Wal-Mart names Roces to head ‘Store Experience’

Home Textiles has a brief blurb about the appointment:

Wal-Mart Stores is creating a new organization it calls “Store Experience” to delve more deeply into store planning, space management, and the retailer’s store-of-the-community initiative.

Santiago Roces, who was most recently Wal-Mart’s Korea president, will be leading the initiative. He is relocating to company headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Roces’ promotion is one of several appointments that make up Wal-Mart’s recently restructured marketing “dream team,” explained John Fleming, evp and chief marketing officer, during Wal-Mart’s presentation Wednesday at the Morgan Stanley Global Consumer & Retail conference here.

Tags: Wal-Mart, store experience

Luxury auto dealerships invest in good design

While consumer retail garners the most attention when it comes to in-store media, a lot is going on in the retail automotive sector that deserves some commentary as well. My company has been working in that space for about four years now, installing both interactive kiosks and digital signs into hundreds of US dealers, and big chains like AutoNation have also invested in chain-wide digital media networks.

USA Today apparently noticed the trend, as they published this article about the lengths that luxury retail auto dealers are going to in order to bring their dealerships up to snuff. They note:

At Fletcher Jones Motorcars, customers stroll through a gallery of Mercedes-Benzes, linger at the cappuccino bar, tap balls on the putting green or go for a pedicure.

A couple of blocks away, Newport Lexus boasts marble fireplaces, Oakley and Tommy Bahama beachwear boutiques — and a flat-screen television, tuned to ESPN, of course, mounted above the urinal in the men's room.

The two dealerships are pouring on the fancy fixtures and service extras as they vie for a larger share of one of the nation's most prosperous luxury-car markets, coastal Orange County. But even far from "The O.C.," auto industry officials see the sprucing up of luxury-car dealers as a sign that the high-end market could finally be brightening.

I don't know if I'd particulary want a pedicure from my auto dealer, but it's certainly interesting to see that retail design is being used as a gauge for market performance.

Tags: retail automotive, auto dealerships, retail design, store design

Uniqlo injects Eastern design into western retail

Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo falls into the same category as H&M for me -- a trendy-looking store that I'd never actually buy anything in, but is visually appealing and shoppable nonetheless. Apparently I'm not the only one to think so either (well, the looks cool part, anyway, I'm sure these stores are heavily shopped), since BusinessWeek decided to do an article on their approach to retail design a few weeks ago. Semi-famous retail architect Masamichi Katayama designed the New York flagship store that's getting all the attention, and in the article he describes the store's "Japanese-ness" as "seiriseiton, " which he then further translates into "simplicity" and "orderliness."

While spartan layouts and stylish fixtures have long been present in tiny boutiques and haute couture specialty retailers, Uniqlo is trying to blend their casually trendy offerings with a high style, dare I say upscale retail design that oozes with simplicity and orderliness. From what I've seen, I certainly think they've met their design goals.

Tags: Uniqlo, retail design, store design

Making an emotional appeal with in-store media

Note: I've cross-posted this to the Digital Signage News blog, since the subscriberships seem to be somewhat different (and unrelated).

Institutions spend too much time focusing on the science of shopping, rather than the art of shopping. So says The Integer Group's Meg Kinney in her article "The Art of Shopping," featured in the November/December issue of HUB Magazine. While that sentence might not appear to make a lot of sense on the surface (since when is shopping an art or a science, anyhow?), Kinney looks at the growing number of retailers who are focusing on ways to enhance the in-store experience, and comes to some interesting conclusions about what needs to be done to bring in-store media up to snuff in today's experiential retail environment.... Read the full article: Making an emotional appeal with in-store media

Tags: in-store media, at-retail media, digital signage, out-of-home advertising,

Supervalu aims to surprise and delight shoppers

Fresh off of their recent acquisition of the Albertson's grocery chain, Supervalu CEO Jeff Noddle announced an ambitious plan to spend $1 billion in the coming years to remodel existing stores and build a few new ones under a new program called Premium Fresh & Healthy. The goal, according to Duncan Mac Naughton, EVP of Merchandising Marketing, "is all about surprising and delighting the customer," which will apparently include things like:

[expanding the stores'] produce, meat, seafood, bakery and deli departments. Stores remodeled or built under the new plan will also have an area for international foods, since 24 percent of Americans eat at least one ethnic meal a week, Mac Naughton said.

Supervalu is also pushing to focus on natural and organic products, which have become quite popular for mainstream grocers in the past few years after the rapid growth of specialty chains such as Whole Foods Market Inc.

While it certainly remains to be seen exactly how the chain expects to delight their shoppers, I'm hoping that they'll introduce some new innovations for making grocery shopping faster and more convenient (and you can always spot the good innovations because they spread through the whole industry like wildfire :)

Tags: digital signage, store experience, retail media, in-store media, merchandising, retail marketing, advertising, visual merchandising

Inside retail stores, it's all about the 'message'

I don't like stealing other people's titles when summarizing an article, but this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette really hit the nail on the head. You don't normally see a lot about retail media or the retail experience in mainstream newspapers, but clearly there's a lot going on in-store, and with the holiday season nearly upon us (or already upon us for a few weeks, if you're some retailers), perhaps some people are starting to take notice of their shopping environments. The article notes:

Every retail space has to handle merchandise shifts. At the beginning of a season, racks of hanging clothes may be full. As they empty, the walls might adapt to hold shelves or make the most of a shirt on a hanger. Color choices in carpet and paint can't clash with the latest fashions. "Flexibility is really important in retail," said [Suzan Lami, of Lami Grubb Architects]. Architects hoping to create something for posterity should be aware that in retail, change is not just embraced, it's required. Some of Ms. Lami's clients' leases require their stores be remodeled every five years, whether the existing design was a good one or not.

Consumers are more fickle and ad-shy than ever, and with the echo boomer generation coming into their own as an educated, mobile and media-savvy consumer demographic, stores are having an increasingly hard time combating poor advertising performance and Internet shopping options. By making the in-store experience more interesting and enjoyable, brick-and-mortar retailers are able to offer shoppers something that can't (yet) be had online.

Tags: retail media, store experience, store environment, advertising, retail marketing, merchandising

When is a store redesign really innovative?

There's an interesting discussion going on at RetailWire right now about OfficeMax's recent announcement that they'd be trying some new things in their stores to stimulate sales. Among their innovations were brighter, more colorful stores and signage, an in-store TV network, and the addition of a coffee bar at some locations. Interestingly, all of these things have been tried before (though not necessarily in the office supplies category, as some commenters at the site are quick to note). In fact, as Mark Lillien at RTG quips, "what will the LAST retail category be to offer coffee bars? Funeral parlors? Storefront Medicaid mills?"

Women say: no time for ads, it's time for CROPing!

The Wise Marketer is covering a survey by public relations firm Ketchum about what influences women's purchase decisions. There were four trends that came out of the results, which focused on women aged 25-54, with the most interesting (perhaps) being the advent of CROPing (looking for CRedible OPinions) before shopping. By getting the opinions of trusted friends, experts and information sources (like trusted web sites and magazines), women can cut down on the amount of "actual" shopping for a target item by eliminating universally panned choices and focusing on highly selected ones. According to Ketchum's synopsis, other key findings include:

• Consumer-Electronics Shopping Is Easy, But … - Three of four women say that consumer-electronics shopping is “very” or “somewhat” easy, but some aspects frustrate them. Forty percent get frustrated when talked down to while shopping for consumer electronics and a quarter of women voice confusion over whether to buy a warranty (28%), product complexity (27%) and too many choices (26%).
• Product Research Rules, But Impulse Buying Is Still Popular - Seven in ten women do research before making big purchases (72%), but only 35% “rarely” buy on impulse. A quarter of women say they are the first to try new products and services.
• Health is Part of the Definition of Success - Eighty percent of women surveyed feel that being healthy and having healthy children (82% and 81%, respectively) are the top qualities that define success. Other leading factors include having well-adjusted children (79%), living in a nice, safe community (77%), not having debt (77%) and having a strong marriage (77%)

Of course, all of this research and CROPing seems to indicate that women are making more buying decisions (or bigger parts of the decisions) before they enter retail stores, which could be a problem for in-store advertisers hoping to influence buying decision with retail media like POP displays and digital signage systems.

Here's a podcast of the synopsis.

Tags: retail media, store marketing, retail marketing, digital signage, CROPing, purchase decisions, in-store advertising, out-of-home media

RetailWire asks: What do consumers want from in-store media?

All too often, we wonder what do retailers, or advertisers, or CPGs, or media buyers, or a whole host of other groups, want from in-store media. However, as Adrian Weidmann asks in a recent RetailWire BrainTrust Query, what's in it for the consumers? More specifically, he asks:

In today's media cacophony, what the consumer wants is helpful and enlightening filtration. Surprise and delight them and you'll begin to gain their trust! Digital media networks are inherently multi-channel (in both marketing and technical terms) but must first be architected in environmental context and implemented to help the consumer (and retail associates). Upon that foundation, trust is built one brick, click and clip at a time. Having established this ecosystem, the consumer will then allow commerce on their terms.

As usual, the responses, from a wide range of media professionals, are excellent and demonstrates multiple distinct points of view. Here's the interesting challenge with asking (and answering) this question, though. As noted, everybody who answered works in advertising or marketing. Sure, we're all consumers, but in the context of such a discussion, we're marketers first. Compounding this problem is the fact that whenever we do a survey or a questionnaire or a customer intercept, we don't get genuinely useful data. Sure, somebody might do an intercept outside of a Wal-Mart and ask, "what did you think of the in-store TVs?" If the person answers that he didn't like the system, that's something valuable. The media registered enough to cause a genuine reaction. But most people, due to simple human nature, will offer some kind of noncommittal response which doesn't help the marketer improve things at all.

And forget about asking people what they'd like to see. A marketing firm can't expect the average consumer to spend enough time really thinking about what kind of ephemeral in-store technologies might improve the shopping experience, at least not where in-store media is concerned. If it doesn't impact pricing or the speed at which a shopper can navigate the store, most shoppers are going to have a very hard time offering any useful suggestions about the retail media landscape.

Tags: retail media, in-store TV, in-store radio, retail tv, retail television, digital signage, store media

First-generation RFID tags not secure enough

At least, that was the general takeaway from this report from a group calling themselves the RFID Consortium for Security and Privacy Group. As Evan at StorefrontBacktalk notes,

The group tested about 20 samples from various contactless credit cards and concluded that "the cardholder's name and often credit card number and expiration are leaked in plaintext to unauthenticated readers" and "our homemade device costing around $150 effectively clones one type of skimmed cards." Perhaps of greatest concern is the report's conclusion that "RFID-enabled credit cards are susceptible in various degrees to a range of other traditional RFID attacks such as skimming and relaying."

Of coruse the most immediate implication is that a nearby data thief could simply use such a radio device to steal credit card information that could then be used to make online purchases (where you don't need an ID, physical card, etc.). However, Evan also notes that identity thieves could utilize name data from RFID tags even if the credit card number was encrypted (which is how things are heading).

I don't think I'd ever want my name to be broadcast in plain text for anybody with an RFID reader to see. Creepy scenes from Minority Report keep coming to mind, though admittedly wrapping my contactless payment cards in some kind of RFID-proof material is a lot easier (and less painful) than having my eyeballs plucked out.

Past articles on RFID include:
Bookseller uses item-level RFID and kiosks to lower costs, boost sales
Using RFID to improve the customer experience

Tags: RFID, encryption, security, retail media, contactless payment

Shoppercentric and The Screen to work together on an in-store media report

According to this press release, retail research and behavior firm Shoppercentric announced that it is releasing the results of its next major survey on retail digital media networks with the The Screen, the UK's leading research and trade organization for the industry. The survey is due to be completed later this year, and according to the release will provide, "authoritative comment on how consumers relate to digital signage and how stores can best implement screen media networks." Here's the interesting part of the blurb:

The agreement to release the results of the survey in partnership with The Screen Association follows Shoppercentric’s well-received presentation at the trade body’s 2nd annual conference, on the 10th October. At the conference, Shoppercentric provided strong research and experiential evidence that, while the potential benefits of digital signage in retail is large and growing, retailers have yet to fully understand how it can be best used to meet the needs of shoppers. Only by aligning shopper needs with business targets, claimed Danielle Pinnington of Shoppercentric, will the full potential of screen media be fully realised. The company’s conclusions were based on its own original research, as well as extensive shopper behaviour experience gained through work with a large client base, which includes Cadbury Trebor Bassett, Coca Cola Enterprises, Currys Digital, Homebase, Mothercare and Somerfield.

Credible research is still wanting in our industry, so the more the merrier. We'll keep our eyes peeled to see when the summary/synopsis becomes available. The Screen was recently in the news, heralding their findings that UK digital signage networks are mostly brand-oriented and infrequently updated.

Tags: digital signage, screen media, narrowcasting, captive audience networks

Unisys marries magazine, out-of-home advertising in aggressive pitch

We've heard a number of reports about magazines having a hard time selling out their ad space (and at reduced rates), but Unisys is experimenting with a unique plan to combine the targeted appeal of magazine ads with the broad audience of an out-of-home media campaign in an effort to reach 20 -- and exactly 20 -- people. From this WSJ article:

Around 20 high-ranking executives at corporations such as Subaru of America, DHL, Citigroup and Northwest Airlines will get a surprise when Fortune magazine arrives on their desks this week. Each will find his or her own face gracing the cover.

The covers are one-of-a-kind mock-ups wrapping the actual Fortune edition, part of an advertising play conducted by information-technology company Unisys that brings new meaning to the idea of niche marketing. Unisys is sending the magazines to get the attention of executives -- mostly chief information officers -- responsible for making buying decisions about their companies' technology products and services. In other words, the people Unisys most wants to influence.

To make sure that these select few actually pick up a copy of the magazine, Unisys is blanketing the areas where they work, play and shop with out-of-home advertisements like billboards and vehicle wraps, even going so far as to figure out where the execs might stop for breakfast or coffee on their commute to the office.

On the one hand, that's pretty creepy. There's a fine line between avant-garde and invasion-of-privacy, and this campaign does a good job of straddling it. On the other hand, though, combining the reach and depth of these two advertising media gives Unisys a chance to be remarkable, not only for the 20 intended viewers of the personalized pitch, but also for the millions of people who are now talking about the company.

Tags: Unisys, out-of-home advertising, magazine advertising, FORTUNE, Omnicom

Subliminal nude pictures focus attention

Scientific American is running an interesting article on subliminal messaging -- images that are displayed in such a way that you don't consciously perceive them, but still register with you subconsciously. While most common examples of subliminal messaging use a moving frames example -- e.g. of the 24 frames that make up one second of motion in a film, one of those frames would be replaced with a subliminal message (which would be displayed for 1/24th of a second) -- the researchers in this experiment used a different kind of display to take advantage of a quirk in the way we process visual information. From the article:

Cognitive neuroscientist Sheng He of the University of Minnesota and his colleagues gathered groups of heterosexual men, heterosexual women, homosexual men and bisexual women numbering 10 each. Each viewed special images pointed directly at each individual eye. The researchers could cancel out vision of one eye's image by presenting a specific high contrast image to the other eye. Such an image, called a Gabor patch, consists of a series of contrasting lines that form an abstract--and visually arresting--shape. "Normally, the two eyes look at the same image. They don’t have any conflict," he explains. "We create a situation where the two eyes are presented with two images, and then they will have binocular competition. One image is high contrast [and dynamic], the other is static. You basically just see the dynamic image."

Into the canceled out image slot, the researchers slipped an erotic image; for example, a naked woman displayed for a heterosexual man. To ensure that subjects did not consciously detect the invisible image, they were asked to press a specific key if they noticed any difference between the left and right images. Over the course of 32 trials, men were significantly better at detecting the orientation of Gabor patches when they appeared in the slot formerly occupied by an invisible image of a nude woman.

The researchers found that men and women responded differently, as did homosexuals and heterosexuals, but the most interesting finding was that men were significantly better at accurately identifying a symbol after being "primed" with an erotic image that matched their sexual orientation.

Bottom line: sex sells, and while this particular form of subliminal messaging isn't likely to find a home in at-retail advertising any time soon (the rig requires you to focus your eyes on two different images at once), I'm willing to bet that it will rekindle interest in other forms of subliminal advertising. It's also worth noting that while numerous experiments have verified that we can perceive many things without consciously registering them, there have been no verified cases of a successful subliminal advertising campaign (though there have been reported cases of unsuccessful ones).

Tags: subliminal messaging, advertising

Using RFID to improve the customer experience

The Wise Marketer has a short piece on an experimental platform being pitched by NCR. In the system, branch bank customers are identified by an RFID tag as they walk in to the branch (presumably this tag would be embedded into something like a cellphone or PDA that's personally identifiable).

Aside from giving bankers the ability to start a personalized conversation with customers as they walk in, the system also gives managers an alert if the individual was flagged as a "special" customer who might be a prime target for a certain type of loan or other financial product, or a VIP who's eligible for special perks like skipping the teller queue or getting some additional attention.

This makes me think two things: first, as David Polinchock mentioned at the At-Retail Media Expo, for RFID adoption to really take off, it must offer something of value to the consumer. Right now, all it does is help with inventory tracking and loss prevention, neither of which are particularly interesting to the average shopper. NCR's prototype system, on the other hand, is trying to provide something of value via the technology, which is worth looking at. Second, isn't it peculiar how we need all sorts of new technology to help retailers (or in this case bankers) identify customers by name, figure out who gets special attention, etc.? The Internet has largely obviated the need for me to go to the bank these days, but even just a few years ago when I was going perhaps twice a month, the manager and several of the tellers all knew me by name. It seems like that level of customer service shouldn't require a huge tech infrastructure.

Tags: RFID, NCR, retail banking, retail media, store media

10-Figure in-store ad deals block competitors for years...

... or so says MediaBuyerPlanner in this short article, but I've read previous articles about P&G's massive in-store media deals before. Apparently, some CPGs have been buying ad rights in retail chains for up to 2 years, with discounted rates in return for making such a long-term (in the retail world, anyway) commitment. Interestingly, as the article notes, "the complete control offered to these marketers means selling space to marketers across multiple four-week cycles whether the marketer intends to use the space during every cycle or not. Even when the space is not in use by the marketer who has contracted for it, competitors can be blocked from using it."

That's an interesting wrinkle, since a long-term media buy could be looked at as a defensive manuever as well as an offensive one (no pun intended :) However, as the article also notes, "P&G allows News America to resell ads during the four-week cycles its brands don't intend to use," though the actual mechanics of this aren't described.

For reference, a 10-figure deal means at least $1,000,000,000. Ouch.