Adjusting for consumer height?

Berlin-based artist Hans Hemmert (famous for his work with balloons) threw a party where guests wore shoe-extenders to make them all the same height of 2 meters. Aside from bringing the partygoers all to a common eye level (and eliminating the awkward postures of party talk between the tall and the short), this could be a way of optimising shopper traffic-flow and settle the question of different charge-out rates for shelves, to comply with the new GSCOP?
Source Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

More experiments in public space

Penalties for over-stocking?

Not an application of GSCOP excess-ordering penalties, but a Dutch cannabis shop-owner has been fined 10 million euros for breaking Netherlands drug laws. The Checkpoint coffee shop in Terneuzen which used to serve up to 3,000 customers a day, has been selling ten kilograms of marijuana and hashish per day, vs maximum permitted trading stocks of 500 grams of cannabis at any particular time.

A disappointment for those KAMs wishing to include the coffee-shop in their routine store-check trips (in case of memory-lapse, Terneuzen is close to the Belgian border) well worth the trip for many…

Have a forgetable weekend from the Namnews Team!

The Folding 3-pin Plug, a Lateral Solution for an 'impossible' Problem?

In 1946, it was decided to standardise the UK three-pin plug for all sockets and appliances. However, it has proved a bulky inconvenience in the modern world.
Min-Kyu Choi, 29, a design student from Bayswater, West London, determined to end the 64-year reign of the unwieldy three-pin electrical plug and has won the Brit Insurance design of the year award, by realising that the barrier was the plug, not the socket.
Despite TVs going flat, videos being junked for the slimline DVD and record players being replaced by MP3 devices, the plug remained virtually unchanged for more than half a century.

A lesson for us all in refusing to accept the status quo…

Have a really experimental weekend, from the Namnews Team!

Getting Past the Buyer's Gut-instinct…?

In the absence of sufficient data and sufficient time, a buyer is right to fall back on gut-instinct…
But today, you can do this quickly and inexpensively via online research, in 3 easy steps:

1. We carefully select a sample of that retailer’s main shoppers who buy your category, from a pool of over 250,000 registered panel members
2. We design a questionnaire that investigates the buyer’s key objections and then gather actual feedback from their real category buyers
3. We feedback easy-to-digest charts that makes customers’ views clear, and decision making easy

For an example of what your buyer might need to see, if they are relying purely on gut-instinct, see KamLibrary

By Barney Byfield, POW Marketing, 020 7993 6137 / 0113 322 6454

NIVEA Conversion of an empty shop in Hamburg….

Still think empty shops are just empty opportunities...?

See 'Empty Shop Usage' below

Virtual window-shopping at empty units or bigtime product placement?

Local councils in the UK such as Brighton & Hove (above) are attempting to restore life to the high street by adding fake shop-fronts to empty shops at a cost of £1,500 per unit. The government-funded projects involve colourful graphic designs featuring a range of different shop-types and café/restaurants, which are either taped inside the windows or screwed to the facia so they can be removed and reused as required.

Whilst this is intended as a way of keeping the high street alive in terms of appeal to shoppers and potential investors, perhaps the big idea might be for brand suppliers to see the move as a whole new approach to product placement?

Imaginatively designed shopfronts that feature retail-partner windows and displays of sponsor-brands, varied by promotional period, have to represent cost-effective and novel alternatives to traditional poster-advertising…whilst making a positive contribution to the local community….

Meanwhile, pro-active brand-owners already running with the ball?


NB See this as a long-term placement opportunity. Unlikely that many empty shops will revert to traditional usage because of fundamental changes in shopping habits...
Need convincing?
See 'Kind of Blue on the UK High Street http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDzfzB6nVfI

A new open-door opportunity to re-enter a closed shop for Tesco?

Following the Office of Fair Trading’s (OFT's) year-long investigation into the estate agency sector, the regulator has proposed changes to the law which would allow supermarkets and search engines, for example, to sell property for a flat fee, a change from current levels of 1.5% to 3.5% of the sale price.

This means that multiple retailers and online search engines (Tesco and Google, for those needing pointing) can opetrate via a (low) flat fee....

Under the OFT proposals, a firm such as Tesco would be exempt from the need to check the accuracy of each house sale advertisement on its website. The seller would be responsible.
OFT spokeswoman: "…. we just need enough to start shaking things up and putting pressure on the traditional model.”
Wanna bet?
Have a de-regulated weekend, from the Namnews Team!