The project, installed by Lime IT at sites including Macy’s, Debenhams and House of Fraser in Manchester and London’s Oxford Street, replaces a series of passive aisle-mounted large screens running TV-style content with an interactive array of displays in among product.
Customers are provided with media content specific to their needs at the point at which they are making the decision to purchase Est_e Lauder Aramis or designer fragrances from the retail chain’s Lab Series Skin Care For Men.
The solution comprises a number of LCD screens and RFID-tagged products integrated with both Remote Media’s signagelive solution and traditional retail point of sale. When the products are picked up, video is played back on the nearby screens specific to the selected product along with cross-recommendation to other products in the range.
“RFID is a means to an end,” Remote Media CEO Jason Cremins told II. “You need it to deliver the necessary experience and to make the interaction as intuitive as possible. If we go up and ask someone to press a button or pull a tag that’s not part of what they’d normally do but by getting it back to the basics of a discrete technology you get far more interaction.”
A special RFID tag presented by a Lab Series Consultant turns the screens into a skin scanner enabling a customer’s skin type to be analysed and suitable products recommended. Real-time statistics of every customer interaction and the subsequent impact on sales at the tills can be fed back to the store or brand.
“Each of the four RFID plates can register 16 different products and each one has a physical RFID coded into it as you would with any form of security label,” explained Cremins. “This provides us with the ability to control multiple tags and upload specific media content for playback when the item is picked up.”
He added: “We’re moving from standard, packaged digital media into solutions that are more interactive. If the solution is owned by the store rather than the brand the store has the ability to restack the shelves, and resync it with new content. Currently RFID is only justified on high-ticket items but that will reduce over time so more and more commodities might feature the technology.”
