How Creating Disruption With Retail POP Displays Can Increase Sales

High school graduations will be here sooner than you think, and seniors across America will turn their focus from academics and college admissions to coming up with a memorable senior prank that will create an enduring legacy for their class. Led by the class’s most creative mischief makers, the goal of these senior pranks is to create as much chaos as possible without jeopardizing graduation rights. One example of a successful senior prank was cooked up by a few enterprising seniors who let three pigs loose in their high school. They labeled the pigs 1, 2, and 4. It was a clever way to create a full day of disruption.

As with any good senior prank, an effective retail POP display generates sales by creating some level of disruption that gets the attention of shoppers or creates an opportunity for consumer engagement. Here are five ways retailers can be purposeful about creating disruption within interesting retail displays:

1. Rotating Graphics: Unfortunately, many displays lose their effectiveness over time as consumers frequently shop at the same stores. Over time they become desensitized to things in the store that are not new. One way to counteract this is to refresh the graphics on your display. To the extent you can do that for promotions or on a seasonal basis, you have a greater likelihood of getting noticed by shoppers. Changing the graphics on a display is significantly cheaper than having to replace an entire display.
2.  Interactivity: A second approach to creating disruption is to intentionally build interactivity into your retail display. Inviting shoppers to interact with your product creates an opportunity to change a shopper’s pattern of behavior and make an investment in learning about your product.
3. Visual Disruption: There are several ways to create visual disruption such as using bright colors that stand out in a retail environment, using lighting in situations where surrounding displays are not lighted, and using eye-catching graphics.
4. Physical Disruption: Physical disruption can be achieved by separating your products from competitive products that are on either side of your products inline. This can be achieved by using sectional header signs, dividing blade signs, aisle interrupters, or other separation techniques. Alternatively, you can create physical disruption by placing a freestanding display in a location that is away from the normal location where a shopper might look to find products in a particular product category.
5. Element of Surprise: A great way to create disruption is to offer an element of surprise. For example, we made a staircase to showcase Woodbridge wine. Not only did it fit with the brand, but it created an element of surprise since shoppers didn’t expect to see a staircase in the middle of a grocery store.

Before embarking on your next interesting retail display project, get in touch with your inner mischievous self and be intentional about creating retail disruption.

Jim Hollen is president of the San Diego division of Agility Retail Group, a full-service manufacturing partner for creating unique and engaging in-store environments.