I like taking retail executives out into their lots and just watching the action for a while. Every parking lot has terrible weather 24-7. It is too hot, cold, windy. At crowded mall parking lots the process of finding a spot and landmarking so you can find it again and making your way is often the worst part of the shopping experience.

Research has showed that people landmark based on age and gender. Men like numbers and letters. Women like colors, and kids like physical objects like fruit or animals. For every time I’ve gone to a mall I’m familiar with and parked and land-marked with uncommon skills, there are the times, where I’ve gotten lost.  My worst experience was after an hour of looking for my rental car at a mall outside Houston, when I’d begun to doubt my sanity, knowing that I’d missed my flight. 
 
The paint treatments we use in parking lots have no regard to the real dimension of our cars – but to some engineers or building code prescription.  Paint is so cheap – many stores could do seasonal treatments, just like lighting changes on the top of sky scrappers.

One retail channel I have only recently gotten to know are, Farm and Fleet Stores. These are large one hundred thousand square feet and bigger stores designed to serve farmers and rural businesses.  Out on edges of no-where these large store sit in the middle of even larger parking lots. Land is cheap. The problem is the lots often look painfully empty. The regional chain we worked with had a policy of putting employee parking discretely at the back or side of the building. Our advise was to move the employee parking to the front of the store two thirds of the way from front door to the outer edge of the parking lot – a line of thirty or forty cars is powerful statement to passing customers that this store is open for business. 
 
If you are looking for guerilla marketing opportunities, there is one right outside your door.