Retail season has arrived. From now until spring, our calendars are filled with the hottest events and busiest days in retail. We jumped into the fray last month with back to school campaigns and returned from Labor Day to kick things into high gear with Shop.org prep. This year, Shop.org is Sept. 26-28 in Dallas, only a three-hour drive up I-35, and our team is excited to check out the show along with a number of events taking place throughout the show. Here’s our roundup of can’t miss Shop.org happenings:
Retail Innovation Lounge Dallas Ketner Group is thrilled to serve as a media sponsor for Retail Innovation Lounge Dallas, taking place Sept. 26-28 at The Dallas Entrepreneur Center, a short shuttle ride away from Shop.org. The event will bring together leading retail executives and retail technology innovators for three days of keynotes, panels and networking.
Ketner Group Clients at Shop.org In addition, a number of Ketner Group clients will be attending and exhibiting at Shop.org. You’ll find Convey, DynamicAction, Edgecase, Kibo and Mirakl on the expo floor. For more information on their exact location, check out the Shop.org exhibitor list, here, and if you’re interested in meeting with one of our clients, let us know.
Can’t Miss Keynotes and Sessions There are number of exciting keynotes and sessions planned for Shop.org. We’re especially looking forward to the keynotes, “JC Penney and Transforming the Customer Experience – An Insider’s Look” and “Digital Retail’s Fast Track: Virtually There With AR/VR” featuring speakers from Sephora and Google.
We’d love to see you in Dallas this month. Please reach out if you’re interested in grabbing coffee to catch up or talk about your company’s PR strategy.
I’m a woman for whom space and tangible experiences are of the utmost importance. So after reading Rock’s article, that discusses the trend of stores offering an experience that simulates your actual life, I was ready to book a trip to New York.
If you’ve been reading about the trend for stores to offer experiences, you’ll be familiar with Rock’s examples. Want to buy a new shower? Try it out before you purchase at the Pirch showroom in SoHo. Want to cuddle up on a cozy couch while you lust over clothes with a Basquiat hanging out behind you? Go visit The Row’s Upper East Side townhouse.
The Pirch Showroom. Photo courtesy of Pirch
Rock provides a deep dive into the history of this trend. Starting with the Sears catalogue and extending to the Internet as the ultimate big box store, we have at our fingertips everything and anything we may need. It is only a click away. So what then, is our need for stores? Rock answers, “What the shop can offer, however, are things difficult to achieve online: an intimate relationship with things, a haptic appreciation of materiality, a personal interaction with a sympathetic helper, an experience that contextualizes objects, a place to socialize with like-minded connoisseurs and, most importantly, a respite from the avalanche of too much stuff.”
He continues, to my jubilation, “A visit to the store may revert back to John Wanamaker’s original dream: shopping as a form of education and cultural edification. Maybe we learn best in the places that we feel most comfortable in: places that feel like our own living room, only nicer.”
So this got me thinking, if stores are evolving to feel like our own living rooms, does this mean anything for PR?
As a B2B technology provider for retailers, your strategy ultimately aligns with your clients’ strategies. If you’re not offering a solution to their problems and you’re not talking their language then you’re not gaining new clients and you’re not staying in business. The press has a similar model for business, if they can’t speak to the retail community’s experiences, their stories don’t resonate.
So what’s resonating?
To me, the trend of stores offering unique experiences aligns with the more general trend of authenticity. Everyone from marketers to your younger sister is talking about a desire to hear real stories, for honesty and uniqueness. We’re seeing this play out in fashion, as designers reflect street wear in recent collections, and in the trend for more personalization in products like Netflix.
To offer an authentic story for PR, consider first what makes your brand unique. What is different about you? What do you value? Ideally, your company has an accessible mission, vision and core values available for you to use as a starting point, but if they don’t, think about your own experience with your company. When crafting a campaign, make sure your language and your story align with these authentic qualities. So, if one of your company’s values is “innovation,” it makes sense to have a quote from your CEO in a press release incorporate the word “innovation.”
Next, think about how you can authentically engage with press who are reporting on ongoing stories. Recently, Ketner Group facilitated some replies for our clients in a RIS News story on Amazon’s “Project X.” The reason we were successful in having our clients’ opinions picked up is that each client uniquely responded to the story, in a way that was authentic to their experience and their brand.
As convenience continues to become a top priority for mass-market brands like Amazon or Wal-Mart, smaller retailers and the community in general will desire more authentic experiences to balance it out. By placing authenticity front and center to your PR campaign, you’ll be able to better appeal to prospective clients and the media.
OK kids, this is a BIG week! It’s the last week to vote for your favorite SXSW 2017 panels. In case you missed the memo or just need a friendly reminder, this Friday, September 2 is the last day for public voting and commenting for the panels you’d like to see as part of the 2017 programming.
If you are having trouble deciding which panels to vote for, let your friends at Ketner Group help you out! This year, our clients at DynamicAction and Convey have thrown their hat in the ring to speak on some incredible retail and brand-focused panels. And because we love retail tech so much, we’ve also listed several additional panels from our friends at RetailMeNot, Bazaarvoice and eyeQ. Check out our recommendations below:
In this session, four female thought leaders will discuss how the concept of “fit” has evolved from the early days of ready-to-wear clothing to custom clothes-on-demand. From clothing to cosmetics, we’ll explore how retailers need to keep up with changing styles, sizes and gender identities, the changing role of sales associates and how technology (magic mirrors, virtual reality, mobile apps, body imaging) is changing the way shoppers find the perfect fit – forever!
Rising customer expectations are forcing retailers to build complex carrier networks with disparate experiences and capabilities. How can retailers use data to unify the experience, reduce cart abandonment and boost post-purchase satisfaction? What is necessary to answer customers needs for real-time updates? In this panel, eCommerce leaders will discuss how they are overcoming modern delivery challenges to wow customers.
In this world of consumer oversharing, the line between public and private content is blurry, leaving brands to navigate a murky gray area of what kinds of consumer-generated content can be repurposed for a brand’s needs. How do the boundaries of the law differ from the ethical guidelines set by industry groups, and what can brands do to protect themselves and the consumers they hold so dear?
Brands are living in the age of the consumer, but with smarter insights the age of the savvy marketer is bursting onto the scene. So, how can you harness the power of consumer behavior and data in a way that is discrete, empowering and not….creepy? To remain relevant in the cut-throat world of retail, brands must start to leverage consumer behavior data at scale, and optimize the information overload in new and interesting ways.
Retailers and brands are adopting new technologies to better compete with e-commerce. From responsive signage, to beacons and sensors, store environments are becoming embedded with shopper-aware technologies in response to customers’ demands for easier, more fun, and more engaging shopping experiences. But if these devices are aware of – and responding to – shoppers, does that create new privacy concerns? In this survey of emerging technologies panelists will discuss the privacy implications for shoppers, brands and retailers.
Final 2017 programming will be announced the week of October 17. Click here to check out already announced key note and featured speakers!
The old rules are broken. Look to the horizon as long as you want, there is no tough guy sheriff riding into town with his posse to restore law and order. Parking lots at major chain stores are turning into weed havens as they shutter their doors, from national department stores to niche retailers like Sports Authority. Others are searching for unique ways to increase their foot traffic and customer loyalty, putting car showrooms in clothing stores or bringing booze and bocce to a bookstore. Malls are asking startups to fill the same spaces they used to give away for free to the biggest retailers.
In old Western movies, law and order was always restored by the end because the hero sheriff had the support of the townspeople and was able to outsmart the bad guys. But guess what? This time around, the newcomers have the numbers, and they’re not going anywhere.
CPG Goes Rogue
Subscription services have been shaking up major industries for years now; from music and movies to clothing and video games, pay as you go has been lucrative for retailers and convenient and budget-friendly for consumers. Most of those services simply found a new way to get the same goods to consumers cheaper and more conveniently, and more importantly, a new way to fuel customer loyalty.
Let’s look at our friends at Dollar Shave Club: Razors make you look sharp. But who really cares what the name on the handle says? Four blades or seven, vibrating head or stationary, people just don’t want to worry about bleeding necks or shins, or worse, untimely stubble. Unorthodox advertising has played a part to be sure, but the simplicity of it all has helped Dollar Shave Club enlist 3.6 million subscribers who have sent their old name brand razors packing.
Loyalty to Dollar Shave Club razors is multi-tiered, but at its core it is founded on easier acquisition of new goods and the inconvenience of going back to the old way of buying razors if they opt out of the program. Loyalty is quite literally built into the program, combining the three key pillars of loyalty directly into it: affinity (via quirky ads and branding), trust (the razors are actually good) and habit (they just keep ‘em coming!).
Don’t Talk About It, Be About It
To sell a product, people have to know you sell it, and Dollar Shave Club is hitting the bullseye spots in this arena. Tried and true advertising is more “tried” than “true” today. For example, all of the fastest growing L’Oreal brands share one trait – they don’t advertise. They instead invest those dollars on modern capabilities like search optimization, distribution improvements and reinvestment in R&D. That’s one thing the old westerns always proved: you can talk the talk, but to come out the other side, you better be able to walk the walk.
The New Six-Shooter for Brands: Data
We all know the power of data, but it has been critically elusive for CPG brands because channel partners control consumer interactions. Direct-to-consumer subscriptions reduce that barrier and make customer intelligence much more accessible. As a direct subscription service provider, Dollar Shave Club owns all parts of customer relationship in a way Big Razor never could, meaning they can optimize their strategy at a much lower cost by analyzing the data their members organically produce.
Getting Shoppers to Remain Loyal to Your Posse
Today,one third of shoppers are buying more private label products, and only 6.5 percent, a new low, hope to return to name brands some day. For CPG, this is momentous. Where emotional involvement with a brand is low, and there is no real product differentiation, customers have no problem getting out of Dodge when an easier, more convenient or cheaper option becomes available.
Loyalty is not a program. It’s not something you get it the mail. It’s earned, and earned again and again at every touch point and opportunity for a customer to find a better alternative. Don’t take it for granted or think that the reason shoppers relied on you before is why they’ll keep coming back. In the Wild West of retail, you can’t wait for the sheriff to arrive. You have to innovate.
Amazon Prime Day 2016: A lesson in playing the long game
Pretty much everyone I know, knew about Amazon Prime Day. While most of them didn’t buy anything on Amazon that day, they still took the time and made the effort to look at the deals they could get on a day billed as being bigger and better than Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
How can such a self-serving sale day, or, as some venture to call it, a “holiday,” that’s so different from the norm succeed in retail?
Not Your Grandmother’s Sale
Let’s think about it. Why do retailers introduce sales? Traditionally, they are spurred on by a present and competitive business need, such as:
Shedding excess inventory or old models/styles to make space for more in-demand items;
Earning market share during high-sales volume times, like the winter holidays;
Increasing cash flow to make new investments;
Simply keeping up with competitors who market more aggressively on price.
But Amazon made this holiday up to celebrate their 20th anniversary last year. They’re already the largest retailer in the country and are poised to topple Macy’s as the largest apparel seller as well. It happened in the middle of July, during the mid-week grind, with no obvious holiday tie or “competitor sales”. It defied the accepted rules of engagement.
Playing Mind Games
The Power of Habit: Amazon must have read this one twice
A quick story: I was away with some high school friends last weekend. One was reading a book called “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” (found, of course, on Amazon for $9.18 in paperback, but there are over 400 vendors and options to choose from). The author, Charles Duhigg, talks about why we do the things we always do. Duhigg tells the reader about craving an afternoon cookie every day, and obliging himself. Then, through careful self-analysis, he realized the cookie need was not a result of hunger, but because he needed socialization and a walk. The true reward for his urge wasn’t unhealthy food, but camaraderie. Now, he skips that snack and feels a lot better.
To that same end, Amazon knows that people are creatures of habit and of reward. Amazon understands social psychology better than anyone and have the resources and marketplace influence to manipulate the masses into giving them more control over their consumption habits.
So they enlist their army of marketplace sellers, eager to spice up a lazy summer sales season, who live up to Amazon’s promotional hype and make it worthwhile for casual Amazon shoppers to sign up for Amazon’s $99/year Prime membership.
Prime Day conditions both sides of the transaction to expect benefits from using its platform. For buyers, it’s seemingly a no-brainer. “Save $400 on a 4K TV, have it on the doorstep in two days, plus get free shipping on anything I want for a whole year? Yes, please!” Even though deals beyond a few big-time purchases like those TVs were minimal, shoppers are being conditioned to see Amazon as the go-to place for what they need, which doesn’t pad margins now, but creates the conditions for increased market domination moving forward.
For marketplace sellers, the financial benefits weren’t tremendous, growing only 1% from 2015. The act of participating in the sale, again, really just has the same effect as a traditional sale, as mentioned above. But marketplace sellers are encouraged by the long-term (potential) benefit of increasing their regular customer base thanks to increased traffic from the rise in Prime subscriptions. For one day, they’ve seen a bump in sales volumes, unloaded inventory and brought in new buyers to their potential pool. They’re slowly being conditioned to rely on Amazon for larger and larger chunks of their revenue, becoming less autonomous and another pawn in Amazon’s domination of everything, everywhere, all the time.
Amazon Prime Day can be debated on its single-day successes on seemingly limitless merits, and goodness knows, it’s been debated. But what is undeniable is that Amazon is a master at making us look at them, think of them, engage with them, even when we don’t know we want to, or why we’re doing it. I’d call that a success.
This blog was written by our intern, Kamilla Rahman.
If you’ve ever surfed the web for more than 10 minutes, you’ve definitely come across the word millennial at least five times. People are constantly talking about millennials, what they’re doing, what they want, what they will be doing, how they react and how to resonate with them. Even the KG team has been known to write about millennials on behalf of our clients from time to time – here is a recent example.
According to Investopedia, “a millennial is the given name to the generation born between 1982 and 2004…this generation is often associated with technology and social media.” In the last couple of years, there has been a more specific consensus. A millennial is basically someone in their 20’s or 30’s.
The world is infatuated with millennials, and as a millennial, I honestly don’t get it. I was flipping through a few articles the other day and almost every article referenced the millennial generation. I do understand millennials are important, especially when regarding technology and retail. We’re a different generation, we’re nontraditional, we’re viewed as more independent, we have different expectations and we are more technologically advanced than our parents and grandparents with a tremendous amount of buying power.
Though all of these articles are extremely insightful, as a millennial, I don’t understand why all of these brands and companies are constantly trying to appeal to us. The word is everywhere. It’s basically inescapable and everyone seems to think that appealing to a millennial is the magic key to all things holy and great.
My brother and I are both millennials. He was born in 1985 and I was born in 1995. Throughout most of our lives, our purchasing habits, interests and even technological awareness have been different. Though they are closer today than they have ever been, they’re still completely different.
He’s 31, he goes to work, has meetings all day, buys suits and dress pants, goes to CrossFit, has nice dinners with his beloved girlfriend, just bought a house, gets a beer with his buds, checks his iPad for emails, pretty much knows what he’s doing with his life and occasionally has a late night out. I, on the other hand, am 21. I’m about to start my senior year of college, I intern, I’m an avid online shopper, I go out with my friends almost every weekend, I study, am always on the move and suffer withdrawal symptoms when I don’t have my phone for more than 45 minutes.
The only things we really have in common are that we stay busy and know technology. I may be wrong here, but that just doesn’t seem like the proper way to target consumers, especially in retail. The word millennial is too broad. It encompasses people that are in completely different stages of their lives. To me, focusing efforts around millennials is just an over-followed trend.
Don’t get me wrong; appealing to millennials has definitely shifted the way marketers appeal to consumers. It has become intuitive, personal and brands have figured out how to market in a way that is additive to peoples’ lives. But if you think about it, don’t generations older and younger want that as well?
In retail and technology, a new goal is personalization; so my question is why do these industries continue to obsess over a market that appears to be so diverse and vague?
A recent Washington Post headline read, “Unemployment is down. Gas prices are low. Why isn’t America shopping?”
There are a number of possible answers. Both in the article and at the inaugural ShopTalk conference, there were numerous discussions about the U.S. being “over-retailed” – too many stores and e-commerce sites for too few shoppers. Many like to point to widespread uncertainty about the global economy and the twists and turns of the presidential election. Moreover, shoppers are spending their money differently: they are addicted to promotions and often opt to spend their hard-earned dollars on experiences like vacations or big projects like home improvement. But these don’t explain the whole truth.
In reality, the shopping experience can all too often be downright awful. On a recent weekend I spent five minutes at a big-box office products store waiting for someone, anyone to show up at the empty cash registers at the front of the store. I didn’t really feel like chasing anyone down, and I’d only gotten half of what I came for, as the pens I wanted were out-of-stock. After a few minutes of waiting I started comparing prices on Amazon. No surprises here: I found everything I wanted at a lower price, so I left my purchases at the register, walked out the door, and placed the order before I left the parking lot. It’ll likely be the last time I visit that retailer for basic office supplies.
My wife didn’t fare much better at a women’s apparel store that weekend. She stood in line at the register for what seemed an interminable amount of time waiting to pick up an order, which turned out to be a different size from what she ordered. When she headed back to the counter to order it in the right size, the sales associate promptly announced she was headed to lunch, leaving my wife stranded at the cash wrap. She placed her order online later that afternoon; however, her 40% off coupon code didn’t apply online, even though the coupon said nothing about online exclusions. It took a call to the e-commerce help desk to straighten it out – although the help desk operator couldn’t answer my wife’s questions right away, as the retailer’s systems hadn’t updated yet.
These problems fall into two broad categories: too few sales associates for many retailers (and a failure to properly train the ones they have), as well as outdated systems and disconnected technology. Is it any wonder that Amazon accounts for 1 in 3 shopping transactions, according to Internet Retailer?
Fortunately, the best retailers are making the right moves to re-energize retail and attract shoppers. Nordstrom, which consistently has some of the best sales associates in retail, is opening a small Tesla gallery at a high-end mall location. Target is spending $1 billion this year remodeling its stores and has launched 25 “stores of the future” in Los Angeles. Urban Outfitters, which recently set a Q1 sales record, firmly believes that “bricks and clicks are synergistic.” Urban bought the popular Vetri Family pizza chain last year and recently opened two flagship Anthropologie stores with “a petite shop, expanded jewelry and accessories, an intimates boutique, an 800 square foot beauty shop, a full-service shoe salon as well as over 6,000 square feet of home products,” according to RIS News.
These retailers, and many others, are clearly doing everything they can to get America shopping again. Retailers shouldn’t forget the fundamentals, though: Train your associates. And get those legacy systems to talk to one another, in real-time. Focus on these things – and continue to make stores fun, creative and innovative – and consumers will start shopping again. After all, you can’t buy a Tesla, get a makeover or get a slice of pizza while shopping at Amazon – at least not yet.
Last week the Ketner Group team attended the inaugural Shoptalk conference at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. The much-anticipated conference lived up to its promise, bringing top industry leaders together to discuss the technology disruption currently turning the industry on its head.
Shoptalk offered a three-day jam-packed agenda that in true Vegas fashion ran well into the late hours of the night, bringing with it great networking opportunities, organic thought leadership conversations and even a stellar performance by Wyclef Jean at the conference’s Industry Night.
This year’s sessions also brought a few resonating themes and posed several questions about where the industry will find itself in the next few years. It’s no surprise that the wave of technologies available to retailers today has them scrambling for a roadmap of the perfect combination needed to deliver the greatest customer experience possible.
Both vendors and retailers throughout the show agreed that the customer experience is paramount. No matter if your organization is omnichannel, strictly digital or only brick-and-mortar, at the end of the day shopping is not about channels, it’s an experience, and the technology that you implement throughout should create a memorable experience.
Here are the top interesting takeaways we gathered from industry leaders at this year’s Shoptalk:
Buying a product is an experience; all touch points must intersect in order to create this experience.
Retailers are now living in an all-channel universe; the Internet will not destroy physical stores, it will just grow to be a part of every transaction.
The customer has never been more in charge.
What is happening to retailers right now in terms of adopting in-store technology and becoming omnichannel should be considered an evolution vs. a revolution.
Technology will not dehumanize the physical store experience—it will enhance it.
The principles of retailing are still there, but retailers need to figure out the balance between old and new.
Be agile – everything that touches a retailer’s organization touches the consumer.
Retail complexity breeds a different opportunity, people will still need to understand what humans want and this will lead to new opportunities to bring together data, artificial intelligence and technology to meet the customer’s needs.
Think of artificial intelligence as amplified intelligence for retailing.
All in all, the conversations at Shoptalk demonstrate that while the industry is continuing to adopt technology and change, this is only the beginning. Can’t wait to see what innovative topics Shoptalk brings to the table in 2017!
This blog was written by our intern, Cambria Sawyer.
Cause marketing is a lot like college.
I first started to see this connection in my journey as a Ketner Group intern back and forth from the office to the jungle (a.k.a. campus). You see, college is a balancing act.
Professors assign you more hours of homework than you have in a day. Somehow I’ve managed to survive off of cheese sticks and grapes for the past week, but the grocery store is in my imminent future. I need to go to the gym, steel drums practice, a club officer meeting and still go out with friends tonight– and all I want to do is take a nap.
Figuring out how to fit all the pieces together so they make sense and reach a goal is a delicate art; the same type of challenge comes with devising an effective cause marketing campaign.
If you break it down, it has two, equally important parts: the cause and the marketing, but putting the two together is easier said than done. Brands have to be careful when they choose a campaign. It must be simple, interesting and brand-relevant, while not appearing insincere. Digiday explains the stakes well in an article warning brands of “cause fatigue,” where poorly balanced campaigns cause consumers to stop taking corporate social responsibility seriously.
This Earth Day, I want to take a few brands from the apparel and fashion industry and rate them on a 1-10 scale for their Earth Day cause marketing balance skills.
Photo courtesy of Amour Vert
Amour Vert Rating: 4 The sustainable fashion brand’s “Buy a Tee Plant a T(r)ee” campaign is fine, but that’s kind of the point– it’s just fine. While the rhyme is catchy and the cause is admirable, the connection between the fashion brand and planting trees is not particularly strong. Not to mention this is definitely not the first time a campaign identical to this has been launched, so it also looses points on originality. It’s clear to a consumer that this campaign is more about the marketing.
Burton Rating: 8 A brand for the earth-conscious adrenaline junky, Burton takes environmental campaigns to the next level.
Photo courtesy of Burton
Their most creative plan to save the world (yes, they have many) is, in my opinion, the Burton x Mountain Dew campaign, where recycled plastic bottles are converted into the thread Burton uses to make some of its equipment and athletic wear. It’s unique, but still hyper-relevant to what they do as a brand. Where the brand falls short is its lack of focus on a specific campaign. While it undoubtedly earns a perfect 10 conservation-wise for facilitating a whopping 11 separate eco-campaigns, the marketing aspect suffers. As the Harvard Business Review advises, keep it simple. There’s a fine line between impressing and overwhelming your customers.
KEEN Rating: 10 The footwear brand’s motto is “Follow Your Feet,” so that’s what it’s doing– and it’s awesome. KEEN’s Live Monumental Film Tour campaign began as a cross-country road trip 10 months ago in a yellow RV. As the brand ambassadors travelled 7,500 miles from Oregon to Washington, D.C., a film crew captured their efforts as they received more than 40,000 petition signatures to protect 3 million acres of public land, according to Cause Marketing Forum.
Photo courtesy of KEEN
The grand finale? A yellow-carpet movie premier of the film on Earth Day and film tour to follow. The campaign directly correlates with the hiking- and travel-oriented merchandise the brand offers. Even if it wasn’t relevant, the idea itself is so intriguing you forget it’s a marketing move in the first place. What’s even better? Two of the five natural areas the KEEN campaign focuses on have been declared as “protected” since the outset of the movement, a tangible achievement consumers can really take to heart when evaluating the brand.
SXSW Interactive 2016 blazed through Austin this past week in typical disruptive fashion, bringing the tech industry’s brightest minds into town for a five-day festival that was all business during the day and all party during the night.
No matter the application, the topic of how to engage customers was at the forefront of the most prominent conversations. From machine learning to data analytics to mobile, all technology pointed to one focal point – the customer and their engagement.
However, during all of the discussions one thing became apparent: while we now have technology that can help us track and study customers’ actions throughout the engagement cycle, we cannot yet decipher what prompted the customer to begin the engagement process with a particular brand.
Zappos Product Manager Kandis Yaokum best described it during the panel session titled “Future of Cool: Predicting What’s Next in Fashion”. Sitting alongside ThoughtWorks Senior Retail Consultant Rachel Brooks, Google Fashion Data Scientist Olivier Zimmer and Shoptelligence Founder Laura Khoury, Yaokum discussed how data analytics is helping fashion retailers predict what will be the industry’s next big trend. When Yaokum was asked “what kept her up at night?,” she answered that it was not knowing why a particular customer decided that a certain product was the “cool one” to buy and what stirred the initial curiosity to engage with a brand.
All the panel members described how data analytics is historical by nature, and can help deliver better insights into overall trends that can help predict the future. However, understanding what sparked a customer’s initial attention is still something that technology cannot yet decipher.
It seems we are at an inflection point, however; additional sessions all pointed to a better understanding of the customer and different ways we can look at the convergence of brand and technology to spark and measure customer’s attention. Key themes that emerged included:
It’s all about psychology: a brand’s engagement with a consumer should have personal and organic connection.
Marcela Sapone, founder of the New York based startup, Hello Alfred, discussed that how brands make you feel is all about perception, and brands can use this perception alongside technology as a metric to continue innovating and building a better product.
Going beyond the product – A physical store setting should be more about the overall experience and providing content customers can immerse themselves in.
STORY founder Rachel Shecthman discussed how the retail store should be utilized as a media channel to create an experience that immerses customers in the overall story and gives them something to do. We should think about physical stores as living labs and places of entertainment that are enabled by technology.
Democratizing access to luxury: luxury is now defined as a combination of access, experiences and usability.
Discussing wearables, Uri Minkoff and Decoded’s Liz Bacelar emphasized how luxury items should be both about usability and functionality and how the wearables of the future will be more about portraying emotion than tracking health data.
ALL customers are individuals.
Refinery29’s Phillipe von Borries discussed how all brands should look to people as individuals instead of grouping them into a block such as a generational age group. The power, he says, lies in niches – people who are defined by their overall passions and hobbies.
At the end of the day, the customer is the key driver, and brands that look to incorporate innovative technologies and tactics into their overall customer experience philosophy will continue to spark their attention.
This blog was written by our intern, Kamilla Rahman.
Austin
