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ads in store aisles
Stick-on messages that hawk items on shelves
By Kathy Prentice
From what brand of turkey and cranberry sauce to serve at the feast to which electronic toy to put under the tree, there are a multitude of choices made by consumers during the holiday season.
Even when dollars are tight, families tend not to skimp at the grocery store or in the toy aisle. And that’s exactly where most decisions are made—at the point of purchase.
With this in mind, some advertisers are putting their logos literally in the aisles to influence consumers’ decisions as they look over their choices. Brightly colored logos, even recipes and cooking tips, are printed on vinyl and stuck to the flooring.
To find out how to get your client’s ad on the store floor, read on.
This is one in a Media Life series on buying the new out-of-home venues. They appear weekly.
Fast Facts
What
Billboard-style advertising strategically placed on the floors of food, drug and mass merchant retailers.
Who
There are several companies offering floor advertising. Media Life talked with Floortalk, a division of News America Marketing, headquartered in New York City.
How it works
Ads are usually placed in the aisle in front of the product display.
Branding is a primary goal of floor advertising.
“About 60 percent of our business is tied into new product launches,” says J. Gary Henderson, senior vice president of advertising for News America Marketing.
“It’s the vehicle inside the store to let consumers know about new products. For instance, Lysol has a new scent so they place a three-foot by two-foot decal in front of the consumer in the aisle. It also reinforces what they saw on TV.”
The ads are also used to give consumers new information about existing products.
Cross-merchandising is common.
“You might have Campbell’s Soup with Tyson Chicken so part of the ad is in the chicken area in the perimeter of the store and the other is by Campbell’s Soup. The ad contains menu planning with a recipe for cooking the chicken with the soup to make a meal,” Henderson says.
Floor ad campaigns often revolve around holidays and seasons.
“Thanksgiving and Christmas are the biggest time of year for retailers,” Henderson says. “Seasonal brands inside the store also include barbecue and flu seasons.”
Advertisers are usually national brands and not local businesses, Henderson says.
Category exclusivity is provided in each four-week cycle.
“We only allow three ads per aisle, so if you’re a children’s cereal you have the exclusive right to preempt competitors on that aisle,” Henderson says.
“The conflict for space often doesn’t result from category exclusivity but from aisle availability. On the breakfast aisle you have pre-sweetened cereal for children, hot cereal, syrups, coffee and tea. It’s a hot aisle. So if you sell a cold cereal, a hot cereal and a coffee, the inventory is sold out and there’s no room for an ad for tea.”
Floor ads are usually part of a media mix, Henderson says.
“With a new product launch you typically have television, magazine, radio, and something in the stores to get the biggest reach and hit consumers a minimum of four times.
“Most people go into a grocery store three to four times over four weeks, so Floortalk really provides the ability to enhance your media reach.”
Creative is provided by the advertiser and is most often tied into existing media campaigns.
“The message is brought home through TV or a magazine and then shoppers bring that message with them into the store, where it’s reinforced at the point of sale,” Henderson says.
Ads tend to use more graphics than text.
“For the Tyson-Campbell’s ad the recipe was a visual on the floor,” Henderson says. “It showed that a piece of chicken, the plus sign, and soup simmering on the stove equal a meal. It included logos for both products.”
Creative sometimes ties into the theme of its location.
“A few years ago we had an ad for Uncle Ben’s Rice that was a picture of the product with the message ‘Don’t Get Floored,’” Henderson says.
Tyson used a picture of a cut-out piece of floor with the tag line, “Most frozen chicken tastes like this.”
Companies offering multiple products can use the six-square-foot space for one or more product decals.
Standard ads are three feet by two feet and “Super-Sized” are four feet by two feet.
Die-cut shapes, 3D and holograms can be used.
Ads are printed in four-color offset
The printed decals are installed by Floortalk.
“We’re turnkey,” Henderson says. “We have the decals produced, shipped, collated, delivered to the field and installed.”
Markets
Food stores are in markets including Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dayton, Cleveland, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Detroit, Toledo, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Missouri, Los Angeles, Louisville, Lexington, Memphis, Little Rock, Miami, West Palm Beach, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville, Knoxville, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, New York City, upstate New York, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Tucson, Pittsburgh, Portland, Richmond, Norfolk, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi, San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, St. Louis, Tampa and St. Petersburg.
Kmart is in all 50 states.
Floortalk is available in 6,000 food, drug and mass merchandise stores.
Food stores include Acme Markets, Albertson’s, Associated Foods, Associated Grocers, Baker’s Supermarkets, Ball’s Food Stores, Bi-Lo, Certified Grocers Midwest, Copp’s, Cub Foods, Dillons, Food 4 Less, Fleming, Food Giant, Farm Fresh, Ingles Markets, Jewel-Osco, Kessel Food Markets, Kroger, Mars Markets, Murphy’s Markets, Ro-Jack’s, Seaway Food Town, Sentry, Smith’s Food + Drug, Spartan Stores, Sterk’s Superfoods, Great Valu & Food Rite, Shop N Save, Camellia Food Stores, Supervalu-N.E. and Tops Markets.
Other stores include Discount Drug Mart, Osco Drugs, Sav-On Drugs, Snyder’s Drug Stores, Ames Department Stores, Kmart, Big K and Super Kmarts.
Numbers
Sales lift is +13 percent and the audience is 17.8 million households, according to News America Marketing research.
The average grocery store reach is 2,300 to 8,000 shoppers per week, depending on the store size and volume. The average supermarket in the sample delivers about 6,000 impressions each week, according to Point-Of-Purchase Advertising International and the Advertising Research Foundation.
Point-of-purchase advertising generates sales increases ranging from +2 percent to +65 percent, depending on the size of brand and type of advertising vehicle. Source: POPAI and ARF
How measured?
The industry standard for measuring the impact of in-store panels like Floortalk is to match 15 control stores with 15 identical stores. After an initial 28-day period during which none of the 30 stores has floor ads, an ad is placed in one group of 15 stores. Sales numbers for the control group and ad group are then compared.
The impact on sales is an average 12 to 18 percent increase, Henderson says. Some categories, like soft drinks, which are high volume, are happy with a 2 to 3 percent increase. Independent research companies like IRI are used to conduct the studies.
Research
Primary shopper profiles are divided into five categories by Guideline Research:
- Traditionalists are shoppers who compile detailed lists and spend 140 minutes in the store each week. Home is the first point of contact. Traditionalists make up 32 percent of total shoppers.
- Strivers, comprising 23 percent of shoppers, have hectic schedules and limited time. They would like to be more organized shoppers but tend to make numerous, unplanned trips to the store.
- Anti-shoppers simply don’t enjoy shopping. They make up 21 percent of shoppers.
- Stressors, disorganized shoppers who say they’d really like to get organized in order to save at the store, make up 16 percent of shoppers.
- Casual spenders aren’t as concerned about the bottom line at the checkout as are other shoppers. They make up 7 percent of shoppers.
Typically, Kmart reaches half of all U.S. households, Henderson says.
What product categories do well?
Health and beauty aids, cereal, baking products, frozen foods, yogurt and salty snack foods are the most popular categories in food stores.
“Visibility in the aisle is the issue. Items like toothpaste and other health and beauty aids, which are all in tiny packages, can be hard to see on the shelf. Frozen pizzas can be hard to spot, too. So the decal becomes a product
locater, as well as a vehicle for delivering a message,” Henderson says.
In stores that are not primarily food retailers,
popular categories for floor stickers include toys, automotive, videos and sporting goods.
Also seasonal items like crayons and backpacks do well in September.
“In non-food stores there’s a real emphasis on what’s seasonal,” Henderson says. “The focus is to bring an awareness for existing brand lines that already sell there.”
Demographics
Obviously, many demographic groups shop in grocery, drug and mass merchandise stores,
but floor ads principally target women
ages 22 to 45. Floortalk reaches 65 percent of that group, Henderson says.
“They’re making the decisions. They run the world.”
Making the buy
Ads are sold in four-week cycles.
Lead time is six weeks with creative in hand. However, space reservation is recommended as soon as a campaign is planned, as aisle inventory is quick to sell out, especially seasonally. “Eighty percent of next year is already booked,” Henderson says.
Factors that affect pricing include the number and type of stores. There is generally a discount for volume.
The open rate is $32 per store.
- A national buy of food, drug and mass merchandisers is $34.
- A full-market buy of 50 percent or more of the network is $44 for food and $40 for drug and mass merchandise.
- A full-market buy at less than 50 percent of the network is $47 for food and $42 for drug and mass merchandisers.
- A chain-specific buy of greater than 1,000 stores is $49 for food and $44 for drug and mass merchandisers.
- A less than full-market or full-chain buy of less than 1,000 stores is $57 for all venues.
- Fixed production rates are separate and range from $4,960 for a standard three-foot by two-foot ad to $5,385 for “Super-Sized” four-foot by two-foot ads. Variable rates per store are $15.76 per ad for three feet by two feet and $21.45 per ad for four feet by two feet.
- A die-cut option is available for $1,000 per creative for standard size and $1,075 for “Super-Sized”.
- Add 33 percent for checkout or store entrance placement. Add $5 per location for placement outside a primary aisle or category.
Discounts are available for holdover cycles contracted before printing and for additional locations if
the same creative is used.
Sales offices are in New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco and Atlanta.
Who’s already on Floortalk?
Gillette, America Online, American Dairy Association, American Licorice, Bob Evans, Borden, Campbell Soup, Clorox, Coke Minute Maid, Colgate-Palmolive, Dreyer’s, Eastman Kodak, Frito Lay, General Mills, Hershey Chocolate, Hormel, Kellogg’s, Kimberly-Clark, Kraft, Lipton, M&M, Mott’s, Nabisco, Nestle, Oscar Mayer,
Perrier, Pillsbury, San Diego Union Tribune, Tetley, Travelers Express, Vlasic and others.
What they’re saying
“The battle for the consumer is won at the shelf. If I’m home, sitting on the couch watching an ad on TV for toothpaste, I’m not going to jump up and go buy a tube. My decision will be made at the shelf in the store.”–J. Gary Henderson, vice president
of advertising, News America Marketing
Web site info
Floortalk
November 19, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Kathy Prentice writes about out-of-home advertising for Media Life, penning her stories from the resort town of Traverse City, in the upper reaches of Michigan.
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