TV or Not TV?
Frank Dekker, Tuesday, 26th July 2007
In store TV has been around for a few years and despite the positive comments from suppliers and retailers, has failed to take over the nation.
There is abundant evidence that in-store TV works and helps retailers to promote certain products, promotions and offers. There is also plenty of evidence to suggest that the cost and complexities of installing a large network are at best unknown quantities, leading to procrastination and indecision.
As experts in customer experience technology, we cannot claim to understand all the reasons why retailers choose, or choose not, to implement in-store TV. Yet, in some of our projects, we are working closely with the retailer to evaluate the content and model of their in-store TV programming. It is true that engaging and informative content can improve the customer experience, but it is equally true that blasting your customer with single directional TV channels is not only ineffective, but often affects the experience negatively.
Most of us have grown up to appreciate TV for what it is, a passive experience, that we often consume in a reclined mode. Does this mode travel from the couch in the living room to a dynamic engaging retail environment?
Leading retailers such as Nick Tentis, Guru and Harrods are recognising that their retail environment has become a leisure destination, an environment in which to be entertained, a space in which customers engage with the staff, merchadise and other customers. The proliferation of in-store cafe’s and meeting places is just one manifestation of this.
In such a space, TV, of the kind we know from our couch, is inappropriate and ineffective.
Does that mean these spaces should not implement TV, plasma screens and dynamic promotional content?
Au contraire. Dynamic content is a pre-requisite for a leisure destination, a place where we want to be entertained. The difference lies in the mode in which we consume this content. In traditional TV it is passive and single directional. Unfortunately, most in-store TV is like this. Engaging content creates a bi-directional experience, an experience that leisure destinations aspire to.
My daughter still wants me to lift her up to the camera so she can wave at herself on the security CCTV in our local Debenhams. Youtube, currentTV and a host of others work because of audience generated content.
A version of in-store TV in which customers participate, become part of the content, or determine what is shown can be magic. That is what in-store TV is capable of, and what will ensure the medium matches the space, and the content matches the experience. The magicmirror, developed together with acquility, offers exactly this!
Engaging experiences can benefit greatly from well executed in-store TV. A bi-directional experience that enables customers to become part of a personalised retail experience, immerse in the space, and build their own lasting emotional connection with the retail brand - now that would be TV.