Building trust

With its new flagship store at Dubai Festival City, Toshiba is embarking on a journey of total re-engagement.

Electronics stores are a bear-pit of brands trying to capture the consumer's attention - which is why Toshiba was keen to create an uncluttered space where it could candidly communicate with consumers, explained Stu Higton, creative director of Octopus, the Dubai-based brand and communications agency tasked with the design and build of Toshiba's new flagship store at Dubai Festival City.

Octopus was launched in 2000 with the aim of offering truly multi-disciplinary solutions to the Dubai market. "It is about answering clients' needs, across media and mediums. We'll look at a brief and look at a problem and come up with the best solution for the client - we are not just an advertising agency pushing advertising or a PR agency pushing PR or an interactive agency pushing interactive. If it needed out-of-the box thinking across mediums, that's where we came in," Higton explained.

"The new Toshiba flagship store is a good example of that 360 degree approach. We've been working for Toshiba for a number of years - we've looked at their advertising and their general marketing. This is the missing piece of the puzzle, I suppose," he added.

Unified approach

With this final component in place, Toshiba is able to send a single, unified message whenever it is interacting with its consumers - from its high impact sponsorship of the English Premier League, which provides access into millions of homes each week, to this new point of sale, the message is consistent.

"This is where Toshiba can walk the walk, in terms of consumers actually interacting with a product - not just off the pages of a brochure, where the consumer will go: ‘that looks like a nice laptop, that looks like a nice price, I'll go and find out'. Then they walk into one of the electronics stores where you've got all of our competitors screaming at them, and someone comes along and poaches the sale," said Higton.

Toshiba's ultimate aim is to regain its standing as market leader, a position that it held until a few years ago. "Toshiba was the first into market; it still has a strong brand but there's been a process of attrition from other competitors.

"It has still got a very good heritage and brand values, but it's a case of re-establishing the trust that the consumer has with the brand. Trust is a key word because that's the target with this store and our overall campaign - to refresh and revive the trust that already exists."

The Festival City store is designed to facilitate a re-engagement with various consumer groups, whether it be end users, distributors or dealers. It is essentially a ‘flag in the ground' but also a practical venue that can be used for distributor events or cocktail receptions.

"When we were looking at the space, we looked at how you communicate trust. Trust is a prediction of reliance. If you trust someone you predict they won't let you down. Within a retail environment, there are different things that will back that up - we have broken it down into value, service and innovation," he said.

In practical terms, the service part of the equation is covered with a dedicated ‘service' area, along with staff who give customers the space they need to engage with the products on show. In terms of value, products are presented alongside their full specs, ensuring that consumers know what they are looking at.

"The tagline for Toshiba is ‘leading innovation' so we wanted a clean, modern space. Products speak for themselves in terms of the innovation that they bring but it's a kind of gallery to put them in," Higton explained.

Opening up

The original space was a square block set into a corner of the shopping mall. Because it is not ideally located, one of the first things that the Octopus team did was extend the entrance area.

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