In-store marketing is proving itself

It's logical, really. Why spend a fortune on mass media advertising getting consumers to go to the store to buy your product, only for them to be switched to another brand by somebody else who is a lot more active in store than you are?

Getting attention

Sure, there have been shelf-talkers, in-store static and digital screen ads along with personal samplers and demonstrators for yonks, but now the challenge is for advertisers to beat the clutter to get the attention of shoppers and hold it. And most importantly, measure results.

I have seen a lot of great idea but the cleverest I have seen for a while, and also the simplest and possibly cheapest, is from a young fellow called Bosman Swanepoel who runs Basket Ads International.

What he has done is take the run-of-the-mill supermarket shopping basket and place ads in the bottom of it. Which means that the shopper is forced to see the ad because that's where you have to look when you start loading your basket with products and when you empty it at the till.

Paying dividends

The results have been most interesting and prove pretty conclusively that engaging with consumers in-store, with subtlety, certainly pays the piper.

In a Colgate toothbrush trial, results showed that in 24 Pick n Pay supermarkets with baskets ads, sales of the toothbrush advertised in baskets increased by 13% over a previous period while, in the same number of PnP supermarkets without basket ads, sales declined by 25%

A two-month basket ad trial in Builders Warehouse by a construction chemicals company produced a 43% increase in product sales.

Campaigns in Shoprite and Checkers supermarkets and Hypers have produced similar results.

Something for everyone

As far as I am able to tell, this is by no means an expensive exercise and there appears to be something in it for everybody:

• Advertisers - a new medium to expose their brands and products to the consumer and increase awareness and sales of their products, having thousands of mini-ad billboards roaming in-store.
  
• Retailers - in the past, retailers only had to buy and maintain the baskets for their customers, earning no revenue. Now they make money from their baskets.

There seems to be no doubt that successful FMCG marketing involves a lot more attention to in-store activities than before. That successful in-store marketing is that which has something in it for everybody - the retailer, the advertiser and, most of all, the customer.

And being able to get the attention of the customer without simply adding to the clutter.