Jul
30
Why Agencies Should Care About Shopper Marketing And The Path To Purchase
Filed Under Digital Signage, digital ooh, metrics | 2 Comments
You’ve all heard me discuss the importance of Shopper Marketing and the Path-to-Purchase in the past. The old sofa-to-store philosophies of old just aren’t holding strong. So I was smiling the whole way through when reading Joel’s post (CRO at the ARF) about why Shopper Marketing matters – especially to agencies.
Generally, media agencies have not been great at understanding shopper marketing or retail in general. There are some notable exceptions in the like of Publicis ARC, Satchi X and David Sommer and his group over at Mediaedge. For most, until recently, it just hasn’t really been part of their purview, falling in the larger pool of 245 Billion in trade/promo spending. That has been changing recently and folks in the media biz have to start paying a lot more attention, if not for anything than Joel’s #2 of his top 10:
#2: Shopper marketing offers immediacy and reach and is projected to be the fastest growing part of the media mix over the next few years. Wal-Mart offers a bigger audience than any prime time show. Target is up there too. In the era of fragmented media audiences, delivering a huge audience, right at the “first moment of truth” should not be ignored.
Yes, Shopper Marketing, although fuzzy in what it includes, is growing faster than both Internet and DOOH. Some projections put it in at over $30+ Billion by 2012.
For those of you who don’t know what Shopper Marketing is, Joe answers that very question in the comments based on what the ARF’s councils (which are made up of folks from companies like Unilever) deem it to be:
The ARF shopper insights council leadership agrees that shopping begins well before someone enters the store. Whenever a person begins a process intended to end in purchase, they have started down the path to purchase and are shoppers.
Some of my favorites in Joel’s post:
#3: What people care about as shoppers is different. As shoppers, people are in action mode. They are making many decisions during the course of a shopping trip, filling their cart with diverse products, taking only seconds per decision. When people are shopping they are motivated by different messages than they are as consumers (more price-related and solution-based). Shoppers want a highly shoppable environment which is tricky because 99% of the products in the store are irrelevant to the shopper’s mission on a given trip.
#4: Shopper marketing gives you unique opportunities to be relevant. Retailers have different store formats that are geared to serve their local clientele. Some formats match the local ethnic concentration. How will your brand presentation be customized in each store format?
#7: Advertising agencies must master shopper marketing to have a complete offering: those who do not offer shopper marketing services will be viewed as incomplete in their messaging and media planning approaches.
#8: Shopper insights and consumer insights are different things. Consumer insights study the relationship and expectations a person has regarding brand alternatives. Shopper insights study how people put preferences into action in the context of replenishment needs, search for solutions, promotional offers, and the retail environment. The research tools, questionnaires, and mental models are all different.
#9: Studying the path to purchase offers a new approach to media planning. Some product categories are characterized by brands being decided on before entering the store (e.g. cigarettes, soft drinks, iPhones). For them, shopper marketing is less important and off-premise is more important. Other brands are chosen in-store mostly (store brands, lower priced alternatives, impulse items) and shopper marketing is a must.
One thing I feel Joel doesn’t touch on is understanding/communicating “What Retail Is” beyond the typical explanation of a retail store carrying 100,000 SKUs. Retail may be different things for very different industries. For instance, Bars, nighclubs, Convenience Stores, Hotels and the like may not be seen as retail for Unilever but they are most definitely known as “retail” to the likes of Diageo, Coors and Patron. In the same way, a pharmaceutical company may view a Doctor office as “retail” (while you may buy drugs at a pharmacy, you make the purchase decision at and with the Doctor). I just listed off a couple Billion dollar companies/industries that may not typically be recognized in ARF shopper marketing philosophy but the philosophy of Path-to-Purchase/Shopper Marketing applies in the same way.
What I did find fascinating is that while Joel’s own definition of Shopper Marketing states that Shopper Marketing begins WAY before the store, all of the focus for insight in his top ten is generally at the retail environment/location.
My feeling is that Shopper Marketing as a MEDIUM and MEDIA need to connect both retail and the Path-To-Retail more suscinctly (read: consistency in messaging and creative/promotional handoff) if it is to mature as a science and an art.
Great job though Joel! Keep it up. The article can be found here
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Jul
17
Digital OOH Revenue Trends Up, Knowledge of Space Down
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, digital ooh, metrics | Leave a Comment
While there are a lot of rosy numbers, predictions and positive news coming out about Digital OOH from stats, growth analysis and the use of the medium, it’s always a kick in the teeth to realize that folks still really don’t know what makes up the full scope of the Digital OOH space.
If you speak to the average ad layman about DOOH, they generally may recognize some of the more prevalent forms of DOOH such as Gas Stations or Elevators but many simply don’t get the opportunity to end up in the other forms of venues such as malls or convenience stores and so are unaware of the huge amount of opportunities out there. For example, I haven’t actually been IN a mall or Dr Office myself in over 4 years (other than to review DOOH installs)…it’s just not my stage in life or what I do so how would I otherwise run into these forms of DOOH media if I wasn’t in the business?
Case in point Media Life Magazine had a piece earlier this week that painted a relatively rosy picture and a fast recovery for the OOH medium in general. That’s great news and Brian Weiser from Magna is bullish on DOOH and it’s play in driving that growth. As he says:
Place-based media, such as sports stadium ads, digital advertising and cinema will all boost outdoor over the next few years, Wieser predicts.
He says that this year there are 1,519 digital billboards, more than double the number just two years ago. That figure is expected to grow by about 100 per year as controversy over the safety risks of the digital displays dies down
What is disconcerting, to say the least, is to read further down and look into their “analysis” of what they call “Alternative” Outdoor:
Notice anything wrong with this?
Magna is completely aware that there are 265,455 “faces” for advertising on buses…but he has NO concept of how many digital Convenience Store “faces” there are.
2nd problem?
Listed here are only FOUR categories for “Alternative/Digital” (”Video Networks” is not a category). As many of you know, my company has done a fairly exhaustive breakdown of where we know these DOOH screens exist and we break them down into 16 top-line categories and over 70 sub-categories. Some of these top line categories are:
| Airport | Convenience Store |
| College | Entertainment |
| Hospitality | Gas Station |
| Grocery | Office Building |
| Personal Care | Retail |
| Health Care | Shopping Centers |
| Transit |
Under “Healthcare” however, you may have DOOH displays in Pediatric, GP, Cardiac, OBGYN, etc…the list goes on and on.
The problem is, if Magna 1.) Doesn’t know how large the list of possible locations actually IS and 2.) Doesn’t know how many are in each category….how the heck can they help support planning or strategy decisions to the media teams they support?
I don’t blame Magna at all for this and OVAB is working hard to get folks like this to understand the true scope and scale of the medium but we have some way to go to let folks understand that there are millions of screens out there that most definitely fit into some of their plans.
Maybe the report does dig deeper and they do have more info but, from the tone and content of the article, it doesn’t sound like it.
Sphere: Related ContentJul
16
When Contextual Advertising Goes Wrong…Or Maybe Right?
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, digital ooh, humor | 1 Comment
Depending on whose side of the coin you’re looking at this from, this is either great…or crappy. Toyota must have been chuckling over this one.
Context is very important in advertising and recent studies are showing 10x the returns/ROI when a campaign is more contextually targeted. That being said, I couldn’t help but have a good belly laugh this morning when I saw this story on the Wall Street Journal’s web site, on GMs efforts to retool Buick as a youth brand.
What got me chuckling was the following screen shot
Notice the nice little Youthful Toyota Corolla ad next to the copy? A win for Toyota to be sure and GM didn’t have much control over this but I wouldn’t be too happy as Buick’s brand manager.
Lessons learned in this for future contextual controls in Digital OOH. Brands don’t like this sort of thing and the DOOH industry needs to be active in not letting this type of thing happen to our customers.
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15
The Case for OOH and SMS in Auto
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, Mobile, digital ooh, metrics | Leave a Comment
While I haven’t seen him in a while, my buddy Marc Belcourt over at BMW is doing some great things with the new Z4 and his outdoor promotions and is really making the case for smart outdoor executions and how SMS can help to prove out some of the effectiveness.
While more of a OOH Merchandiser than “ads”, BMW used SMS and a couple of 40″ screens to promote their test drive program.
The conversion rate from those who text to those who actually FULLY REGISTER is an astounding 12.5% through mobile. That figure doesn’t even include those who go online on their own or just show up at the dealer based on the promotion.
This, added to Porsche’s SMS program last year that drove 22% of the total campaign has got to have the auto industry talking.
Obviously, when converting this into a larger true “campaign” that has scale, you will see these numbers go down (it’s just way too expensive to put Z4s in front of every luxury hotel 
) and if you don’t have a car that’s as sexy to promote as Marc’s Z4 you’ll probably see it go down as well but this does prove out that using SMS in OOH with an effective consumer value prop DELIVERS.
Hats off to you Mark and we should grab a beer soon and chat about doing this targeted in ALL DIGITAL!
The original article can be found here
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14
4X Growth in Digital OOH Ad Revenue
Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage, digital ooh | Leave a Comment
Interesting post on Digital Signage Universe, quoting a report from ReportLinker.com that Ad revenues on DOOH in Europe will quadruple by 2012 (from 2007).
The added value of digital OOH formats over traditional OOH formats (superior impact of moving image, creative and dynamic copy, booking flexibility and scalability, etc) allows contractor to sell inventory at premium rates.
Not fully sure how nascent or not the DOOH ad sales game is in Europe so others there will have to weigh in on that front.
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