Saturday, April 5, 2003

NorgesGruppen Installs Digital Menuboard System Throughout Shell FRESH Gas Station Network

NorgesGruppen Installs Digital Menuboard System Throughout Shell FRESH Gas Station Network

Norwegian grocery retailer NorgesGruppen freshens up the gas station deli experience with the Shell FRESH network, using a Scala-powered dynamic digital menuboard to help sell healthier foods to hungry people at all hours.

Oslo, Norway (PRWEB) June 21, 2006

In January of 2006, Norwegian grocery retailer, NorgesGruppen, launched the first five pilots of their new Shell FRESH concept. The concept behind Shell FRESH is to offer healthy, delicate and enticing fast food, employing a digital menu board that dynamically adjusts for different promotions throughout the day. Each of the 166 Shell FRESH gas stations are fitted with a 4-screen digital menu board located in the FRESH section of the store and driven by two channels of Scala InfoChannel® (http://www. scala. com (http://www. scala. com)) software. Currently 400 Scala InfoChannel® Players are deployed throughout the Shell FRESH network.

NorgesGruppen is Norway’s largest trading enterprise. Its core business is grocery retailing and wholesaling. Through its chains, the group holds 34.8% of the Norwegian grocery market.

The goal of the Shell FRESH network is to improve the communication between the store and its customers by combining brand advertising with in-store customer information to enhance the customer shopping experience. In addition, to ensure a focused message is delivered to its local customers each store will create and manage some local content over its in-store infrastructure, by exploiting the dynamic control over playback of content at each location. A key feature offered by Scala InfoChannel®.

Each FRESH menu board installation consists of 4 NEC LCD screens configured side-by-side to create a single menu board array. Each menu board displays a unique campaign loop consisting of multiple promotions each day during predefined times; morning (breakfast), mid-day (lunch) and evening/night dinner/snack). Promotional content is chosen to fit the time of day as well as regional or store demographics. Campaigns and their individual promotions are consistently measured and changed accordingly. Digital content in all regions and individual locations is updated centrally by the advertising agency, Virtual Garden, who manages the content for all screens nationwide.

NorgesGruppen’s FRESH concept represents a new era in culinary offerings at Norwegian gas stations. Traditionally, this segment has represented unhealthy, ready-to-eat food. The deli counter in the new Shell FRESH stores however; offer a variety of healthy, fresh and delicate ingredients – no matter what time of the day you come in hungry! When planning the first pilots, NorgesGruppen Convenience wanted this new and FRESH concept to be reflected throughout the entire store. They felt the replacement of traditional printed signage with digital menuboards would be a great contribution to their strategic goal. To date digital menuboard systems has permiated the entire Shell FRESH network.

”It has been a pleasure working with NorgesGruppen on the Shell FRESH project,” says Truls Baklid, managing director Scala Nordic. ”NorgesGruppen’s mission is to modenize and freshen up the appearance of their stores and provide the best possible shopping environment for their customers.”

About Scala, Inc.

Scala, Inc. (http://www. scala. com (http://www. scala. com)) is the world’s largest provider of software for digital signage software used in retail, education, entertainment, government and other industries. The Company’s cutting-edge multimedia software platform powers thousands of digital signs around the world including the digital signage networks of Tesco, Best Buy, T-Mobile, ShopRite, Virgin MegaStore, Bloomberg, Burger King, Kiwi, Azizia-Panda Supermarket. McKee Foods, Muvico, Santiago Airport, RaboBank and Warner Brothers Movie World. Since InfoChannel is proven, scalable, and easy to manage, it is the platform of choice for many digital display networks ranging in size from one screen to thousands of screens with uses including advertising displays, touch screens, retail TV, LED billboards, lobby signage, digital menu boards, interactive kiosks, and more. Scala, Inc. pioneered the industry of digital signage in1987, and is today headquartered near Philadelphia, PA with operations in California, the UK, Norway, The Netherlands, China and Japan.

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