Video in supermarket aisles

FOR many marketers, advertising in stores is an increasingly important way to influence shoppers at the so-called moment of truth, as they finally make up their minds about which brands of soup, soap or cereal to buy — or not buy. Now, a company is hoping to bring commercials to the retail point of purchase on screens that will be attached to shelves and above aisles.
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Automated Media Services plans to test its system, 3GTV, in stores this summer. This screen displays an ad for Kraft macaroni and cheese.

The company, Automated Media Services, known as A.M.S., has been working for years on a system that would deliver television in retail environments in a way that would allow media agencies to plan and buy commercial time in stores just as they do on the networks, channels and stations watched at home. The system, which the company calls 3GTV, also includes provisions to verify that commercials have actually run.

The initial test of 3GTV is scheduled during the summer in Maryland and Virginia, at nine stores that belong to the Bloom supermarket chain, part of the Food Lion unit of the Delhaize Group.

The executives at Automated Media Services, who have backgrounds in television, advertising and marketing, have raised an estimated $10 million to develop 3GTV. Investors and advisers include some names well known on Madison Avenue, among them Burt Manning, former chairman and chief executive at the JWT division of WPP, and Stephen Grubbs, who held senior posts at media agencies owned by the Omnicom Group like OMD and PHD.

Source: NY Times

Puma's pop-out shop

Puma has developed a “pop-out shop” that will tour the country as the sports fashion brand aims to allow customers to rediscover the brand’s retro lines from the 1970s and 1980s.

As part of its Rewind Forward project, which launches next month, Puma will drive a customised vehicle that “mutates into a shop” representing those two decades to London, Manchester and Liverpool as well as various festival locations throughout the summer.

The brand said that it may pitch up in car parks, railway stations or even people’s gardens. “The stranger the location the better,” it said.

The shop will be made up of various elements that pop out, which include seating, storage, TV screens and a projector.

The Rewind Forward project, which encompasses other yet-to-be-revealed events, will “enable the consumer to re-discover and see the Puma Archive range in a new light”, it said.

The inside of the pop-out shop will be “decked out with the best archive moments in Puma’s history alongside Puma Archive product”, added the brand.

Source: Retail Week

Mobile charging wellies!

Thanks to a new prototype, powering up a cell phone can simply mean using heat from the feet. The catch is it takes a lot of walking.

European telecommunications company Orange is displaying a new phone-charging prototype in a pair of rubber boots. The company is unveiling a set of Wellington Boots that have a "power generating sole" that converts heat from the feet into electrical power to charge battery-powered handheld appliances.

The boots were created in collaboration with renewable energy experts GotWind. They came about through Orange's efforts to find alternative, sustainable and eco-friendly mobile phone charging technologies. The boots are debuting at the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, where patrons can check them out.

GotWind explains that the power is collected through a process called the "Seebeck" effect. Thermoelectric modules created from pairs of "p-type and n-type semiconductor materials" are located inside the power-generating sole. They form thermocouples that are connected to other thermocouples and placed between two thin ceramic wafers.

Heat from the feet are applied to the top side of the water and cold is applied to the bottom side from the cold of the ground, causing electricity to be generated.

The company states that 12 hours of stomping should produce enough power to charge a phone for an hour. Hotter feet mean more energy

Orange stated in a press release that the Orange Power Wellie follows other innovations created for use at the festival.

Previous projects included the Recharge Pod that used wind and solar energy, the Dance Charter that was powered up by kinetic energy created by dancing and the Orange Power Pump that used energy from a traditional foot pump and turned it into electricity.

Prince Charles opens his own organics store

Highgrove Stores

You know Britain is in a recession when Prince Charles opens a chain of retail stores! Highgrove is The Prince of Wales' organic produce brand and has seen him open it's third branch on Wednesday, despite suffering from a lingering chest infection.

Charles has cancelled a number of visits so he can fight the illness, but is honouring key long-standing commitments this week, Clarence House said.

Among those engagements is the opening of the latest incarnation of the Highgrove store, this time in Bath, Somerset.

Highgrove sells organic foods and lifestyle products, which take their inspiration from his Gloucestershire home of the same name.

The majority of goods in the collection have been created by British artisan manufacturers and craftsmen.

Profits from the sale of products are donated to the Prince's Charities Foundation.

A second branch of Highgrove opened in Tetbury in March 2008, near to the Prince's home, where the first store is open to visitors touring his gardens.

Have a browse and purchase online at http://www.highgroveshop.com

Whole Foods Map of Local Growers

Map of Local Growers

Whole Foods has recently developed this cool map of local growers and vendors. It is still a work in progress but well worth a look. Local partnerships are added all the time and some of Whole Foods' regions and stores aren’t represented yet. Users can search for locally grown producers near them or near a specific store. Check out their interactive local growers map.

John Lewis captures the hearts of Britain

Created by UK agency Adam & Eve for department store John Lewis, the retailer says that the ad – which features a reworking of Billy Joel’s Always A Woman To Me soundtracking a woman’s life story – has resulted in an astonishing 39.7% leap in sales.



It’s certainly capturing the public’s imagination in the UK. Several mainstream British papers have written about it, and I think it’s the first time my parents have ever emailed me about an ad. As The Observer puts it:

“All over Britain, women are kneeling in front of their tellies, heads low, shoulders shaking, tears and mucus dripping from their reddened faces like rain from a suburban gutter.”

I can’t think of another ad, which has such a positive response from the mainstream press so quickly:

* John Lewis ‘Spend it before you die’ ad puts sales up 40% – Observer
* Genius of John Lewis’s everywoman ad wins female vote – Guardian
* She’s ad us all in tears – The Sun
* John Lewis advert prompts iTunes release of Billy Joel cover – Telegraph
* John Lewis’ £6m advert becomes a YouTube hit - Metro
* The £6m ad that’s got Britain talking – and sobbing – Daily Mail

Mind you, at a reported $10m, it had better shift some units.

And as John Lewis isn’t in Australia, if I was Myer or David Jones, I’d be looking at the possibilities of licencing it for this market before my rival does.

Thanks to Tim Burrowes Mumbrella

HMV collaborates with Curzon

The UK’s most successful music and movie chain HMV has opened its first in-store cinema...

HMV Group's conversion from main street music retailer into multi-format entertainment operator is a combined music store and cinema in London.

HMV was on the ropes in 2007, struggling to stay relevant in a music market hit by cost-cutting, the growing consumer trend towards buying digital music, and copyright-breaking file sharing. So it embarked on a major restructure which saw it broaden its portfolio of retail brands and formats. It shed many music retailing assets outside its core markets of the UK, Canada and Hong Kong (although it still has two stores in Singapore), to focus on a network of 692 stores in seven countries, including specialist English language bookstores in Europe and the Waterstones book chain.


While rival Borders UK went into administration, HMV returned a healthy profit, opened new stores and explored new opportunities, such as February's purchase of venue owner Mama Group. It's all part of a strategy blending new brand positioning and store design and driving many other initiatives, such as gaming websites, music streaming, ticketing, live entertainment venues, a revamped loyalty program and a stronger online presence.

Amongst new formats being trialled by HMV Group is an in-store cinema concept, the first of which was opened in the London suburb of Wimbledon.

David Wright, partner with Dalziel and Pow Design Consultants in London, which designed the concept, says it fits the new HMV ‘Get Closer’ marketing statement, with the company aligning itself more closely with people’s emotional relationships with music, films and games.



The instore cinema follows Dalziel and Pow’s design of HMV’s ‘next generation’ store concept, launched in 2008, now being rolled out rapidly, with great results, including in Westfield London.

"The Wimbledon store concept creates a compelling, multi-channel shopping experience that becomes a destination ‘social space’ for people to visit, spend time in and, ultimately, shop," says Wright.


The first HMV Curzon is a 263-seat, three-screen cinema on top of the HMV store. This will not only enable HMV to venture into the as yet largely untapped arena of in-store cinemas, but the retailer will also be able to do more cross-marketing to promote the latest DVD or games releases, using the cinema screens as a base where fans can interact. HMV claims that music now represents just 28 per cent of its UK and Ireland sales, while DVDs bring in 45 per cent and games/technology comprise 24 per cent.

Consumers reach the cinema by entering the front of the store, which will advertise the films on show, and then taking the stairs or lift to the second floor. An entrance at the front of the store allows direct access from the street, which is open during store trading hours and also for evening shows.

Once in the cinema, the multifunctional lobby has a club-like vibe, there is a bar selling food and drink and space to hang out. Customers are encouraged to buy their tickets online and print them out beforehand – a service only offered at the moment in London by two Showcase cinemas – but there is, of course, a box office too.
The screens will be traditional in feel but modern in execution; each named after their colour (red, blue and green) rather than a number.

"The HMV customer in Wimbledon is beginning to see their local HMV as an entertainment venue – as an alternative to the local Odeon, but with so much more to offer. All of this supports the brand vision: to create experiential spaces, not just another transactional space," says Wright.

Project: HMV Curzon
Location: Wimbledon, London
Size 200sqm (500sqm incloding screens)

thanks to insideretailing.