by Mimi Nicklin (@miminicklin) It seems to me that in general people like to talk ‘shopper’, and agencies like to claim ‘shopper’, but that often underlying this trendy new money maker is a disinterest from the industry that is so powerful that the discipline is not only an afterthought, but avoided all together.
The perception is that the ‘in-store bit’ is the less interesting, less exciting sister of the rest of the communications mix.Whilst we know this is the final and critical point of actually selling the product, it gets dismissed, forgotten or left to the last minute. The shopper conceptgets left with no time to research, to create or to innovate, with a belief that an on-pack sticker or a busy wobbler will be enough to convert the habitual shopper mom as she flies down the aisle.
In a previous life I may also have fallen into this group of people so I am not totally naïve. I know that producing a TV ad is more glamorous than designing a gondola end, and I know that the photography behind a print adcan, literally, stop one in their tracks. However, I have spent thelast few days wondering why it is that ‘shopper’ in the USA, Europe and even Asia is a discipline full of change and innovation and excitement, yet in SAwe are so often stuck with‘matching luggage’ linked to the consumer campaign that fades into the clutter of retail messaging. Why can’t we see what the rest of the world is seeing so clearly?