Brandscape Architects

After a trip, a move, and a short ailment, I’m back wandering the streets of Camden.  At times, I’ve been doing so in the company of representatives from corner shop brands. 

Each ad hoc display is an assemblage of material brought together by different actors, and branding reps play an important part in this curation.  As well as information about current promotions, these reps provide shops with a bounty of branded materials, including carrier bags, canopies, posters, stickers, sign boards, Ramadan schedules, Oyster card holders, window displays, leaflets, and pads of sticky notes.  While some of this material is used at the discretion of shopkeepers, materials are most often put up by the reps themselves.  The reps also advise shopkeepers on styles of display and, when allowed, reorganise products.  They may, for example, move their products to the front and centre of a display or assemble like products so direct comparisons can be made by consumers.

As discussed in earlier posts, brands become markers for ad hoc shops and help announce shops’ presence in space.  The identities of brand and shop are intertwined, especially in kiosks, which seldom display a business name.  To discuss these connections with a brand representative, I suggested how the Wall’s sign acts like the barber pole of the corner shop.  To further my analogy, he told me his posters are like the hairstyle photos inside the barber shop – they tell customers what’s on offer and educate on the latest styles.  

Competition is fierce for surface area and – with shop keepers’ permission – reps will cover the promotional materials of others.  Although reps remove outdated posters, layers of material are evident on all surfaces.  Constant visits to these shops ensure that materials are current, unobscured, and in good shape.

Material properties of the promotional stuff and the shops themselves pose challenges to the reps.  In one shop, packing tape doesn't adhere well to a new "silent" plastic newspaper box.  In another, a stairwell in front of a shop window makes applying stickers a challenge for Lyca reps, whose stickers are sticky only on the back.  Unlike Oyster stickers with double-sided adhesive, they cannot be applied from the inside.  Each new addition is documented with photographic evidence and submitted to the brands’ head office. 

Some reps explain that shop keepers are fortunate to don their brand.  They believe the benefits of brand association are payment enough.  Others offer shop keepers product vouchers or cash to display their promotional materials.  In either case, many brand representatives strike exclusive deals with shop keepers, to limit the presence of other branding on the shop front.  In businesses with such small margins, these deals are hugely advantageous.  Interactions between brands and shop keepers are not without dispute.  Negotiations for exclusivity are on-going and some shop keepers shared their frustration after waiting months for canopies promised after reps reorganised their displays.  Many are still waiting. 

Press Gallery

I’m told selling magazines and newspapers is a tough business.  Shopkeepers pay for delivery of the material and margins are low.  This is compounded by print media sales being down overall, owing to so much online information and so many free papers.  Shop-front promotion of print materials helps to some extent.  By occupying a significant portion of the frontage, it also contributes to the texture of shops in the neighbourhood.

Newspapers and magazines are promoted in purpose-built frames – affixed to windows, paper boxes, and exterior walls – and on wooden news boards, which hold headlines behind wire mounts.  Generally, the former are designed for blown-up magazine covers, and the latter for newspaper headlines... but rules are made to be broken.

Newspaper headline posters may be sent to shops through the post and positioned by the shopkeepers themselves, whereas the magazine posters are often placed directly by magazine reps who tend to organise them in multiples for higher impact.

Of course, mobile companies like Lebara and Lyca produce posters that also slip into these frames and have created stickers to capture this space.  Shopkeepers use them for their own unbranded promotions too, and tend to use text instead of image. 

News boards are an enduring part of the high street.  Here, an image taken in 1903, on (a now demolished block of) Marchmont Street, shows an array of headlines... not to mention a good deal of chocolate branding in the adjacent windows.  Everything old is new again.

Stack in the Box

In front of corner shops, the space between the thresholds and the property line is often furnished with a number of things.  These may include various types of fruit displays, Wall’s signs, lotto displays and signage, newspaper racks, flowers, sandwich boards, and postcard racks, among others. 

While most of these things are moved inside at night, at many corner shops, news agents and kiosks, one large box remains outside.

In my neighbourhood, phone card advertisements are often affixed to these boxes.  Alternatively, they are fashioned with metal and plastic frames used to display current magazine covers.  In either case, they show the layering of stickers, paint, practice, wear and tear.

Their mystery was solved at the news agent on Euston Road.  The keeper explained that his large blue metal box is used for early morning newspaper deliveries and as a place to deposit old papers and magazines. 

Then he let me see inside.

Border state

When I moved to London in autumn 2010, corner shops had bright blue adhesive borders around their windows to advertise the TFL Oyster top-ups available inside. Six months later or so, I noticed Lebara phone card branding had begun occupying this space. The vibrant azure blue is virtually the same in both brands.

Outside of my study area, but along an often travelled route, shop keepers on Edgware Road combine the Oyster and Lebara borders.  It is a very clever – and virtually seamless – merging of branded material. (Very exciting!)

 

In the last few months it seems Lebara has been upstaged by Lyca, another phone company, which has been increasingly occupying this edge space.  Their blue is more cobalt in hue. 

Recently Oyster stepped up and designed a flashier border, which uses the azure and cobalt blues on the Oyster logo card.  The cobalt matching the Lyca logo quite well.  

Like the shop on Edgware Road, the shops in Bloomsbury/King's Cross area show some amazing mash-ups of this material.  In the image below, Oyster, Lyca, and Lebara collide.

Wall's has also become part of the shop window borderlands.