Here’s a challenge that will fire up the imagination of everyone in the communications business today. How do you entice people into a retail store to buy products that are typically available in thousands of other stores and are sold at similar prices everywhere? By the way, any advantage you may have on price, service or selection may not be strong enough to make people beat a path to you door and is likely to be matched by your competitors, usually within hours.

No one said it was easy!! But retail advertising has to achieve precisely that.

Advertising has become the last legal means to truly differentiate yourself from your competition and that is never more true than in retail categories. Is retail advertising mainstream? Well, we follow precisely the same principles we practice for consumer brands… but we come at it from a different angle.

We start by finding a unique Retail Personality that is capable of positioning a store in a category of one. A personality that reflects a position of stature in the merchandise category and one that can be executed with powerful imagery that will endure and evolve over time.

Retailers that have achieved this spring immediately to mind… Ikea, People’s Jewellers, Blacks, and from our own agency, Leon’s Furniture, Canadian Tire and Grand & Toy. Advertising has played a key role in helping these stores to differentiate themselves and maintain high levels of awareness throughout their trading year.

They all possess that essential something which engages people and makes them want to shop there, not just for what they say but the way in which they are saying it. They’ve learned to talk to customers in a language they respond to and approach their particular category from a customer’s point-of-view.

A successful retail personality halos the entire organization. Item and price offers attract a disproportionate share of traffic although the offer may be identical to a competitor’s. Customer loyalty increases because the store seems to command more respect and trust. Customers become more likely to use the store as their first choice destination and shop other categories within the store.

Like everything else in advertising communications, retail advertising is about finding new ways to ‘add value.’ Retailers and their agencies that have learned how to do this successfully are not only winning at the cash register, they are also creating advertising that is among the most distinctive in the country. And if that isn’t a mainstream proposition, I don’t know what is!!!

daniel peppler, ceo, national creative director of Doner Schur Peppler, was judging chair of the 1994 Bessies judging committee. Peppler is an awards show veteran, with kudos from Cannes, and Clios as well as Bessies for his work.