Fiona Rayner (née Tindall), Head of Experiential & International Operations at Blackjack Promotions, explores the benefits of personalisation in sensory marketing.

A nicely scented business, the ability to touch, feel and try different products, using engaging visuals and the right in-store music are just some of the multi-sensory steps that retail stores are employing to differentiate and enhance the experience over e-commerce.

And a new report* confirms that these measures are working. These steps would, in fact, persuade nine out of 10 shoppers to ditch their devices in favour of visiting high street shops that offer an enjoyable in-store atmosphere.

The study, which quizzed over 10,000 consumers across 10 countries, defines an ‘enjoyable atmosphere’ as one with the right combination of music, visuals and scent – with 78% of shoppers likely to make purchases in this kind of store.

In Travel Retail the sensory approach has always been a big driver in influencing customers, who only have a finite amount of time to make purchases before resuming their journeys.

The report cites the ability to touch, feel and try different products or services as the biggest driver in making consumers more likely to want to buy something while shopping in a store (at 56%).

I’ve always believed in the power of human touch and the benefits of having a brand ambassador to enhance a brand or retail experience. Our challenge now is to try and take this to the next level and to turn these experiences into complete brand stories and to encourage customer loyalty, as well as sales.

This could be through creating a complete themed day around a well-loved character, which tells a story through experiences in passenger lounges and via food and drink retailers.

And while pulling in all five senses – sight, sound, taste, touch and smell – is important, it also helps if consumers feel that the experience is relevant to them.

In the age of AI, algorithms and recommendation engines, digital consumers have become used to more targeted and relevant messages so we need to bring this in store too. Personalisation has become our sixth sense.

More than a third of consumers interviewed for the report (38%) said that feeling like the experience was personalised to them made them more likely to purchase something.

A great example of this currently in Travel Retail comes from Atelier Cologne in Dublin Airport. When a customer purchases a 200ml bottle, they are able to choose a beautifully designed leather pouch for their free travel sized bottle. Brand ambassadors are on hand to create a personalised label for the leather pouch, which could feature a name or a unique message if purchasing for someone else as a gift.

Camus is another great example. It provided Chinese calligraphers at Heathrow around Chinese New Year to create personalised gift tags for customers with every purchase by writing a message or their name in Mandarin. These little touches enhance the shopping experience.

Elsewhere, another interesting finding the report makes is the importance of scent psychology, with one in two consumers reporting that a nicely scented business lifts their mood. I think there’s a lot you can do with scent in Travel Retail to make it a more targeted and personalised experience.

While some retail environments use their own ‘signature scent’ by deploying diffusers in their air conditioning, some of the most innovative retailers are now even looking at using this to promote certain scents, so that when shoppers walk through a store or past a particular display, they experience this overwhelming sense of a new fragrance.

The report also suggests the importance of research and careful application of customer data to make sure the experience is relevant to the target market – especially when you’re looking at the influence of sound on consumers.

Music was cited in the report as the number one factor to improving a shopper’s mood in the store, with 85% of shoppers stating this had a positive impact. But get this wrong and more than half these respondents said they would disengage.

These findings should help all retailers focus on the experiential side of what they’re doing, so that they can create the mooted ‘enjoyable in store atmosphere’ that should see consumers returning to their stores in droves.

The challenge now is to use the data to take the in-store experience to the next level. We need to pull in the best of both worlds, combining the personalisation enjoyed by e-commerce consumers, with the sensory tools that are already starting to lure shoppers back to the high street.

*Mood Media ‘Elevating the Customer Experience: The Impact of Sensory Marketing’

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American confectionery brand, Reese’s, is offering limited edition personalised products for Christmas in Selfridges.

Field Day have created special branded counters which have been installed at Selfridges branches, offering personalised Reese’s products while customers wait.

Utilising the biggest marketing trend of 2018, Reese’s are capitalising on personalisation to improve customer experience and build brand love.

Customers are able to purchase jars of Reese’s peanut butter spread and its Perfect Mix selection box and can add names of up to 12 letters for instant printing.

This personalisation is taking place at Reese’s counters at Selfridges stores in London, Birmingham, and Manchester Trafford Centre, as well as online, while stocks last.

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Quirky personalised gift company Harrow & Green, which usually sells its products via its own website or ecommerce sites such as Notonthehighstreet.com, is again opening a present personalisation pop-up in iconic department store Selfridges on London’s Oxford Street.

Shoppers searching for the perfect bespoke Christmas present for their loved ones will be able to enlist the help of a crew of elves provided by staffing specialists Blackjack Promotions.

Harrow & Green mainly sells through websites, offering a range of customisable personalised products which includes special Christmas stockings and sacks. However, last year, in the run-up to the festive period, it set up a special pop-up personalised gift boutique in Selfridges’ Christmas Shop, with Blackjack’s help.

That experiment proved so popular that Harrow & Green is doing it again this year, with its pop-up set open from early September. Blackjack has recruited and trained a team of four staff, who will be on hand to guide shoppers through the mysteries of Christmas wrapping and help them select personalised gifts for friends and family.

The brand ambassadors, wearing Harrow & Green-branded aprons, will also make the bespoke items, which can carry shopper-selected messaging, including children’s names and dates of birth.

Philip Taylor, who co-founded Harrow & Green with his wife Tanya, says: “Our Christmas pop-up in Selfridges offers the perfect opportunity for us to share our passion for all things beautiful. We’re inspired by modern typography, old-style fonts, and the way text can be combined with original design to produce high quality, great-looking personalised Christmas gifts, stockings and sacks. We need intelligent, engaging staff who share our passion for the beautiful and who can articulate our vision and our brand values – and Blackjack has already shown it’s more than capable of recruiting and training just the right people.”

Fiona Tindall, Head of Domestic Retail at Blackjack Promotions, says: “Blackjack needs fully-trained brand ambassadors who understand the brand inside out, can operate the printing process and embody the Harrow & Green charm. Fundamentally, it’s moving the relationship from being a purely transactional, product-based one to being an emotional, experiential one.”

The Harrow & Green Christmas pop-up will be open in Selfridges until December 24th, 2017.

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TRO Retail used last week’s Retail Design Expo to showcase a suite of creative technologies that are transforming modern retailing and shopper marketing, featuring them in its bespoke ‘TRO Boutique.

TRO Retail, a sub-division of TRO, was set-up 12 months ago with the stated mission of making the retail experience more entertaining, more immersive and more relevant to both brands and consumers at the crucial decision-making point. It is the second year running it has exhibited at the Retail Design Expo, which took place last week at London’s Olympia exhibition centre.

Creative technologies demonstrated at the Retail Design Expo included Augmented Reality, Personalised Virtual Reality, RFID and Microsoft Kinect, with visitors able to experience the benefits and features in a bespoke “boutique” environment.

Retail Experience Director Ben Taylor says: “TRO Retail has had a great first year delivering experiences at the point of purchase and we are delighted to be returning to the Retail Design Expo to showcase some new and emerging technologies. We see this as a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate how a great experience between brands and their consumers can truly revolutionise the bricks and mortar retail environment.”

The “TRO Boutique” included a Living Poster that transports the consumer into the picture in real time, an interactive T-shirt wall and a tea bar that serves up a personalised tea bag depending on the mood the consumer is in.

Founded in 1982, TRO is an award-winning global experiential event agency which creates memorable experiences to connect brands with their audiences, generating brand advocacy and driving sales. TRO has 400 people in 16 offices in 11 countries in Europe, Asia and Australia. TRO is a member of UK marketing industry trade body the Institute of Promotional Marketing.

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Nestlé Confectionery is offering consumers the chance to win KitKat packs with personalised messages and pictures. The promotion runs from February 1st until March 29th 2017 across KitKat 4 Finger and Chunky singles, multipacks and 2 Finger biscuit packs.

Consumers enter online by inputting an on-pack code; if they win, they will be able to add personalised messages and photos which will be printed onto a unique KitKat wrapper. A KitKat 4 Finger Milk will then be made in the KitKat York factory for every winner and posted out in a gift box.

Nestlé Confectionery’s Business Unit Head, KitKat and Biscuits, Haseeb Rahman, said: “This promotion taps into the current trend for personalisation, giving consumers the chance to win a personalised KitKat 4 Finger pack for themselves or to give to a friend or loved one.”

More than 55,000 printed personalised packs will be on offer in the prize promotion. The launch will be backed with a £1m media budget across digital and social media.

Nestle’s last big promotion for KitKat, in April 2016, saw the confectionery brand team up with Google’s YouTube to launch 74 different promotional packs featuring the YouTube logo and a digital code which consumers could scan with their mobiles to be taken to one of 74 different YouTube clips. Each of the 74 YouTube videos featured music, gaming, comedy or sports content, with a five second KitKat video ad running at the start. The idea was that consumers could share their favourite videos with their friends as part of the ritual of having a break with a KitKat, and that as they shared they will also be sharing the KitKat ad.

The campaign was supported with a £4.3m spend across TV, online, and social media, driving awareness of the event to more than 15 million consumers across May and June 2016.

Google has a tradition of naming its Android operating systems after desserts or confectionery, and released one called KitKat in 2013, which is why the two brands linked up.

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Ferrero is launching a new recipe hub for its Nutella sweet spread brand and will then be bringing back the extremely successful Nutella personalisation campaign for a second year.

Nutella, which owner Ferrero says is worth £50.3m and is the UK’s number one sweet spread brand, plans to shake up the breakfast occasion with a new recipe hub hosted on the Nutella website which will offer consumers a selection of unique breakfast recipes. The recipes will communicate the versatility of the product by showing a variety of great ways to enjoy Nutella such as on pancakes or on crumpets and waffles.

Following the success of ‘Your Nutella, Your Way’, this year shoppers will be able to pick a product that is relevant to them, thanks to a variety of six label options carrying different sayings.

From ‘Thank you’ to ‘Love you’, the new jars will give shoppers the option to personalise beyond names into phrases, pushing the brand into token gift territory for the loyal brand following. Last year saw the redemption of nearly 300,000 personalised labels showing the unquestionable demand for consumers to purchase more tailored products.

Supported by a £1.1m media investment, the personalisation campaign will be showcased using TV, VOD, digital and PR.

Levi Boorer, Customer Development Director at Ferrero, comments: “We know that nearly half of our target market describe Nutella as a brand they love. Our upcoming activity is designed to capitalise on this loyalty by giving consumers more of what they want; delicious ways to enjoy Nutella plus the option to make their Nutella jar personal to either themselves or their loved ones. We know that Nutella is a go-to product for breakfast and our recipe hub will demonstrate that there are so many ways to use Nutella at breakfast time and inspire shoppers at that consumption occasion.”

Present in the UK since 1966, Ferrero is a leading family-owned global company. Ferrero is the fourth-largest player in the global confectionery market and its UK brand portfolio includes Nutella (the 400g jar is the UK’s No.1 selling spread SKU), Ferrero Rocher, tic tac, Kinder Surprise, Kinder Bueno, and most recently Thorntons, acquired a multi-million pound deal in 2015.

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Coca-Cola in the US has launched a new Christmas-themed “Share a Coke” label campaign, giving consumers the chance to order bottle with seasonal names and messages.

For a limited time, Coca-Cola is replacing its iconic logo on glass bottles, multi-packs, 12-ounce cans, 20-ounce bottles, 1.25-liter and 2-liter PET bottles with a range of options including “Santa,” “Someone Nice,” “Someone Naughty,” “Under the Mistletoe,” “Elves” and “Secret Santa.”

Aluminum bottles of Coca-Cola will feature reindeer names such as “Dasher & Dancer,” “Prancer & Vixen” and “Comet & Cupid.”

Racquel Harris Mason, vice president Coca-Cola trademark, Coca-Cola North America, says: “The ‘Make Someone Happy’ campaign is all about sharing your time, attention, love and laughter with others. And by pairing the holiday with ‘Share a Coke’ packaging, we’re hoping to give people even more ways to make a connection and share a special moment together. Whether it’s toasting to ‘Mrs. Claus’ or wrapping gifts with your ‘Elves,’ we hope ‘Share a Coke’ helps make moments with friends and family even more magical this holiday season.”

The ‘Share a Coke’ activity launches at the same time as the return of Coca-Cola’s “Make Someone Happy” advertising campaign, which encourages people to look beyond the presents and focus on the true spirit of the Christmas holidays. The 60-second TV spot shows that all it takes to make someone happy is the act of opening your heart.

The Coca-Cola Holiday Caravan, five trucks each illuminated by more than 30,000 red and white sparkling lights, also returns, rolling into 90 cities across the US in a massive sampling and experiential campaign running until December 20, 2015.

Consumers who want to purchase and send “Share a Coke” glass bottles customized with names or holiday themes can do so through ShareaCoke.com. Online purchase options include individual eight-ounce glass bottles and six-packs of eight-ounce glass bottles of Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola’s iconic Santa Claus, as imagined by the artist Haddon Sundblom, will appear along with “Share a Coke” names on limited-edition holiday packaging on Coca-Cola multi-packs, cans, glass bottles, and on 20-ounce, 1.25-liter and 2-liter PET bottles. “Share a Coke” will also come to life through Coca-Cola Freestyle fountain dispensers, which will offer a limited-time mix called “Secret Santa.”

Social and digital campaigns will provide fans the opportunity to test and share whether they’ve been “Someone Naughty” or “Someone Nice” this year through a Facebook app.

The fully integrated campaign will also feature a radio takeover across partnering stations, print, out-of-home, point of sale, Delta in-flight and mall advertising.

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UK male fashion brand Turnbull & Asser has revived a promotion from the 1930s to help raise money for canine charity Dogs Trust this Christmas.

Customers can now order bespoke pocket squares (handkerchiefs) with the picture of their dog on. There are three bespoke styles to choose from: Doggy Warhol, Renaissance Dog and Polka Dog.

The bespoke pocket squares can be ordered instore at the brand’s three London outlets or its New York branch, or over the phone. Once ordered and paid for, customers send a digital image of their dog to T&A’s Man’s Best Friend team, who will process the order. The pocket squares are made from 100% silk and printed in Macclesfield, England.

Turnbull & Asser will be donating 10% of the profit from all UK sales to Dogs Trust, the UK’s biggest canine charity, founded in 1891 and formerly known as the National Canine Defence League.

The fashion house says the idea for the promotion came from a 1931 advertisement found in its archives which offered customers the chance to have their dogs pictures put on fabric.

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Drinks company Maxxium UK is launching a new campaign for The Famous Grouse, the UK’s number one selling blended whisky, which include a brand new TV ad, a media partnership with the Guardian and a personalised label offer.

The Famous For A Reason campaign celebrates fame that has been earned and not sought and according to Maxxium is firmly grounded in the brand’s heritage and the principles of its founder, Matthew Gloag, who believed in only using the very best ingredients for his whisky.

The TV ad, created by AMV BBDO, airs until 27th December, reaching an audience of 32 million. Designed to launch the campaign and strengthen the brand’s premium position, the ad tells the story of Matthew Gloag’s competitors and their reaction to his high-quality ‘Grouse brand’ whisky created in the 1800s, which soon became famous for its quality and was renamed The Famous Grouse.

The brand will also partner with The Guardian to inspire readers with stories of pioneers from the world of music, technology and sport. This partnership will feature Ralf Baer, famous for building the first home video game console; Dave Godwin, famous for spreading the love of Northern soul music; Emile Berliner, famous for being the first person to record music to a disc; and Charlie Miller, famous for bringing the game of football to Brazil.

The campaign will activate across the Guardian’s digital platforms, with a reach of 12 million. The partnership was brokered and executed by Newcast, part of ZenithOptimedia. It will be further supplemented by a digital campaign delivering over 7.3M impressions across Audience on Demand, You Tube, 4 On Demand and Facebook.

In addition, Maxxium is partnering with Selfridges to run an exclusive in-store personalisation campaign in its London, Manchester and Birmingham stores from November for eight weeks. Selfridges customers purchasing a bottle of The Famous Grouse will have the option to request their very own personalised front and back labels which will be printed live in store.

Consumers will also be able to visit thefamousgrouse.com to order their own personalised bottle direct from the website.

John Penman, marketing controller, The Famous Grouse, says: “The Famous for a Reason campaign aims to build on the iconic advertising of the past, driving real meaning and sharing the authenticity of The Famous Grouse brand. It provides us with a strong platform for future growth. We’ve also placed more of an emphasis on digital content in this new campaign, ensuring we remain relevant to today’s whisky consumers. Each piece of content that we have developed and activity we have planned is designed to communicate the campaign message, reminding us that true fame is earned.”

The campaign follows the launch of a new look portfolio for The Famous Grouse, which includes a repack of The Famous Grouse, a rebrand of The Black Grouse to The Famous Grouse Smoky Black, and the introduction of a new premium expression into the portfolio, The Famous Grouse Mellow Gold.

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