Remembering this Blast from the Past from a WARM summer several years back!
Every year in Toronto the summer ends with the Canadian National Exhibition running the last two weeks of August until Labour Day. For the first time in 30 years I decided to venture down in search of effective examples of experiential marketing and there were many to be found. In fact I’d say that many marketers are missing out on key branding and customer acquisition opportunities by not taking advantage of this annual event.
First off let’s be clear, it’s been years since I’ve been to the (CNE). This wasn’t always the case, in fact some of my earliest memories are of my Mother loading up all the kids and making the road trip from Burlington in the 1960’s. In the 1970’s I saw many classic concerts at the CNE Grandstand including T-Rex, Three Dog Night, The Guess Who, Emerson Lake & Palmer and The Beach Boys only to name a few. My CNE highlight had to be going backstage to meet RUSH and having a smoke with Neil Peart when we stepped out of the trailer to escape all the girls going ga-ga over Geddy Lee.
In the 1980’s, 90’s and since 2000 ‘The Ex’ and I went separate ways, not with any intention, we just drifted apart. But that was then and this is now, we’ve come back together so let’s dive into some of the experiential marketing seen at this year’s CNE.
Social Selling is all the rage and if not already, will very soon be the ‘go to’ methodology for B2B sales success! For B2B salespeople and leaders, do you know what your personal Social Selling Index (SSI) is or the SSI of all your sales team members and how this compares to Social Sellers in your network and Industry?
Whether you’re just setting out on your Social Selling journey or have already attempted and don’t feel you’re getting the results expected, there’s a formula I call the 3Cs of Social Selling. These are Content, Curation and Community and building these three legs allow you to create a virtual Social Selling stool which will stand on its own and combined these 3 components will synergistically deliver greater results than any of these 3 strategies employed individually.
Social Selling is all the rage and if not already, will very soon be the ‘go to’ methodology for B2B sales success! For B2B salespeople and leaders, do you know what your personal Social Selling Index (SSI) is or the SSI of all your sales team members and how this compares to Social Sellers in your network and Industry?
Whether you’re just setting out on your Social Selling journey or have already attempted and don’t feel you’re getting the results expected, there’s a formula I call the 3Cs of Social Selling. These are Content, Curation and Community and building these three legs allow you to create a virtual Social Selling stool which will stand on its own and combined these 3 components will synergistically deliver greater results than any of these 3 strategies employed individually.
Since the advent of the consumer internet in the mid-1990s we’ve heard and seen the word e-commerce some several billion times as it has blended into the smoothie that is today’s societal lexicon.
Funnily enough, it’s only now that the last laggards are finally beginning to spin up e-commerce sites as they realize they’re slowly sinking deeper into their single channel swamp.
So… what does the future of retail look like and what might an airport have to do with this?
Well first off, Omni-Channel’s a great buzzword, but how best to define the term and how can retailers (and even airport authorities) get from where they are today to the promised land?
This week’s share ‘Videos and Visions: Of Omni-Channel and Airports’ seeks to shed more light on both the definition and growing manifestation of future state omni-channel retailing.
To get started you should check out part of Jim Tompkins video ‘The Titans’ specifically focusing on his third game changing strategy ‘Omni-Channel Retail’
The entire video is 34 minutes long (well worth a look) but for today’s purpose have only selected the last 15 minutes in which Jim puts forward one of the most condensed, compelling and complete definitions of omni-channel retail I’ve seen to date!
Sure hope you enjoyed Jim Tompkins expanded views on omni-channel retail and how mastering same will truly be a game changing strategy for those retailers who successfully cross the chasm.
Evolution to omni-channel retail is all about transforming the customer journey and what better place to begin talking about journeys than the airport!
Omni-channel evolution is all about taking the ordinary, re-imagining what could be and then recreating the traditional customer experience into the extraordinary.
This is what has been done at the Frankfurt Airport through their omni-channel e-commerce transformation as highlighted in this video!
How are 160,000 daily travellers contributing to making the Frankfurt Airport the largest shopping mall in Germany?
The answer is e-commerce integration leveraging space and time to uncover opportunities for travellers to take better advantage of time during delays, stores in other terminals of airport and keep up with gate changes to ensure packages get to passengers before departure.
These opportunities also extend to arriving/returning passengers who can have their groceries ready for pick up upon their arrival/return to conveniently take home with them regardless of the time of day.
All of this was developed for Kai Schmidhuber of Frankfurt Airport courtesy of Kian Gould and the team at AOE, along with Magento, representing just one more example of how omni-channel continues to transform how we’ll all shop in the future!
Let’s now re-imagine all of the ordinary in a digital lens to see where space and dead time can be leveraged; the waiting room, concert venues, commuter trains/stations, sports stadiums, the gas station and even the shopping mall are all places ripe for re-invention.
Time to digitally rethink the ordinary to discover and create the truly exceptional.
Future of Retail as an Omni-Channel ‘Internet of Things’ | Jeff Ashcroft | LinkedIn
The future always comes faster than we think.
Even more so in the evolving world of fast retailing where websites are now merging with bricks and mortar stores to create what last April I dubbed The Endless Store.
How will retailers manage in stores without boundaries inhabited 24/7/365 by almost 8 Billion shoppers armed with mobile computing and payment devices?
Not easily, and certainly this new reality is as terrifying as it is awe inspiring to those with true merchant blood coursing through their veins.
Welcome to the world of Matrix Commerce aka Matrix Retail where retailers will have to monitor, manage, optimize and move more information and products faster than ever before.
The question is how will they be able do this quickly, accurately and effectively given the growing scale and complexity of evolving digital retail business?
When it comes to managing the reams of associated information and making the multitudes of rapid decisions needed to manage Matrix Commerce, new technology will be required to keep up. The human managers and masters of these retail supply chains, stores and online spaces will likely need to augment their capabilities through the use of cognitive technologies.
When it comes to products, many years and billions of barcodes have been printed to try and keep track of retail store inventories. And frankly other than improving checkout accuracy and speed this now somewhat antiquated technology still relies on people to maintain inventory accuracy at stores which just doesn’t work.
And even where the rare store can make it work, this method is not fast enough to keep up with the instantaneous requirement to power omni-channel retail.
The time for people to try and keep track of products in stores has passed, it’s over and never really worked, it’s now time for the products to keep track of themselves.
All products now need smart labels and smart tags to keep track of them at the item, pack, case and pallet level from manufacturing through distribution, to stores and then the ultimate delivery to, and returns by consumers. I would use the term RFID to describe these tags, but for some reason for several years RFID has been treated as the bastard child of the retail business, but hopefully not for much longer.
The tide is starting to shift towards the use of smart labels and smart tags as this example from lululemon‘s results quoted from RFID Journal demonstrates.
Global athletic apparel company lululemon reports that it has boosted its in-store revenue by deploying a radio frequency identification system at all of its stores to track its products’ movements as they arrive at stores, are placed on display on the sales floor and are sold. The system has increased the company’s inventory accuracy to 98 percent, says Jonathan Aitken, lululemon’s RFID program director, which is one reason that the company’s revenue is up, since its stores know what goods are available in the back room to be restocked on the sales floor and purchased. The company’s ability to access RFID-based inventory data and choose to sell goods online or in store accounted for 8 percent of e-commerce revenue for the quarter, said Stuart Haselden, lululemon’s CFO, during the firm’s third-quarter investor call in December 2015
Not only can this technology be utilized for inventory control and tracking purposes, it also can enhance the sales process and sharing of product information in store to assist in purchasing decisions.
Online and bricks & mortar retailers who continue to operate in status quo mode will not be able to keep up with the customer experience demands of the mobile connected consumer.
The world of retail is now omni-channel and shoppers live in a fast moving connected world where Endless Store shopping environments will be the norm.
Products will soon utilize smart labels and tags to keep track of themselves, communicating with both systems and consumers to manifest the emerging future of retail as an omni-channel internet of things.
Are your retail customers finding you less attractive lately? Consider your position on the seven signs shared below, and you may decide your retail business needs an omni-channel makeover!
This is not just an idle suggestion we’re making, as the omni-channel retail buzz is quickly becoming a roar and with good reason.
Not since the advent of price tags, cash registers and the ubiquitous apparel hanger has there been a retail industry innovation poised to create such major change.
Those in the know in online retail have been leveraging dropship vendors to create expanded ‘endless aisle’ assortments for a number of years now.
Through the ongoing development of the Matrix Retail approach it’s now become apparent a new reality is emerging best described simply as the ‘Endless Store.’
Just as an ‘endless aisle’ expands assortments well beyond the current store and retailer stocked web assortments, creating the ‘Endless Store’ connects and extends the bricks & mortar and virtual environments within which retailers operate. The potential for dramatically improved customer service and functional development of a unified retail customer experience is now within reach of every retailer.
For the past several years social media has been a buzzword swamp with marketers chasing one shiny object after another like dogs chasing their tails. Social Listening, Advocacy, Content Marketing, Engagement and Social Marketing to name but a few.
More recently joining the CMO in the chase have been other c-suite executives lured by the promise of a brave new world empowered by social business and collaboration. Or maybe it’s just their fear of losing control and being left behind.
Over the past year, like many others working within the Retail Industry in Canada, I’ve grown tired of hearing about all the bad news relative to retailers pulling out, closing down or shrinking their store counts here in Canada.
Other than one major ‘faux pas’ by a discount retailer which doesn’t need to be named yet again, the majority of recent store closures have actually been retailers dealing with unprofitable stores in their chain. And although painful for the individuals and areas where these actions happen, these steps are often necessary to keep the overall chain healthy in the long term.
The great news, and what we should be focusing on instead of the ‘doom and gloom’ of negative reports, is the growing number of new retail entries into Canada and the ongoing industry extensions taking place over the last year.
