http://www.designforum.com Just another WordPress weblog Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:09:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 en hourly 1 http://www.designforum.com/experts-answer-what-do-retailers-do-next/ http://www.designforum.com/experts-answer-what-do-retailers-do-next/#comments Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:31:11 +0000 Lynn Gonsior http://www.designforum.com/?p=1093 Scott Jeffrey, Chief Creative Officer Push for differentiation. There is no time to rest on your laurels. Realize that innovation isn’t a stage, it’s an ingrained brand behavior. In fact, stop thinking of innovation as a “next step” all together--"step" as in a phase of something that stops and starts, or merely cycles through. My ideal retail brand would be one that never completes a store design prototype. The “never done” mentality is always asking, “What else? What else can we do to make it better?” That type of thinking requires courage. Belief in the importance of change. Granted, not every one of your new ideas will be a game changer, but once you entertain doubt and back off, you pretty much lose momentum. Particularly now, when the customer expectations are so far ahead of what most retailers are delivering in terms of the brand experience. The minute you rest on your laurels and let your brand and your stores get outdated, you have a really big, hardest-to-do maneuver on your hands: a turnaround. If you have a fleet of any size, you’re in danger of being too big and too rigid to manage a turnaround. But if you’re a constant seeker, a brand that remains loose and nimble, the maneuvers are much smaller and easier to manage. Your creative adjustments and transitions will be happening all the time. Knock down any silos in your way and get to that mindset as soon as you can. Bill Chidley, Senior Vice President, Shopper Sciences Consumers’ rapid adoption of the smartphone means it’s time to start thinking about connecting and communicating through that little screen. To make the most of the opportunity to drive demand, mobile optimization should be a top priority for your brand. It’s all about being in the game. Don’t try to justify mobile initiatives with ROI. Move forward with a reasonable hypothesis and prepare to learn and adapt. Don Rethman, Senior Vice President, Architecture Consider doing a site survey. Do your shoppers expect to share their shopping experience instantly? Do you plan to make fast calls to action in the store? Your building needs a wireless-based backbone to support that, with wireless connectivity that allows for transitions. This goes even beyond the creation of mobile hot-spots. Buildings must have a distributed, robust and flexible IT infrastructure which will allow technical access to all spaces. It helps if you’re working with architects who are aware there is such a thing as a path to purchase so they can help create a store that increases productivity and doesn’t skimp on the brand experience. Amanda Yates, Vice President, Strategy & Analytics It’s vital to map the “customer journey” to understand where best to make the wireless investments, as well as other investments that help your brand drive choice. Mapping will provide the insights that will help you gain advantage and protect sales by offering shoppers what they want in the modes they desire. Not every retailer will need a full-blown program, but each must understand the needs of its customers, what information and access they are looking for and where or how they want to access it. Once these insights are known, the appropriate level of investment and how to spend it will become much clearer. Dave Nixon, Executive Director, Digital Strategy The multi-channel ideal is a seamless transition from the physical shopping experience to the virtual experience through every digital touchpoint--one that’s painless for the shopper and profitable for the retailer. However, for most retailers that’s not the first thing you can do. There will be silos to take down, brand strategy work and brand engagement initiatives to adopt before that nirvana is reachable. I’d like to elucidate further on what Bill says (above)—“Get in the game.” Companies that spend too much time planning their next technology steps will find themselves playing catch up to those that are already moving. One of the main benefits of digital is the ability to deploy it quickly and then modify or adapt the solution depending on the performance metrics for success. In that respect, adopting new digital platforms into your channel strategy is less expensive and presents less risk than physical channels. The time is now to leverage digital technologies for increasing revenue, efficiency and customer loyalty. Kris Medford, Ph.D., Director of Shopper Sciences Get to know your shoppers again. Segmentation that is a few years old is downright archaic so make sure your insights are recent and actionable. Who are your shoppers—both those in your store today and those you want in the future? What’s important to them from a digital perspective, and how can you use digital help to make your brand be more relevant to their lifestyle? Justin Wartell, Senior Consultant, Brand Strategy The physical store needs to evolve from its position as the “jewel in the crown” to a “tool in the arsenal.” For retailers, the most important thing that can be done right now is to (re)examine the relationship between the physical brand experience and all of the other expressions of the brand. Brand experiences are inter-connected organisms that create an overall customer feeling about the brand. By understanding the role that retail plays in the context of the other touchpoints that are, or can be, deployed, retailers can drive loyalty, reputation, efficiency and value across their organizations. ]]> http://www.designforum.com/experts-answer-what-do-retailers-do-next/feed/ 0 http://www.designforum.com/why-shoppers-ignore-your-brand/ http://www.designforum.com/why-shoppers-ignore-your-brand/#comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:16:01 +0000 Kris Medford http://www.designforum.com/?p=1184 annual IIR Shopper Insights in Action conference, there was a surprising focus on biology and chemistry, and how all of these subconscious human processes relate to decision making. This year, the conference had a slight feeling of Bill Nye the Science Guy meets shopper insights. We heard some intriguing facts about how our senses of smell and sight, for example, work in relation to branded scents, and—of special interest to me—why we humans tend to look beyond what is right in front of our faces. In Shopper Sciences, we are often called upon to create disruptive solutions in store, putting brands in the shopper’s line of sight. One of our constant challenges, especially in mass retail, is that it’s not just our client that wants to be disruptive. It’s every brand in that category, and every category in every aisle. We’re working in any extremely noisy environment. ]]> http://www.designforum.com/why-shoppers-ignore-your-brand/feed/ 0 http://www.designforum.com/mobile-is-the-new-online-for-retailers/ http://www.designforum.com/mobile-is-the-new-online-for-retailers/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:01:22 +0000 Amanda Yates http://www.designforum.com/?p=933 They say that having no presence on mobile devices in 2010 is like not having a website circa 1999. So true! The digital age is in hyper-drive. 3G access continues to increase, and 4G is already here! Some stats say that up to 99 percent of the population will have some sort of data capability on their mobile phones by 2011. So what does this mean for retailers? It means the need for a whole new view to their digital strategies. When a shopper can enter a store, scan a barcode, see that the same product is cheaper at a nearby competitor and click a link for directions to take them straight there, the game has suddenly been changed, so to speak. There is an ever-expanding catalog of apps out there to enable this type of shopping behavior (in the store, in the car or on the run), and manufacturers like Apple are training customers via commercials and advertisements about how to use all these apps to simplify their lives. It might be easy to dismiss this trend given the relatively small percentage of people with iPhones or Droids today, but now is the time to start investigating and investing in individual strategies. ]]> http://www.designforum.com/mobile-is-the-new-online-for-retailers/feed/ 0 http://www.designforum.com/q-when-is-post-important-to-kelloggs/ http://www.designforum.com/q-when-is-post-important-to-kelloggs/#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:52:21 +0000 Bill Chidley http://www.designforum.com/?p=910 A: When I’m shopping at my local Kroger. No, not the “Post” as in Raisin Bran; I’m referring to the physical post, or column, that is in the cereal aisle at my store. The scene is this: my wife asks me to go get the Multi-Grain Cheerios so she can shop in peace for 10 minutes. She says, “Get the big box, unless the smaller box is on sale,” adding, “The Cheerios are close to the post about half-way down the aisle.” If she wouldn’t have given me that navigational pointer, she probably would have bought herself 15 minutes of peace. The merchandise presentation in the cereal aisle is such a mess, so lacking in organization, I could easily have squandered more time, forced to scan every package, not finding what I was looking for. But since she gave me the post as my pole star, I managed to navigate past the lions and tigers and bears to the Cheerios. After a moment of anxiety while I scan the shelf for validation—Ta-dah!—I find the Mutli-Grain big box not on sale! Contrast this with my second mission, during which my wife gets only a few minutes of peace.]]> http://www.designforum.com/q-when-is-post-important-to-kelloggs/feed/ 0 http://www.designforum.com/pay-attention-cpg-friends-pantene-does-it-right/ http://www.designforum.com/pay-attention-cpg-friends-pantene-does-it-right/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:26:50 +0000 Rhonda http://www.designforum.com/?p=826 While I spend my days understanding shopper behavior and applying rigorous research and analysis methods to help companies “grow categories,” I spend my weekends shopping like crazy. With my bank account being the victim of all of these great growth strategies! As you know, retailers and manufacturers are always finding new ways to create incremental growth or, simply put, make shoppers spend more. One of my favorite places to shop is Target. Before I even make it into the store I have generally blown $20 on the dollar spot. After piling my cart with a bunch of stuff I really have no use for, my second stop is always the shampoo aisle. Regardless of need, I always stop. Something about the colors and the arrangement of the shampoo aisle just makes me feel so clean and orderly and I generally end up picking up something guaranteed to fix frizzy hair or give me more volume. Well, much to my surprise, my venture into the shampoo aisle a few weeks ago yielded a fantastic new surprise! The new Pantene display! Aisle violators grabbed my attention as they organized the offering by color and hair solution. That’s right, hair solutions--easily found! And not only did the aisle violators frame up the offering, but the bottle packaging was new and perfectly coordinated with the signs. You can image my excitement as I quickly zeroed in on the “fine” solutions area. I left the aisle with a whole new system of hair care.]]> http://www.designforum.com/pay-attention-cpg-friends-pantene-does-it-right/feed/ 1 http://www.designforum.com/gender-disruption-boys-like-the-new-kotex-packaging/ http://www.designforum.com/gender-disruption-boys-like-the-new-kotex-packaging/#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 01:15:22 +0000 Kris Medford http://www.designforum.com/?p=579 What is an 18 year old guy doing talking about feminine hygiene products?! Even as I grabbed my purchase and escaped the awkwardness, I began to contemplate what transpired. Given that I spend my days knee-deep in shopper sciences, I found the situation quite compelling. Good packaging should be, in part, disruptive, and the new U by Kotex packaging is definitely that. The sub-brand is unique in the category, both in shelf presentation and in the “get real” tone of the advertising. A+ on disruption. ]]> http://www.designforum.com/gender-disruption-boys-like-the-new-kotex-packaging/feed/ 1 http://www.designforum.com/why-shopper-marketing-is-too-aspirational-for-most-brands/ http://www.designforum.com/why-shopper-marketing-is-too-aspirational-for-most-brands/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 20:19:34 +0000 Bill Chidley http://www.designforum.com/?p=474 The urge to dive in is understandably tempting. Brands that invest in shopper marketing are seeing three times the return as compared to traditional marketing disciplines. But the discussion revolves around a very small percentage of brands, such as CVS/pharmacy and Mars Snackfoods, ShopRite and Kellogg’s, Walgreens which just announced it will engage in a shopper marketing pilot with The Hershey Company, and of course the eminence of shopper marketing, Procter & Gamble. All have been working on shopper marketing for years and have an extremely high level of expertise.]]> http://www.designforum.com/why-shopper-marketing-is-too-aspirational-for-most-brands/feed/ 0 http://www.designforum.com/how-brands-build-digital-bonds-with-their-shoppers/ http://www.designforum.com/how-brands-build-digital-bonds-with-their-shoppers/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:23:05 +0000 Lynn Gonsior http://www.designforum.com/?p=430 Even with millions of items for sale, Amazon connects intimately with customers, from its one-click ordering to its ability to become more relevant with each visit. The result is a “barrier to exit” that other brands envy. American Eagle excels at aggressively integrating multi-channel marketing tactics into both its traditional and digital campaigns. It connects at all the right touchpoints, which goes a long way towards achieving brand loyalty. This year, AE included a mobile filed in its loyalty program, and used mobile as a point of entry into sweepstakes as well as an alerts program. Calls to action were posted on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter in the form of banner ads, status updates and tweets.]]> http://www.designforum.com/how-brands-build-digital-bonds-with-their-shoppers/feed/ 0 http://www.designforum.com/it-takes-a-strong-brand-is-to-inspire-shopper-confidence/ http://www.designforum.com/it-takes-a-strong-brand-is-to-inspire-shopper-confidence/#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2010 18:23:33 +0000 Justin Wartell http://www.designforum.com/?p=432 This year, retailers have made headway in the battle against “sameness” by negotiating exclusive famous name brands, making sure their private labels stand for something besides “cheaper” and by infusing the shopping experience with emotional appeal. One brand that renewed its value-plus-reason image is Old Navy. After veering off into fast fashion inspired by the designer runway, it has returned to bright basic family apparel surrounded and supported by its kitschy sense of humor. Shoppers are returning to the store and business is on the upswing.]]> http://www.designforum.com/it-takes-a-strong-brand-is-to-inspire-shopper-confidence/feed/ 0 http://www.designforum.com/radical-ideas/ http://www.designforum.com/radical-ideas/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:11:22 +0000 admin http://designforum.atomicclients.com/?p=280 http://www.designforum.com/radical-ideas/feed/ 1