FEATURE: RETAIL
advantage of the inherent flexibility of digital displays – now it’s informing me, now it’s making an offer, now it’s entertaining me, now it’s part of a co-ordinated branding experience running across the entire store, now it’s part of the store infrastructure.”
EXPERIENCING THE BRAND Increasingly, retailing is about the brand – and the brand experience can be difficult to convey via a simple PC screen, something that switched-on retailers are recognising. Helping create the brand image is a challenge for AV companies. Accurate colour reproduction, for example, is much more important in branding than it is in digital signage – a point made by Scott Pickus, marketing manager at DynaScan, whose company has developed displays specifically for the retail environment. “We’ve paid special attention to colour quality,” he says, “ensuring that our displays deliver a true white. All of our high-brightness LCDs are individually colour calibrated to the D65 colour standard which has a colour correlation to natural daylight.” He also notes that the retail displays designed by DynaScan feature high brightness and 24/7 operation capability. It’s not just about video. Audio too has a key role to play in creating ‘the brand atmosphere’. “The requirement we most
frequently see is for high- clarity room-filling sound with even sound pressure to create an ambience appropriate to the brand,” says Babs Moore, sales director at Amina
THE MOST ADVANCED USE OF AV IN RETAIL IN THE WORLD?
Burberry’s London flagship store is housed in a 200-year-old listed building on Regent Street and, at 4,400sqft (410sqm), is the largest Burberry brand experience in the world. It opened in September 2012. Technology has been woven
throughout it, and the company says that it will become a space for experimentation in technology. It is designed as an immersive audiovisual experience, with almost 500 speakers and 100 screens intended to engage customers through emotive brand content. It features the tallest indoor retail screen in the world – 6.9m high and 38sqm – using over 190 panels of Prysm’s LPD (laser phosphor display) technology. RFID features in selected
apparel and accessories, triggering bespoke multimedia content relevant to the products, while mirrors turn instantly to screens with runway footage and exclusive
Technologies. “In such places, it is unusual for the music to be played particularly loudly, but an even ambience is important. Amina Invisible loudspeakers are designed for locations where aesthetics are key, and ugly ‘dinner plate’ ceiling loudspeakers impact the design in an unacceptable manner. Amina retail customers are typically those focused at the very high end of the market where aesthetics are a key part of the experience.”
INNOVATION More and more, it seems that AV is being designed in to stores, rather than bolted on as an afterthought – and AV
video. Satellite technology enables the streaming of events into the store. Applications on iPads carried by store associates provide
applications are becoming more innovative. “We work on a lot of bespoke projects, so a brand and their agency will approach us with a concept and we will work alongside them to technically deliver it,” says Neil Manwaring, sales and operations director at integrator Arcstream AV. “Recently, we worked with Vauxhall to produce a screen on rails which revealed the interior of the car as it moved past each part of the vehicle. We have created a huge touchwall which lit up a whole Sony store in the correlating colours to the laptop which was chosen by shoppers in Manchester.”
purchase history and customer preferences to enable a tailored shopping experience as well as a link to
burberry.com for access to worldwide stock.
“Retail theatres are a new
trend that we are seeing start to emerge, particularly within the automotive and high-end fashion sectors,” adds Scorse. “No products are on show within this space, so the focus is on interactive technologies to create the experience and gain people’s interest, with products being shown later in the journey. I think we will continue to see a rise in interactive displays being used to create a sensory experience which can also extend the consumer journey by linking with an online strategy.”
“The important thing, and what we always try to do, is to understand what the
The new shop is designed
around the brand’s website and has rooms that mirror the different sections available online.
customer is trying to achieve,” points out Chris Bartram, managing director of Crystal Display Systems whose retail product range offers transparent displays – including displays for food/ drink retail refrigerator glass doors – battery-powered displays and shelf-edge displays. “It’s got to be about more than just novelty value.” ‘Transparent’ seems to be
catching on: Bartram notes that such displays have been used by Harrods, Casio and Nike among others. “Our EYE- LCD transparent displays are ideal for retail environments, because they can be used to combine digital information with real-world objects,” says Eric Hénique, director of
18 February 2013
www.installation-international.com
STUDY CASE
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