Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Convenience store chain SPAR (UK), has built on its digital signage network with the installation of signagelive – allowing the retailer to manage it’s growing network of 170 stores, through an easy to use platform that allows content to be tailored to different store formats and locations.
Anthony Sappor, Business Development Manager at Spar told us “Having made the decision to bring content and network management in-house, we needed a simple solution that any of us could use. We also needed the ability to distribute content en masse, or on a site-by-site basis to ensure that our suppliers are reaching the correct audiences in accordance with a store’s product range and location. signagelive has ticked all of the boxes.”
SPAR has bought 510 licences from signagelive so far and an expansion is in the pipeline – we believe that this network will grow to reach 1,000+ stores by the end of 2012.
SPAR chose signagelive, explained Sappor “Because of its competitive price and ease of use. We were able to have it all sorted in a matter of weeks. The helpfulness and support of the team was definitely a deciding factor in choosing signagelive. Also, signagelive offers the possibility of easily integrating other software such as Flypaper, which was very important to us.”
SPAR is one of the world’s largest grocers with over 12,000 stores in 34 countries. The majority of stores are independently owned, but a number are directly owned by SPAR’s wholesalers. This business model means that each store is tailored to meet its local customer needs with different product ranges, layouts, and services.
Sappor was keen to talk about content and said “An example of the need to tailor our content is the recent work we have been doing with a company called Payzone. Payzone is a service that allows people to pay bills remotely using cash – typically utility bills. This facility is available at 65 of our 170 digital signage locations and we have been able to work with Payzone in creating a series of adverts that are only transmitted to those relevant sites”.
To design ads, Spar uses Flypaper, a software solution that generates Flash and video content for digital signage networks without the need for custom programming that we saw at #dse2012 last week. Photos provided by the brands and the relevant text can be quickly uploaded and broadcast.
“Using SparTV with signagelive has proven very effective for us. The ad campaign we did for BritVic drink was a good example. BritVic provided us with the imagery and the details of its campaign. We assembled the ads and broadcast them in the stores. As a result of this exercise BritVic reported a 40 per cent increase in sales.”
Rumour is that the Spar network represents the first of many major networks that will be moving from their current digital signage platform to signagelive over the coming months but signagelive CEO Jason Cremins would not confirm or deny, he did say however that “The Spar network is a great example of how easy it is for digital signage networks to move from an existing solution to signagelive with tremendous commercial benefits”
March 16th, 2012 at 10:54 @496
Hi Jason, long time no speak, but just a quick question.
Is this the spar tv netwrok that avanti put into Tates?
Interesting whats happening with Britvic and not really surprised at result.
I still have all the epos data analysis which goes into considerably more detail than just one sku promotion. Maybe talk?
Regards
Stuart
March 16th, 2012 at 12:25 @559
Hi Stuart
Yes, it is indeed the same infrastructure that was installed by Avanti, which has been updated and refreshed to run our signagelive platform.
Tates have quietly gone about their business building the network back up before looking to achieve revenues through media sales and sponsorship. Now both they and their suppliers have a stable and accountable solution in place, the revenues are starting to flow and all parties are very happy.
We are not involved in the commercialisation of the network, just the infrastructure, but feel free to make contact with Tates regarding any analysis that you have that you think may be of interest to them.
Kind Regards
Jason