"A NEW COMMUNICATION MODEL"

A new communication model

NEW YORK — In-store marketing is assuming greater prominence for retailers and suppliers trying to reach time-pressed consumers who have abandoned traditional leisure pursuits.

"The days of people coming home and reading an afternoon paper or all watching the same television program are long gone," says one chain drug retailer. "Folks are working long hours to make ends meet, and TV viewing is fragmented across hundreds of cable and satellite channels."

"People are spending less time driving because of the cost of gas, so they're not listening as much to the radio or seeing as many billboards. That means one of our best chances to hit our shoppers is when they're in our stores. And people want to get in and out of stores, so we're looking for impactful communications."

Indeed, next to the Internet, the fastest-growing advertising is via media that reaches people outside their homes. "Out-of-home" media ranges from bus shelter signs to in-store television at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

"There's a whole new model of communication planning where advertisers are trying to reach people through the course of their daily lives and use different services and different media to hit them at different points in the day," says Rick Sirvaitis, president of StoreBoard Media LLC (SBM).

"We're grabbing the shopper at the point of entry and exit."

SBM has thrived with "in-store billboards," advertising sleeves that fit over security pedestals, flanking chain drug store entries with 5-foot-high, full-color panels. Drug stores, including CVS Caremark Corp., Rite Aid Corp. and Duane Reade Inc. units, have been ideal for the sleeves, says Sirvaitis. "Drug [stores are] becoming a bigger and bigger factor in everybody's daily lives as they go there more frequently because the stores offer more," he comments.

The panels' cost of $2 or less per thousand impressions is "a real value" that is especially welcome during the current economic slide, he adds.

"It's the convenience store of America, " SBM chief executive Doug Leeds says of the typical chain drug store. "It was a great place to start, and we've had a phenomenal response."

Retailers generally get all the promotional and co-op spending available from their suppliers, adds Leeds. "We're giving them an opportunity to tap into something that they typically don't receive, which is media dollars," he says.

While SBM communications are inside stores, they're not promotional, he emphasizes. "StoreBoards is an indoor billboard program," he says. "But instead of being miles away, as billboards are, we're aisles away from the purchase point."

Recency is another important StoreBoard benefit, says Sirvaitis. Every advertiser wants his or her message to be the last one a shopper gets before making a purchasing decision, he explains. "If you think about it, you view a TV commercial in your home and then you're expected o remember that brand message the next time you happen to go to a store. Well, here's a brand message that hits you in a very big manner as you enter the store. It's probably the most recent message you will see prior to actually making a decision. And it's a message that comes across as the consumer is changing from observer to active purchaser."