POP Comes of Age

Technology helps point-of-purchase displays contend with both limited shelf space and limited consumer attention spans.

Christine Esposito, Contributing Editor

When it comes to effective selling, beauty companies need to communicate their brand’s message and their products’ benefits. In upscale markets, counters are staffed with trained (and hopefully friendly) consultants, armed with information to solidify the sale. In mass, that task often becomes the responsibility of an inanimate object: the point-of-purchase (POP) unit.
    
To make matters more complicated, it’s getting harder to capture the attention of today’s consumer, who is flooded with media and marketing messages and has developed a much shorter attention span. Television commercials—the method that for years has been commonly used to communicate a brand’s message and inform consumers about new products—are falling victim to the fast-forward button on the remote control thanks to TiVO and similar technological advances.
    
This, according to POP display executives, has placed a greater burden on a company’s communication efforts in the store, which is where more than 60% of buying decisions are made.

Rules of Engagement

For Boots, Checkland Kindleysides created this unique display for Ruby & Millie.

POP displays, self-serve kiosks and end caps must do more than neatly hold products. To be effective, the POP unit must effectively communicate the brand’s message and engage shoppers.  All the shelf space and signage in the world can’t help a company’s bottom line if it doesn’t make a customer stop, shop and spend.
    
“The key ingredients for a successful retail environment…are attraction, engagement and conversion,” said Andy Turnbull, principal creative director of Checkland Kindleysides Limited, a UK-based firm that recently worked with Boots in the United Kingdom to give the No. 7 and Ruby and Millie cosmetic brands their hip new retail look.
    
Converting shoppers to a new brand is the goal of every company in the beauty market, from the savvy start-up to the long-standing industry giant looking to expand its share of the market via line extensions of a high-profile brand. This proliferation of products has taken its toll on the retail environment and consumers’ psyches.
    
“The battle for consumers’ attention in today’s retail environment is extremely tough,” noted Ralph Wares, global design team leader for DuPont Cosmetic Solutions. “The average consumer’s attention span is very limited, as retailers continue to reduce space in favor of their own label products and high employee turnover means in-store staff may not be adequately trained to sell sophisticated beauty products.”

As always, cost remains a major concern for marketers in the highly competitive beauty industry, and this affects the POP development process.
    
“It is challenging for everyone in POP business—the quest for creativity within a tight budget is just huge,” said Michael Williams, vice president/national sales manager for Shorewood Display. “There is continued pressure to do things cost-effectively while maintaining a high- end look, while breaking away from what’s been done before.”
    

Shorewood Display provides the POP display for Sally Hansen Radiant Nails.

According to Williams, Shorewood often looks to combine simple materials and works with architecture to give companies settings that stand out. The company’s client list includes Del Labs’ Sally Hansen line and industry giant Unilever, for which it creates POP units for Dove.  
    
With a product stable that now stretches far beyond basic bar soap, keeping Dove’s POP units connected, but category specific has been a challenge that Shorewood has tackled head on. “The goal is understanding the essence of Dove and translating that across a wide range of products, lotions, body washes, etc,” noted Williams. “We have to translate the master brand, at same time narrowing the focus at the specific category. There is a multitude of demographics that buys Dove products, but we also need to drill down to the category/product and message and tie the two together.”
    
Another Unilever project in which Shorewood played critical role was the launch of Sunsilk in U.S., which at $200 million, has been one of Unilever’s largest ever in hair care. Shorewood, which is part of International Paper, worked for two years on the Sunsilk project and was highly involved with Wal-Mart on how the hair care line would be merchandised.

Brave New World

Sunsilk’s launch included $30 million for so-called non-traditional media, (including laser-activated motion-detector audio units in malls and motion-triggered digital screens that turn into mirrors in bars), offering evidence that technology is changing marketing strategies, and as a result, POP practices too.
    
Having successfully mastered creative use of plastic, cardboard, metal shelving and colorful graphics to engage consumers, POP experts recognize the role high-end technology will play in the future of retail.
    
“New technology will always play a part in forming the presentation of a brand at retail, but only if it enhances the customer experience,” said Turnbull, who has used a variety of technologies in beauty market projects.  Still, he warned, “They have only been successful because they have added value to the product offer and are relevant to the brand.”  
    
RFID, or radio frequency identification, may further change the POP landscape. While experts see more immediate potential for RFID in backroom operations, it may one day help cosmetic and personal care companies better evaluate their POP efforts too.
    
Gillette’s Fusion razor launch in February included a limited test of the new technology. According to RFID Journal, RFID tags on promotional displays and pallets tracked the product’s arrival at distribution centers and stores to make sure retailers would be stocked in time for the razor’s Super Bowl commercial debut. In addition, RFID readers placed between the store’s stock room and sales floor allowed P&G to see if retailers installed the display on the floor or if stock was adequate.
    
Sounds too much like Big Brother? Maybe. But in an era where companies invest millions of dollars into a new launch, keeping track of the entire project, including critical POP and promotional endeavors, makes sense. According to Point of Purchase Advertising International (POPAI), as much as 50% of promotional displays that have been delivered to retailers never get set up.
    
But don’t expect widespread RFID implementation just yet.Outside of the Fusion project, the primary RFID pilots being tested are in the backroom of the store. “RFID is still in its infancy,” said Darin Yug, a partner with Diamond Consultants, a global management-consulting firm. “[It] is still trying to gain acceptance and critical mass with retailers.”
    
Broad acceptance among consumer product goods (CPG) companies has been slow too. “Over the past year, companies are becoming more vocal now about the drawbacks—high costs of tags, process complexity and redundant infrastructure and immediate benefits,” said Yug. “The ultimate goal with RFID, outside of the efficiency and inventory benefits, is to obtain and utilize near-real-time information for assortment, promotions and replenishment decisions. However, without critical mass, the information obtained is less meaningful.”
    
In a Diamond Consultants white paper, Achieving RFID’s Full Potential, Yug and his colleagues note how the current RFID discussion resembles the debate surrounding the adoption and implementation of the now ubiquitous UPC bar code back in the 1970s and ‘80s. Proponents contend CPGs, including cosmetics and personal care, will move toward RFID in incremental steps, and over the next decade or so, marketers will begin to garner the benefits of RFID on the POP side.
    
“Once retailers have RFID capabilities fully deployed in their store, the advantage of POP in the display realm would be having readers in the backroom (to identify when/if the display is moved to the sales floor), around the store (to identify where the display is placed) and ultimately in the unit itself, which could identify which specific items are moving off the display unit and when—improving information to make assortment and inventory management decisions,” said Yug.
    
Another high-tech twist being incorporated into POP looks to take advantage of PDA/cellular phone-obsessed customers.  NeoMedia Technologies, Inc., Fort Myers, FL, and London-based POP firm The Valley Group this summer announced iPos (interactive Point of Sale). With iPos, which features NeoMedia’s Qode technology (formerly known as PaperClick), consumers can use the camera application in their mobile phone or PDA to click on a two-dimensional smartcode printed on the POS material, which then links to a marketer’s mobile Internet site. According to NeoMedia, marketers could put instant coupons, value-added promotions or product information in the shopper’s hand, or more specifically, their handheld device.
    

Communication Yields Execution  

 
As new technologies (as well as tighter budgets and increased competition) become a greater part of the discussion regarding POP strategies, experts stress the importance of being open with POP designers and suppliers from the start of a project. Not giving enough information about a brand or coming in with pre-conceived notions can hamper the process.
    
“We want to understand the essence of who you are selling to and why those customers are going to buy that product. Designers want to demographics and motivation as to who they are selling to,” said Williams of Shorewood Display.
    
“Rather than blindly guessing, it is important to test new ideas and concepts with a pilot group before developing. It is essential to stay connected to, and coherent with, the brand’s overall image, while also being fully aware of all elements of the marketing mix,” suggests Wares of DuPont Cosmetic Solutions.
     
Checkland Kindleyside’s Turnbull offered more advice on how to keep the customer engaged: never compromise at the point of presentation of the brand or at the point of interaction with the product.
    
“Within the beauty market, allowing the sales process to hinder a customer’s access to products is a common mistake,” he said. “Our research into the many shopper types tells us consumers increasingly demand access on their terms and will vote with their feet if it is not granted.”

Olay Goes to the Mall as P&G uses a limited-run kiosk to learn more about customer base

Understanding how consumers shop and feel about a brand is critical for all marketers. If only there was a lab realistic enough to study shoppers in a true retail environment…
   
To do just that, P&G set up a special Olay counter at the Kenwood Town Centre Mall, nearby its Cincinnati, OH headquarters.
   
Open from Aug. 15 to Oct. 15, the counter was staffed by beauty consultants as well as Olay employees who volunteered their time to learn more about how women feel about skin care and the Olay brand. Stocked with a full line of Olay products for purchase, the kiosk also provided skin analysis by certified beauty consultants.
   
The POP “lab” was crafted by Benchmark, a Cincinnati, OH design firm, to resemble Olay retail kiosks used in international markets such as Poland, Mexico and Russia.
   
The goal of the Kenwood kiosk, according to P&G, was to gain further understanding of women’s skin care needs and concerns, not test the waters on a new U.S. retail strategy for the megabrand, which is sold at mass merchandisers and food/drug stores.
   
 “The design objective was to bring Olay’s visual identity to life in a way that would invite consumers to experience the brand in a new way,” said Sean T. Parker, brand external relations, North American Olay Skin Care.