One of my favorite marketing metaphors ever is from Advertising Age, which termed the retail promotion / below the line space as "the fanny-pack of marketing: not pretty, and sort of embarrassing, but really functional."
Well the fanny-pack may be undergoing a bit of a makeover. At least that's what you're left to conclude from a few developments of late:
- RGA is "aiming to bring dynamic interactive shopping to the retail environment," opening a retail unit to bring their interactive brains to bear on the signage world
- Quotes like this are popping up around retail circles:
"Increasingly success at retail is less about what the retailer has to sell and more about how they sell it. This is the new experiential paradigm shift in shopping. This shift toward the shopping experience marks the biggest change to occur in the retailing landscape over the past century."
- Retail, media and CPG heavyweights are aiming to monetize the shopping environment and are seeing it as the next marketing frontier. The new PRISM initiative is all about the 'In-Store GRP'. They will ultimately put in-store in the media plan. But it raises the question, what is the 'art' that will complement the reach/frequency 'science'?
- And lastly, Integer, where I work, has created a blog called Shopper Culture around all things shopper culture. It's meant to create a dialogue around all these things.
Join us. And bring your fanny-pack.