Does This In-Aisle Digital Marketing Display Set-Up Go Too Far?

May 31, 2024 by Dave Haynes

It would be interesting to get a read on the measurable impacts – sales, obviously, but also things like brand awareness – for this digital in-aisle display set-up in the UK, spotted on Linkedin, for a brand that’s marketing and merchandising what they call crisps over there.

Tactics like putting screens right at the shelf-edge in the aisles have a pretty strong track record for drawing shopper eyes and markedly influencing higher sales, but you wonder if there is a balance to strike and that maybe this one’s off balance, with so much going on it feels a bit like rolling a shopping cart past a bank of slot machines in a casino.

There are LCD ribbon strips running animations for the snacks brand, a vertical display strip extended out from the shelves, and a bank of conventional LCDs along the top, set at angles so they can be seen by shoppers approaching from either end of the aisle. There is also, it appears, another display immediately to the right, perhaps for something different.

I can admire the effort to visually dominate the aisle, but it’s almost – or just is – too much.

One odd note – this must not be something organized by the grocery retailer- whoever it is – because the pricing labels are not integrated in the creative – meaning little paper or plastic shelf pricing labels are sitting over top the LCD ribbons. The slick shelf-edge solutions out there build the electronic shelf labels element inside the digital.

  1. Wes Dixon says:

    yikes (heck of a great salesman though – I wonder if he is looking for a job?)

  2. Jackie says:

    The expression “less is more” is actually true. We always need to think about the consumer and their experience, and carefully balance that with our own brand objectives (here both the retailer and the advertiser/supplier). In this case you could argue that “pick one” might be the right guide. I could go on and on about the operational considerations, etc etc, but I’ll spare y’all.

  3. Jeffrey Martin says:

    Yes!

  4. Jeremy Gavin says:

    I’m generally a less is more person – but if I’m honest I think the goal here is to attract attention and in a chip aisle this might be effective. The numbers we don’t know would tell you. Obviously if they could sync the content it would be better, but I imagine we are going to see a lot more of this – and worse – before stores start to settle into standards. Right now stores are trying a lot of different things to experiment and they should. That is where we are at right now.

  5. Ken Goldberg says:

    My first thought was that this install was done at no cost to the retailer as a proof of concept, with two goals in mind: 1) a rollout if success metrics were met, and 2) an install to point others to, including the industry press.

    The range of different solutions in a small space sure looks like overkill, with no way to know which of the different displays had impact.

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