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The VMSD International Visual Competition provides a window into merchandising trends. This year’s message: Simplify.
By Anne DiNardo
When Apple Computer launched its new visual campaign for the video iPod nano, its window display featured a single prop: popcorn. Popcorn? Digital music and video player? And the connection is what?
The connection is scale. The oversized popcorn kernels conveyed the message that these new video devices are small. “Using oversized popcorn next to images of the product, you get the message about size right away,” says David Hogrefe, managing director at Fitch (Powell, Ohio). Hogrefe was a judge in this year’s VMSD International Visual Competition. And the Apple campaign, designed by Michael Fisher at Apple, was so effective, it won one of the competition’s first place awards.
The competition is a chance to review current practices in visual merchandising. And in the past, trends have favored throwing a lot of merchandise into a display to try speaking to a broad range of consumers. Somewhere in that presentation of numerous products and propping, something was sure to attract shoppers’ eye.
But 21st Century consumers are on image overload, barraged with messaging on a 24-7 basis. “People are being inundated with data from their phones, computers, billboards, iPods and text devices,” says Tracey Lanz, design director at Landor Associates (Cincinnati), and another judge in the competition. “They’re seeking an escape from all the visual stimulus.” Visual merchandisers are realizing that cluttered displays can be harder to focus on and the overall message ultimately might get lost. Consumers are also time-pressed and impatient, less likely to see and absorb detailed and layered messages, no matter how cleverly designed.
“Less is more right now,” says judge Jennifer Wilson, a freelance visual merchandiser who does work with Sony and Jos. A. Bank. “It used to be that you’d use propping to tell the story. Now there’s more focus on the merchandise.”
So what does it mean to be simple?
“It’s using less to get the same point across,” says Wilson. At Sony, Wilson has been focusing on one particular product rather than an assortment of electronic devices in the windows and in-store displays. “Keeping it simple makes it easier for consumers to understand a complicated message quickly,” she says.
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