The kids are screaming, it’s raining, you can’t find a pound coin for the trolley, you look a state and it’s late. Get in, buy food for dinner tonight and get out. But wait: “Step in to ‘The Tunnel Experience’ – an immersive activation that allows customers to “step into the Pepsi world and feel the excitement”. Ye gods.

Last week at Morrisons Liverpool Speke, a giant, open-ended Pepsi can was installed, leading from the car park to the entrance doors. “Win Pepsi Merch,” barked banners at one end. Nearby a spin the wheel game – sorry ‘pop-up experiential activation’ – offered “exclusive prizes”.

And inside the store, Pepsi ads marked practically every surface – aisle ends, trolleys and bays, as well as ominous-looking branded black discs that hung and spun overhead, like a soda-based sword of Damocles.

Running the retail media gauntlet

This was, of course, all in the name of retail media, which is becoming ever harder, if not impossible, for shoppers to avoid. At Morrisons, store visitors could take a diversion around the tunnel if they really wanted to, but it wasn’t obvious. And in store, even with eyes fixed firmly on the ground you’d still get slapped with a huge branded vinyl floor sticker.

In industry lingo, it’s called a store “takeover”. And it can feel increasingly like that to shoppers too – their environment unrelentingly invaded by brands.

There is a concept in physical retail that “retail is theatre”. And, sure, consumers becoming the star of a mini-gameshow to spin the wheel for a few minutes can be part of that. But theatre is not – avant-garde, experimental performances aside – an audience getting fire-hosed with brand messages while a slogan repeats at unbearable decibels.

As supermarkets roll out more and more digital screens (thankfully, for now, sound off), and expand the potential retail media advertising canvas to practically every surface (including the exterior of a superstore – like Pepsi’s 46 metre-wide and 10 metre-high Tesco Wembley ‘wrap’ last year), to secure still more marketing spend from brands – there is a risk they’ll repel consumers by forcing them to shop in an intolerable Times Square-with-trolleys.

Screening out the screens

And there’s commercial reasons not to over-egg the opportunity (which is, by the way, huge – reaching $154.8bn in advertising spend globally in 2024 with a further 14.8% rise expected in 2025, per WARC Media). 

Speaking on the relatively benign retail media surface of branded displays, Mike Ralls of Shopper Intelligence argues that “when the entire store becomes littered with displays, they become wallpaper”.

“The human brain starts screening them out as it’s too much information to take in, particularly on a weekly grocery shop. The number of displays in this store assumes everyday grocery shoppers are going into the store to wander, stop, and gawp like they have all the time in the world. But that’s not the case, is it?” he points out.

Research is scant on shopper attitudes to still more marketing being forced upon them in the aisles. But few surely have ever wished for more ads (unless there’s a solid promotion at the end of it). Maintain the onslaught of in-store advertising, though, and brands will certainly, eventually, gain clarity on the diminishing returns. Neither can they allow retail media to become a stealth suppliers’ tax that means they have to pay to play.

Pepsi’s oversized tunnel is a sign that retail media might be perilously close to jumping the shark.

“While it’s a short-term revenue stream for retailers,” Ralls adds, “the long-term revenue wins come from executing on what the shopper needs.”

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