Molton Brown, London-based fragrance experts, is launching its new Vetiver & Grapefruit Collection with a series of eye-catching retail experiences, featuring anamorphic art to create clever optical illusions that represent the tension between the new fragrance’s contrasting notes.

Molton Brown’s master perfumers have a rich heritage in combining imaginative and unusual ingredients to create unique fragrances. For this new campaign, the brand brought in rising designer Peter Tarka, a specialist in pioneering 3D imagery, to work with it on a marketing campaign under the title, ‘Build the Tension’, reflecting the contrasts in the new range.

Molton Brown then appointed creative agency Ready to deliver an experiential and promotional campaign to bring Peter Tarka’s creations to life.

To grab consumers’ attention and drive footfall to Molton Brown stores and concession stands, Ready created large-scale 3D optical illusions which have been rolled out at several shopping centres around the UK. Each one invites those who experience it into a world of rough and smooth textures, stark and soft shapes and gravity-defying objects that reflect the fragrance’s skilful construction.

Shoppers who interact with the experience were offered the chance to enter their details into a prize draw to win a luxury weekend in London. They also received a free 30ml sample of the bath and shower gel product from the new range.

The experience kicked off earlier this month, and has so far appeared at shopping centres in Newcastle, Glasgow, Bluewater in Kent and intu Milton Keynes. It opened at London’s Canary Wharf yesterday and today (May 21^st and 22^nd) before concluding at Victoria Quarter in Belfast on May 25^th.

Ready director Jake Xu says: “Molton Brown are true pioneers when it comes to original perfumery. So when they asked us to deliver a show-stopping retail experience for this launch, we knew we had to push the boundaries and create something unique and original. We’re really happy with the end result, and so are the team at Molton Brown. Working with them and their retail partners has been a great experience.”

Ready, based in Bath, is a multi-disciplinary creative agency specialising in promotional and tactical marketing campaigns which break through the noise of clients’ categories and persuade target audiences to take a desired action.

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Independent shopper insights consultancy Shoppercentric has published its Shopper Stock Take Index for a third year, which reveals that 41% of consumers use store loyalty cards ‘a lot’ and 47% use them ‘occasionally’. Only 1% of survey respondents said they had never heard of loyalty cards.

However, Danielle Pinnington, Managing Director at Shoppercentric, warns: “Retailers and brands must keep a finger on the shopper pulse and appreciate that each customer is now using a range of strategies to cope with increasing pressures on household budgets. Which categories or sectors will suffer most this year is likely to depend on how they react to changing shopper needs.”

Pinnington adds: “With shoppers picking and choosing between stores for particular items based on their own experience of how well different retailers deliver, there is even greater pressure to differentiate and create memorable in-store experiences. Equally, avoiding or challenging misconceptions based on bad experiences has become more important. If, as our report shows, shoppers are actively widening their repertoires, loyalty as we used to know it is an outdated term.”

Shoppercentric collected more than a thousand online survey responses from shoppers, covering how they felt about the stability of their household budgets, how their shopping habits are changing, and what brands and retailers need to do as a result.

The 2018 Shopper Stock Take index reveals that while shoppers aren’t yet feeling the same pinch as in the worst of the recession, they are certainly starting to feel more pressure. Only one in four claims to be unaffected by the current economic situation, with a considerable proportion of UK shoppers having to make minor changes to spending.

The speed of change is rapid – just 12 months ago, the proportion of those making minor changes was just 16%, but today it stands at 44%. 26% of shoppers have noticed prices increasing a lot, and 56% have noticed small increases.

Shoppers primarily put these increases down to the state of the economy (54%) and Brexit (50%), although the exchange rate, cost of ingredients and greedy companies are also ‘blamed’ by a fair proportion of shoppers.

80% of shoppers are now “being careful to avoid waste”, while 75% are “avoiding being tempted to buy things I don’t need”. 50% are “going out of their way to find the best prices” and will “split shopping across different stores to get the best deals.” 60% are now buying “own label where I can to keep costs down” and 33% are now using “online shopping to check spending as I go.”

2017 saw a continued increase in the proportion of shoppers who had abandoned weekly main shops in favour of shopping little & often – rising from 11% to 16%. This year, however, there has been no change in that figure, suggesting this trend may have reached its ceiling.

Instead, shoppers are becoming more active as they make the most of the choice available. Shoppers’ average repertoire has changed to five stores or websites in the last fortnight, up from four in 2017. 26% of UK shoppers say that they fit their grocery shopping in where and when they can. 33% of shoppers switch stores based on what they need – to get the best places for what they want (versus 28% in 2017).

The biggest change in the five channels covered by the report was in the use of discounter stores – up 13% on 2017 figures to 57% of UK shoppers. Use of the Big Four supermarkets rose by four percentage points on 2017 figures to 83%. There was no significant change in convenience store or online grocery usage penetration – 49% and 30% of shoppers using those channels respectively.

With the exception of Smart TVs, all digital devices covered by this report saw increased usage by UK shoppers. Computers/laptops were cited as the most used touchpoint – up six percentage points on 2017 figures to 63%. In second place were smartphones with a huge 18 percentage point increase on last year to 45%.

Interestingly, despite a number of retailers and brands moving away from catalogues, usage by shoppers rose to 22%– up four percentage points on 2017.

There has been a seven percentage point increase to 58% in the number of shoppers that have been triggered to shop by content on their smartphone. Using a smartphone to carry out ‘research’ has remained on a par with last year at 61%. However, using the device to ‘find’ an item has risen from 56% to 60%, while the number of shoppers using smartphones to buy a product has gone up from 37% to 42% of shoppers.

However, despite the considerable shift in shoppers using their smartphones as they shop, particularly in relation to actual purchasing, there has been no increase in the uptake of mobile-based promotions, which remains at 20%.

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Independent Events, a multi-award winning experiential agency based in the North East of England, has been appointed by two new clients to create events this Halloween.

Two destination shopping centres, Dalton Park near Newcastle and Captain Cook Square in Middlesbrough,  have commissioned IE to deliver Halloween shows and activities for families.

Dalton Park will have a weekend of pumpkin fun on October 28^th and 29^th, with prizes for the best costume, lantern making workshops and a pumpkin parade featuring dancers, jugglers and stilt walkers.

There will also be a pumpkin trail in aid of the Sick Children’s Trust.

Captain Cook Square in Middlesbrough will feature a life size spooky pirate ship, with IE working on behalf of marketing agency Bewonder to deliver a family event to remember.

The ship will be there on Friday 27^th and Saturday 28^th October with activities including story-telling and workshops for all the family.

Danae Abadom, co-director of IE, says: “It is great to see these shopping centres really thinking about their customers experiences and pulling out all the stops to make a visit into really good memories. Halloween is becoming bigger in the UK every year, and the best way to draw customers is to have an experience that people will talk about, and look forward to for next year. Experiential marketing is all about people, and interaction. Building memories that stay with people and create a loyal following.”

IE, which is coming up to its 10^th birthday, works with companies such as BooHoo, Famous Grouse, Kerry Foods, DFDS and Nissan. Other clients include shopping centres across the UK, RoadRespect and many councils across the UK.

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Electric vehicle charging company Chargemaster has just opened the EV Centre, the UK’s first ever Electric Vehicle Experience Centre, in the centre:MK shopping mall.

The EV Centre is a multi-brand showroom which has been designed to offer impartial advice to shoppers. It is staffed by highly trained independent professionals whose brief is to educate and inspire people about the benefits of electric vehicles.

The retail division of experience agency TRO was responsible for the design, production and installation of the EV Experience Centre, which features a number of engaging touchpoints to enrich shoppers’ showroom experience.

Ben Taylor, Retail Director at TRO, comments: “We are delighted to be involved in such a ground-breaking project which has taken our expertise in experience into the permanent retail space. Through our knowledge of experience marketing we understand the power of immersive techniques to engage consumers and drive change and ultimately buying habits.  Our involvement from the design and production through to the installation has been delivered end-to-end by our in-house team.”

Chargemaster is responsible for the running and management of the store for its five-year duration. David Martell, Founder and CEO of Chargemaster, says: “Being part of such a high-profile and diverse project is very exciting for Chargemaster. The centre will be the first of its kind and we are sure it will pave the way for other cities to follow. We are looking forward to welcoming Milton Keynes shoppers and showing them everything that going electric has to offer.”

The ground-breaking EV Experience Centre was opened on July 20th 2017 by Jesse Norman MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department of Transport. It was developed as part of Milton Keynes’ £9 million ‘Go Ultra Low’ Cities programme, which encourages the uptake of low emission vehicles, with a target of 23% of all car sales being electric or plug-in by 2021.

Founded in 1982, TRO is a global experiential event agency which is connects people and brands through memorable experiences. The agency offers in-house insights, strategy, creative, production, field staffing, digital/social/mobile and measurement departments and has 16 offices in 11 countries around the world.

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