While people often talk about the demise of the high street, there remains immense promise and opportunities for retail brands that operate from one of the 7,000 or so such locations in the UK.
For example, some 10.3 million people (or 16% of the UK population) live within just 200 metres of their local high street.
What’s more, high streets on these shores have experienced higher population growth in recent times, with this averaging out at 6% between 2012 and 2017. This compared to just 3% in non-high street areas during the same period, so high street brands have a tremendous opportunity to target large audiences within local catchment areas.
This is excellent news, especially with the Christmas period approaching and families already looking to spend their cash ahead of the festive season. But which retail brands are doing particularly well at present, and how can you design your in-store POP displays to achieve the optimal impact?
A Quick Word on Successful High Street Brands
From the perspective of both customers and stock and CFD traders, it’s fair to surmise that sustainable high street brands are faring particularly well at present.
Take Patagonia, for example, which is an outerwear brand that uses recycled materials and has had parts of its supply chain certified by FLA and Fair Trade. The latter ensures that living wages are paid through most stages of production, highlighting a commitment to sustainability and ethics that provide the retailer with a competitive branding edge.
Outside of Patagonia (which has a flagship store in Manchester) and similar outlets such as Finisterre, brands that boast high levels of awareness and recognition also tend to fare well in competitive areas such as the typical high street.
Take brands such as Adidas and Nike, for example, which leverage their name and visual branding to stand out on prominent high streets and shine like a beacon to huge throngs of customers.
3 POP Design Tips for the Festive Period
While your brand may lack the presence or reputation for sustainability boasted by the examples above, it’s still possible for small and independent retailers to build awareness and drive recognition among local customers through targeted advertising and the intuitive use of ad mediums such as out-of-home (OOH).
Similarly, it’s possible to maximise the footfall that you have through your high street store, with this particularly important as the festive season approaches and customers prepare to spend more of their hard-earned cash.
One of the best ways to achieve this is by paying careful attention to the placement, nature and design of your in-store POP displays. Here are some ideas to keep in mind:
#1. Use Your POP Display to Relay a Particular Narrative
Often, successful high street brands like Patagonia and Nike have built engaging and consistent narratives around themselves, with this creating emotive hooks that draw in customers and drive increased levels of loyalty and spending over time.
Remember, research has shown that purely emotional ad campaigns performed nearly twice as well in terms of engagement when compared with rational advertising (31% vs 16%), while the former even outperformed mixed content campaigns by around 5%).
With this in mind, your in-store POP displays offer an opportunity to relay a particular brand narrative, or at least tap into the spirit of the festive season to help establish some form of emotional connection with your customers.
For example, we all know that Santa’s bright red jacket with fur trim is synonymous with Christmas, so incorporating the same colour and materials into your POP display can instantly evoke the spirit of Christmas while leveraging the emotional connection that we all have with the holiday period.
This works even better if you can tie such colours seamlessly into your visual brand identity, as this will help to drive brand recall and recognition among customers over an extended period of time.
#2. Prioritise Temporary POP Displays That are Portable
Depending on the nature and size of your retail store, you may want to prioritise the use of temporary POP displays that are also portable.
In simple terms, this enables you to seamlessly shift and rotate your displays depending on foot traffic, and the typical routes that customers plot through your store during both quiet and busy periods alike.
Similarly, you may move such displays to entire different parts of your store, especially if you identify bottlenecks or particularly high-traffic areas that create a more captive audience in real-time.
There are practical benefits to investing in lightweight, portable and well-designed POP displays too. More specifically, they may afford you the option of storing away them compactly so that they can be used again next year, potentially driving cost savings in the process.
#3. Experiment With Different Materials and Textures
Last, but not least, it’s important to retain an open mind when designing new POP displays for your store this Christmas.
The reason for this is simple; a willingness to think outside the box and experiment with a diverse selection of materials and textures may unlock additional value and impact in your displays.
On a fundamental level, using durable and hard wearing materials create long lasting displays that withstand the challenges posed by high traffic areas. This saves money may even create continuity throughout your in-store advertising, while as we’ve already touched on, the use of sustainable materials can drive higher levels of engagement among customers.
From a creative perspective, the combination of different surfaces and textures (particularly those that are slightly unusual) may help to invite higher levels of customer interaction.
Research suggests that this is especially likely among consumers aged 30 or under, of whom approximately 80% are more likely to shop in person and spend their hard-earned cash if the store utilises interactive screens with product information.
Clearly, creating an interactive experience around your POP displays can help to drive optimised conversion rates, although it’s important to ensure that you utilise materials that are affordable (within your advertising budget) and easy to maintain during the peak festive period!
