Signs... Signs... Everywhere Signs

Don't make Joe Ricci angry. As these recent photos from the In-Store Marketing Institute attest, supermarkets have truly embraced instant-print store-signage systems. This technology, introduced widely over the past few years, enables department managers to print and deploy price- and brand-specific signs on a daily basis. When originally introduced, the signs were small, shelf-edge labels that helped dress up a product on a gondola. However, they're now not only getting bigger, they're also getting slapped onto just about every retail surface this side of the restroom door. Evidently, some store managers think nothing of placing their sign directly onto your P-O-P display header -- a practice that really bugs our retail columnist, Joe Ricci. (See this month's Ricci at Retail article.) Certainly, providing space on your header for a retailer's price sign is a partial solution, but as these pictures show, even that accommodation is sometimes ignored. "Women shoppers are stressed," declares Mary Lou Quinlan, founder and CEO of Just Ask A Woman, a New York-based strategic consultancy dedicated to marketing to women. But when Quinlan made that statement during her keynote address to the New York In-Store Marketing Summit this past June, you could almost feel a roomful of eyes rolling upwards as hundreds of high-pressure executives began mentally comparing their brutal business schedules to a leisurely stroll through Macy's. "Stop," said Quinlan. "I know what you're all thinking. But stress is not a competition, folks." Quinlan's elegantly perceptive point was that executives -- and let's be honest, males, in particular -- must get over their resistance to the idea that women find the store experience stressful. If women -- who Quinlan says account for 85% of everything sold in this country -- say it is, it is, and you should start factoring their reality into your merchandising plans.How big is the P-O-P market? I.T. Strategies, a Hanover, Mass.-based consultant to digital printing and printing press manufacturers, has released a new report in which the company estimates that worldwide P-O-P advertising expenditures were $44 billion in 2002, with $17.4 billion of that spent in the United States alone. Analog-printing technologies (screen, offset, flexo, gravure and photo) make up more than three-fourths of the market; digital-printing technologies about 25%. I.T. Strategies' market size estimate was based on previously published data from a variety of sources including POPAI, McCann Erickson, Veronis Suhler, Stevensen, the Promotion Marketing Association and SGIA. The company also relied heavily on internally developed digital printing forecasts, end-user research and a general knowledge of market activities. A synopsis of the report is available at www.it-strategies.com/news/29.htm, although In-Store Marketing Institute members can view the full 19-page report here.

Signs... Signs... Everywhere Signs

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