In France, many major grocery chains and supermarkets have already hopped on the digital out-of-home signage trend. It isn’t as common, though, to see digital screens displayed across the country’s smaller food markets, called proxi alimentaires. But DoohYouLike is a company that’s looking to change that. They’re making the case for digital screens in smaller shops, leveraging the power of DOOH to drive sales and leave lasting impressions with shoppers.
Better retail marketing through DOOH
Founded just over two years ago by Fabrice Guez and Jérome Lalou, DoohYouLike’s mission is to innovate the experience of shopping at proximité alimentaire stores. These are hybrids of grocery markets and convenience stores that are roughly 400 square metres in size.
For the most part, DoohYouLike’s customers aren’t franchises. Rather, they’re independently-owned businesses under the umbrella of large retail brands like Carrefour, Franprix, Intermarché, Système U, Auchan and others. Most are located in cities across France.
Shoppers that frequent these locales tend to be professionals with higher-incomes, whose busy lives mean they’re more likely to drop in several times a week, rather than buying groceries in bulk once or twice a month. While proxi alimentaires are easily accessible on busy streets in bustling neighbourhoods, their location means they are sometimes housed in older buildings, making it somewhat tricky or costly to upgrade to newer technology.
Despite this challenge, DoohYouLike saw a lack of digital signage as a welcome opportunity to get its inventory up and running in these shops. In 2018, the company started its digital screen roll out in Paris, France’s largest market. Starting out in Paris helped put DoohYouLike on the map and allowed it to gain recognition in other French cities too. In 2020, they expanded nationally, growing to become the leading provider of DOOH in small food markets.
Today, DoohYouLike’s inventory includes about 1,000 screens across approximately 600 stores all over the country.
Benefitting store owners and their customers alike
DoohYouLike’s inventory generates over 15 million qualified impressions each month. Part of this success can be attributed to food buying habits in France, with customers tending to visit and revisit shops several times per week. While some prefer to trek outside city limits to buy groceries in bulk a handful of times each month, many city dwellers prefer the convenience of visiting their local food market two to three times per week on average.
Another piece of DoohYouLike’s winning strategy is the company’s approach to screen installation. Typically, the company places one screen by the entrance and, on occasion, a second one near the cash registers and other enticing impulse goods like alcohol or candy. So while the customer may not purchase something they see advertised the first time around, they’re more likely to follow through at a later visit, as the messaging may be fresh in their minds.
Working with local shops means DoohYouLike can maintain a positive relationship with its merchant client base. That’s because shop owners also use the screens for other types of communications that go beyond promoting items in-store. Health and safety guidelines, opening hours, and additional handy information for clients are all displayed on the screens, which warms clients to them, seeing them as a tool for communicating rather than a means of advertising.
To the store owners’ advantage, DoohYouLike also sends out a newsletter regularly, communicating which ads are set to be displayed. Such symbiosis allows merchants to plan accordingly by adapting their merchandising or ensuring they have enough inventory to increase sales.
DoohYouLike and Broadsign
DoohYouLike wanted to continue scaling its network and find new ways to help merchants connect with in-store audiences who were ready to make purchase decisions. To make this happen, DoohYouLike needed the support of the Broadsign Reach supply-side platform.
By integrating its homegrown DOOH players with Broadsign Reach, DoohYouLike’s team of experts has enabled its customers to better reach a highly-captive and ready-to-spend audience with relevant programmatic ad campaigns. Because Broadsign Reach connects to a large number of demand-side platforms, integration also opens up DoohYouLike’s inventory to new buyer demand from all over the world.
Hungry for more
DoohYouLike plans to continue its growth across France, looking to install an additional 200 to 400 screens in stores by 2022. The company is also looking to get its entire inventory programmatic-ready. While the food industry has been their bread and butter since day one, DoohYouLike’s founders have also begun exploring the potential of expanding into other areas, having already published ads from non-food businesses, including telecommunications and credit card companies. In other words, this ambitious company is hungry for more, and it’s only getting started.
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