• by Ken Liebeskind , September 3, 2002

Seen any Oreo TV commercials lately? How about an in-store one at your local Wal-Mart?

Kraft Foods, makers of Oreos, has turned to narrowcasting--in-store broadcasting, to promote Oreos with an original promotion that actually goes beyond in-store TV ads. This summer it ran in-store ads in all 2850 Wal-Mart stores to promote an Oreo cooking stacking contest for children that also featured country music stars She Daisy. "We positioned our brand at Wal-Mart and tied it into an in-store promo," says Douglas Haase, director of customer marketing at Kraft.

She Daisy performed in the 30 second spot, produced by Cragan Campellone & Associates, that ran for three months in the stores. She Daisy collectible cards were a giveaway also used in the promotion.

The spot played twice an hour in the stores on screens situated in high traffic areas. "There's lots of numbers out there, Wal-Mart has over 100 million shoppers a week," Haase says, "and the average consumer watches TV five and a half minutes per trip."

Kraft worked with Premier Retail Networks, the out of home media company that places narrowcasting ads in Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Sears and SAM's Club stores. "We put up media that teaches and informs shoppers, amplifies the merchandising plans of retailers and gets out advertising messages," says Sean Moran, PRN's chief strategy officer.

Narrowcasting will generate $388 million in revenue this year, with a projection of $2 billion by 2006, according to CAP Ventures. More than 160,000 displays will be installed this year, with nearly 400,000 by 2006, when 22 percent of large multi-site retailers will use it, according to CAP. Large retailers account for 75 percent of the displays, so it is a form of advertising that will be popular there. Narrowcasting is said to deliver a message to a known demographic in a defined setting, which may be preferable to some forms of advertising that reach a less defined audience.

Ads are shown on a variety of screens designed to fit the retail space, from standard TVs to larger screens.

Package goods companies are the leading narrowcasters, eager to advertise products sold in the stores. Entertainment and technology companies have also used it. Besides Kraft, Unilever, Walt Disney, Warner Bros., Canon, Microsoft, Hewlitt Packard and others have worked with PRN.

The ads can be targeted to different demos, with separate ads played to male, female and teen shoppers. "We aggregate eyeballs into categories," Moran says, "with different advertising in different networks based on targeted demos."

Haase said he made the buy himself, with the agency only doing the creative. He purchased four week flights, which are available from $50,000 to $300,000, based on frequency and times the ads run, "like TV rates," Moran says.

One could compare narrowcasting to other forms of out of home media like billboards or other forms of in-store advertising like shelf signage. But it's unique in being a form of out of home media that allows advertisers to play TV spots in-store. Kraft created an original spot instead of using a regular TV spot "to keep it more sensitive to what we're trying to do in the store," Haase says.