News

Marketing in motion

Gesture-based digital signage draws customers into stores.

March 18, 2008

This article originally published in Retail Customer Experience magazine, April 2008. Click here to download a free PDF version.

Virgin Megastores have used gesture-based promotions since 2005.

Virgin has been using gesture-based digital signage in-store as a new and different way to attract customers since 2005.

One of the company's first applications was to promote an album re-release for grunge-rock band Nirvana. The signage featured a projected image of the band's "Nevermind" album cover on the floor of the store, which showed a baby swimming underwater. As customers walked over the image, the water rippled out from under their feet.

Three years later, the entrance to the tri-level Virgin Megastore in New York City serves as a gateway to thousands of customers daily. Most of them are drawn in by Virgin's music videos playing on screens or the racks of marked-down Top 40 CDs that seem to spill out of the entranceway.

But too often the buck, and the customer, stopped there.

Most customers spent their time in the entranceway or flipping through the sale racks at the front of the store. Virgin Megastores needed a way not only to make its store attractive amidst Times Square, but to drive more customer traffic through the entranceway and into the back of the store.

"Eighty percent of the traffic to the Megastore was occurring in the first 10 feet of the store, in the Top 40 section," said Vincent John Vincent, president of Toronto-based GestureTek, a company that designs and installs gesture-based interactive signage. "We installed gesture-based signs in the back of the store to draw attention to the less-visited areas."

Vincent said the plan worked well and that crowds often would gather around the signs in less-visited areas, such as the jazz or world music sections.

Gesture-based signs allow users to move and manipulate parts of an advertisement that is projected on a store window, floor mat or screen. These differ from interactive touchscreens, which have seen a growing amount of retail deployments in the past few years, in that customers don't even have to touch the window or screen to manipulate the ad.

Infrared tracking devices register movements made with hands, feet or the body within certain proximity of the projected image. That motion is translated by a computer that makes objects in the ad react. For example, you may be able to brush leaves or mist away from a logo with your hands or kick soccer balls with your feet, as in a promotion for Cingular/AT&T Wireless.

"It's all based on real-world physics," Vincent said. "What's most important is a real-time reaction that moves as the customer would expect it to."

Taking it outside

In England, another gesture-based sign with a mobile-phone application gained attention in January. Orange, one of the U.K.'s largest mobile providers, deployed a gesture-based sign on the window of its Carnaby Street store in London.

The sign is similar in nature to those seen at AT&T and Virgin, except that Orange's store window allows customers to interact with body motions from outside the store.

"If you see someone dancing around in front of the store window — that's worth stopping and watching," said Gavin Martin, creative director for The Alternative, the London ad agency responsible for Orange's sign. "Gesture-based is all about the 'wow' factor."

London's high streets traditionally are characterized by "retail store after retail store," and can be some of the busiest tracks in the city. With that, Martin said that high street advertising was beginning to look all the same.

Orange's application is unique in that it functions as a customer entertainment and information tool, even after business hours, with no modification necessary to the window.

"We are lighting up one of 120 windows on the street," Martin said. "It's like free media space — it'd be criminal not to use it."

Keeping the retailer in mind

What's most important for the retailer is the advantage that the signage brings to the stores and, thus far, gesture-based advertising has shown strong benefits for both retailers and customers.

1. Gesture-based signage gets noticed. "Even if a grown man gets in front of ascreen and plays with the images on it, that's a memory he's going to keep," said John Payne, president of Monster Media. Monster also specializes in developing interactive advertising applications and played a role in the implementation of Virgin Megastores' signage.

"One thing that stores want is foot traffic," Payne said. "Anything that is going to get them into the stores is going to be a big help."

2. It reinforces the brand. Payne said gesture-based interfaces resonate well with customers based on research that Monster Media contracted. Rates for unaided recall, meaning customers weren't told to look for any particular ad prior to entering a retail space, were high for products advertised using gesture-based signage.

"The uniqueness of this type of application makes customers look at it with much more interest," Payne said. "Static signage and advertising tends to blend into the background."

3. It engages and entertains customers. The rise of digital signage in retail has been a result of positive customer response while shopping. When customers are entertained using gesture-based or digital signage, they are more inclined to stay in a retail store longer, which results in them spending more money and returning for future shopping trips.

Also, Martin said retailers are looking for new ways to attract customers into the store.

"With more people shopping online, stores need to be more of a brand experience and less of a retail store," he said.

4. It gives retailers control. One of the biggest advantages of digital signage for retailers is that it gives them control and flexibility over what is shown on their screens. Most back-end systems for gesture-based interfaces allow retailers to change animations (mist, water, leaves, etc.) and drop in new backgrounds as needed.

"The nature of the ad business is that ideas need to get turned around very quickly from concept to deployment," Gesture Tek's Vincent said. "Campaigns can change very fast."

Just as gesture-based interfaces are a step up from traditional digital signage, new technology indicates that in-store digital advertising only is going to become more immersive and interactive.

"This kind of technology really appeals to the next generation of game players and Internet users. They are used to interacting with everything," Vincent said.

Bill Yackey is editor of digitalsignagetoday.com and a regular contributor to this magazine.