The Retail-interactive digital experience, North America.

The retail environment is becoming increasingly competitive, and as a result more retailers and brands are looking to break away from the price vs product consumer mindset and 'being unique' has become more important than ever before in the fight for busienss.

Winning customers by delivering enhanced service, value and a quality customer experience can acheive this, especially in store. In order to do this retailers and brands need to harness their consumer research and find new ways of deploying and leveraging new and innovative in-store marketing technology.

In this evolving battleground for consumer mindspace, it is vital that retailers understand who is shopping in their store and when and then to tailor the communication to address their profile, shopping behaviour and their frame of mind. Industry research has identified a significant group of customer ‘clusters’ – customers that can be linked by mission rather than traditional demographics, and research like this shows that retailers will at last be able to truly accurately map customer flow and where/how they dwell. Furthermore, from the digital Out of Home industry’s perspective, it allows us to truly understand the shoppers’ ability to be aware of, engage with and respond to relevant external targeted messaging during different stages of their shopping journey.

This brings us to the next subject, 'Interactive-digital signage'. Allowing a brand message, sales specials, promotions etc is great, allowing users to interact with a virtual attendant or interactive-catalogue at your store glass window, subscribe to alerts via sms, enter their email address directly, or just browse anything you'd like  to show them is a whole different value experience.

We know the content not only has to be compelling it must also be extremely relevant and delivered when the shopper is receptive to such messaging, in order to interrupt, engage and influence behaviour. Attract, Draw, Engage, & Interact is our model for example, and with using technology such as i-glass (interactive touch thru-glass) allows retailers to use their existing real estate (their shop window) to display in HD and allowinstant  interactivity seemlessly.

Retail ooh/interactive signage models and campaigns:
The most effective campaign will see a retailer strike a balance between messaging browser-shoppers and mission shoppers. This can also mean the difference between further communicating with 'destination location' shoppers and 'mall-walkers and competition shoppers' and with this in mind, the primary aims of threshold screens should be to aid navigation, communicate your offerings, inviting customers deeper into the store, accelerating flow & maintaining a clear threshold, & create a possible CRM strategy/databasing, or further drivers including contesting/sweepstakes.

Another issue to keep in mind is that your messaging strategy always has to align closely to the needs and frame of mind of your customers. A common internal issue with all elements of in-store marketing is that it is not sufficiently aligned with the overall marketing message. While non-store marketing is planned and carried out at board level through well planned and an executed mutli-channel marketing programs, in some cases the in-store approach is carried out at a much lower level, meaning it misses out on expertise and consistency of message, this is where teaming with experts in the field can prove beneficial with a mult-prong approach including elements such as drivers, incentinces, visual appearance, interactive content tweaking, 1-3 year strategy planning, campaign integration and much more.

The key is communication of the store’s message and marketing strategy among all channels, so that the final solution is both aligned to the target audience and the retailer - communicating with brand affinity, loyalty, and recognition in mind. -Bash! Digital-Interactive Custom OOH Solutions, Toronto.