ThinkingOutsideTheShelf Next time you find yourself at the airport or in a shiny foreign store, take a good look at what other brands are doing, says Colin Clarke.
W
e have all stood in an airport console or a store when travelling abroad, looked at what a brand is doing and
thought to ourselves "We should try that!". There is something exciting about finding innovation. I guess that's our job to be aware of these things, but we should strive to carry these discoveries and innovations home and implement them to our brands and to our stores. It doesn't take a foreign holiday to realise that our store environment has become sterile. The "Clean Store Policy" really means a complete clutter of standardised retailer-led POS which is so devoid of creative that the consumer just sees wallpaper and not the brand message. We as designers, marketers and brand managers have the onerous task of taking our brands to the customer, making them come alive and stand out so the marketing and brand message is clear. In the battle against store sterility we have no choice but to innovate and disrupt. We should treat the store as our canvas, not exactly a blank canvas because it's one already filled with a plethora of logos, messages and offers, but we should paint out the pathway to purchase, lifting the customer's blinkers and guiding them past the competition and directly to our brand. It can start in the car park with clever use of proximity media. As a trolley is grabbed, so too is a trolley ad signposting your brand, followed through with clever floor graphics and other in-store media you can hand-ball your consumer through the store to where your brand lives. The pathway to purchase does not always lead straight to your category. The customer may meander through the store so brands need to escape from their own aisle and get seen away from the home site too. Consider complimentary category partnerships to get your brand featured in places where the consumer didn't expect to see it. Jelly and ice cream anyone? Strawberries and cream, madame? A well thought-out partnership can deliver you an auxiliary FSDU or interim bespoke fixture. The proliferation of ‘Aisle Arches’ highlights just how important it is to invite and entice the consumer down your aisle. More recently, brands have taken to producing store signposts that point to the brands’ advertising while also
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pointing to where the product can be found, or, as recently installed by HB Ice Cream in Tesco, actually walking the consumer to the aisle with floor graphic footprints to their Ice Cream Funday Truck category installation, in aid of Down Syndrome Ireland. When it comes to the aisle, you don't have to be the category leader to lead the category. Convince the retailers that you can add value to the shopper experience and the number two or number three brand can take ownership of dressing out the fixture and build in the brand livery in the process. While brands won't be able to feature their logo per se, clever use of home site POS will stitch the creative together to complete the masterpiece. Lucozade's Energy Zone is the perfect example. Not every brand has the profile or the pockets to own the aisle however, so it is vital to grab what you are given and make the most of it. The stores have strict guidelines we are all to follow as to what the in-store brand materials look like. The net result is that every brand and every offer looks the same and the consumer can't differentiate between baked beans and coffee beans. We need to push those guidelines, push the die cuts, materials, finishes and forms and create something different. Extend your store canvas by combining a security header with a
floor graphic, include a spinning disk on a hanging card, place a hanging board over a headboard. Is there a way we can take the most standard of retailer POS elements and use them in different way? Of course there is. Add a flashing LED to a wobbler, place a scratchNsniff panel on an SEL, use motion sensors to deliver voice or jingle messaging from your headboards, or simply print mirror or lenticular finishes on your FSDUs to engage the consumer's eye. It makes sense to utilise the senses. Of course we are constrained with budgets and guidelines but we should not be constrained with creativity and should always be looking for the ways to break those moulds. We think design and branding needs to get in the way. Creative needs to disrupt, otherwise frankly it wasn't that creative in the first place. It's all about thinking outside the shelf. So, next time you are in that airport or that shiny foreign store, make sure you can look at what other brands are doing and then think to yourself, "I've done that." Colin Clarke is creative director at InSight Marketing & Branding.
IMJ FEBRUARY 2013
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