Is Digital Signage for Branding or for Sales Lift? Experts Say …

November 1st, 2007 Nurlan Urazbaev

… for sales, and, may be, a little bit of branding along the way.

11 out of 12 experts quoted in Laura Davis-Taylor’s article “Branding or Sales Lift? Having it Both Ways” spoke in favor of using in-store digital signage for generating sales lift, while the branding function is performed in the background, as an ancilliary process. The article was published in the October issue of the Marketing At Retail magazine and continued the ’branding vs. sales uplift’ debate that, according to Laura Davis-Taylor, is still raging in the industry.

Frankly, I wonder why the debate is still even on. There are already so many existing vehicles for branding, why misuse digital signage airtime when it is best suited for closing a sale?Perhaps there are a lot of agencies and individuals with deeply vested interests in expanding their branding expertise and services into the lucrative world of retail digital signage. Even then, I see no contradiction here: if branding originates somewhere else, use digital signage to extend that campaign and to actually sell the product. What I don’t see is how digital signage can be used as a primary brand-building vehicle.

My naive thoughts: selling can exist without branding, but can branding exist without selling? And, after all, is there a better way to complete a branding effort than to make a sale? 

However, I am glad to see that common sense prevails.

Here are some eloquent expert quotes selected by Laura Davis-Taylor, a renowned retail media consultant, from the RetailWire BrainTrust Query results:

Professor John Greening, Sector Head, Advertising; Associate Professor, Medill Graduate School of Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University:
“Marketers need to look at in-store for what it is rather than trying to transfer another medium’s strength and weaknesses onto it. In the store, aperture is different. At home, I’m in ‘lean back mode’ and looking for a distraction. In the store, I’m ‘leaning forward’ and trying to accomplish something-shopping or buying. So, if the media is not helping me do what I need to do while there, it may end up being distracting or aggravating.
The effectiveness of any medium is always the message. So what we need to do is rethink what types of messages we serve up at each point in time of the brand experience. What makes sense in-store? The message of ‘branding’ in-store gets confused because in the glory days of TV we were all about maximum entertainment. Anything price and item or sales focused was seen as sacrificing the brand. Not true if that information is helping me make a decision on the spot in a store.
Valuable, helpful information at the point of purchase builds the brand in a direct way (like direct-response TV does) while still focusing on results generation. And TV entertainment spots (AKA branding messages) are not the kind of messages that will do this. So the answer is that the brand CAN be built in a store…Just in a different way that’s tied to results!”

Mark Lilien, Retail Technology Group:
“Some marketers push ‘brand-building’ instead of ‘sales’ because deep down they don’t know how to build sales more productively. So they go for the ‘easier goal’: gross rating points. The accusation: it’s easier to buy an audience than to get an audience to buy.”

Philip Straniero, Executive in Residence, Western Michigan University:
“As a Trade Marketer by profession, I am always slanted to take the side of increased sales lift. This is surely a result of my training and a point of view that in-store investments need to deliver increased sales lift and reach a return on investment hurdle rate. I also think that there are ways that these types of tools can be used to grow brand equity with the consumer but the advertising message must be tailored to an inclusionary (not a primary) focus of the in-store advertising.”

Bill Robinson, Senior Executive, QuantiSense:
What do shoppers want, especially when they are in the store? In my experience they have very little need to hear about the brand, unless the brand message is tied to something useful. Usually they want some information about a product or a line that they are interested in. Unfortunately, in-store product information is woeful in almost all stores. Product marketers, if you use your new displays and interactive gadgets to provide this type of useful information, sales will increase. And yes, build your brand in the background, unobtrusively.”

Nikki Baird, Managing Partner, RSR Research:
“In-store digital media is about sales and brand building and entertainment for the shopper. But the implementation costs should be justified by the sales lift alone. If you can get enough value out of your implementation from the promotional opportunities to justify the investment, then the rest – ‘soft’ benefits from a business case perspective – are a bonus.”

Don Delzell, Principal, Retail Advantage:
I believe that the primary reason sales lift is the dominant use of in-store media is that the brand objective ( at the retailer level) has already been met. The consumer has already chosen to shop there, and the beneficial value of reinforcing the belief system through additional brand message delivery is relatively low – particularly when compared to the opportunity cost of using that time and space for an objective not met.
If the retail brand objective isn’t sustained by the shopping experience, using in-line screens to deliver it isn’t going to change the overall consumer affect. We need to reinvent the content so that it accomplishes both purposes. If the product being presented manifests the brand message (and shouldn’t it?), it is possible to script the content so that both product specific messages and brand reinforcement are delivered.”

James Tenser, VSN Strategies:
“The shopper media environment offers layers of higher value for brands – measurable interactions, purchases, and repeat purchase behavior – that should be more valuable than gold to brands. Don’t let the glowing screen fool you. This is not TV. Shoppers view in-store media on their feet, in a distracting, highly stimulating environment, while engaged in a utilitarian, decision-intensive chore. If we deliver and document customer actions, ranging from ‘show me more information’ on up to loyal behavior, we should expect brands to pay lavishly.”

And, finally, as Laura Davis-Taylor put it herself:
“But think about this: Whatever your perception of branding is, it is a means to an end, and that end is sales. Do we spend millions and millions of dollars on marketing to create positive brand perceptions just for fun? No. We do it to ultimately translate into business and dollars. Do stores want to expand on “store as media” just to give people cool places to go? No. They want them in stores and coming back, often buying more. … Branding is one of the many tactics …, but sales will always be the ultimate goal”

I want to thank Sara Dechamps for helping me retype these precious quotes from the hard copy of the magazine.

Entry Filed under: Digital Signage ROI, How to: Digital Signage Tips, The Big Picture, Uncategorized