It’s Not the Screens; It’s What You Put On Them
Notes on our journey into tasteful advertising
Screens, they’re everywhere. In your pocket, in your backpack, on your walls. In classrooms, the back of your cab, at McDonald’s. Big screens, small screens, curved screens. Screens you can touch, screens that talk. Annoying screens, awesome screens. The other day, I saw a screen above the urinal.
If you’re of a certain generation, the age of omnipresent screens can sometimes feel a tad irritating. Younger readers may relate, though most are savvy at instinctively or forcibly blocking them out. But let’s get something straight — it’s not the screen anyone is annoyed at — it’s what’s playing on it.
As retailers around the country grapple with their in-store screen strategies, there are plenty of questions to be asked. Where? How many? Who operates them? Whose content plays on them? Who makes the content? Will my store look like Times Square? And yet the most important typically sits in the middle of the list at best and bottom at worst: what sort of content should these screens play?
These days, people can and will opt out. Advertising, in broader terms, has long been evolving to meet this reality but point-of-decision video is even more demanding. Content simply has to be helpful or compelling. It has to inform, connect, or warrant a shopper’s attention.
People can smell a slogan or a pitch a mile away; authenticity is a must. Otherwise, people tune out, annoyed.
We’ve believed this from day one, but walking the walk has not always been straightforward. When we first launched our in-store media platform Loop™, our content model was laser-focused on stories about people. The appeal is obvious: humanity has deserted in-store shopping over time, there are too many choices and too little information or personalization, and we increasingly want to buy from folk who share our values or lifestyle. Authenticity is key here — we’ve held a firm and sometimes stubborn line in terms of requiring brands to feature real human beings as protagonists. The challenge is that while everyone loves a good story, not everyone has one or wants to put an employee on camera. Storytelling itself, however effective — and so it has proven on Loop™ — started to feel too narrow at the point-of-decision.
Enter education.
A couple of years ago, we collaborated with Anheuser Busch on a “category education” pilot — videos intended to educate shoppers about a whole category like beer rather than a specific product. It boosted sales, but just as importantly, it was powerfully additive to the shopper experience. It also opened the door to leveraging research suggesting independent protagonists can be more effective at promoting specific products than those affiliated with the brand, largely due to perceived trustworthiness. Whose recommendation would you trust more: a trained sommelier or the guy selling the stuff?
The result is an ever-growing list of content types, from recipes to virtual tastings, lifestyle stories, to party hosting tips, and of course the incredible human stories we were founded on — all under the umbrellas of storytelling and education — to meet every product, brand, and category. It’s unified by humanity (real human protagonists) and authenticity (no scripts) with a genuine intent to help shoppers make informed decisions. There’s plenty yet to learn, but early signs are that we can be faithful to our mission to promote humanity and responsibility in commerce while delivering forward-thinking content to our brand partners; and genuine value to shoppers rather than annoying them.
There’s no ad blocker in the grocery store, after all.
