FUTURAMEDIA and Scala drive French pharmacy sales with digital signage

Part of the Cegedim group, FUTURAMEDIA first introduced the concept of digital signage in 2004 to pharmacies, health stores, medical centres, opticians, drug stores, beauty counters and hairdressers, teaming up with Scala over the years to offer a variety of dynamic signage options to independent or chain retailers in that industry.

FUTURAMEDIA started by offering pharmacies – and by extension their para-pharmaceutical laboratories and counterparts - a Scala-based digital signage network package that included the placement of screens located close to the point of sale (PoS).

In 2011, FUTURAMEDIA added a streetfacing shop window network option to its package, that sees digital screens located in the pharmacy windows carrying messages designed to inform and attract members of the public passing outside the pharmacy.

Both types of digital signage packages are available across metropolitan France. The PoS network usually requires the installation of four screens and players per pharmacy in landscape mode, whereas the street-facing network requires a single screen and player combination in portrait mode.

To date, FUTURAMEDIA has rolled out over 10,000 PoS screens in 2,500 pharmacies across France, supporting both queue management and upselling within the pharmacies. In addition, over 1,000 pharmacies have either rolled out or added the shop window screens to their network to support their branding, visibility and drive foot traffic into the outlet.

A recent study performed by FUTURAMEDIA and a pharmaceutical laboratory showed that a combination of both PoS and street-facing signage has the strongest impact, driving sales for a particular product up by 77%, with a rise in sales of 64% noticed by pharmacies using PoS screens only and nearly 50% for those using street-facing screens alone.

At Pharmacie Edgard Quinet in Paris XIV, also equipped with both solutions, the street-facing network is particularly effective: “The impact of the screen we have placed in our shop window is undeniable, its locaton is perfect looking out onto a very busy street and carrying very targeted content.”

From day one, FUTURAMEDIA set up an multiple award-winning creative studio dedicated to the generation of content for these digital communication networks. A database containing information on over 15,000 products is at the disposal of the pharmacies, allowing their teams to organise their own tailored promotions via a Scala Content Manager web interface. The content manager also allows them to personalise the screens with pricing information and other information such as the weather forecast which is often sponsored by the pharmaceutical laboratories.

“We were seeking a very reliable and stable partner back in 2004 when we launched our first network and Scala was already a household name in the US at the time for digital content distribution,” said Mélanie Brugnacchi, Project Manager of FUTURAMEDIA. “We ran a very successful trial that convinced us of the strength of the Scala solution and the power of the Scala players.“

“Over the years, our partnership has strengthened,” concluded Mélanie Brugnacchi. “Scala has kept developing its services in a coherent manner based on the evolution of dynamic signage in France, by adding monitoring, targeting, content management features to an already great solution. And we have worked together with the Scala team to improve services and adapt them to our client interfaces.”