Hum, seen at Hong Kong airport, I wouldn’t say creativity is in the blood Land Rover. Been done before I see.
Read MoreRetail and brand insight
Entering the Burberry store in the IFC, Hong Kong:
‘Hello Sir’
‘Hello, welcome to Burberry’
‘Hello Sir, welcome to Burberry’
‘Hello Sir’
‘Hello, welcome to Burberry’
‘Hello Sir, welcome to Burberry’
‘Hello Sir, welcome to Burberry. Would you like to try some purfume?’
… ‘Erm, no thanks, it’s for women’
Burberry: I know I’m in a Burberry store. I was acknowledge by each member of staff within the first ten seconds of being in the store. One welcome would have done the trick. Think about your service relationship and understand your customer. There are many cultural differences to be aware of, some people like to be left alone, some people want attention. Retail staff should be able to read their customers, understand how to be treated and nurture a relationship.
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After a recent visit to M&S on Oxford St, London to look at their in-store interactive screens it took a while to find them, they seem to be stowed away out of customers reach in an awkward space within womens area … not sure if it’s intended but didn’t look temporary.
After reading the Guardian article M&S are pushing in the right direction to capture the online generation and harness interactivity instore – the stores play a vital part in facilitating digital interaction for the connected shopper http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/02/marks-and-spencer-multichannel-shopping
At the Landmark in Hong Kong, Fendi created a pop-up to celebrate a range of carefully selected, handmade crafts that represent the best in Italian tradition and creativity. All the exhibits have been flown in directly from Italy.
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Fujifilm Studio is a new concept store where people can try out the latest Fujifilm products, display their photos and get expert advice on getting the best out of their camera. Inspired by the ‘atelier’ feel of contemporary Japanese interiors, and the stripped-down classic design ethos of Fujifilm’s iconic X-Series cameras, it’s an open, creative space where people can share their love of shooting great photos.
Case study available here:
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The adidas Virtual Footwear Wall is live and in the London Oxford Street store. My word is, go and try it, visit the store between 31st October – 14th November. Here is the press release from the London team:
Together, adidas and Start JudgeGill have taken a bold step into the future of shoe retail with the first public launch of the Virtual Footwear Wall (VFW).
The towering interactive installation was unveiled to a highly charged crowd at adidas’ flagship store, on London’s prestigious Oxford Street, during the last weekend of October.
The Virtual Footwear Wall, or ‘VFW’, offers consumers an entirely unique way to engage with adidas shoes; utilizing visual, aural and emotional devices to immerse users in the products
they’re browsing like nothing they’ve experienced before.
And yet, remarkably, it’s blissfully simple to use. Shoppers simply reach out and tap whatever catches their eye, and within moments, they’re transported.
“Choose a running shoe, and suddenly you’re surrounded by stadium lights.” says Executive Creative Director, Liz Sivell. “Heartbeats thump through your ears. The running track extends in front of you. You can literally feel the adrenaline from the starting block, right there as you look at the shoe, without moving from the spot.”
“Another tap and you’re in the middle of 10,000 screaming fans, F50s biting the turf, ready to score the winning goal in your new boots. Instantly you’re more connected with the shoe that’s in front of you than you’ve ever been before – yet you’re not even holding it.”
Richly detailed 3D models of the shoes, digitally scanned and recreated in their entirety to preserve even the slightest intricacies, are explored with simple and familiar multi-touch gestures on one of the unit’s four huge high-definition touch-screens – all whilst ‘cogs’ of shoes from each of adidas’ sport & style lines extend up and down beyond the user’s peripheral vision to tempt and tease.
From there it’s simple to try, buy and find the perfect shoe with smart filters. It’s been designed to be adaptive to varying customer types, with browsers, hunters and prospectors alike each finding their unique purchase journeys smartly catered for. The Wall can even automatically identify your gender to make sure you love what you see.
A cutting edge gaming engine brings the wall to life, animating and extrapolating the shoes inside heart-pumping, immersive soundscapes and energetic 3D scenes to complete the picture and drive engaging, emotional responses to the product at hand.
Users can even delve deeper into key products to discover back stories, watch high-definition product videos, explore the technology behind the latest shoes or simply indulge in what others have to say through live ‘hype’ feeds from social networks.
“The virtual footwear wall is our first step into a new world of retail where we blur the lines between the digital and physical space”, adds adidas Vice President of Global Retail Marketing, Chris Aubrey.
“Through this concept we will be able to offer our consumers a much wider range of products, a better overall shopping experience, and more detailed information about our products and why they are right for the consumer. We believe this and other similar concepts will change the way we shop now and in the future. This is a new shopping experience for a new generation of shoppers.”
“It’s such an exciting time for us,” continues Sivell, “not just as an agency, but as a generation. Technology is allowing us to create experiences that we couldn’t have even dreamed of only a handful of years ago. And believe me. The Wall is just the beginning.”
The launch marks the next stage in over a year’s worth of intense research and development, which has previously seen the VFW pick up international attention at the annual NRF conference in New York, and, most recently, winning the 2011 MasterCard Retail Business Innovation award.
adidas’ latest football boot, the intelligent ‘adiZero F50 miCoach’, was aptly chosen as the sole launch product for the smart-store’s first public outing, as part of a complete campaign created by the innovative London consultancy which sees just 250 pairs of the ‘boot with a brain’ exclusively available for early pre-order in the Oxford Street store.
Enhanced by a smart ‘SPEED_CELL’ sensor in the sole, the new boot allows players to track their performance to enhance their skills, challenge friends, and prove their speed – prompting Start JudgeGill to create 250 bespoke 3D printed ‘BrainBoots’ as limited edition gifts for purchasers, amongst digital, social and store based activity.
Premier league pro Gareth Bale will even be dropping in to an exclusive pick-up event to meet the so-called pre-ordering ‘F50 250’ on November 14th alongside famed freestyling duo Billy Wingrove & Jeremy Lynch.
“The wall, and now everything surrounding it, opens up the best opportunity we’ve ever had to tell stories that matter. Consumers are with us from the moment they first encounter an update or tagline, right through their purchase journey in a whole new way, and even long beyond it. Curiosity is rewarded, exploration encouraged”, concludes Sivell.
“This is just the first stage. The wall can only get bigger and better from here. This is connected retail. Bring on the infinite stockroom.”
To experience the Virtual Footwear Wall for yourself, visit adidas Oxford Street between 31st October – 14th November.
For further information please contact:
Thalia Temmerman
Start JudgeGill
DL: 020 269 0125
thalia.temmerman@startjg.com
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Examples shown here are from Kiehl’s, displaying consumer profiles with comments. Also, Rod Stewart standing by his brand!
I believe the latest smartphone technology will support the shopper experience. So, that you can sell more and build a better and more personalised experience. This will aid and enhance the relationship between staff and shoppers.
With smartphones connected to social networks retailers can help to understand more about their individual customers by pulling in information from their social API’s (allowing software programs to communicate with each other) – of course, all at the consumers consent. Social media can be used to bring knowledge to staff through smartphones to support relationships.
Store experiences and staff relationships are key to connecting consumers with the brand and learning something new. Building brand equity for that consumer – telling friends of the great experience they’ve had through their social channels builds great advocacy and drives return visits.
There’s a really interesting article here from Social Commerce Today, about the value of loyalty and fans of brands: how-to-calculate-fan-value
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I have to say I struggle to understand the popularity of this brand? The connotation of FujiFilm and beauty don’t go hand in hand. Consuming a ‘FujiFilm’ product seems quite extreme especially in a skincare market where consumers are obsessed by natural beauty. The store I visited on Queens Road, Hong Kong was baron, each day I pass it, without a customer in sight I would be interested to see how they can differentiate their brand and consider a separate brand identity moving away from FujiFilm. There are more intrinsic ways to create a brand around impressive product values.
A talk for WGSN 18th May 2011. www.asiafashionsummit.com
What we’re talking about is a walk-in website –
So, an example of a good customer journey – Think of the great experiences when visiting a premium hotel, your favourite fashion store or a great restaurant. Every touch-point is considered and enhances your senses and triggers emotions. Mobile commerce and social media now allows a deeper level of interaction and takes the experience in and out of the physical environment.
In the context of a typical consumer journey and shopping for a product, I recently purchased some new running shoes and it engaged me in; online research, asking friends, acknowledgement of the brand, the product, visiting a store, touching the product, trying them on, engaging with the staff …. the touch-points are considered and all on brand up until the point of purchase the consumer journey is very much disconnected by the sales till; it is an often awkward part of the journey.
Throughout the customer journey the PoS services are all the same – there is room for differentiation at this point.
How often have you got to the point of purchasing a product only to place it back on the shelf because the queue is too long? Sometimes shoppers are put off buy by the queue …
I predict we going to see the end of the store sales counter. [RIP}
Thinking of the history of retail, over the past hundred years or more, the transition from market traders and stall keepers surrounded by product and free to engage with customers with a money pouch; to today - bricks & mortar with a sales point. That is tethered by one of these … (show Ethernet cable)
‘Connected Retail’ © StartJG
How do we understand the consumer better –
The latest smartphone technology will allow the store format to be changed. So, that you can sell more and build a better and more personalised experience. This will aid and enhance the relationship between staff and shoppers.
With smartphones connected to social networks retailers can help to understand more about their individual customers by pulling in information from their social API’s (allowing software programs to communicate with each other) – of course, all at the consumers consent. Social media can be used to bring knowledge to staff through smartphones to support relationships.
Store experiences and staff relationships are key to connecting consumers with the brand and learning something new. Building brand equity for that consumer – telling friends of the great experience they’ve had through their social channels builds great advocacy and drives return visits.
Customers and their brands –
- Staff insight and expertise is incredibly valuable, they are a face to your brand and when staff interaction is performed well it builds strong relationships around stop, hold and close. People still want physical experiences and human interaction, let the store do this for you and use the smartphone and social commerce to help facilitate this.
The results of doing this, consumers are massively engaged with their brands and will allow us to demonstrate:
- Benefits to staff for understanding their customer
- Benefits to customers for having a better service and experience
- Benefits to retailers to sell more. Support their staff and understand consumer needs.
How do we entice the customer –
- Brand and retail environments should be destinations, advertising is just wallpaper, people do not absorb advertising, they have become numb to it. Customers want real tangible experiences were they can be part of the gang or join the club. Associating themselves with brands they can share experiences with friends both physically and digitally.
- Enhancing the smartphone within a retail environment to create a more personalised experience where the staff and consumer remain close; bringing the point of sale to the decision.
- For example, thinking of how this will work in a fashion retail environment, this should start to affect the way a store is designed. Knowing that a shopper can pay with their phone, the nature of the fitting room can be repurposed. Why not make the purchase in the fitting room at a terminal within the privacy of the staff.
- Take that experience back one step further and the fitting room could be personalized with a selection of clothes for the customer determined on their purchase history, or the store accessing their social network and analyzing photos to sense personal styles or status updates to see where they are going on holiday next week. The smartphone can be used to share pictures of the products and get direct feedback from friends to strengthen the purchase.
- To conclude, within the context of the customer journey. The state of mind changes at the point of purchase. Don’t give the consumer the chance to walk away. Keeping momentum with the shopping experience and emotions around stop, hold and close.
Through this we’ve created a personalised experience, rethinking the store design to accommodate a new wave of technology (smartphones):
- Where, consumers demand deeper relationships to stay loyal.
- Create more opportunity to streamline the retail journey.
- Facilitated the conversation on and off line to create advocacy
- All giving the retailer a better chance of closing a sale.
End.
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Brand and retail environments should be destinations, advertising is just wallpaper, people do not absorb advertising, they have become numb to it. Customers want real tangible experiences were they can be part of the gang or join the club. Associating themselves with brands they can share experiences with friends both physically and digitally.
Charlie Brooker sums it up like this:
“TV advertising used to work like this: you sat on your sofa while creatives were paid to throw a bucket of shit in your face. Today you’re expected to sit on the bucket, fill it with your own shit, and tip it over your head while filming yourself on your mobile.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2009/dec/05/charlie-brooker-screen-burn
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