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.”

PSFK Looks At The Future of Everything

I think of PSFK's annual NYC conference as Next Gen TED in that it brings to the stage a series of wickedly smart designers, marketers, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, many of whom you have never heard of. PSFK, a design / research firm and think tank headed by visionary Pier Fawkes, offers cutting edge insights that span disciplines. Speakers range from climbing wall developers to wearable technology designers to food designers with titles like New Worlds Creator (for toy apps) and Revisionary (for clothing designer).

Take for example food designer Emile Baltz, a food designer whose work crafting designer cocktails (that you lick off of a plate) for the Museum of Sex takes one form and function and transcends it into another experience altogether.  Or Billie Whitehouse whose FUNDAWEAR through her company We:eX connects physical experiences to your clothing such as vibrating underwear for those who … ahem … want to remain intimate in a long distance relationship.  

"What does this have to do with media?" you might be thinking. Well, everything. Media is experiencing an unprecedented transformation, crossing platforms, expanding its engagement with viewers, searching for unfathomable amounts of new compelling content and generally stretching the boundaries of what it is and what we do. So a company like We:eX that enables us to enhance the sports fans viewing experience with tech infused clothing that signals us when the athlete is excited, nervous or elated, helps us more deeply engage with the content as if we are there right in the middle of the game. It is part of our mission in media – to expand the boundaries of the viewing experience, making it more intimate, immersive and creating more connections - literally and physically in this case!

Turn the Media Paradigm Backward and Upside Down

Whether you are a print publication transitioning to Tablets or a Content Creator seeking funding, PSFK believes that there are new approaches that make all challenges easier and more successful.

Bjorn Jeffery of Toca Boca tackled the print to digital challenge that many magazines are facing today. He reimagined the idea of a magazine by starting with the digital concept and making a magazine experience rather than vice versa; adapting a magazine to a digital platform. His Popular Science Magazine was one of the first to migrate to the tablet with a video component. Getting in early and turning the challenge backward led to a successful result.

His work with Sesame Street turned the concept of tablet ownership upside down. Coining the phrase the “pass back effect”, Jeffrey realized that parents were taking tablets and passing it back in the car to the children in the backseat. “It was a radical notion at the time where we increased childrens’ ownership of the device” and created content that spoke directly to the child rather than through the parent.

Rodrigo Niño of Prodigy Networks believes that “the crowd has the power to make change” and has put the power of the crowd into real estate, funding multi-million dollar skyscrapers in Colombia via crowd funding. So I am thinking, if millions of dollars can be raised for a real estate project, why can’t the crowd fund television series for those networks with the vision but maybe not the budget for ambitious programming projects?

YouTube’s Kevin Allocca upended some preconceived notions about what makes a video popular on his service. Providing social and authentic experiences helps drive viewership. But what constitutes an engaging experience differs across locales. Example: A 4 minute video of elks crossing a road garnered over 1,000,000 views … mostly in the western US. “Tech makes global possible but it is still local.” It is impossible to predict if a video will be popular or hit the cultural zeitgeist but, according to Allocca, one thing is certain; “knowing how video works is to understand how creativity works.”

We in the media are in the business of implementing creativity but we may be trapped at our desks doing routine tasks day after day. One day spent in the presence of creative iconoclasts can help us look at the whole world with fresh eyes.