Footfall is the easiest number to produce and the least useful one to receive. It measures the location, not the work. Put the same counter in the same mall on the same Friday with no activation running at all and the number barely moves.
So we stopped leading reports with it.
The four numbers, in order
Every activation we run reports the same funnel, and the report is built around the middle of it:
- Passed — the location's number. Context, not performance.
- Stopped — chose to break stride. The first number the work is responsible for.
- Tried — took the sample, played the game, entered the draw. Intent.
- Converted — bought, subscribed, or came back. What the client is paying for.
The two that tell you whether the activation worked are stop rate (2 ÷ 1) and try-to-convert (4 ÷ 3). One measures whether the thing was interesting. The other measures whether the product delivered on it.
A high stop rate with a low conversion is a creative success and a product problem. A low stop rate with a high conversion means you built the right thing in the wrong place. Footfall tells you neither.
How we count, and why it is boring on purpose
The method matters more than the tooling, and the method is deliberately dull:
- One counter per gate, one tally per promoter, reconciled at the end of every shift. Not at the end of the campaign, when nobody remembers Tuesday.
- Stopped is defined before the campaign starts. Ours: stationary, facing the unit, for three seconds or more. Any definition works as long as it is written down and the same on day one and day nine.
- Try is counted by stock movement, not by a promoter's estimate. Units out, minus units returned, minus damages.
- Convert needs the client. This is the number we cannot produce alone, and we say so in the proposal. Without a till, a code, or a redemption, the last row of the funnel is a guess — and a guessed conversion number is worse than an absent one.
What good looks like
Broad ranges from in-store and mall work across the last two years, so a new brief has something to argue with:
| Metric | Weak | Working | Strong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stop rate | under 2% | 4–7% | above 9% |
| Try rate (of stopped) | under 20% | 30–45% | above 55% |
| Cost per try | — | benchmarked per category | — |
Those are not targets to copy. Stop rate on a supermarket aisle and stop rate on a mall atrium are different games. They are here so that a report saying "4.8%" means something to the person reading it.
The uncomfortable consequence
Reporting this way means some campaigns come back with a number that is not flattering, and it means saying so. We have handed over a report showing a 1.9% stop rate on a format the client loved.
That report was worth more than the ten thousand footfall figure sitting next to it, because it changed the next activation — the unit moved off the wall and into the walkway, and the rate tripled.
Measure the thing you can change.