A Ubimo Q&A with Marlow Nickell, Grocery TV

The OOH Opportunity in Grocery Stores

There’s a common misconception that brick-and-mortar grocery is dead. However, the fact is that 98% of Americans shop primarily for groceries in-store. Those in-store shoppers also take 1.6 trips a week, making grocery the highest traffic channel in retail. On a qualitative level, the grocery store is a highly trusted environment that often represents the center of a community. This feature makes it incredibly attractive to businesses hoping to reach their local community. It also offers CPG brands the opportunity to engage customers directly where their products are sold, so there’s a huge convenience factor in play for brands.

“Grocery stores offer CPG brands the opportunity to engage customers directly where their products are sold.”

To understand just how big the Out-of-Home opportunity in grocery stores is I reached out to Marlow Nickell, CEO of Grocery TV.

Grocery TV fis a DOOH advertising network located in grocery stores across the U.S. They help everyone from major brands to local businesses reach consumers in the highest traffic retail environment with engaging video advertising.

Q: What kind of audiences do grocery stores attract?

A: Grocery stores used to primarily attract female key household decision makers, but this is definitely changing. We’re seeing more and more co-shopping behavior with pairs shopping together (divide and conquer) or taking turns. According to FMI, 84% of all U.S. adults claimed they do at least 50% of the grocery shopping. Women still do more of the shopping, but we’re interested in how the continuous growth of male shoppers will affect our business.

Switching gears to age, 90% of Millennials still do most of their shopping in physical stores, compared to 96% of Gen X-ers and 94% of Boomers. As far as shopping frequency, Millennials and Gen X-ers tend to visit stores more than Baby Boomers (2.2 and 2.3 trips per week vs 1.9), which could be due to a difference in household size and income. These are all things to consider when choosing messaging and creative for advertising campaigns on Grocery TV.

Location intelligence is crucial for any successful campaign. Grocery stores are the centers of every community, but every area of a town has different demographics. CPG brands tend to care the most about specific audience demographics since they want to target certain generations or geographic locations. Using location intelligence, you can be more targeted about which customers you’re reaching the most.

“Grocery stores are the centers of every community, but every area of a town has different demographics...Using location intelligence, you can be more targeted about which customers you’re reaching the most.”

Q: What are some of the different use cases and outcomes advertisers can expect?

A: It depends on the type of advertiser. The primary use cases for CPG brands include product launches, market share growth, seasonal campaigns, and product redemptions. To give an example – Red Bull ran a text-in product redemption campaign that gave customers a free can of Red Bull and featured their new summer edition cans. The result was a 67% redemption rate across 118 stores.

A different example was a seasonal campaign another brand ran for their new product during the Super Bowl. That campaign resulted in a 146.8% growth rate for that brand in stores where the campaign ran. These are just a couple examples – overall, CPG brands like that their ads are being shown in stores where people can actually buy their products and food shopping is top of mind. Other businesses primarily use our network to reach local communities across the U.S. We’ve worked with businesses like Supercuts that are often near our grocery stores and want to drive traffic to their locations. We also work with a lot of small businesses from real estate agents to auto dealerships that work with us to build their personal brands within their local communities. Another use case we’ve noticed recently is for public health agencies wanting to spread awareness of specific health issues.

Q: What advertisement has been effective on you personally as a consumer?

A: The advertisements for Quip have been impressively effective on me. It’s because of their branding/design. Plus the frequency in messaging really convinced me over time to buy it, by negating my fears of purchasing.

Q: What advice would you give anyone venturing into this type of OOH advertising?

A: Like any investment in advertising, we always recommend deciding on your campaign goal and expected results before diving in. We think that the type of DOOH we do is especially great for brand awareness since it gives businesses and brands a way to consistently engage people in a highly trusted environment. The biggest mistake we see people make is to directly compare DOOH with other advertising channels and copy campaigns from one to the next. While there is certainly opportunity to run similar campaigns across different channels, DOOH is unique in that it is contextual.

“The biggest mistake we see people make is to directly compare DOOH with other advertising channels and copy campaigns from one to the next.”

For example, a financial institution is running an ad on our network featuring a prominent celebrity with groceries in hand to promote their credit card that gives cash back on items like groceries. We encourage marketers to think about tailoring their messaging and creatives to relate to consumers and take advantage of the unique environment.

For more information on Digital Out-of-Home, property types, audience targeting and programmatic buying, download Ubimo’s The Ins and Outs of DOOH report.