Category: Digital Merchandising
Webinar: Retail Digital Signage
The Digital ScreenMedia Association put on a webinar on Retail Digital Signage last week. The session was moderated by Laura Davis Taylor of Creative Realities, Inc. and included Natalie Egleston of PRN, and myself as panelists. Watch a replay of the webinar after the break.
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Best Buy Deploys QR Codes to Enhance Shopping Experience
Best Buy adds QR codes to all their retail stores. 82% of consumers already use mobile phones during their shopping trips, so it’s critical that retailers understand and embrace this new shopping behavior. [Read More]
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What Shopper Marketers Need to Know about Location Based Marketing
It’s been a remarkable day in the evolution of Location Based Marketing. The day started with ShopKick launching in 257 Best Buy stores; and ended with Facebook announcing a location based marketing solution.
Here is a recap to help you catch-up and my own predictions about where we will be going. (more)
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Future of Retail (as seen in 1992)
In 1992, I was part of a team at Blockbuster Entertainment that imagined what the future of entertainment retail might look like. We believed that consumers wanted "Songs" rather than albums, and that long before video on demand was a reality in 300 million homes, it would be practical in 4,000 retail stores. We were naive enough to build the proof of concept. This was 9 years before iTunes was launched and the content owners weren’t ready to give up their inefficient distribution model. This is the promotional video we developed for the concept… at least I got to meet Dennis Miller.
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Mobile is the Future of In-Store Marketing
Imagine a shopper walking into a retail store, and holding their phone in front of the aisle. The phone’s camera instantly photographs all the products on the shelf, performs image recognition on the boxes, looks up competitive prices online, and color codes the image with the products that are a good deal.
Do you think that sounds like science fiction? It’s not.
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Walmart Digital Merchandising Statistics (don’t trust an ad man)
Retail Customer Experience.com has a new article by Graeme Spicer entitled “Digital Displays in Retail Environments Coming of Age”. The article talks about Walmarts recently refreshed in-store video network (aka Smart Network) and shares some data on the success of advertisements on the network.
I’ve seen similar Walmart data before, but always in private meetings, so now that the data is public I can comment… Here is why you shouldn’t believe it. (more)
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The dilemma of the digital in-store marketing industry
The Digital In-Store Marketing industry is confronted with a dizzying array of trade orgs, websites, and events to support. What’s a well intentioned marketer to do?
An old boxing axiom starts with the advice “You gotta have a good nickname.” But my own profession struggles to find a universally recognized label. The lack of a universally understanding manifests itself in a variety of challenges.
My work is at the interesting intersection of a two industries, In-Store Marketing and Digital Marketing. Both industries are the logical evolutions of earlier disciplines, and both suffer from a confusing variety of labels. It makes it all the more difficult to define what happens when the two industries converge. (more)
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Vacant Stores as Digital Signage
MediaPost’s Marketing Daily has an article about how some advertisers are setting up digital signage networks in the windows of out-of-business vacant retail stores. (more)
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Harrods goes live with innovative digital signage in window display
Adrain Cotterill who writes the excellent Daily Digital out of Home blog, sent me a heads-up this morning about a new window display being unveiled at Harrods.
For US centric readers, Harrods is based in the UK, and is one of the premiere department stores in Europe along with the likes of KaDeWe from Germany or Printemps of France. The US doesn’t have a true equivalent in terms of eclectic and comprehensive product assortment, but I suppose the closest comparison would be to a premium Macys. (more)
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ad:tech San Francisco recap
On Tuesday April 15, I had the opportunity to attend my first ad:tech event, and speak on one of the Power Panels (Tales from the Bleeding Edge – Game-Changing Opportunities for Tomorrow’s Marketer).
Ad:tech is an interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibition. They do a number of events each year at a variety of international venues. The primary attendees are brands, agencies, publishers, portals, and service providers.
I’m not sure if it’s the intention, but the bulk of exhibitors and content are primarily focused on web based activities (media buying, search, e-mail marketing, web analytics, affiliate marketing, blogging, etc…). There is not (yet) much of a presence for Digital Out of Home, much less retail environment specific content. (more)
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