Retail Networks - Delivering A Powerful Promotions Solution

Successfully engaging highly-desirable demographic audiences in a long-dwell but transient retail environment is attractive to advertisers, but is often hard to achieve. Unlike other retail environments with established promotional channels, garden centres lack any accepted mechanisms for reaching audiences at, or near, the point of sale.

The Challenge

How does a brand, or even a garden centre proprietor, effectively engage and stimulate customers, and encourage them to interact with products and promotional displays? And, ultimately, how do they influence their customers’ purchasing behaviour to encourage additional spend and loyalty?

Retail Networks (RN) took on this challenge and created the world’s largest digital advertising network within tier-1 garden centres – 'Gardening TV'. RN deployed screens in high-dwell areas such as information points, restaurants, and at the cash tills. In the UK, RN currently has over 240 display screens in 45 tier-1 garden centres. These include two of the UK’s largest flagship locations – Le Friquet Plant Centre in Guernsey (part of the Blue Diamond Group) and Bents Garden Centre in Cheshire, voted Best garden centre 2009 by the Garden Centre Association.

Domain Partners

As a technology partner, RN chose Cambridge Visual Networks (Camvine). Historically, RN sold local advertising on their network, but they were looking for a partner who could support their growth and migration to an infrastructure that would also accommodate national and international brand advertising. Camvine’s CODA content management and distribution system, with its easy-to-manage user interface, enables sophisticated content schedules to be simply and efficiently created and deployed to multiple screens located in different zones and garden centres.

Gardening TV

RN’s content strategy was to create a short magazine format, featuring a combination of seasonal gardening tips – presented by Charlie Dimmock – to stimulate engagement, plus local advertising and real-time information such as local weather. In addition, using CODA, garden centres can create and display their own content, from ticker-based messaging such as store-specific promotions, events and opening times, to the communication of corporate ethics and social responsibility themes. As a result, Gardening TV is now a media platform that provides benefits to all stakeholders – from garden centre owners, to advertisers and delivers an enhanced garden centre experience for shoppers.

To find out how Camvine can help you deploy and grow your digital advertising network contact us at steve.hales@camvine.com, explore our website at www.camvine.com or telephone + 44 1223 755155.