Client
Sainsbury and Sainsbury’s Bank

Brief
We want use every medium possible with which to communicate better with our customers in-store. Will having our own in-store digital television - a relatively unproven medium - add to our marketing mix, or merely annoy customers during their shopping journey?

Approach
Working closely with the Sainsbury’s Local Marketing, IT, Revenue Generation and Brand Marketing teams (as well as chosen suppliers Sony, Litmus and New Crane, publishers of Sainsbury's Magazine) communications agency shining-red partnership – sister company to Cornerstone – devised an innovative strategy which moved in-store television from a supplier focus to a medium which looked at digital television from the customer’s point of view. Building on Sainsbury's own research, we established key “archetypal” Sainsbury customers and worked with them to understand their shopping moods, missions and mindsets, their category emotions and purchasing hierarchy. From this we developed a tone of voice and media mix (to be shown on fifteen category-based channels) which informed the content development. The content was based on information of real value to the customer, shown on ergonomically placed screens within the customer's cone of vision, offering both peripheral encounters and repeated chances to view during a rational shopping journey. Advertisers were brought on board from the start to act as media partners rather than as simple providers of little-watched ads, offering them category dominance as an incentive to sponsor individual channels.

Outcome
This new channel, Fresh TV, proved that in-store television could be both natural and watchable. A totally new means of evaluating and costing screen space was developed. The trial which began with three stores is moving into a wider rollout across the estate. From a business case point of view, the trial results were independently verified by TNS with like-on-like increase in sales, and the whole channel is now sponsored by national advertisers.

Feedback
“We knew digital TV had the potential to be a really effective customer communication medium, but we also knew that no one else had looked at it from the customer’s own eyes.”
Rob Crumbie, Sainsbury’s Business Development Manager, Local Marketing.