The SCREENS.tv Blog

Screen Expo Europe 2008: the future for retail (4)

 

(This is the first of two posts today in which I'll report on some of the highlights of the speaker programme at Expo -- more tomorrow, I hope. Of course, I didn't get to hear everyone, so omissions don't mean anything.)

"If you have to predict the future, you're going to get it wrong." That's how Screen Media Magazine and SCREENS.tv's own Guy Kewney kicked off his keynote in the Advertising Theatre at Screen Expo Europe 2008 today -- and of course, predicting the future is precisely what he went on to do.

Among Kewney's prognostications was that "the Sainsbury's Lesson will at some point become the standard method of doing not just POS marketing, but promotional marketing". This lesson, in case you were wondering, comes from the world of (pre-digital) direct mail, where Sainsbury's figured out that thanks to data mining it could send mailshots only to people who were likely to buy.

And digital just enhances our ability to do that, said Kewney: "We will be able to promote our brands to the right market for a fraction of the cost we have today."

But he raised questions over the viability of the mobile phone as the answer to all a marketer's dreams -- questions that may reinforce the role that fixed screens have to play. When it comes to mobiles, said Kewney, "you have a choice -- either moving pictures or good battery life" -- and nothing is more likely to annoy consumers quickly than running down their batteries with your promotional messaging.

Some have proposed the theoretical possibility of actually transmitting power into a mobile device but, said Kewney, "I don't take it seriously".

Gavin Anderson from Retail Radar disagreed with Kewney on the role of mobile, and had some interesting insights to offer into the shop of the future.

"The single point of communication for the customer is the mobile phone," Anderson said, and -- although the view isn't universally shared -- he's a big proponent of Bluetooth as the means of delivering information (that's information, not mindless promotions) to shoppers.

It's information, Anderson believes, that conveys customers along the sales process. Historically this was offered by the shop assistant; now, for many consumers, it's coming off the Web. So where Bluetooth or similar technologies can add value is by dragging the customers back into the shop to give them information alongside the actual products.

Another interesting example of tech leading to sales uplift given by Anderson was the clothes retailer's changing room. Enhancing the changing room with interactivity can lead to more items being tried on -- and bought.
 

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