FutureShop
This post was originally published on the Leo Burnett site. I'm including my original write up here.
Intro
The Innovation team started out doing events in 2011 with the simple goal in mind to inspire the agency and its clients with what’s next in X. FutuRetail was our first event and established the template for events from that point forward. Bring together innovative partners around a theme, expose them to the agency in a marquee event setting and then follow up with teams to see if there were any fits for that technology.
Over the past few years the consumer landscape shifted due to the rise of the smartphone and our hyper-connected lives, the shoppers path to purchase was completely disrupted. Retailers have been slow to accept this change, forcing shoppers to take control of how they buy. Enter Amazon, Instacart and any other platform that makes it easy for a shopper to buy what they want when they want.
While there is a treasure trove of data and quotes to demonstrate how significant this change has been to retailers (and thus brands), one that stands out is foot traffic in stores has dropped significantly from 40 billion in 2011 to 16 billion in 2014.
With all of these changes and our focus on the shopper, it seemed natural to change the FutuRetail name to FutureShop for this year’s event. In addition, we’ve co-ordinated with Arc London to help them host their own FutureShop on the same day. There will be a few global partners at each event that we have in common.
We hope to add in other markets next year to make this a ‘proper’ global event for Arc.
What are the major trends this year in retail?
There are 5 trends that we’ve identified from watching the retail space this year. We recognized these trends by visiting all of the premier trade shows, going to see how retail is evolving in different markets and talking to our global partners. They are Social Playground, Connected Experience, Sensory Experience, Vending 2.0 and Social Currency.
Here is how we think of these trends:
Social Playground: How Retailers are remaking brick-and-mortar stores into popular destinations by offering experiences that can’t be replicated online.
Connected Experience: Consumers are interacting with brands using the Internet of Things (IoT) on a multitude of devices, whether it’s a computer, wearable, in-store kiosk or mobile phone.
Sensory Experience: Consumer emotions and evaluations can be paired with strategic sensory inputs in retail stores to increase sales, return visits and customer loyalty.
Vending 2.0: How Brands are taking stores to unexpected places to capitalize on connections with consumers.
Social Currency: When anyone can create their own media channel, brands can adapt by creating smaller endorsement deals.
What most excites you about the latest retail innovations? Where do you see the big opportunities here for marketers?
There’s never been a more urgent time for brands to be creative in how and where they reach consumers along the path to purchase. Conversely, there has never been a more dynamic or exciting time to be looking at the technology space.
Consumers now look to brands to provide value, utility and entertainment. Some technology areas that provide this are:
-Proximity (beacons, NFC, geo-fencing, physical web) to provide relevant content and messaging based on where a consumer is.
-Virtual Reality to provide entertainment and immersive branded experiences.
-Facial Recognition to convey they right message to the right consumer (can sound kinda scary but when done right can be a creative experience).
-Cognitive Computing (IBM Watson) to provide exact product recommendations based on either who you are or what you’ve said on social networks.
What are some stellar examples of brands taking advantage of some form of your above outlined trends?
-Proximity: Peak Performance http://www.leovative.com/2015/03/31/peak-performance-virtual-pop-up-shop/
-VR: North Face http://www.leovative.com/2015/06/02/ever-wanted-to-base-jump/
-Facial Recognition http://www.leovative.com/2015/05/18/astra-girl-detection-billboard/
- Cognitive Computing http://insightsmagazineonline.com/Assets/2015/February/IBM-InterConnect-Watson#.VXhs9WRVhBc