White Paper Madness Giveaway - Clean Store, Digital Retail...

I haven't posted anything lately because we have been slaving away at work on a couple of interesting white papers regarding the in-store world.

An associate of mine wrote a very interesting piece cleverly titled, Clean Store Policy: A Point of View. As the title suggests, he delivers our point of view on current trends in Clean Store Policies. (just messing with you Andrew, its a great title).

As for myself, I have been working closely with Craig and Morgan to launch our new Digitail™ intiative. Digitiail is a new focus at Integer around the convergence of the digital and retail spaces. Technology shifts and changing shopper behaviors, in addition to a number of other factors led us down this path. Take a look here to find out more.

White Paper: Women and consumer electronics: A love story

Wanted to throw a shout to our office in Dallas who have just produced a new white paper based on a Consumer Electronics Study undertaken in 2007. The paper looks at the needs and wants of the female shopper in the Consumer Electronics category and offers some thoughts on how to effectively engage them. Head over to shopperculture.com to check it out.

Safeway goes Hollywood

I'm feeling a little lazy, but at the same time need some new content for you all. So, I'm pillaging a post I also recently threw up on our work blog. But, the story and point of view are interesting I swear. Here you go.

The Promo Magazine website recently featured a story about Safeway partnering with Warner Bros. to launch a kid friendly extension of their Eating Right product line. In a marketplace where many popular kids brands are having to turn away from licensed characters for their "not-so-healthy" products, Safeway is taking advantage and moving aggressively with their private label brands. This isn't their first step in redefining private label (see Safeway to Market Private Label Brand to Other Supermarkets).

According to the article, "More than 1,700 Safeway locations in the U.S. will carry the line, which includes Toasted Os cereal, frozen meals, such as chicken enchiladas, and beverages." By adding popular licensed characters to their Eating Right line, how long will it be before kids have an affinity for healthy private label products over long established kids brands, because they feature Bugs, Taz or Marvin the Martian.

PRISM White Paper

Over on our official Integer blog, shopperculture.com, we have posted our first white paper. The paper covers off on our point of view about the impact PRISM will have on the in-store media landscape. We draw some parallels to the impact of metrics on other media vehicles and make some rough predictions about where we think the industry will go. Check it out.

At Shelf Video Gets a Little Better

Recently had a meeting with POP Broadcasting to check out their new demo unit for at shelf video. (See pic to the side and notice coffee cup cleverly place for scale) There are a couple fascinating things about this unit that get me excited.

1. Its wireless and runs off of cellular signals. This means that you don't need to tap the stores internet connection or depend on their IT capabilities. Content is beamed directly to each unit from POP Broadcasting's mothership.

2. Not only do you get the motion activated video screen, but you also have a small text display which can be changed out to display a price point, promo message or whatever you want.

3. Content can be change out in a relatively real time manner via the web. Clients can log in and upload new creative and can even schedule during what daypart they want it to start running.

4. Backend reporting is fantastic. Clients can log in and get reports of how many times what content played and in which stores. Imagine paralleling that with sales data to determine real effectiveness.

Like I said, after the meeting I was excited about the possiblities of this kind of technology at shelf. Will keep you posted in the future with what happens.

New Look, Same Great Taste

No, you're not at the wrong blog, I'm just going for a new look. Its been about a year now since started this thing and it was time to clean it up. Hope you like, if you don't... let me know.

In-store TV Evolving in the Right Direction

When I was home in L.A. over the holiday break, I took the opportunity to check out one of IBN's latest installs of their PerfectMedia In-store TV network. Conveniently, it happened to be in my parent's favorite Ralph's, so as I made the ever dreaded Christmas day "fill-in trip" for whatever ingredients mom's was missing, I killed two birds.

Overall, I was impressed with the offering. Large perimeter screens with their vertical orientation do standout, and the choice of locations, produce and bakery, meant that shoppers might actually slow down long enough to take in some messaging. Also, the creative I happened to see were nice in-store specific executions featuring video within a seeming flash-based branded environment. You can check out some creative samples here.

More interesting however, were the in-aisle placements. In the fabric care aisle, there was this placement. Right at eye level and with audio just loud enough to hear within close proximity of the screen, but not so annoying that you heard it beyond more than a few feet away. As I passed it, there was some content, I think sponsored by Better Homes, about organizing your home or something to that effect. Relevant enough for a placement in the household needs part of the store.

If in-store TV networks are going to live up to the hype currently in the marketplace and truly become a medium of the future, its networks like this, focusing on increasing relevance through context and quality placements over quantity, that will take this vehicle to where it needs to be. Now, unfortunately, they just need to roll out into more stores. Currently only available in less than 100 Kroger stores, PerfectMedia is evolving in the right direction, now they just need build their reach.