Mall Funiture Advertising: Connecting with consumers

Nearly 8 million consumers visit shopping centres each week in the UK, where half of shoppers make impulse purchasing decisions. That’s why mall furniture advertising is a highly effective tool for reaching and influencing consumers.

Shopping centres present a perfect opportunity to influence consumers close to Point of Purchase (P.O.P). They bring together a wide range of shopping and leisure activities all under one roof, and shoppers get a chance to see, touch, and try out products.

Clear Channel reach more than 1 million shoppers every two weeks with a portfolio of over 400 digital screens in top malls across the country. It’s a big market and it’s full of devoted consumers.

Brands like Danish shoemaker Ecco and boutique fashion retailers Seasalt have taken advantage of Bubble to deliver impactful ads to mall audiences (more of which below).

What consumers think about mall advertising

“If you see an advert for a nice perfume it does prompt you to think ‘I’ll go and have a look at that’”, said one shopper in a video compiled by JCDecaux.

The video makes fascinating viewing. It’s great to hear the consumer’s view of the impact mall advertising can have.

Shoppers drew attention to the impact of large digital billboards to send authoritative messages.

They appreciated how mall furniture advertising like ad kiosks and digital 6 sheets keep consumers up to date with the latest brands and offers. Scrolling kiosks draw consumers in:

“It makes you look at it for longer too, because it makes you wonder what’s going to flick round”.

Wall-mounted 6 sheets are viewed as “stimulating and more fun to look at than these blank walls!”

One couple explained how they pay more attention to ads in shopping malls: “I take it in more here than I do at home. We tend to skip over adverts at home.”

Mall audiences tend to be aspirational and image-conscious. They have a strong intent to buy and use mall advertising as a guide to their purchases. Mall digital 6 sheets in sleek standalone cabinets engage audiences in their line of sight, and wall-mounted 6 sheets influence and shape purchasing decisions mere minutes away from the point of purchase.

Shopping malls are like theatres for advertising, and many brands have played up to the potentially social nature of shopping centres to draw attention to their products. They’re also an arena for experimenting with new technologies.

This Pictionary Surprise campaign from Mattel saw an interactive poster on a digital kiosk presenting a live game of Pictionary with large prizes given to the winners. Sure it was a stunt, but it gave the ad a healthy life online; the campaign garnered over 1.1 million views.

And this Listerine campaign was based on the insight that 60cm is the distance within which close relationships are formed. A segmented footpad activated a sequence of gestures from an at-first-distant man or woman who became increasingly friendly the closer audiences moved towards them.

But brands can engage with consumers without resorting to fancy tech. Danish shoemaker Ecco placed life-size posters featuring a young woman modelling their range of women’s trainers in a Manchester mall. By making use of doorways and the physicality of mall space they created an ad that stood out and grabbed attention. Seasalt are very effective at crafting effective OOH ads that are stamped with their personality whilst using tactics like window displays and thoughtfully crafted online content as part of an effective ad strategy.

Marketers quite rightly pay a lot of attention to the latest developments in mobile, digital, and other more traditional mediums. But it seems clear that the humble shopping mall is not only a great place for brands to engage with consumers, they are places where perhaps the most receptive audiences are to be found… audiences who are not only highly influenced by effective mall advertising, but are grateful for the influence.