CONFAB REPORT

Ask not what your shoppers can do for you

The future of brands & retail is not rocket science

Legend has it that on a tour of NASA in 1962, President Kennedy approached a man pushing a broom. “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy,” the President said. “What are you doing?” The man replied: “Well, Mr. President, I’m helping to put a man on the moon.”

Like so many other legendary stories, this one may be apocryphal. Would JFK have asked a man pushing a broom what he was doing? Maybe he did, but the point is clear: This man may not have been a rocket scientist, but was part of the journey nonetheless.

A man pushing a broom is not intended as a metaphor for Shopper’s role within the broad context of the brand and retail culture. It is rather a vivid illustration of the universal truth that success ultimately depends upon a living, breathing network of many different types of people with many different kinds of skills. Everything, and everyone, matters. Every moment matters.

The experience is the metric

How to measure the moments that matter?

Ultimately, success in the brand/retail experience must be measured, but what are the metrics? Unlike the past, in the traditional world of brand and marketing alone, measurement is not limited to the media/communications aspects of making brand/retail promises. Now that the remit has expanded across each and every possible interaction, the measurement mandate is considerably more complex. It stretches across the entire customer journey.

Real-time retail & stranger things

Execution: The "demogorgon" of the shopper journey

The brand/retail experience is all in the delivery, which of course is all in the execution. This is more complicated than ever in today’s “omnichannel” world. This is not a relatively simple matter of just delivering brand messages, be they ads or promotions, at every touch point.

Ominchannel is not the same thing as omnimedia. The word “channel” not only connotes media channels; more important, it encompasses transactional channels — that is, retail in all its multi-tentacled iterations.

Butch Cassidy & the shopper experience

Innovation: It's all about real life

Darren Serrao, former head of innovation at Campbell Soup, and now Chief Growth Officer of ConAgra, says that “innovation is about creating long-term, sustainable growth through differentiated solutions that bring new meaning and value to consumers.”

Ground Control to Major Tom

Organization: The Soul of the Customer Journey

Having a healthy organization is foundational; without a happy, communicative, and culturally aligned organization, one cannot expect to have happy, communicative and culturally aligned customers. The organization is the heart and soul of the brand and retail experience.