This article by Anthony Deeble, Chief Commercial Officer, HOYTS Group & VMO forms part of a special feature published in the latest edition of Shopping Centre News.
Going to the shopping centre is an inherently feel-good experience. The sights, sounds, smells and deep-rooted sense of community and connection make visiting shopping centres a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
There is no arguing the shopping experience has endured major shifts and transformations, notably through the boom of e-commerce and a global pandemic. Yet while many shoppers enjoy the ease and convenience of shopping online, the tactile and social experience of visiting shopping centres is unparalleled.
Recent research from e-commerce platform Adyen found that, despite the e-commerce explosion, Australians by and large prefer to shop in-store more than any other country.
A large 73% of Australians still prefer to shop in-store, which is significantly up from the global average of 59%. And, since the pandemic and lockdowns, 34% of Australian consumers say they have a new appreciation for being able to touch, feel or physically try products in-store before they buy.
With this in mind, it is pivotal for shopping centres to keep their experience at the forefront of their customer engagement strategy. There are several ways to enhance the shopping centre experience and facilitate heightened methods of engaging with shoppers, yet there is one solution that stands a cut above the rest: digital media screens.
Enhancing the shopper experience with digital media screens
Most shopping centre visitors are there with the intent to purchase. Nothing enhances the shopper experience more seamlessly than a network of strategically placed digital media screens featuring the latest retailer promotions, brand campaigns, centre information and engaging content.
Shopping centres with digital media screen networks provide an upscale communication opportunity for customers and brands alike. With dynamic content offerings that can deliver relevant messages to immediately influence purchase decisions, consumers are drawn further into the shopping centre, and a quick supermarket run could potentially turn into a much longer and larger shopping expedition.
The ‘less-is-more’ approach
Val Morgan Outdoor (VMO) takes a less-is-more approach, with fewer, better, considered locations to maximise audience impact. Screens are never littered throughout centres; instead, we use data and insights to place screens strategically where they’ll get the most valuable attention. This is not only better for sustainability and our carbon footprint but also builds a better ambience within shopping centres.
We use DART, our first-party proprietary and the industry’s most intelligent out-of-home audience insights platform, to determine the best place to capture meaningful shopper attention within the centre. While some providers might place five digital screens in one walkway in an attempt to capture a larger audience, with our strategic placement, we know one big screen can capture an even greater audience without cluttering the centre with too many redundant screens. Placing screens in proven high-attention areas is an example of how quality underpins everything we do at VMO; every screen has its place and is proven to be the best and most effective location for that screen.
Quality above all else
Along with the strategic and considered placement of screens, each features high resolution, with many being 4K, with peak brightness and viewing angles.
DART proves digital screens deliver more than 50% engagement than static, with our full-motion digital creative communicating better and more engaging brand stories. Simply put: we’ve created quality screens with quality placements that can’t be missed.
For example, our innovative large-curved screens are designed with consumers in mind, to create better viewing angles, enhancing the overall viewing experience. They’re always strategically front-facing and obstruction-free, which has been proven to capture a greater audience than parallel-placed screens.
Designing our quality network with a ‘no two spaces are equal’ approach, we work with the shopping centres to complement and elevate their spaces, with the shopper experience at the forefront.
Content-led amplification
While advertising content is an integral part of our network, we also offer dynamic content offerings including contemporary news, and key content pillars of escapism, inspiration and connection, which speak to audiences throughout their shopping experience. We do this through high-quality and popular content via a suite of publications that sit under the Val Morgan Digital umbrella, including The Latch, POPSUGAR, Thrillist and Fandom.
When combined with marketing and advertising material, this content enhances the shopping centre environment and makes the consumer journey and experience more enjoyable. Via our DART platform, we uncovered that relevant content alongside advertising drives the most engagement1, which underpins our approach when it comes to content on screens.
With a focus on content now and into the future, we utilise our network and screens for good to ensure audiences within shopping centres and across our other touchpoints are well connected within their communities and the world around them.
Data creates meaningful connections
Our DART platform has become one of the most powerful insights tools for shopping centre partners to access exclusive real-time data on how customers engage within their centre.
We capture anonymous data that helps our shopping centre partners not only understand their audience deeply, but also utilise key information to enhance the shopper experience.
This information creates meaningful data connections, which allows centres to shape the way they further develop solutions that complement, enhance and elevate environments and provide consumers with a better experience in the centre.
While Wi-Fi – used by many other outdoor providers – could historically provide behavioural insights for centres, these providers are now facing challenges with the key privacy settings change in the way IOS 14 works with Wi-Fi networks. Repeat visitors can no longer be detected, resulting in a discrepancy in recording audience frequency data. Wi-Fi also suffers a disadvantage in understanding audiences. The technology does not have the capability to determine audience engagement levels as it cannot verify if people are actually viewing the content on-screen.
Our DART platform does data differently, going deeper beyond the surface, anonymously providing valuable information on demographic profiles of consumers within the centre, alongside attention gaze metrics – something no other outdoor provider can deliver. VMO has also developed an insights portal for retail partners to easily access these crucial insights, which will launch in 2023.
With consumers increasingly demanding a greater shopping centre experience, harnessing the power of a digital media screen network can not only positively enhance the environment but also deliver on your shopping centre’s bottom line.
