StoreBoard Media uses security pedestals to place advertising

NEW YORK Most people give security pedestals little attention while entering and leaving drug stores, but one company sees a valuable advertising opportunity.

New York-based StoreBoard Media has developed EyeCurve, patent-pending cardboard advertisements that it places at security pedestals near the entrances of nearly 10,000 chain drug stores, an area the stores consider one of the most important.

“You want someone to be exposed to our message, and see it, and read it, and be motivated by it,” SBM President Rick Sirvaitis said.

Sirvaitis said that the ads capture customers’ peripheral vision as they pass through the entrance, which he said he knew from doing presentations for SBM’s clients. “It offers a can’t-miss opportunity to send a branding message to their consumer that is entering an establishment where their product is sold.”

The company contracted with Masi International to conduct a matched-panel study at 15 CVS stores in Chicago, where it installed EyeCurve ads for three Oral Care products. The study, which examined the four-week period before the ads were installed and the four-week period when they were up, found that toothpaste sales increased by 6.5 percent, mouth rinse sales by 6.9 percent and brush sales by 8.7 percent.

Most of SBM’s ads are in the form of five-foot-tall, two-foot-wide folded covers slipped over the pedestals, though it uses inserts for CVS stores. Earlier this week Drug Store News reported that the company had just signed on to place ads in Kerr Drug.

Drug stores join SBM’s network, and SBM sells the space to advertisers to use for four weeks. Clients have included Hershey, Wyeth, Vonage and others.

SBM has also advertised the Broadway musical “Mamma Mia!” in some stores in New York, as well as products targeted at specific markets, such as Vaseline Cocoa Butter, which maker Unilever is marketing to black women.