Selling Eggs, Milk and Newspapers in St. Louis

By: Jennifer Saba When the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wanted to drive Sunday single-copy sales skyward, executives tried two methods: the ho-hum price cut and the not so ho-hum direct appeal on TV screens positioned in grocery stores.

Interactive Graphic Solutions, a one-year-old company that provides grocery stores with LCDs so they can run product advertisements, approached the paper about running spots on its "network." The idea is to position flat-screen LCDs around high traffic areas in the store, like the meat counter and dairy section, and run product advertisements along with local items such as the news and weather.

So far, the company has a contract with two St. Louis-area supermarket chains, Shop 'n Save and Dierbergs. Each store received four 40-inch flat-screen TVs -- free of charge -- in order to run a five-minute loop of commercials peppered with information.

"The biggest complaint has been from the workers in the store who thought they didn't get a raise because the store bought the screens," said John Henningsen, marketing and content manager for St. Louis-based Interactive Graphic Solutions. The screens have no sound component, just images. And any revenue gained from the media buy is shared with the stores.

Henningsen's company also produces the client's 15-second spot, which runs on the loop. Along with the Post-Dispatch, which is doing this on a five-week trial basis in four Shop 'n Saves and four Dierbergs, the company made commercials for Gerber's baby food and Dole salads. But for ICG, the Post-Dispatch is a particular coup: "It lends us credibility," Henningsen said.

John Maher, vice president and director of marketing at the Post-Dispatch, said he was willing to give the new technology a whirl. "It's an active point-of-sale medium that goes beyond the stack card or tent," he said. "It's intriguing." The paper, however, is still deciding whether to sign on after the trial.

The test period coincides with the paper's 13-week Sunday price discount (cut to $.99 from $1.25). But the results from the LCD trial have been, well, ho-hum. "Right now, I haven't seen a lift in sales," said Maher, who added that he was only looking at the first week's raw data but in some instances, stores actually registered a decline in sales. "It is clear to me that we have to tweak what we're doing to drive results."

Maher questions the frequency. "A spot on a five-minute loop is not going to move the needle," he said. "It's still too soon to tell. It's got to pay off for us to keep doing it."