Conveyor belt advertising

There really isn't much unconquered advertising space left in a grocery store. Here is one more frontier mapped.

Advertising Age - Want Your Ad to Get Checked Out?
That plain-black conveyor belt at the grocery checkout line is the next stop for ad creep.



“Conveyor belts have never been on anybody's radar screen for marketing,” said Frank Cox, president-CEO of EnVision Marketing Group, a Little Rock, Ark., firm with a patented system to print digital, photo-quality ads directly on conveyor belts. “But a store with eight to 10 checkout lanes, well, you're talking about 100 square feet of wasted ad real estate.”

Cincinnati-based Kroger Stores is the first national retailer to open checkout lines to the ads in a test in a few dozen of its stores, mainly in Northwest Arkansas; Jackson Miss.; and Memphis, Tenn. Harps Food Stores, a 52-store grocery chain based in Springdale, Ark., is also testing the system in 13 stores.
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The first marketers to sign on aren't national brands, though, and for now shoppers see hometown ads with photos of local real-estate agents and insurance brokers, not the logos of Coca-Cola and Hershey.

Mr. Cox, formerly president of CJRW, an independent ad agency based in Little Rock, said he waited to knock on Corporate America's door until the system, dubbed Ads-n-Motion, had the kinks worked out. Additionally, the capital investment is high. Printers capable of printing on conveyor belts cost upward of $400,000.
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Mr. Cox bought the patent for the conveyor belt ads from the inventor, Joe Molinaro, and launched EnVision in May 2005. With a sales staff of five, Mr. Cox said he's aiming first for brands in the checkout aisle, such as candy makers Nestle, Hershey, and Mars; film makers like Kodak and Fuji; and, of course, soft-drink brands Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

As part of the sales pitch, Mr. Cox said he's offering national advertisers the chance to shut out competitors at the cost of $182,800 a year for the entire 55-store footprint, which Mr. Cox claims can deliver 3.3 million impressions a month.

I could see the high cost of investment being an impediment. Though, we were once pitched the idea of creating military grade holograms, and hanging them in grocery stores. The machines would generate a 6 inch high 30 second 3-D holographic video, but cost a few hundred thousand dollars each, plus were the size of small automobiles.

Tags: Advertising, /Business