Last week, there was a fantastic article in Marketing Week talking about retailers increasingly looking to use store fronts and shop windows and turning them into innovative, high impact outdoor ads. In the article, A Window of Opportunity by Charlotte Rogers published in Marketing Week on the 12th of May, it makes reference to a number of brands that have invested in shop window executions recently for a number of reasons.
For Topshop, it was all about retail theatre when they put up a 20m square banner on their flagship Oxford Street storefront sporting pop star Beyonce in a swimsuit to tie in with the launch of Ivy Park, their new active wear range. According to Sheena Sauvaire, Topshop’s global marketing and communications director, the stunt was all about capitalising on the store’s prime position in a high traffic area, using maximum visibility and talkability to reach consumers in a shopping or browsing frame of mind and ultimately to aid conversion.
For online retailer Made.com, it was a realisation that they needed to act more like a high street retailer that drove their decision to invest in showrooms to create a physical touchpoint with their customers. However, it was bringing their windows in line with a wider outdoor advertising campaign, ‘Made You Look’ that resulted in driving up footfall in-store by 10-15%. Annabel Kilner, Made.com’s commercial director views the showroom as a ‘brand cathedral’ offering a great engagement and conversion opportunity with the windows to be fully aligned with all campaign channels in the future.
House of Fraser went a step further to create shoppable windows for their Black Friday initiative last year using augmented reality (AR) technology from Layar. Customers who installed the House of Fraser iPhone app could use a ‘scan to explore’ feature triggered by scanning the window vinyl to unlock a host of Black Friday deals. There was also a ‘scan to win’ feature offering customers the chance to win a £250 gift card. The initiative ran across 13 stores in key cities across the country and according to Sarah Stagg, House of Fraser’s director of digital product, the customer interaction with the app following the Black Friday shoppable windows activity was ‘really positive’ with app downloads up 45% compared to the previous week and rising 26% year on year.
Katie Ingram, strategy planning director at OOH marketing body, Outsmart was quoted in the article as saying that, “There is huge value in tying the message from windows to an immersive experience. Creative campaigns that include wraps and dominations put brands front of mind before the window has the chance to do the talking. This kind of campaign cuts through the noise and helps attract a new customer base.”
You can read the original article online in Marketing Week on the following link: https://www.marketingweek.com/2016/05/12/why-retailers-are-turning-shop-fronts-into-high-impact-outdoor-ads/
We thought it was especially interesting considering the launch of our Window Vinyl format in Coffee Shops last year. Brands like Penguin Random House and Microsoft have invested in campaigns looking to capitalise on the busy, trendy locations of our artisan Cafés and the unique opportunity their window space offers to advertisers looking to cut through the noise and drive consideration and conversion.
