Outside in – what does your window display evoke in others?
From a recent trip to London, I snapped some of the shop windows along Oxford Street admiring the trends in window displays and the materials that reflected trends in 2011.
As large format design and print is part of what we do at Oxbow, I am in a habit of touching window and interior displays as well as photographing them and I can assure you, I get some very strange looks but thankfully, have not been carted off by security – yet!
Pretty pictures are one thing but what about the story behind the message we are sending to customers and how do the campaigns we run effect the motivation and moral of our employees and in turn their performance in customer facing roles? I was reminded of the BUPA campaign in the 90’s – ‘You’re amazing’- with the bill boards brandishing the latest amazing facts about the human body and inspirational television adverts with the feel good factor (in recessionary times we need reminding of the incredible things we take for granted). Intended to attract new customers this campaign boosted staff moral too as the campaign was so popular and this in turn increased the company’s profitability enormously due to the pride felt by people within the organisation. In contrast to the warm and fuzzy feeling we got from the BUPA campaign, the United Colors of Benetton presented a harder hitting image to the world (a bloody new born baby still attached to the umbilical cord) a far cry from their previous campaigns of cosy colourful knits and an ethnic mix of beautiful people. It was confusing and certainly attracted much controversy and media attention. This was only the start for Benetton and what followed throughout the decade included stark images of Aids victims, a prisoner on Death Row and hard to stomach images relating to drug addiction. Such ‘Shock’ advertising is not popular with the public as a whole and organisations that believe they have an obligation to sell more than just stuff – take on a huge commercial risk when creating associations with hard to stomach subject matters.
I contacted Patrick Ballin a leading HR & training specialist within the retail sector who used to work for The Body Shop (known for its sales of beauty and healthcare products with a conscience) and asked him about his experience relating to the impact shop window displays has on customers and employees:
.
“Anita always saw the shop window as a billboard to talk to the world about whatever we were doing; multiplied by 52 countries and that’s a reach that most PR people would be pretty envious of. Once or twice a year, there would be an overt Values related campaign message and that was always contentious: the retailers, who live and by each week’s like-for-like sales, would always want a product related, promotional message. Of course, quite rightly, Anita’s view won out and it’s a really good example of brand building versus direct promotional messaging. The most contentious example of all was when she took on Shell for their support of the notorious Abacha regime in Nigeria, which permitted terrible environmental damage and orchestrated the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer friend of the Roddicks, who was a community leader in Rivers State. To their credit, individual shop managers and franchisees all over the world took on the campaign – a stark noose poster in the windows of nearly 2200 stores all over the world. It didn’t directly sell a lot of shampoo or body butter but it was incredibly powerful, memorable and it said everything that needed to be said about what The Body Shop stood for. And it still makes me come out in goose bumps to think of it. Nigeria was expelled from the Commonwealth following its actions and I am sure that our campaign had a huge amount to do with this.
Long after dozens of commercially successful promotions of tea tree and vitamin E cream had come and gone, I can find hundreds of colleagues from that period who remember the Nigeria campaign as a significant moment in their careers: a landmark that really engaged them with what our business was about. So if you want to look at how a shop window can really affect the feelings of the staff and their belief in the company they work for, it’s an exceptional example.
At their best, window displays tell the story of the organisation. They are instantly recognisable and wow you. You know exactly what to expect when you see the stylised white logo on the glass cube of the Apple store near Central Park in New York; and the store delivers 99.5% on that promise. I love Anthropologie for the same reason: the displays are eccentric, eye-catching and very true to what the company has to offer. The Disney Store experimented with really wacky video displays a year or two ago – it said more about what they were about, the theatrically of a business where the sales advisors talk about “being on stage” with their customers, than a thousand Hannah Montana posters would have done. On a very simple level, I passed the garden centre on Handcross Hill this morning and they had turned an HGV trailer into a billboard for their summer clearance: simple and effective – and a wonderfully creative use of the trailers that the end-of-season merchandise had been delivered in.
Part of the art and science of retailing is the most effective use of space: and that outside display space, whether the window or a makeshift temporary display like the trailers this morning, cuts through. So much window display is safe, samey and boring: a waste of
space. The best displays get the message out in a way you just can’t ignore and, on the way, provide something that the store, quite literally, can get behind. It shows that the retailer knows its customer and it invites you in.” Patrick Ballin, Director, Mile One Ltd www.mileone.co.uk
Mile One supports the Rework programme from Retail Trust, free help for people made redundant in retail www.retailtrust.org.uk.
So what does your window display say about you? If you get it right, your shop front can be an inspiration inside and out.
Oxbow will donate 10% of its profits on large format print of store banners & other display panels throughout November to the Retail Trust. Please contact aaron@oxbowmedia.co.uk for details.
