Customer: Wal-Mart
 Deceptively Simple Display Generates Great Results for Wal-Mart Marketing Communications Inc. (MCI) supplied an innovative marketing display to more than 1,600 Wal-Mart stores in the United States, utilizing an often-overlooked piece of “real estate” in retail space.
 This deceptively simple display, around 2 feet tall and 5 inches square, wraps around the pole that shields the wires powering each cash register. The pole fixture display serves a couple of purposes for Wal-Mart – first, it creates a unified home for a collection of financial service products and second, a way to create a tidy, uniform look at checkout lanes.
Kyle Harmon, Project Manager Wal-Mart Credit Card for the Wal-Mart Financial Services Division, said stores that installed the MoneyCenter displays saw strong increases in the total activity across the featured products when compared to stores without the pole fixture displays. The featured items include the Wal-Mart Credit Card, the prepaid Wal-Mart MoneyCard and product care plans for large-ticket items.
“We believe the pole fixture displays further Wal-Mart’s new emphasis on helping our customers ‘Save More and Live Better,’” Harmon said. “By organizing our financial products into one convenient location, we are helping our customers save time in learning about services that can enhance their lives and protect their purchases.”
MCI worked with teams from Wal-Mart, N.E.W. Customer Service and GE Money Americas to design the pole fixture display after winning an online competition hosted by Design Forum for the contract to supply and install the displays in roughly half the stores throughout the country. With an average of 22 pole fixture displays per store, the contract represented a very significant number of units to be manufactured, shipped and installed.
At the beginning of the project, we collaborated with Dayton, Ohio based Design Forum on issues of aesthetics for the display and practical methods of attaching the fixture to the cash register pole. Dan Hauser, Vice President Implementation & Logistics at Design Forum, said his company relied on our experience to achieve a number of key objectives – product merchandising, durability and functionality of the display and finally, implementation.
Our team recommended a lightweight and durable, high-impact polystyrene structure with a removable back panel for easy installation. Four-color graphics were printed on each side of the display describing each of the Wal-Mart MoneyCenter products.
Utilizing merchandisers provided by Retail Merchandising Xpress of Irvine, Calif., we had to make sure individuals with modest mechanical skills could easily install the display without any lengthy or personal training. Comprehensive instructions shipped with each of the units were short on wording and long on clear illustrations.
The Wal-Mart MoneyCenter display is currently one of the highest profile displays in the store, as anyone making a purchase has to pass by it during checkout.
|
