive Intelligence

Capture competitive observations during account visits — what's on the back bar, what's on competitor menus, pricing, display activity. Build a competitive picture from the field up.

Relationship Mapping

Track key contacts at every account — GMs, bar managers, sommeliers, buyers. Know who your advocates have relationships with and when those contacts last received a visit.

Why trade marketing teams choose PINATA

Prove advocacy ROI with data

The #1 challenge for trade marketing leaders: justifying the advocacy budget. PINATA connects account visits and staff trainings to depletion lift — the metric leadership actually cares about. Stop defending advocacy with activity counts. Defend it with sales impact.

Structured data, not CRM notes

Salesforce call logs capture freeform text that nobody reads and nobody can analyze. PINATA captures structured data at the moment of activity — visit type, contact met, brands discussed, placements secured — so every touchpoint is queryable, comparable, and reportable.

GPS-verified, not self-reported

Trust but verify. GPS check-ins confirm your advocates are at the accounts they say they're at. Timestamped photos prove trainings happened. Structured reports replace 'I visited 12 accounts this week' with verifiable, location-stamped data.

Key Metrics

• 342+ account visits per team per month (avg)
• +14% average depletion lift at activated accounts
• 156 menu placements tracked monthly
• 87 staff trainings logged monthly

"We always knew advocacy worked — we just couldn't prove it. PINATA showed us that accounts receiving staff trainings had 14% higher depletions than accounts that didn't. That one data point justified our entire advocacy budget for the year."

— Director of Trade Marketing — Top 10 Spirits Supplier