Gill Randall and John Bowles, joint MDs of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau (NAB), have returned from this year's Retail Advertising conference in Chicago with a validated sense that South African retailers are getting it right when it comes to advertising to geographically segmented markets. The conference, hosted by Retail Advertising and Marketing of America (RAMA), is the only one of its kind globally and focused on 'Innovation' as the 2006 topic.
Gill Randall
"The core message," says Randall, "is that to be truly successful in a fiercely competitive market, retailers must innovate and enchant, or die! It's encouraging to see that, on the whole, South African media planners are on track and often ahead of international counterparts with regard to retail advertising. In South Africa, inserts into community papers are welcomed into the homes of readers and are used to plan shopping trips without feeling obligated to make a purchase."
Conference content examined innovation for communication vehicles, technology and creative. From a media perspective, the key learning was a new definition of media performance metrics ie the 'who, why, how and where' media consumption evaluation process:
- "Who" - seeing/hearing the media type
- "Why" - what is their reason for consuming it
- "Where" - is the activity taking place, at home, on a plane, at the office etc?
- "How" - is it actively/passively, processed etc?
In order to ensure that NAB offers clients the finest retail advertising opportunities, it stays abreast of international retail advertising market trends, the annual RAMA conference being one channel it monitors without fail. Many large operators and major US retailers, such as Walmart, Target and Best Buys, and attend the conference from Europe and the rest of the world.
