Consumer Experience Innovations: Takeaways from PSFK’s CXI 2018 Conference

If you’re looking for innovations in consumer marketing, PSFK’s CXI 2018 conference has proved to be, for me, one of the most forward-thinking conferences around. Speakers from a range of industries share their insights about the consumer experience, the key element of marketing that drives engagement, sales, and, ultimately, ROI.

Piers Fawkes, founder and editor in chief of PSFK, has made it a point of choosing speakers who “think differently from the assumed groupthink.” He noted that it’s important to have a diverse discussion around issues like privacy, security, news, and trust, and to look at the future in a more practical way. By understanding how brands and industries can impact the consumer experience, marketers can better formulate stories that truly understand and map the consumer journey.
Here’s what’s on the horizon.

The Impact of GDPR, AI, and Blockchain

Consumer experience innovations are emerging as a potent force in driving success. The advent of privacy legislation like GDPR, immersive artificial intelligence technology, and blockchain transparency for transactions will all have an impact on the level of that experience.

When it comes to privacy, Fawkes believes the GDPR legislation will first impact European...

Read the full article at the Videa blog.

The Future of Retail – Brick and Mortars Woke Up

According to Piers Fawkes, Founder and President PSFK, “it is an exciting time when it comes to retail. There is transition taking place and some of that is painful. And it will continue to be painful in some places such as department stores. But we are seeing a lot of really exciting ideas and innovations. It’s like retail has woken up.” 

His company just released the latest results of a trend study which tracks the evolution of retail in all of its forms. Here are the highlights:

No More Digital and Offline Divide

The future looks very different from the retail of the past. This point in time marks the end of the digital and offline divide. For one thing, there are more opportunities for brick and mortar stores as shopper experiences are increasingly blended with retail sales. There is a digital underpinning to store sales because now customers expect coordination between all channels from online and the physical store space.

For retailers, it is more important than ever to build an integrated retail business now referred to as  blended retail. It is no longer an offline versus online competition. Offline should work more to its strengths and use online channels to fulfill certain needs. The result, brick and mortar stores are becoming more of a playground rather than a place to just purchase and eventually, in the near future, won't be the place for the actual purchase transactions. 

Higher Consumer Expectations

The consumer mindset is shifting. Consumers don't only want to save time in their shopping excursion, but also want to add value during their visit. They are seeing all channels – offline and online – as a way into the store and seek consistencies across each platform and device. Ideally all should work together holistically.

Nike seeks to meet their most avid consumers’ expectations by, as Ron Faris, General Manager, of Nike’s s23NYC Digital Studio and SNKRS App, described, “creating a sense of community and vibe that you might get in a festival, but on your phone.” Nike is building emotion digitally among their coveted demographic of Sneakerheads fanatics by treating product as content. For example, using AR, Nike buries hints to a stash of highly prized, limited-edition sneakers into their mobile app. Sneakerheads see the shoe on the app and enter a geo-fenced physical area, like a park, where they locate the hidden limited-edition sneakers that they can then purchase in the store. In this way, Nike is shaping sneaker culture by creating a sense of urgency, excitement and scarcity within their most ardent consumer segment.

Advice for Brick and Mortar Stores

Stores should avidly create opportunities for consumer exploration and identity-building through:

    >  Revolving discovery. No more static retail space. Create excitement by changing merchandise frequently to support themes. Support that effort by programming events around the store. An example is the Timberland Concept Store Tree Lab which changes every six weeks.

        >  Integrated wellness. Capitalize on continued growth of wellness market by making spa and fitness part of the retail experience. An example is The Wellery at Saks Fifth Avenue. 

     >  Educated confidence. Offer hands on workshops and immersive learning activities in the store to build confidence around purchases. An example is Lowe’s Holoroom How To which can show consumers how a new bathroom would look before the project begins. Learn basic home improvement skills before applying them in the real world using VR technology. 

?    >   Valued attention. Serve need and connect to specific consumers based on their interests and proclivities. Transform previously frustrating shopping moments into luxurious experiences that add value to a retail experience. An example is MM.LaFleur which offers a personal shopper experience via a pre-visit survey. The dressing room is set up before the shopper arrives. 

Conclusion

While offline retail has remained fairly static over the years, e-commerce has gone through three modern digital cycles according to PSFK. 1.0, the Follow Model, uses platforms like Facebook. 2.0 is the Intimate Model like Snapchat and 3.0 is the Tribal Cult Model that fuses the first two trends and adds influencers into it by building energy and emotion and creating social bonfires. The inclusion of brick and mortar into the digital Tribal Cult Model hearkens a brand new age of retail when both offline and online can benefit and thrive.

This article first appeared on www.MediaVillage.com

The Future of Retail: Consumer Attitudes, Brick-and-Mortar Strategies—and TV

Is there a unified channel strategy to drive the future of retail? According to Piers Fawkes, founder and president of media company PSFK, the retail space is transitioning from an online-versus-offline competition into an omnichannel landscape where the two competing channels are blended and synergistic.

“Retail is going from a place of transaction to a place of experience,” said Fawkes. In January 2018, PSFK released the latest results of a trend study that tracks the evolution of retail in all its forms.
What were the results? The future of brick and mortar looks very different from the antiquated stores of the past. And perhaps more surprising? The fact that TV has a central role in the future.

Transitions in Retail

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

Morgan Spurlock is Focusing Forward (PSFK 2017)

No sooner do I think I am up to date on media news than I attend the annual PSFK conference where they report so much more happening than what we hear in the press. The conference covers a range of cultural projects and global initiatives that can not only impact individual lives today but also future society. Momentous stuff, and yet, PSFK Founder Piers Fawkes sees this effort as a “sense of purpose with a small p.”  Each year for the past 11 years, PSFK focuses on efforts that, “impact communities and the people around them by highlighting pioneers and change makers.”

Here are some major takeaways from this year’s conference:

Brands are Engaging Directly in Content Innovation

Media is transforming through the use of technology, raw creativity and the need to rise above the general chatter. Morgan Spurlock’s production company, Warrior Poets, strives to tell stories, introduce brands and reach the right audiences in new ways.  “One of the projects that I'm most proud of is the short film series that we produced in partnership with GE* called FOCUS FORWARD FILMS ” he explained, “The series featured 30 stories about innovators, directed by 30 amazing filmmakers, and, to date, has been seen by more than 175 million people worldwide.”

Spurlock sees future expansion in the next five years where, “you'll see larger brands taking even bigger swings in the content space - so much so that they'll be creating content that can compete with the traditional content you see. Brands are starting to realize that to stay relevant they need to be infinitely better storytellers and not just sell products.” But he warns that “branded content becomes overkill when the messaging outweighs the power of the content. People want to be entertained, and brands can do that, but too many brands can't get out of their own way. The sooner that brands realize that connecting to an audience in an entertaining and meaningful way is the priority, the sooner we'll see brands taking greater risks and making better content.”

Innovations Designed For Other Industries Can Transform Media

What3words is a company that has divided the world into 57 trillion ten foot by ten foot squares, identifying every single one of them with a unique three word address. Based on an algorithm using GPS coordinates and 40,000 terms, what3words converts these coordinates into words, effectively replacing street addresses around the globe.

According to COO, Clare Jones, her company’s corporate address is Index Home Run which is the location of the front door of their offices in London, rather than the building in total. Because these three words are in ten foot by ten foot increments, even a small 300 square foot NYC apartment will have three addresses. What3words can be a lifesaver for those trapped on some remote mountain or shipwrecked or suffering in some earthquake ravaged landscape where street addresses no longer apply. It can also help facilitate drone delivery (to the delivery entrance instead of the front entrance), transforming logistics for a variety of companies and industries.

Focusing on the media world, knowing a house’s what3words addresses might help ascertain media usage by the room within the home. Am I viewing TV in the living room or the bedroom or in the back yard (three different addresses)?

Introduction of Innovation Requires a Deft Touch For Brands

Tucker Fort, Partner, Smart Design, spoke of the “ah-ha” discoveries he experienced when rolling out Gatorade GX, a personalized sports beverage that is based on the athletes’ own physiology. Gatorade GX is one of the first “super created sports drink,” according to Fort. But despite the tested benefits of first adopters, the roll-out takes time. Fort’s recipe for success follows these three rules: 

      1.       Digital doesn’t solve everything --old school touchpoints help drive adoption.

      2.       Integrate new behaviors with existing ones.

      3.       Never stop pushing what is possible.

The lesson for media is that new technological and digital solutions need to be integrated the old ways of doing business to help facilitate adoption. Also, it is easy to say, ‘let’s go totally into digital measurement with big data’, but the inclusion of oldie but goodie qualitative research such as focus groups and ethnology studies often offer deeper and richer insights to the quant data. 

Conclusion

The major takeaway from PSFK for me is that if you can envision it, you can do it. There are no limits.  

Need to vertically integrate your product line? Christina Agapakis, Creative Director, Ginkgo Bioworks, is bringing biology to consumer products. Her company takes DNA sequences and develops consumer products such as brewing perfume from yeast, replicating the taste of meat in veggie burgers and growing leather in a lab. Companies exploring this technology include Adidas, Reebok and Patagonia. 

Want to know more about highly niche audiences like Fillipino housewives or Japanese teenagers or gun runners in Somalia? Anthropologist Jan Chipchase, author of The Field Research Handbook  can ethnographically measure any group for you. 

So, media people, the possibilities are endless.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

*Disclosure: MediaVillage.com publisher Jack Myers is a partner in cinelan, the production company founded by Morgan Spurlock that produced FocusForwardFilms.

Converging Data and Creative. Kodi Foster of Viacom at PSFK

I have been attending the PSFK conference for at least 7 years. If you have never heard of it, it is akin to a TED for advertising and branding. PSFK is a daily news site but also serves as a think tank. Piers Fawkes, founder and editor-in-chief of PSFK, describes his endeavor as a platform for ideas and innovation - And it is. 

He is an advocate of embracing change and believes, “Uncertainty or the fear of uncertainty is pointless and even poisonous. Progress gives us direction and gives us a path forward to build on tomorrow. Over the past ten years we have seen great change happens. My goal is to present to you the ideas of today so you can build on tomorrow.”

This year’s NYC conference had speakers from a range of fields from Katie Manderfield and Denise Burrell-Stinson of the New York Times who are building a branded content platform linking advertiser content with editorial, Microsoft's chief storyteller, Steve Clayton, who helps craft Microsoft's story both internally and externally to Blade Kotelly of JIBO who creates robots, Nick Horbaczewski who is creating a drone racing league and Giorgia Lupi of Accurat, a data visualization artist who turns numbers into stories.

While I am ambivalent about more native content infiltrating more media platforms, I am entranced by the use of technology to improve our lives and the use of data to provide us with more insights. Media uses larger and larger swaths of data to make business decisions. Some companies such as Viacom, are using data to also help in the creative ideation process.  

Kodi Foster, VP Data Strategy, Viacom gave a presentation on using data for storytelling. His work involves designing a creative map using data as the guide. “We create content,” he explained, “The destination is always audiences, so we use data to design a profile of the audience we are looking to reach.”  Viacom still targets broad demos, such as Millennials, but the data he uses enables more nuanced targeting with the goal of leveraging Smart Scale. He gave as an example, a profile of New Yorkers who, after looking at the data, tend to coalesce into behaviors such as having brunch, being stylish, hustling and being rude. Hmm.

“We have to kill the idea of convergence of art and science because it has always been converged,” Foster stated, “Architecture and music historically combined both disciplines. The challenge is how can we take something and interpret it through artistic expression and context.” And the age old division of left brain and right brain is a myth, according to Foster. He said, “There is no such thing. Just because you do art doesn't mean you can’t do differential equations.”  It is this thinking that has moved Viacom into a better collaborative integration of creative departments with data departments. “My team lives with the creative team at Viacom. We break apart the taxonomy of the campaign creative and marketing then puts the pieces back together,” he added.

His advice to companies looking to use of data-driven insights in content marketing is simple. “Start with the outcome,” he advised, “Function like google maps where you change directions based on guideposts around the piece of creative. Have relevancy to the moment. Cross reference against the audience. Be more of a detective. Let data drive decision making, a methodology we like to call being Fans First.” He concluded with the most important piece of advice from Viacom, “Listen to the kids.”