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The aisles have eyes. Cooler Screens, a digital in-store media company, has brought contextual targeting to the doors of grocers’ refrigerators. By using video and IOT (internet-of-things), the system measures signals such as pausing in an aisle, opening a fridge door, the weather, and time of day to decide what ad to display.
A prescription for mass personalization. After announcing a focus on “mass personalization” last year, Walgreens says it has integrated data from 100 million Mywalgreens members, about one billion daily digital touchpoints and in-store shopper data. The pharmacy’s new media arm plans to offer that data to other firms to help create more personalized brand interactions.
Duking it out in big data. In a segment dominated by Salesforce, Adobe and Oracle, relative newbie, Twilio has set sights on the marketing automation market. Stemming from its $3.2 billion acquisition of Segment, the firm’s new Engage platform provides more than 400 integrations for using data-driven personalization.
Shakeup in Makeup
Ultra fast Ulta. The beauty and cosmetics retailer announced that it will roll out same-day delivery in select markets and speed up curbside pickup orders. The move comes in response to what Ulta says it sees as consumer expectations built over the pandemic.
Here we go again. Voracious online retailer Amazon is looking to gobble market share in the $500 billion beauty industry. While the retailer has had a health and beauty virtual storefront for a number of years, it saw gains over the past 18 months and looked to solidify its position with a “Beauty Haul” promotion earlier this month.
Love is a battleground. Walmart and Target are also investing more in the beauty category as last year’s slump in sales has seen an 11% rebound in just the first half of 2021. Walmart is investing in more interactive displays and niche brands while Target plans to partner with Ulta for store-within-a-store tactics.
Trick or Treat
Pumpkin bucks. Consumer spending on Halloween-related items is expected to reach an all-time high of $10.14 billion, up from $8.05 billion in 2020, according to the National Retail Federation.
A breakaway costume. Hershey’s Kit Kat brand team is generating buzz with their four-person break-apart candy bar costume. Four revelers can each sport a chocolate wafer suit and come together with a magnetically adhered Kit Kat label for fun and, presumably, costume contest judging.
Google is scary. The search engine compiles the most-searched costumes every year. Nationally, this year’s top five are: 1) Witch; 2) Rabbit; 3) Dinosaur; 4) Spider-Man and 5) Cruella De Ville. You can see the full top 50 along with favorites in your local region at the platform’s FrightGeist minisite.
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