Ideations

A Retail Publication Issue 3 2012

What do Shoppers Need to Choose You?

Although todays consumer is in a constant state of shopping, they have never been more elusive. Always online with their mobile devices, connected to friends and brands online and off, people are continuously discovering, judging, selecting and deselecting, listing, evaluating, projecting and recommending purchases. But the sale is harder to close. Influences on consumers are so many, so convoluted and so fast, stores struggle to find points where they can connect and become the retailer of choice. How can a retailer unscramble the new behavior and plumb it for useful insights insights that will lead to new territory for connection and innovation? When Bill Chidley, Senior Vice President, Shopper Sciences, Interbrand Design Forum, and his team developed new thinking for their CPG clients to improve the path to purchase consumer study model (see Ideations, issue 2, 2012) they realized retail brands could benefit from it as well. Actual consumer behavior maps to an open cyclical model that Chidley calls EngageBuy-Commit, which encompasses the full context of behavior and choices and all its moving parts. Engage refers to the when-where-how someone becomes aware of something they need or want. Buy is the way a person acquires goods and services, as well as the enabling experiences that help them make the acquisition. Commit relates to someones readiness to enter a relationship with a brand that will add value beyond the sale and open an enduring dialogue. Consumers are always just a moment away from entering one of the three modes, which, interestingly, are repeated, but in no particular order. People can engage with a brand before they buy, or buy before they engage, and so forth. Once a retailer begins to organize its thinking around Engage-Buy-Commit, its easier to see where its own brand ideas relate to those of its targeted shopper, and to find ways to win more trips, bigger baskets, and stronger loyalty says Chidley. Knowing how people Engage-BuyCommit helps retailers get them to do just that By and large, its the instore experience that triggers Commit. In most cases, however, Commit is influenced by the delivery of value, says Rhonda Hiatt, Director, Strategy and Analytics, Interbrand Design Forum. For example, the easy return service at the Lands End counter, or a personalized solution to a disappointing experience. If you can find out how your customer attaches to your category, you can then examine whats workingor missingin your store environment that drives Commit. Lowes uses an online tool that makes shopping its sprawling home improvement store much more manageable, says Chidley. MyLowes is a great program from the Engage-Buy-Commit point of view. It does things like keep records of your paint color purchases, it reminds you to change your furnace filter, and gives project advice. It creates a sticky relationship. Retailers who wait for shoppers to come into the store in response to an email or Sunday circular need a better way to close the sale. Fashion apparel brand Express has come up with a way to activate a shoppers Buy phase, says Hiatt. An Express app with GPS capabilities pings a shoppers device with a promotion once theyre within the stores geo-fence. Linked to a shoppers purchase history, such an effort can activate the Buy phase. For shoppers who are committed to a brand and already at the shelf, a mobile
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Retail Observations

The Devil is in the Digital Details

where there is typically no table servicetwo hungover punters decided to open their own pub with iPads at every table. Customers can text for wait-service and update their social media sites. Problem solved! Patrons get their pints, and bartenders have time to mix higher margin cocktails. As you can imagine, the pub is a whopping success. Even bettersince I never stop hoping traditional supermarkets will become food shopping experts, not distribution expertsI am delighted about the fact that retailers, such as Target and Walgreens, have developed instore apps that help shoppers navigate, save time, and enhance the overall tactile experience. Like a GPS, Walgreens mobile tool creates a wayfinding pattern from a shopping list. It consolidates the trip, lifts the burden off aisle directories, and moreit provides a platform for promotions and suggested selling at the optimum moment. That is some awesome digital. It helps ameliorate the painful fact that about 20 percent of sales are lost because shoppers cant find an itemand if its adopted by supermarkets, they may have a hope of attracting Millennials, age 25-35, a group that tends to shop less in traditional mass or supermarket formats due to lack of convenience. All in all, theres a lot to be excited about as brands become wiser in the ways of shopper engagement and how digital can enliven the brand essence and help the harried customer through clarity, order and style.

Designer Clement Mok said it best. Design is the enabler of the digital era. Because design is a process that creates order out of chaos, and renders technology usable to business and people. Design means being good, not just looking good. Being good in retail today means integrating the digital and physical in ways that add value, that truly enhance service and create a richer experience. One thats meaningful to your customer. Because I began life as an environmental designer, Im forever looking at retail spaces with an eye for aesthetics and an itch to make experiential improvements. So in terms of brands that have done outstanding work in digital, Im happy to report on some really impressive design thinking. Luxury label Burberry is determined to blow the roof off its new Regent Street flagship with an immersive, multi-media experience. Rather than rely exclusively on its century and a half of great craftsmanship, Burberry is future-proofing the brand with digital innovations. Burberry believes its a content generator as well as a design house, so the store is embedded with digital events, music and

video from its highly engaging website, thoughtfully woven into the shopping experience to reflect the different layers of Burberrys brand heritage. Thanks to this merging of physical with virtual, the brand is relevant to a new generation, as millions of fashion-forward techsavvy devotees follow it faithfully, posting their Burberry photos online. The Nespresso store in Paris has added a digital detail to its self check out experience. After youve bagged your items, you simply set your bag on a counter that uses RFID so you dont have to remove-scan-and-bag. Its a nice subtle touch, suitable to the brands persona of luxurious ease. If any brand could be on par design-wise with Apple, it would be this brand. Its as much about a refined aesthetic as it is coffee perhaps more so. Their products are sleek, their stores are gems of form and color, and now the use of gentletech. Two uses of digital that truly warm my heart, however, have to do with solving longstanding customer experience problems in the daily arena. The first innovation to give me hope comes out of the U.K. in the form of The Thirsty Bear digitized pub. After spending a long night queuing in pubsthat is, waiting forever for the landlord to pour them a pint, which is the rule in England

Bruce Dybvad

Guest Feature

Disruption and Digital

by Brandon Avery

Inspiration for the art that jolts brands to a higher level

Its not like we open the gates of hell. When a client in need of change asks us for a design vision, we push the envelope as far as we can. On the continuum of evolutionto-revolution, we push towards revolution. And that can make people nervous. Its understandable. If your brand is suffering from sameness, we can only help if our designs are aggressively different. Disrupting the landscape. You know how new music grabs popular culture or a meme dominates the internet? Thats what we want for your brand. More than that, we want to help you establish meaningful new leadership in your category, connectivity and staying power. Recent projects demonstrate the way we attack client problems with design thinking and how our visions are created around digital. Digital = Authenticity Were working with a premium avant-garde clothing brand for the global skate-surfsnow-MX scene, which has a narrow but devoted following around the world. We created an international prototype where its brand values, liberation and experimentation, happen in tandem with the customer. The space celebrates celebrity clothing designs, the grainy videos, music and experimental art from the brands website, and the efforts of the athletes the brand supports. During store hours, the fixtures carry unique merchandise. After-hours, products can be removed so fixtures can be skated or used as furniture during events. Uncensored social media plays into the space. Raw tweets arrive in real time. Anything less would be seen as a betrayal to what the brand represents. Digital = Light and Energy A leading interstate travel center brand recently asked us for a breakthrough design. We pitched a complete disruption of its current convenience-store look, and proposed a dramatic change to the exterior, to signal the changes withina new brand personality: fresh. Inside, a new entry experience and design elements convey its changed character, and bring its freshly prepared food to the forefront. Large digital screens add a sense of light and energy to the space. Promotional content can be changed quickly so the experience wont go stale. There is a certain perception about truck stops in America. We wanted to smash through those perceptions with a design that shouts the brand difference. Digital = Paperless and Personal Now lets go to Inner Mongolia, China, where a regional commercial bank brand aspires to become a modern, world-class international brand. For starters, it wants to be more than a place for transactions. It wants to be a brand experience. The goal was to make a routine trip to the bank into a singularly pleasant, useful experience that attaches customers to the brand. We created a new interior for their branches and business outlets. In doing so, we removed the paper and the tedium.

Brandon Avery , Senior Creative Director, Interbrand Design Forum

In a world that requires brands to act or react very quickly, Brandon is at the heart of this fast-paced business. As the Senior Creative Director and Environmental Design Group Leader, he is responsible for overseeing the development of innovative solutions for clients. Drawing on his understanding of the principles of strong brands and deep insights into what makes a great customer experience, Brandon develops concepts that push our clients to places they never thought they would be.

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What do Shoppers Need to Choose You?

initiative can also trigger Buy. Say a shopper uses her smartphone in Bath & Body Works for product reviews. A coupon placed on the popular RetailMeNot app, for instance, might finally get her to try an expensive new skin serum. Understand whats important to the shopper, says Hiatt. All these tools are availablebut whats important to your customer? Studying them through the lens of Engage-Buy-Commit brings your insights together at a more actionable level. Refocusing the blur of shopping, buying, consuming What is shopping today? In many cases, shopping includes engaging in a category well before a need or a want. People engage with the pet care category before they buy a pet. Parents who are planning a family become aware of brands before the first baby arrives. Thats a function of shopping, says Chidley. People are assigning value and roles to certain retailers based on the collective knowledge theyre building through friends and day-to-day news. A brand needs to find a way to position itself effectively in the cloud of information shoppers draw from. The Engage-BuyCommit approach helps us understand whats going on in that cloudthe connections being made by the target shopper, says Chidley. A retailer can then find a point of entry into the cycle. The model can also be a foundation for managing the brand. Form your business questions and answers on Engage-BuyCommit, advises Chidley. Thats the way to start. Then get your group to organize its thinking and strategy around it. Think about who could lead the Engage phase of your brand. The Buy phase. The Commit phase. Can you turn an old structure to new use, or organize a new structure under its aegis? If these efforts already exist in your organization, perhaps they could be de-siloed and combined around an integrated brand idea and a multi-disciplinary team focused on delivering a shopper desire. Holism is good. A holistic investigation, or system of treatment, emphasizes the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts. This holds true for the Engage-Buy-Commit way of thinking. While the Kroger Plus Card or the Amazon.com Prime Membership are powerful Commit assets, points out Chidley, a retailer would be wise not to count on them exclusively and ignore the Engage and Buy aspects of the cycle. It could make a brand vulnerable to, say, a strong price competitor. Or a retailer may possess a shoppers detailed profile, but be unable to convert that knowledge into anything meaningful to the store experience. The most resilient retail experiences deliver on more than one dimension. Now that the idea of shopping cant be anchored in geography or managed as an event, the Engage-Buy-Commit model holds too much promise to be ignored. Explore it as a way to keep your initiatives in perspective, advises Chidley. And envision the entire cycle. Managing all the moving parts with a model that shows how they create your brand is a compelling idea. Next issue: How CPG can thrive using insights from the Engage-Buy-Commit model.

Disruption and Digital

Digital platforms create seamless, personalized experiences from entrance to exit. Digital walls in the waiting lounge share product and service information via engaging interactive media. Paperless deposits and withdrawals take place on tablets. Conference tables with surface screens help consultants to better serve customers. A smartphone app makes transactions even easier and allows the bank to make personalized recommendations. Every moment has been designed to amplify the brand. Its ready for the world stage. Push it We cant do much, however, without champion clients who get behind change and put faith in the future we conceive for them. A brand is more than a product or service. It has to have the ability to inspire people. That means you need to be inspired yourself. So often were approached by brands in need of a great conceptual leap. But, these same brands are often the most overprotective of the status quo that they cant let go. Again, its understandable. Theyve been working extremely hard to gain market share in every way, theyre dedicated, they love their brand and live it. But theyve lost track of whats going on outside. Its a tough shift in perception for even the best of people. At Interbrand, we say if youre a brand today, you need to be a guide. Someone who shows us a new way to be in the world. And for that, you do have to change yourself within.

Ideations
A Retail Publication by
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Brand Strategy | Shopper Sciences | Retail Design | Digital | Documentation and Rollout
For more information or to be placed on our mailing list, visit our website: www.interbranddesignforum.com and complete the contact form. Reprints of articles or excerpts without the express written permission of Interbrand Design Forum are prohibited. Ideations will print four issues in 2012. Subscriptions: $125 annually in the U.S.; $150 elsewhere.

Bruce Dybvad, CEO Jill Davis, Editor Garrett Rice, Design/Production 2012