RFID Targeting for Men

Printer-friendly version

Men are particularly difficult consumers to target, especially when it comes to skin care and fragrances. Studies show that men have a shorter attention span than women (what! – oh, never mind, the football’s on - Rich), so for an advertisement to get a message across to a male target audience, it needs to be short and to the point. Digital signs mounted around aisles of a store have proven to be a good way to attract attention and increase sales of certain products. But to promote skin care and fragrances to men, this tactic might not be enough.
 
Estée Lauder have revolutionised their marketing campaign for men by combining LCD screens with RFID tagged products. When picked up, video content specific to the selected product is played on the screens, along with recommendations about other products in that range. This latest RFID technology enables shoppers to be targeted and informed at the point of decision, while they are looking at the selection of products available. Estée Lauder approached Lime IT Media Solutions in partnership with Remote Media with the objective to deliver an interactive digital signage solution which enables customers to engage with digital media with passive aisle mounted large screens running TV style content. The overall goal of this project was simple: to raise awareness of their brand and increase sales.
 
In order to be different and innovative they looked towards RFID technology as this provides a sleek solution that can trigger an event like the playback of product specific content. ‘Scan and Present’ solutions have been around for a while, but such solutions depend on the customer actually picking up the product and scanning its barcode before a trigger is created. With RFID technology, when the product is lifted up the RFID tag moves out of range from the RFID reader so that the system knows within a fraction of second which product is missing and plays back the relevant content to that product.
 
As if that wasn’t clever enough, a special tag presented by a Lab Series Consultant turns the screens into a skin scanner which enables a customer’s skin type to be analysed and suitable products recommended. This enables a Lab Series consultant to scan the skin of a customer so that they can help a customer to understand why a particular skin care product would be appropriate. The video shows as a live feed on the same screens as the content.
 
The project was provided by Lime IT, a signagelive strategic partner focused on technology led retail applications and video creation, for Estée Lauder Aramis and Designer Fragrances for their Lab Series Skin Care for Men range of products for men. These screens are located in Menswear, away from the traditional cosmetic departments, where men are more likely to be reached. More than just providing a unique and memorable customer experience, the solution also provides Estée Lauder Lab Series Skincare for Men with real-time statistics of every customer interaction with their products and the subsequent impact on sales at the tills. The content can be scheduled and updated remotely from a web-browser. New interrupt functionality allows the administrator to upload specific media content and assign this to individual RFID tags in order to play specific content relevant to the item picked up by the shopper. The administrator RFID tag at the local site allows the Lab Series consultant to override the system so the skin scanner programme can be shown on the screens.
 
Signagelive offers a completely scalable solution and simply requires a standard Internet connection. Support staff can pro-actively monitor the Lab Series network and Marketing can schedule and deploy new content with the assurance that the content is successfully received by each signagelive player. The system also warns if the signagelive players go off-line so any problem can be fixed even before the retail staff themselves are aware of any potential problem.
 
This solution is currently in operation at five sites, including the House of Fraser in Bristol and in Oxford Street and the new Westfield Shopping Centre, London, as well as in Holt Renfrew, Toronto. The installation in House of Fraser, Oxford Street, achieved 800 customer interactions in the first two days of trading.