Do you think that sounds like science fiction?  It’s not.

All the technology needed to deliver that experience can already be found in the Apple AppStore.

	RedLaser, owned by eBay, is a barcode-scanning application for comparison shopping and finding product information using a mobile device.  It uses the iPhone’s built in camera to take pictures of barcodes and return competitive pricing from hundreds of thousands of stores.  It’s been downloaded over 2 million times.
	Amazon Mobile includes the “Amazon Remembers” feature, which allows you to take a picture of any product, and (using the Mechanical Turk service) identify the product and put it in your wish list.  This isn’t real-time yet, but several product categories (movies and books) are already automated.
	Layar is one of many popular augmented-reality apps on the AppStore which allow you to see the iPhone’s camera output in real-time, with supplemental data overlaid on it.  For example, it can show you the nearest cafe or subway station.

The capabilities of these three apps hasn’t been combined yet, and handheld phones don’t yet have the power to do this all in real-time for an entire shelf-full of product, but at the current pace of handheld hardware evolution, it will happen in the very near future.

The mobile era has already arrived.  59% of American adults already go online wirelessly.  By 2014 there will be more mobile internet users than desktop users.   Shoppers are using mobile technology at a rapidly growing rate and teenagers are the heaviest users of mobile technology.  It is clear that using your mobile device when you shop will soon be the norm rather than the exception.

What will traditional retailers do when the likes of Amazon and eBay turn physical stores into nothing more convenient showrooms for their on-line services?  With Amazon’s Local Express Delivery, they can even neutralize the immediate gratification advantage of a physical store.

Smart retailers are going to need to find competitive advantages to build into their own mobile apps to make sure shoppers are using their apps in the store rather than those provided by their online competition.

Luckily, there are many things a savvy physical retailer can build into their apps to give them a competitive advantage.  For starters, a physical retailers app can know what is in-stock at a given time, so that it can make recommendations for immediate purchase.  A physical retailer’s app can be tied into the store’s affinity program recommending new purchases that are relevant to the shopper based on their prior purchases history. 

Most importantly, a physical retailer is now able to know where you are in the store and what you are doing.  Physical retailers need to consider building near-field transmitters into their shelves, telling your mobile app about the products in front of you, products you’re currently holding, or add-on purchases to a product have already put in your cart.

Are you making your regular family grocery trip and want to see your typical purchase list with current shelf locations and prices?  No problem, fire-up your Safeway shopping app.  Making a special trip for an embarrassing personal product, and want to opt-out of having your shopping behavior tracked?  You can do that too.

Got the sniffles?  Enter your symptoms into your handheld shopping app (instead of a not-very-private public terminal) and the app can communicate with the store, get the current inventory of cold medicines, and turn on indicator lights attached to the cold remedies that best match your symptoms.

Retail stores are definitely going to want to consider digital fact tags and/or indicator lights to provide customized assistance to each shopper.

Shoppers could use their mobile devices to get in the queue for services (deli counter, Geek Squad, Genius Bar, sales assistance, returns line, etc…), letting the shopper keep roaming the store waiting for notification that it’s their turn.

Is the screen on a mobile device too small for the rich experience you want to provide?  No problem… let the shoppers use their handheld to put products in their shopping queue,  They can then visit a terminal at a central location in the store that is able to read their queue and give them a large screen experience for the products they’re interested in.  That’s a lot more cost effective and practical than providing large format digital screens for every product in your store.

Other interesting potential features include using the mobile device to manage wish lists, shopping lists, affinity memberships, and even allowing shoppers to pay.  The mobile device could save checkout time by allowing a shopper to store their preferences (payment method, extended warranty, etc…) and in a single barcode scan transfer payment info, affinity info, and answers to all the annoying questions that clerks are often obligated to ask.

Physical retailers are already building some innovative features into their shopping apps.

	Best Buy’s iPhone app lets you see weekly specials, check your reward zone points, and make suggestions on their IdeaX exchange.  The app allows you to scan QR barcodes and get product info and reviews.  Look for Best Buy to start putting QR barcodes on every fact tag in the store, very soon.
	Walmart’s app will let you get product recommendations from your peers on your social networks, and even help you figure out the ideal size TV for your living room.
	Starbuck’s has two apps which allow you to see the balance on your Starbucks card and even re-fill it.  You can find the nearest Starbuck’s that is open right now (handy at 11pm), store your (and your friends) favorite beverages, and at some Starbucks you can even pay using your iPhone!

The future of mobile-assisted shopping is very bright.  If you’re in the retail business you need to have significant resources invested in developing your mobile strategy.

What cool mobile shopping experiences have you had, or do you wish you could have?

Vampire Power

Recently AT&T began selling the Zero Charger that shuts itself off when a device is not connected.  This made me wonder how significant vampire power is, so I did some quick math…

Taking the new iPhone 4 as an example, I assumed that the typical iPhone charger spends 4 hours a day charging an phone, 8 hours a day plugged into a fully charged phone, and 12 hours a day with no phone plugged in.  The iPhone charger uses 0.4 Watts per Hour when no phone is plugged in, and 2.24 Watts per Hour when plugged into a fully charged phone.  Apple sold 3 million iPhone 4’s in their first month.  That equates to 25 Gigawatts Hours per year, which is approximately $3Million dollars of wasted electricity.  And that’s for just 1 month of sales of one SKU!

Apple sells it’s charger for $29 vs $19 for the Zero Charger from AT&T, so clearly it would be possible for Apple, HTC, RIM, etc… to bundle smart chargers with their new products and save a SIGNIFICANT amount of electricity.  What if Best Buy mandated that after some date they would only sell mobile products that were bundled with smart chargers?

Even lower hanging fruit are all the chargers that retailers use inside their own stores.  In the United States alone, there are almost 500,000 cell phones available for demonstration.  The overwhelming majority of those are connected to merchandising systems (many of which I helped invent) that also permanently connect the phones to an inefficient charger.  Best Buy and Walmart could save a dramatic amount of energy just by using smart chargers in their own stores and/or mandating that vendors use smart chargers in their products.

Bloomberg reports, that in the face of declining financial performance, Walmart’s new COO, Bill Simon, is bringing back promotional displays at the front of store and returning more items that were removed.  Overall inventory is coming back up and pallets are returning to action ally.

It’s unclear how extensive the retreat from Project Impact will be.  It will be interesting to see what effect the change will have on their digital merchandising.  If brands can once again buy a traditional end-cap slots, will they still be willing to purchase the expensive digital end-caps?  Will Walmart be forced to reduce the fee’s for those digital end-caps?  I suspect we’ll see the digital endcaps used exclusively for bigger ticket items and products with complicated selling propositions, as fast moving consumables resort to simpler promotional opportunities.

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.

Contrary to Spicer’s article, Digital Merchandising is already widely used in retail merchandising.  But the majority of deployments are NOT delivering paid ads.  The video based displays are used to enhance shopping experiences, communicate complicated value propositions, and drive incremental sales.

Retailers make money by selling products and services for a profit.  Not by capturing an audience to deliver paid advertisements to.  Yes, retailers do try and get their supply chain partners to share in the cost of operating the store through the use of co-op advertising, slotting fees, merchandising accrual systems, etc…  But at the end of the day, retailers don’t want promotions that merely shift sales from one brand to another, they want great experiences that drive incremental sales.

Walmart has a major initiative underway called Project Impact.  The goals are to focus on the most strategic product categories and reduce their efforts in less important ones.  They are also trying to dramatically reduce store clutter, and improve the shopping experience.  Project Impact is being implemented in the form of major remodels to 1000’s of stores.

Because of Project Impact, there is now less shelf space and fewer promotional opportunities available to non-strategic brands.  If you’re one of these brands, you are at risk for getting a smaller piece of the pie.

So because Walmart is offering viewer promotional opportunities,  won’t they generate less co-op dollars?  Not if they charge more for each opportunity… and that’s where the Walmart Smart Network (aka Walmart TV 2.0) comes in!

For the brands that still have shelf space at Walmart, you can now buy a promotional slot on the Smart Network (that includes promotional content on a digital merchandising system and premium product placement on a Walmart endcap). 

The Walmart Smart Network actually has three different types of digital signage.

1.   Welcome Signs – 57” LCDs w/o audio that hang over the front doors of the store and are (potentially) seen by all shoppers as they enter.  Typically running 5 second spots.  200 million people go by these signs weekly (106 million people watched the superbowl where ads sold for $2.6M).
2.   Category Signs – 57” LCD signs w/ option for audio that hang in strategic departments (Health Grocery, Electronics).  These signs are sometimes mounted in landscape and other times in portrait. Typically running 10 second sports.
3.   Digital Endcaps – that include a smaller portrait format display with product specific content and includes product placement on end-cap.  Screens appear touch-capable although I haven’t seen an interactive one yet. You’ve got to wonder how much the digital sign is helping shoppers with the $0.48 ramen noodles.

Walmart has a team of people that sell these new SmartNetwork promotional opportunities and they are more expensive than brands are accustomed to paying for in-store co-op.   Those Ad-Sales people need to demonstrate a good return on investment for the brands.  And that’s why Walmart has published data on the efficacy of the SmartNetwork, to sell ads, not out of some sort of altruistic gift to the digital signage community. 

Walmart hired Candance Adams a very credible Customer Insight exec with a PhD, and she partnered with DS-IQ which is full of ex-Microsoft rocket-scientists.  So I’m sure the research methodology is very legitimate.  But here is the rub… the raw data get’s interpreted by people tasked with ad sales, and it’s there output that Walmart publishes (don’t we all know better than to trust ad men?).

So when Walmart says that a food item that buys a spot on their network get’s a 13 percent lift in sales, or a health/beauty product gets a 28 percent.  What they don’t point out is that in their program is not just a spot on a digital sign, but also a product placement on a scarce end-cap!  How much of that 28% lift is a result of the end-cap vs. the digital component?  Walmart doesn’t say and there is no (published) DS-IQ study on the sales lift of the end-cap w/o the sign.   When the SmartNetwork was launched, Stephen Quinn the CMO at Walmart said the goal was a 30% lift for the endcap products, which he said would typically result in a 5% lift to the entire category the product was in.  As you can see, Walmart now says that even the most successful product is not achieving that goal.  Further, Walmart doesn’t even try to claim to that the Category signs or the Welcome sign have a measurable effect on sales of a particular product.

The bottom line is that the Smart Network is all about keeping Walmart’s co-op revenue flowing in, while reducing the visual clutter and making Walmart a more pleasant place to shop.  It’s a great strategy for Walmart but it’s far from evidence that digital signage advertisements drive retail sales.

I’d love to hear from Brand Managers that have bought into the program (even privately).  What are you’re thoughts?

Update:  It appears Walmart may be re-thinking project impact.  Also, you can find more photo’s at http://photos.retailgeek.com/Retail/Project-Impact/.

Effective this week, I’m now an independent consultant available for hire.

As many of you know, I helped build my last firm from a small operation with $10M in revenue to a large firm with over $100M in annual sales.  I’m certainly proud of that success, and optimistic about their future.   I will miss working with the talented team we built there.

But the basic business model for firms like MTI, is that people like me craft solutions and dispense advice for free, and those solutions include a heavy dose of products and services that clients can buy directly from MTI.  That is a very successful model, but it really limits the kind of projects that have the right scope to be profitable. 

As an independent contractor, I have the flexibility to find the right solution for a client, no mater what mix of products and services that solution might entail.

This is a tremendous time in shopper marketing.  Products are more complicated, shoppers more savvy, and shopping environments more competitive than ever before.   The old practices are no longer effective and  the next generation of shopping experiences and marketing tools are being invented.  It’s incredibly energizing to be a part of it.

So this week, I began working directly with a few initial clients who are inventing some great new customer experiences.  It remains to be seen if I’ll have the right disposition to be an independent contractor for the rest of my career, or if I’ll eventually find my way to a new firm.  Either way, you can count on me to have an opinion about how we should all be able to shop!

Wish me luck, and fell free to drop me a line if you have any advice.

So I thought Powell’s Books offer to create a digital photo of visitors in front of the landmark book retailer, with their own name on the marquee, is a brilliant way to make visitors feel like the own the brand.

For those not from Portland, Powell’s “City of Books” is one of the largest independent book retailers in the world with over 1 million titles, and is arguably Portland, Oregon’s #1 tourist destination.

For this retail campaign.  Powell’s set up a photo-booth inside the store, with a lighting kit, green screen, and friendly photographer.  They collect some information, shoot your photo, and e-mail you the final composition in near real time.

Taking the iconic photo outside the store would force tourists to stand in the middle of a busy intersection.  So Powell’s gives you good lighting, the custom marquee, and a 20% off coupon, all from the safety of their store.

In the process, they capture your e-mail address and put you on their electronic mailing list.  Everything about the program is well executed.  They developed a series of humorous posters that are used as window displays to advertise the service to passers by.

The form you fill out asks for permission to put your photo on the walls of their store and/or their website, and put you on their mailing list.  You can opt out of any of those, but even the wording of the opt out is well done…

“No, I can’t bear a long distance relationship.  Please do not subscribe me to your newsletter or send me a 20% off coupon.”

When your picture arrives via e-mail it has both screen and high-res versions, with an easy ShareThis link to upload directly to Facebook, Twitter, etc…

With the explosion of social media, giving consumers photos that they can use is an inexpensive, but highly effective marketing tool (social albums, profile pics, mobile phone wallpaper, etc…).  It’s the modern equivalent of the bumper-sticker.  Powell’s has done it very well.  You can see a photo gallery of the campaign here.

What can you do in your store to change “the Store” to “My Store” in the minds of your shoppers?

That’s exactly why companies like Walmart employ “greeters” to welcome you to their store.  But too many retailers delegate the role of store greeter to an employee without retaining the spirit and the results are tragic.

Walmart greeters primary role to “greet” customers, any other duties they are assigned are secondary.  Walmart overtly hires friendly, elderly employees for the role, who evoke a shoppers memories of their grandparents.  They just seem sincere.  Clearly Walmart didn’t invent store greeters (they first introduced them in 1983), but for a chain of more than 4,000 stores and 300,000 employees they do it remarkably well.  Here’s a Walmart greeter with over 3,000 fan on their facebook page.

Unfortunately, too many retailers identify an employee who has some other primary purpose and assign greeting duties as a secondary function.  These employees are usually hired for their suitability for their primary function (inventory or loss prevention, for example) and frequently lack the disposition to be a greeter.  Too often these employees will shout “hello” to a new customer without ever making eye contact, simply to check “greet customer” off of their mental check list.  As a shopper entering the store, the insincere greeting from some unseen corner of the store is very off-putting.

Worst of all, many retailers assign this secondary function to an employee who happens to already be stationed at the front of the store… the loss prevention specialist!  When the Security Guard greets you at the door, he may say “Welcome to the store”, but what we hear is “I’m watching you!”.  If the two most memorable events in the shopping trip are going to be the first and the last, do you really want the first one to be accusing your customer of being a thief?

The bottom line is, having a store greeter is a great idea if your willing to make it a primary role, and hire the right people.   Otherwise you’re probably better off to just skip the greeting, and design some other feature of your store to be a great first impression.

What’s been your best or worst experience with a store greeter?

That’s certainly the most popular question, and a surprisingly difficult one to answer.

When someone asks how you like the new lawnmower you just bought, there is an implied context to the answer (the questioner has a lawn that needs mowing).

The challenge with the iPad is that it doesn’t have a single purpose, so you need to answer how you like it for a particular use-case.

So here are my early impressions…

As your primary browser at home – After one week of forcing myself to use it, I’d still far prefer to be on my laptop.  I think I actually prefer the laptop form-factor on my couch, but even if I preferred the slate form-factor the iPad browser isn’t up to snuff to be a primary browser.  Lack of flash support aside, I need background rendering of multiple tabs, I need to be able to open multiple tabs w/o switching to them, I need faster rendering, i need easier bookmark syncing w/ Firefox, and better password syncing/management.  Frankly, I think a primary browser needs plug-ins.

Mobile Safari is my favorite handheld browser, it’s just not up to being a primary browser.  It’s like taking the worlds greatest golf cart and trying to use it on the freeway.  Apple could fix a lot of this with future software upgrades.

I do like browsing with my fingers.  I’ve owned tablet PC’s for many years, but I’ve always owned stylus only models.  I have a new Lenovo X201T on order that will be my first multi-touch enabled tablet, so it will be interesting to see if I use the touch screen on it.

Home Browser score: D.

As an eBook Reader – It’s more enjoyable to read than my Kindle is.  The screen is beautiful, I like turning pages with my fingers (except while eating lunch). The larger screen, backlit display, and color all add to the reading experience.   The iBooks store has a long way to go (availability of titles is very limited), but the Kindle app on the iPad is an excellent experience.

I expected the iBooks version of books to be better than the Amazon versions because I assumed the books would be in color and feel “richer.”   So far, the titles available on booth platforms look the same on both, it turns out the Amazon books can be in color (it just won’t be visible when reading on Kindle hardware), and I’ve yet to find a title that makes you want to own the iBook version over the Amazon version.

So right now, I’m mainly buying books from Amazon, and reading them on the Kindle app on the iPad.  It’s great because the same books are also available on my Kindle hardware, Laptop, and IPhone.  Thanks to whispersync, if I read a few pages on my kindle, when I pick up the iPad and launch the kindle app it syncs to the last page I read.  Ironically for now you can read your Kindle books on the iPad, iPhone, iPod, and Mac (along with Windows and Kindles), while iBooks can only be read on the iPad.

Using the iPad as a ebook reader does have some trade offs vs. Kindle hardware.  Buying Amazon books on the Ipad isn’t a great experience (did I mention the iPad needs a better browser?).  When I buy books on my laptop, they automatically are immediately delivered to my kindle, on the iPad I have to launch the Kindle app and sync before I can see the new books.  On the kindle I can buy books on the device while the iPad Kindle app doesn’t support in-app purchases.  My Kindle battery lasts a week (2 if I turn off wireless); the IPad needs to be charged every night.  The kindle can be read in bright sunlight, the iPad can’t.  The Kindle is smaller and easier to carry with you.  I never hesitated to take my kindle when I go out (just in case I have some downtime).  I don’t think I’ll carry the iPad with me unless I plan to use it.  I’m fearful of breaking the iPad, and when I do it will be expensive and annoying to repair.  I’ve owned Kindles since launch in November 2007.  In that time, I’ve abused the heck of of them, and  I’ve had two problems; both were arguably my fault.  Both times, Amazon over-nighted me a replacement (they even shipped the replacement to my hotel).  When you break your iPad, you’ll go online to make an appointment at the genius bar 1-2 weeks out, wait for 15-30 minutes when you get there, and then pay a minimum $200 (probably more for the iPad).

The bottom line is that if I had to recommend a device exclusively for reading, I’d still suggest a Kindle.  But the iPad is very good (with some advantages) and because it can do so much more than read books, it’s probably the better choice for most people.

ebook Reader Score:  B

As a multi-media viewer - It pretty much rocks as a media player.    Music and Video are great.  You’d rather have your music on something smaller like an iPod or an IPhone, but if you’re carrying the iPad anyway, it might as well have your music.  It’s fun to watch video content, it would be great for kids in the car (way better than a portable DVD player). It will rock on the plane.  The iPad is also a great photo viewer.  The Photo app is pretty strong, the screen is great.

It even makes for a decent (albeit overpriced) photo frame.  The desk accessories have a way to go, but I have no doubt they will get there.

It’s not perfect of course.  I wish it could accept 1080i video files (and scale them down to play), so I didn’t have to re-encode everything in handbreak before I put it on the iPad.  I wish I could use a windows app to tag photos with events and faces (this is a Mac only feature).

I wish it had a disc mode so I could move images on and off without being synced to iTunes.  I really wish I could sync photo’s to the cloud (even if I had to use mobileme).  It could support more media types, and sync with media media managers other than itunes, but it’s an Apple product so that is not realistic.

I have my work portfolio and videos on the iPad and will use it a lot with customers (too bad all my client meetings this week and next seem to be with Microsoft).

Multimedia Viewer Score:  A-

As a Business Meeting Device – For checking your e-mail or a web-page during a meeting (that is losing your attention) it’s great.  For managing your calendar to schedule follow-up meetings, it’s perfect.  For looking up a fact you need in an excel spreadsheet, a PDF, on a web-site, or from a useful reference app (Anayltics HD, Wolfram Alpha, Roambi, Dictionary) it’s very helpful. 

For taking meeting notes it’s pretty good.  I use Evernote and the IPad version is terrific.  Although, I’d love to be able to sort/organize my notes on the App.

Some salespeople may even use this as their presentation tool, using the VGA adaptor to run a projector, although at 1024 x 768 it’s a bit low res.

Meetings could have been the killer app for the iPad if Apple didn’t have a stylus phobia.  If I could take ink notes on this thing and have that ink converted to searchable text in the background (i.e. Tablet PC with OneNote), it would simply rock.

Business Meeting Score:  B

As a gadget – It’s well built, well designed, fun to use, and fun to own.  There are going to be a ton of interesting apps for this thing.  Some of the early apps are very well done, some are pretty rough; it isn’t a surprise given that developers didn’t have access to devices until launch day.   Alias Sketechbook is cool, although it’s really not a practical drawing tool given that you can’t rest your hand on the screen while drawing with a stylus; it’s not going to replace sketching on a Tablet PC with the windows version of Sketchbook.  Evernote is by far my most used app for now.

I’m really eager to see MindManager (or another mind mapper) done for the iPad.  I need a vector based diagramming tool; OmniGraffle is available but it’s $50 and has bad reviews, so I’m waiting for an update or an alternative.  Salesforce.com will be great in an HD version.  It’s surprising that Apples own Remote application isn’t available in a Universal or HD version yet.

I expect it to be a good platform for social gaming, but the titles aren’t hear yet.  The screen is big enough for real time strategy games.  Two people can sit around the screen for head to head board games or cards.

On the downside, ITunes weaknesses are really highlighted with the iPad.  Managing the apps you own is a real pain (keeping versions straight, tracking HD vs non-HD versions, organizing apps, etc…).

The iPad really needs universal docs storage.  It’s shocking that the OS doesn’t natively sync some file storage with the cloud (mobileme) that all apps have access to.

It’s not intended to be anyone’s only computing device, but for those that asked it’s a non-starter.  Lack of a file system and the need to sync with iTunes mean this is a shuttle not a mother ship.

I expected text entry to be better than it is.  The portrait still requires hunting and pecking but your fingers have to travel further than they do on the iPhone.  In landscape you can touch type, but I haven’t mastered it, and the ergonomics are wrong, with the screen in the same plane as the keyboard.   I wouldn’t be willing to type much more text on the iPad than I’d be willing to do on on an iPhone.  That limits the usefulness of the iWorks apps.

Most people are going to want the 3G version.  The Wifi only experience is dicey once you leave your home or office.  Having to login every time you want to access a network is too much effort for a quick e-mail check.  I own a 4G to WiFi router, and that works but is another gadget to carry.  Only the 3G version supports GPS (although many location services work on the iPad using Wi-Fi estimates).    I pre-ordered a 3G on the announcement day, so I’ll be able to compare the two.

Gadget Score:  A

Conclusion – Early adaptors, jump on in… the water is fine.  You’ll find enough useful things to do with it to not feel bad about your investment.  If you need a practical tool for a particular purpose, it’s doubtful the iPad is your best choice. 

I don’t think the iPad is a game changer.  It’s an interesting platform that is primarily a mashup of existing Apple products.  It’s a capable hardware platform that Apple could develop some unique new capabilities for, but so was the AppleTV so it’s not a given that Apple will do so.

As for me, I’ll happily be using an iPad to show off photo’s, watch media, and play with new apps.

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.

When Pierre Lorillard put the first Cigar Store Indian in front of his tobacco store in 1760, the point of purchase industry was born.  Over the next 250 years, permeations of this industry have labeled themselves “Point of Purchase”, “Retail Display”, “Store Fixtures”, “Visual Merchandising”, “Retail Design”, and many others.   And as you might expect, the practitioners of each of these disciplines make important (and accurate) distinctions between these various labels, but these distinctions are often lost on the rest of the world.  Today “In-Store Marketing” and “Shopper Marketing” are in vogue.  

Similarly, when the Florsheim Shoe Company first put touch screen kiosks in it’s stores in 1980, the retail kiosk industry was born.  This industry has used numerous labels including  “Interactive Kiosks”, “Self-Service Technology”, “Digital Signage”, and “Interactive Merchandising.”

The challenge lies when trying to describe the use of digital customer facing technologies for in-store use.  Digital Signage is one common label, but it doesn’t imply interactivity and has many use cases outside of retail stores.  Interactive Merchandising is used by some, but it is also used by marketers who primary sell products over the web.  Digital Out of Home (which has the cool Homer Simpson sounding” acronym “DOOH”) includes a variety of non-retail use cases such as out door advertising.

So for lack of a better label, I’m going with “Digital In-Store Marketing” (DISM).  Why does the label mater?

Because our industry also struggles with the tools to develop standards, best practices, establish credibility with end users, and all the other things that come with being a well established professional discipline.

The In-Store Marketing Institute is a trade organization that hosts a web portal, publication, and trade show.  They occasionally attempt to have a section of their trade show dedicated to “Digital” and recruit “Digital” members.   POPAI is a well regarding non-profit trade org for “Marketing at Retail”.  They have created a “Digital Signage” workgroup, and even published a glossary and some proposed industry standards.  POPAI, along with several other industries including the Association for Retail Environments / ARE (formerly the National Association of Store Fixtures / NASF), hosts the GlobalShop trade show which has a dedicated area for digital.  The Self Service and Kiosk association has the Kioskcom trade show.  The Digital Signgae Association (until recently) hosted the Digital Signage Expo (DSE).  Several other industries including Infocomm, NAB, and NRF make some efforts to cover some aspects of the “Digital In-Store Marketing” industry.  Several of these players are for profit event and/or publishing companies that mainly want to make money hosting Trade Shows and publishing magazines, and they support the associations as a means to that end.  Some of these host multiple events every year.

This year the Digital Signage Association declared itself a non-profit (effectively separating from it’s corporate parent, event company and host of Digital Signage Expo, ExpoNation.  Instead of bidding to continue hosting DSA’s show, ExpoNation promptly formed a new organization “Digital Signage Federation” to host DSE, and the DSA will now launch yet another trade show, or affiliate itself with one of the many other shows listed above.

To market your “Digital In-Store Marketing” services, you could spend all of your time exhibiting at all these shows.  Buy ads in all the publications.  And don’t forget to buy ads on many of the stand alone websites, such as DailyDooh.  You might also focus on some specific retail verticals and participate in their shows/pubs/events such as Grocery, Consumer Electronics, Chain Stores, etc…

If you were a retailer or brand charged with learning more about using digital technology in stores, which of these resources would you find and use?  What if you were a VAR, Designer, Influencer, etc… that wanted to develop an offering for use in-store?  

If you were a Digital Signgae software company and decided to exhibit at GlobalShop, you might meet some brands and retailers but not many Out of Home Advertisers or Hospitality/Event Venues.  If you exhibited at Infocomm you might meet potential integrators but not many end-users.  If you exhibited at FMI you might meet some grocery retailers, but mostly not ones charged with exploring digital technologies for in-store. 

I got to meet Nikki Baird from RSR at Globalshop this year.  She did a terrific job of covering the show via Twitter, and when she got home she wrote an article “Why GlobalShop is Not DSE, But Should Be”.  She didn’t get to attend DSE this year, and so hoped to meet some vendors at GlobalShop, but when she got there she was disappointed with the lack of digital presence.

Personally and selfishly, I’d love to see one of the shows most focused on retail applications become the definitive resource for brands and retailers interested in using Digital In-Store Marketing.  Because DSE was the show getting the most traction and the DSA is now looking for a new host, POPAI and In-Store Marketing Institute should both be reaching out to the DSA right now.  But if DSA aligned with one of those, they will still have a gap in coverage for all the non-retail use cases for their solutions.  I suspect that DSA will align with Infocomm, which will serve some of the other use-cases well but doesn’t have much exposure to retailers or brands.

The result is that Digital In-Store Marketing is likely to continue to be a confusing and fragmented industry.  As a principal of a firm that earns over $100M/year providing services to retailers and brands, I am heavily solicited by all these marketing opportunities. 

Frankly, all this Trade Show posturing is probably rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  Trade Shows are a dying marketing tool (at least the kind that encourage exhibitors to fund events by bringing extravagant and expensive trade show displays).  The internet has become a far more cost effective tool for communicating with your customer base than the traditional annual shows.  This evolution has probably been hurried along by the global recession which has affected trade show budgets for exhibitors and travel budgets for attendees across the board.  As exhibitors continue to cut back, I hope some new model emerges.  I find it enormously beneficial to escape the hustle of my day to day job and have a chance to rub elbows with all the smart peers in my industry.  Perhaps we not only need some major consolidation of events, but that we also need to see the events migrate from trade exhibits to peer conferences.

I’d love to hear you’re thoughts.

After the first day of the show, show defiantly “feels” smaller than it has in the past (official numbers aren’t out yet).  Clearly there are fewer exhibitors, and traffic on the show floor felt light as well.  The segment of the show dedicated to digital merchandising (digital signage and kiosks) is particularly light, continuing a several year trend, it seems that exhibitors in this space are opting to exhibit at the Digital Signage Expo instead.

Attendance issues aside, there continue to be a lot of great retailer marketers at the show, and insightful observations about the future of retail were easy to come by.

Here are some key trends identified by retail notables and GlobalShop conference speakers Wendy Liebmann, WSL/Strategic Retail; Tom Moseman, Envirosell; Joe Feczko, Macy’s; Lee Peterson, WD Partners; and Ken Nisch, JGA:

• Shoppers will remain more cautious, deliberate and value oriented.
• Online has empowered shoppers with information, yet they have not rejected brick and mortar stores. They want to be dazzled and have an emotional experience when they shop.
• Retailers must understand their shoppers on an emotional level, not just with demographics. 
• In order to create a compelling environment, retailers will have to integrate data mining with a synchronization of all retail disciplines: visual merchandising, store fixturing, design and operations, digital, point-of-purchase and marketing services. No more silos.
• Connecting emotionally with shoppers requires 360-degree marketing embracing all touch points from in store to social media.
• Retailers will have to innovate continually, making it more urgent to stay on top of trends and network with colleagues and suppliers.  It’s no longer enough to develop a prototype store, test it, reset all stores and then forget it. The new normal is a fleet of stores in constant flux.

I definitely think that the global recession has permanently changed shopping behaviors.  I really buy into the theory first put forward by brand marketers at Henkel that traditional demographics based marketing is dead.  You can no longer expect all people from a particular demographic, psychographic, or economic stratus to shop in a certain way.  Instead we need to think more about the specific missions and shopping style of those that visit our stores, and tailor in-store experience to their needs.  Henkel likes to talk about three distinct shopping styles:

Shoptimizers are most likely to be influenced in their choices by pre-shopping stimuli such as circulars and coupons. In fact, this group accounts for virtually 100% of coupon usage.

Mainstreeters do far less pre-planning and rarely save coupons, so their store choices are more likely to be influenced by location, convenience and price reputation. This group is highly sensitive to in store messaging and promotions.

Carefrees bypass pre-planning, and once inside the store, tend to ignore prices and promotions and simply buy what they like.

My own co-workers are doing a great job in MTI’s booth at the show.  Despite the slower floor traffic, we captured as many leads as we have in the past several years, and we’ve had great conversations with many of our client who have been nice enough to drop by an spend some time with us.  If you are at the show, please stop by booth #2230 and say hello.  If you’re not at the show, feel free to use the comments here to share your thoughts.