To prove it's not just a cable company, Bright House pins hopes on retail store

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By Mark Chediak, Orlando Sentinel (Florida)
CedMagazine.com - November 01, 2007

Copyright 2007 Sentinel Communications Co.

At Bright House Networks' new store on the University of Central Florida campus, students will see a living room where they can watch football on a 52-inch high-definition, flat-screen television.

They'll see a "student center" where they can play YouTube videos on a laptop with a high-speed Internet connection.

And they'll see an "interactive TV" demonstration of a service that lets users download and watch episodes of shows such as The Colbert Report.

What Bright House execs hope to see at the store - expected to open Friday - are thousands of future customers.

But to lure them, the company realizes it has to do more than promote its latest channel lineups or pricing packages. This is especially true given the stiff competition that local cable providers face from satellite-TV companies and may soon face from phone giants such as AT&T.

"This gives us the ability to show people who we are," said Michel L. Champagne, vice president of operations and general manager of the Orlando region for Bright House Networks. "It's a little bit of a branding opportunity."

Once lords of the paid television market, Bright House has been forced by an increasingly crowded field to expand beyond its core cable business. The company now sells bundled packages that include high-speed Internet and digital-phone services along with cable TV. During the summer, Bright House started selling a service that allows customers to connect to its cable, Internet and digital phone service through Sprint mobile phones.

Bright House executives recognize that some of the company's newer offerings - such as crystal-clear high-definition feeds and "on demand" video downloads - may be easier to sell if people can actually experience them.

As a result, the company's future store - in a retail strip mall next to UCF's sparkling new convocation center - is more a space where customers can sit, watch and play than a place where items are sold.

(Customers will also be able to pay bills and pick up cable and digital-video-recording boxes, and a section of the store will offer Bright House/UCF branded mugs, T-shirts and hats as well as cable and phone accessories.)

"Retail is probably a bit of a misnomer," Champagne said of the new store. "It's more just about the experience."

Increasingly, media companies are realizing the value in letting a customer test-drive a service or new technology before they buy, said James McQuivey, a media and television analyst for Forrester Research.

"There is no amount of marketing material ... that can really convey to you how great your home-theater experience could be. You have to see it," McQuivey said.

For example, Verizon Communications, which offers paid television in some of its markets, has opened "experience stores" in the Dallas and Washington, D.C., metro areas, where customers can watch high-definition video feeds on big-screen TVs and play with the company's latest high-tech gadgets.

Cable provider Comcast Corp. has partnered with retailers Best Buy, Circuit City and Wal-Mart to sell its television services in certain markets including parts of Central Florida.

McQuivey said these companies are following in the footsteps of Apple, which has demonstrated the marketing power of its retail concept, where customers are encouraged to listen to iPods, test out Macs and play with an iPhone in the store.

Typically, such a store is considered as more of a marketing tool than a place to do a lot of sales volume, McQuivey said. But the ultimate effect ends up helping the bottom line, he said.

"Nothing sells like an experience," McQuivey said.


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