Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/513366
fact, digital video media "may be the most controversial and problematic area in signage today because of the conflict between property owners' desire for reve- nue generation and the potential for dis- putes with anchors and other occupants over content," the report said. In the U.K., staid planners still frown on some of the new-generation sign technology and display boards, says Gavin McMurray, owner of the Glasgow, Scotland–based Merson Group, which designs, builds and in- stalls retail property signage. "They object to overlarge signs that are out of scale with their surroundings, over- signing that creates visual clutter, and overly bright signs," McMurray said. "But too often, a sign of a perfectly rea- sonable size, taking into account loca- tion, sight lines and reading distances, will be rejected, or planners will re- quest a size reduction, sometimes for no objective reason other than to be seen as doing their jobs." Interactive kiosks and "quiet" signage with muted colors are favored instead by most U.K. retail developers, with a hand- ful of digital media signs cropping up, though not in historic areas of cities, McMurray says. Even when municipalities cooper- ate, landlords are still hard-pressed to tap small tenants to subsidize new digi- tal signage, says Jeff Badstubner, senior vice president and retail market leader at JLL. Roughly half of the typical shop- ping center's small retailers and restau- rants are owned by franchisees that typi- cally balk at the extra expense. "They'll say: 'My franchise agreement says I only have to spend $7,000, but now you want $20,000,' " he said. Sometimes, overly strict municipal ordinances can hamstring a shopping center located directly across from a competing center just inside a more le- nient town. A shopping center's pylon sign in one California market is barely visible at its maximum 40-foot height and is now partially obscured by trees, compared to a pylon twice that size that towers over the dividing freeway, Badstubner says. If landlords encoun- ter too much resistance from cities, they may relent as long as the signage needs of the anchor are met, he says. Planning precepts in general need to be modernized in most of the U.S., according to Greeby. "Philosophi- cally, their standards are many decades old — very few municipalities have aligned their land-use principles with today's society," Greeby said. "We're still building communities of yesteryear on behalf of individuals of yesteryear." That will change slowly, as a new gen- eration of planners takes over, he says. Much of the planner resistance oc- curs when new shopping centers try to use lettering too large for small signs, says Badstubner. Updating a sign dur- ing a remodeling tends to be less bu- reaucratic, he says. In one case, Federal Realty took an existing mall sign and modified it relatively inexpensively with no resistance by adding finials on the fringes to exemplify newness. New sign innovations abound among stores, too. Besides the instant media-board customer feedback en- abled by Enplug and its competitors, merchants are exploring many other sign ideas. Whole Foods is taking ad- vantage of easy-to-change printing tech- nology to reflect each market's sense of place. In its Detroit store, for instance, the bakery signage is made up of a series of raw-metal conduits suggesting a tail pipe, which is in league with the Motor City image. In Japan, fashion retailers have started using devices like the T e a m L a b H a n g e r from Japanese tech firm TeamLab. Its hangers have sensors that trigger a product video on the nearest wall when a related garment is lifted off the rack. Brazilian fashion merchant C&A; uses a different sort of high- tech hanger with a built-in display that shows the number of Facebook "likes" that the item has. With so many changes in technol- ogy, says Greeby, even the word "sign" is becoming passé in the retail world — slowly being replaced by such terms as "word graphics," "social media boards" and "urban experiential displays." Coming up is 3-D advertising — such as the parallax effect introduced by Cxense, of Norway, which allowed Mazda to create the illusion (sans 3-D glasses) that its car was popping off the TV screen. This is bound to find its way into malls, say industry profes- sionals. "It's not a question of if but of when we start using these mediums to heighten the overall shopping experi- ence," said Greeby. Interactive retail signage "is evolv- ing into a major interactive piece con- necting the social world with the physi- cal world," said Sandy Sigal, CEO of Los Angeles–based NewMark Merrill Cos. "It can be a critical and relevant piece of timely marketing that allows tenants to post sales in real time." Noted Badstubner: "You can project that at some point in the future, there'll be these types of electronics in every mall and above every tenant space." SCT J u n e 2 0 1 5 / S C T 43 Enplug.com Enplug's$pp0DUNHW Show any custom content on your displays. $GGDnGHGLWDppsLn Enplug&RnWURl; )HDWuUHG7KLUG3DUW\$pp 1RsKlLsW NoshList Powered by Enplug