BRANDING, MARKETING & DESIGN
hitting consumers with loads of messages the service allows shoppers to add brand products to their online shopping basket on impulse, in a single click.
Q
How did the idea for Slingshot come about?
M: Slingshot is a self-funded start- up. It started off as university side-project between our Technical Director, Stephen Darlington and myself. James, another University of Lancaster friend, came on board seven months ago and it’s gone on from there.
Q
Which brands and retailers are you
currently working with? J: Slingshot is working with PepsiCo, Danone UK, Kellogg's, innocent Drinks, AB InBev, John West and has sent 10,000 items to the baskets of Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and Ocado. On the strength of this success,
mySupermarket.com has signed up to the platform to allow price conscious shoppers to add directly to their mySupermarket basket.
Q
And what is Slingshot's mission statement?
J: In a sentence, it’s to turn the world into one shopping isle. It’s
our ultimate goal to completely change the online shopping experience. We want to make it an enjoyable and instinctive activity.
Q
In recent times advertisers' initial
enthusiasm for QR codes has cooled somewhat and consumers are suffering from a king of QR fatigue; How do you hope Slingshot will subvert these opinions? J: We debated how shoppers would want to access offline marketing and we concluded that QR coding was the most logical route in that it reflects the impulsive nature of the online experience; it is an easy, fast tool for the consumer to use and a QR reader is easy to download to any Smartphone. There has been a distinct
lack of thought in the implementing of QR codes to date - codes have been poorly reproduced and unwisely placed – in other words brands just haven’t been properly utilising them. We believe that the full potential of QR coding is yet to be realised, and that consumers’ negative perceptions can be subverted; Slingshot will associate QR codes with consumer benefit,
Many brands are
now signing up to Slingshot
as oppose to advertising or promotional activities.
Q
Can you give some examples of the type of
consumer responses you received to the Slingshot beta version? M: The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Shoppers have been impressed with the quickness and ease of the service whilst brands have been excited by the conversion rates they're receiving – double digit on social platforms.
Q
What does the future hold in store for
Slingshot? M: Our over-arching mission is to turn the world into a shopping isle. Long term we aim to expand beyond the fmcg market and into entertainment e.g. dvds, clothes etc. Our goal is that a consumer will be able to open a magazine, walk down the street or browse the internet with the ability to click / scan anything that catches their eye and add the item to basket in one click. Our platform is a seamless, digital bookmark in basket.
Q
And in your opinion, what does the future
hold in store for online shopping in general? M: Online needs to be where the consumer is. This is difficult when you are confined to a screen in the corner of the study or trying to squeeze 50,000 products onto a 3inch screen. Online retail needs to be as ubiquitous and integrated as a social network. It needs to be enjoyable and inspiring. Let’s move online grocery
shopping away from being a chore that you have to allocate time to and instead run it in parallel to day to day life. When you move activity online there is this perception that it will by nature be "easier", but online grocery shopping seems to buck this trend. It needs to offer a level of consumer enjoyment that is simply not achievable at a brick and mortar level. In terms of the future, we see
retailers and brands meeting in the middle. New technologies like Slingshot are allowing brands to create marketing material that is point of sale. Leveraging the fun, engaging content that people love and marrying that with the ability to purchase.
26 | FMCG News |
FMCGNews.co.uk
“Let’s move online grocery shopping away from being a chore that you have to allocate time to and instead run it in parallel to day to day life. When you move activity online there is this perception that it will by nature be "easier", but online grocery shopping seems to buck this trend. It needs to offer a level of consumer enjoyment that is simply not achievable at a brick and mortar level.”
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