When you need to know what your competitors are up to and perhaps how their shopping experience stacks up against your retail communication you need a Pink Flamingo view. We can take a couple of illustrative pictures or we will review entire categories or retail stores.

Our most common examples are visits to two or three stores across your major customer base or competitors. We capture core messaging, promotional straplines, pricing types, navigation, POS types and substrates, on and off shelf, overall atmosphere and ease of shop. We then pull out the good fluffy feathers and point out the dingy dull ones. We tell you what you can or should be doing differently and the key areas to concentrate on.

Any good flamingo loves shopping. How can a girl say no to a nice shiny bright pink feathered bag? But its not just about getting the item home. I don’t know about you but I get really fed up if I can’t find any inspiration in-store. And if I have to hunt to find the price it can make me fly right out. And as for sales staff who either ignore me, know nothing about the product or give me completely false information, well what can I say. Don’t brands and retailers check out in-store compliance? Don’t they build their campaigns based on insight gathered in-store?

We’re sure you do and that’s why your business is so successful. And of course a flamingo viewpoint is always a good addition to your facts and stats. Because boy do we love to shop!

When you need to know the size and value of a market or who the key competitors are and what their positioning is you probably should be talking to us. We gather all the background information into one place and plug all the gaps, we show you strategic plans and we contextualise to make sure you are tapping into the insight in the best possible way.

For example, one of our brand Clients presented a new store wide promotional concept that their retail customer loved and activated as a long term shopper communication. Why did the retailer love it? Because it didn’t just reward shoppers, it helped build THEIR agreed strategies and moved THEIR business forward. The concepts were talking a language that hey could relate to in both pound notes and shopper footfall.

Another service Client was looking to extend their new business programme. We gave them a synopsis of their target business, the market they operated in, their challenges and a few likely solutions. Not only were more doors now open but more contracts were getting signed.

Opinion really counts. And we don’t deal in shades of grey. We all know that multi-channel is here to stay but how can we influence the shopper in this integrated world? And what trends are around the corner that we should be aware of before it’s too late. This is a new social world we live in. We may not all be fans of Facebook or follow Twitter but we are becoming a nation of sharers. Sharing is going to be one of the hot topics over the next few months and years. After all, why buy that nice shiny pink feathered bag if your friend says it might fade in a couple of weeks? Give a shopper too much choice and they start rationalising their decisions. Let them or even encourage them to rationalise and you’re on dangerous ground. They start thinking why they should be buying your products or service or the decision starts to require too much effort to be worth it. More and more retailers are now minimalizing window displays and streamlining ranges to make that whole emotional versus rational shopping journey a simple one for the shopper. By not only keeping our beady eye out for the latest trends but more importantly having an opinion ourselves we can really help you use trends to your advantage.

A square watermelon? Don’t be silly, it will never happen. Well they developed them in Japan. They save storage and display space. It might be different but its not crazy.

Those QR codes we’ve all heard about on the subway. They let shoppers shop when they wanted to even though there wasn’t any retail space.

Virtual mirrors, hologram sales assistants, augmented reality, new substrates, interactive displays. Some innovation may be a little off the wall, most of it is just looking at new developments in a different or more original way.

We fly around the globe to make sure you know what is out there. But most importantly we work with you to make sure you use that knowledge in the best possible way.

Why not have a look at our latest innovation report and get some inspiration juices flowing?