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December 10, 2018 / Thought Leadership

What brand marketers can glean from the growing retail industry

Scott Savitt, Senior Partner, Director of Digital

Just how many dollars are fueling the retail economy?

Retail consumer spending in 2018 is predicted to increase 4.5% vs. the same period last year according to the National Retail Federation. While 4.5% may not sound like a big percentage, it tops out 2017 which was the best year for retail sales in over three years spanning all categories including auto and foods (per the Department of Commerce).

And for this online holiday season, Internet Retailer projects U.S. shoppers will spend an increase of 15.5%—that equates to $120 billion—compared to online spending during the same period last year. This year alone, Black Friday was a record-setting $6.2 billion as well as Cyber Monday which pulled in approximately $7.9 billion, an increase of 19.3% from a year ago according to Adobe Analytics.

What’s the sense behind these dollars?

One of the reasons for this unprecedented growth in retail is the way top retailers are creating frictionless shopping opportunities for their users especially via smartphones. Retailers such as Amazon (Amazon Go), Walmart (Google Home) and Wayfair (AR) are adopting strategies to deliver “experiences” to users vs. just selling their stand-alone wares and “products.”

These savvy marketers are creating more compelling reasons for why to shop and how by modern messaging and capitalizing on modern function.

As technology evolves and data becomes more accessible, these retailers and others benefitting from that $120 billion in transactions are more than ever in a position to personalize, automate and own the entire shopper journey on a path to continuing that 4%+ growth year-over-year.

How to add the dollars and sense for future retail growth?

Whether it’s comparison shopping in real time, an optimized mobile checkout process, live chat, user-friendly ordering options, click-and-collect services or smartphone push notifications, one of the foundational goals of frictionless shopping is to serve consumers whenever they want to be served enhancing the experiences leading to conversion.

Brands should be adopting more of a frictionless mentality when thinking about how to construct their consumer experience, especially in digital. The need to eliminate friction between customer and brand is a key factor in creating a positive customer experience and favorable brand attitude. This means brands think big picture when it comes to “purpose” and strategic positioning, but also non-optional consideration of the “micro-moments” during the customer journeys—literally down to each customer interaction and on each channel.

Whether it’s speed and convenience or instant access to content and/or product information, brands can meet customer’s expectations and gain share of the retail growth market by leveraging more frictionless thinking.

 

December 4, 2018 / Thought Leadership

Put me on the ANA Masters stage

Steve Connelly, President and Copywriter

I attended this year’s ANA Masters of Marketing as a newcomer to the much-hyped annual event. I had high expectations (and a fair amount of skepticism) for the networking, ideas from brand leaders I could take back to my agency and golfing in the sun to spark unrehearsed conversation.

While industry heavy hitters graced the stage, I didn’t leave feeling inspired or armed with a lot of new ways of thinking. In fact, I often felt frustrated. Here’s why:

  1. Diversity is not casting. To many at the conference, diversity felt like a checkmark approach. Simply cast a diverse group and mission accomplished. A superficial solution at best that misses both the point and opportunity. The observation reinforced to me how far our industry has to go to truly represent the spirit and opportunity of diversity and to realistically represent new and different voices that reflect the world we live in.
  2. Data is strategic not strategy. In this forum, data wasn’t considered as organic at all … just numbers they seem to follow like fish downstream. There were no real insights shared, just a lot of data pontification. True marketing power and impact comes from a combination of real powerful data AND real life experience.
  3. Brands sure do rely on agencies yet are slow to credit them. This was the year of the hotly debated in-house versus agency discussion. We should never devalue or denigrate what in-house agencies can do—they have great value. But outside agencies with a broader perspective of and appreciation for empathy and creativity have never been needed more.

Overall, the presentations were hit or miss. Put me on stage for next year or lose me forever. I will share the agency models that (without throwing stones) identify the value outside agencies have over in-house shops, how diversity should be with defined and used and how powerful data becomes even more powerful when it is humanized.

 

December 4, 2018 / Thought Leadership

How launching a wellness brand gave me the perspective to be a better leader.

Alyssa Toro

Senior Partner, Chief Creative Officer

In an industry not always known for giving space to live life inspired outside of the office, I am fortunate enough to work at a company that values ideas, whether they happen at the agency or on your own time. I had my hands full as a mom of two and working full time as Connelly Partner’s CCO, but had an itch to tie my passions for family, conceptual design and nutrition together in a new way. What was born was a brand called Goodee to help parents lay the foundation for healthy eating through the intersection of color, strong design and plant-based foods.

I joke that I earned an equivalent of an MBA through the process. I did everything from creating the physical product to designing the logo and packaging, photographing all of the food, prototyping, and figuring out the legal mumbo-jumbo before it was ultimately sold into 11 Whole Foods stores. And boy, did I learn a lot along the way. I learned the perspective of all the roles needed to launch a brand, how to get the best ideas out of others, and the opportunities to draw outside influences.

I spoke with Muse by Clio about how launching Goodee gave me the perspective to be a better leader. You can read more here: https://musebycl.io/worklife/how-launching-wellness-brand-gave-me-perspective-be-better-leader

 

December 4, 2018 / Thought Leadership

Who the hell are we?

Sid Murlidhar, Group Creative Director

“Agency culture” is an oft-used, oft-misunderstood concept. Is it a truly symbiotic relationship between the agency and the culture? Does the agency define the culture? Or does the culture define the agency? As people come and go, does the culture shift? So many questions and no, there are no right answers.

When it came time for us to try and understand what it is our culture was, it was an opportunity for us to take stock of where we had come as an agency and where we wanted to go as a company. In the span of under 10 years, we had grown from a small family of 60 to a vibrant 170, spread across four floors and two countries. Whatever the culture was that existed a decade ago did not exist today. And that was nobody’s fault. Growth and conversely attrition is a culture killer. People come and go, clients come and go, revenue comes and goes and culture is shaped by all of it. So we had to find something inherent to the bones of this place. Something that was incontrovertible. A defining trait that cannot and will not change regardless of whether we are an agency of one or one thousand. And that one thing was humanity. Not humanity in the traditional sense. But a more fervent sort of humanity. The humanity that arises in times of struggle and that thrives in times of success. The humanity that exists in all of us now and in generations past. A unerring willingness to defend humanity in all its forms. Kindness, empathy, open-mindedness, along with the realization that while the world myopically relies on data, human instinct is still the most powerful tool we have. This is the one commonality, the one DNA string that has existed in all employees current and past. So when it came time to put pen to paper and qualify what it is we are, it was simple. We are now, have always been and will continue to be Defiantly Human.