Experiencing a brand is often an intangible, but not with AT&T. Through a growing number of “experience” stores, the communications/entertainment services giant is offering up its products for clients to see and feel in a whole new way.
	With guided selling kiosks, digital signs, dozens of screens, laptops and stations ranging from gaming to home connections, the stores offer a “fully integrated media experience” aimed at personalization.

But this is no mere cacophony of sights and sounds, no bastion of sensory overload. Instead, customers have found the space surprisingly “soothing” and “calming,” says Alex Shapleigh, director at Callison, the architecture and design firm that helped AT&T develop the prototype.

“It’s a fine balance between being a high-impact retail environment and a casino,” adds Chris Riegel, founder and CEO of digital signage/software platform partner STRATACACHE. “You try not to overload [and], much to AT&T’s credit, they’ve designed something that’s a hip, cool place to be. This is not a tech-head store. This is an easy-going, clean, very colorful experience with nice messaging, rather than an environment where you’re just overwhelmed by gadgets.”

Plans for a new store design were under way before the 2006 merger of AT&T and Bell South — which gave AT&T control of former joint venture Cingular Wireless.

“We had already worked with Cingular through two-and-a-half prototype evolutions, so we were really familiar with the Cingular brand,” Shapleigh says. “We set out to design an environment that reflected the updated attributes of the new AT&T without losing the familiar, relaxed spirit of the Cingular brand.

“One of our primary design goals was to create a store that educated customers about AT&T’s integrated product offerings in a fun and interactive atmosphere,” he says. “The design makes technology more approachable through hands-on demonstrations and personalized service.”

The first store opened in Houston in March 2007. In the beginning, the idea was to locate a handful of “experience” stores in large markets, but they’ve proven so successful that there are now closer to 20, with more on the way. (The new models are being rolled out as needed, but Riegel won’t say how many there will be.)

AT&T isn’t just using the stores to further define its offerings. According to Leslie Hand, research director of market intelligence firm Global Retail Insights, the effort is right in line with at least one of GRI’s top 10 predictions for the year. “AT&T has managed to reach the consumer with a mix of digital signage, interactive kiosks and hands-on experience,” she says.

“Consumers are looking for this type of experience. We’re seeing more messaging directly to consumers, giving them the ability to interact with the store.”

With the volume of information available to consumers on the Internet, those customers want — and expect — the same details and specs no matter where they are. But when they enter a bricks-and-mortar environment, they also want a sensory experience. That’s where store employees come in: All involved in the development of the experience stores were quick to point out that the technology was not meant to replace human interaction. Instead, it is intended to “augment” the communication.

“There are never going to be completely automated environments where there’s nobody in the store,” Riegel says. “These continue to be people businesses. This technology is there to help facilitate discussion, or maybe for those times when the associate is busy with someone else or when [the customer doesn’t] want to talk to anybody.”
 

Holistic vision Riegel says he’s a seeing a shift among the clients his company works with, a greater understanding of
using technology like digital signage to knock down walls between retailer and customer, allowing them toexperience something together. “It’s a much more one-to-one relationship, and a more laid-back environment in the retail store,” he says.

To make it work, however, all the pieces must fit, Shapleigh says. A retailer can’t change an environment with digital signage alone. “The experience-based environment has to have a holistic vision that ties all of those aspects together,” he says, “so that when the customer walks in, it all works. It’s the entire mix that makes it successful.”

AT&T’s experience stores are roughly 5,000 sq. ft. and include a variety of stations that allow customers to quickly home in on exactly the products and services they’re interested in. Those stations include entertainment, home connections, music, gaming, messaging/video and laptop mobility/e-mail and data.

Customers can test a variety of wireless phones, PDAs, Bluetooth accessories and the like; download games to wireless phones; test-drive web-based and wireless remote access features; and experience remote monitoring through an in-store camera. There are also numerous LCD displays running digital messages about lifestyle, product benefits and features.

In order to cut down on the stimuli, Callison designed a space with “a band of light and ambient graphics,” Shapleigh says. This created “a backdrop for the products that wasn’t aggressive. We wanted the technology to feel less intimidating.” To further the point, all of this was done without sound.

“We’re doing more and more work with our clients with triggered audio, instead,” Riegel says. “If a user walks past a motion detector, it will trigger an audio loop specifically for them.”

Another partner in the process was Cisco, which provided high-speed Internet connectivity and traffic management through the company’s 2821 Integrated Services Router and WS-C3560-24PS switches. AT&T also installed wireless access points technology/wireless controller services.

Surface technology
One of the most exciting applications is the integration of the new Microsoft Surface table, which allows customers to place devices directly on the display and receive information about them; it also allows customers to put two devices down simultaneously for side-by-side comparisons.

Through infrared technology, the Surface table “reads your devices and lets you see what features it has, what capabilities, how it can work for you and how you can add features to it,” Riegel says. “It lets you see in three dimensions, for example, exactly what your wireless phone can do.”

With so much going on in the stores, however, it might come as a surprise that the biggest challenge for Riegel and his cohorts was to create a periodic “synchronization of displays” featuring the brand name.

“That cross-branding effect was a real technical challenge,” he says. “In that retail store environment, to be within a millisecond of having everything playing the same AT&T logo at the same time, that takes incredible accuracy.”