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Mar 28 2024
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How data underpins e-commerce effectiveness

During the pandemic, the volume of online shopping doubled due to necessity. According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), e-commerce represented 38% of all retail sales in January 2021, in comparison to 19% in February 2020. This sudden shift forced brands to think about their omnichannel customer journey, particularly when it came to considering purchase items.

This was already the direction of travel, and while online sales proportions have dropped back to the mid-twenties (hitting 26%in January 2023), the acceleration of brands’ e-commerce plans has started a race to enhance operational agility to remain competitive and appealing.

The size of the drop indicates the ongoing power of in-store shopping and the importance of the omnichannel experience. However, we can expect the online share to return to a stable growth in the months to come.

It is not enough to present consumers with a transactional website, a well-considered data stack is needed to provide the customer experience they expect. The right set-up will help to identify consumers’ needs at each touchpoint, which is where performance marketing comes in.

Understanding the customer journey

As Google has now started the process of third-party cookie deprecation, brands are less able to track a user’s activity across multiple websites. This impacts business’ ability to recognise the full extent of the customer journey, and personalise and deliver targeted ads to support a better experience.

We can predict how certain factors will play a role in changing consumer behaviours through different kinds of tracking and experience. For example, we know that the consideration phase is likely to lengthen due to squeezed budgets as people take more care over how they spend their money. We can also expect that as the volume of retailers doing business online grows, the consideration phase will extend further as consumers look at their options across multiple touchpoints.

Trends like these need to be considered at every point of the journey, both online and in-store. Identifying changes like these is not always easy, and data should be at the heart of your strategy for enhancing audience engagement and discoverability, giving your brand the operational agility to succeed amid uncertain market factors.

Harnessing the potential of dashboarding

Without cookies, brands are working to optimise their consented first-party data, and work more closely with third-party sites and stores, so that they can gain an in-depth understanding of their customers that can shape their marketing activity accordingly. The current reality is that there is low metric transparency from third-party websites to the brands, as they, in turn, seek to monetise their proposition.

As many brands find themselves working with more third-party retailers, data and insight models become more important if they want to better serve their customers in a trustworthy way. Rather than relying on shared data, an end-to-end web scraping solution could help to marry e-commerce intelligence with insights from bricks-and-mortar retailing to provide visual and actionable trends.

This type of service provides a dashboard that consolidates insights from different websites, allowing brands to track other measurables, like share of voice, availability, pricing, promotion and reviews, and use the data to build more informed strategies.

Unlocking retail media potential

Retail media is a rapidly growing form of advertising, with global revenue from retailer e-commerce sites expected to exceed television revenue by 2028. For brands, the potential boon of reaching target consumers while they are already browsing or shopping in the category cannot be ignored.

Combining this type of digital advertising with physical shopping environments ensures that brands are showing up in the right places and times across relevant channels. When this is done well, relying on insights from data and human expertise ensures continuity within the purchase journey alongside consistent brand messaging, which will ultimately bring the consumer closer to making a purchase.

However, brands should be careful that they do not de-prioritise data and insight in their rush to play in the retail media space. As retail media supply increases, brands will have to manage campaigns across multiple networks, and it will be those with campaign control and strong insight reporting that will unlock the potential of the data to truly drive innovation in the space.

Building data into the digital shelf

Using data to understand consumers’ needs is the first step, but brands still need to think about what their insights mean for the digital shelf. Browsing the digital shelf is the equivalent of exploring products in-store, but they need to be discoverable quickly on listing pages and under relevant search terms.

Benchmarking against competitors for pricing, promotions and presence is critical and this data, along with on-site performance metrics, are incredibly valuable to brands. This can be a time-consuming process, but with an automated solution like web scraping, brands gain the same knowledge that can be used to form campaigns, and free up time for sales and marketing teams to focus on other priorities.

So, with the deprecation of cookies and the continued evolution of how we track and manage consumer data, brands should be prepared to optimise their own tracking data and work more closely with third-party retailers.

As retail media grows in years to come, keeping track of metrics across the board will become vital for brands if they are to maintain consistency, manage campaigns and influence presence and performance on e-commerce partner sites.

To read the published article written by Dan Todaro, Managing Director please visit Performance Marketing World

Photo by Negative Space

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Mar 13 2024
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Gekko launches new retail web-scraping solution GWS

Today customer experience agency Gekko has launched a new retail web scraping solution, GWS, enabling sales and marketing teams to better understand their brand’s e-commerce performance. GWS is an end-to-end solution for brands which integrates real-time e-commerce data and Gekko’s own brick-and-mortar intelligence to boost effectiveness and identify sales opportunities.

With in-house developer capabilities and Gekko’s market knowledge of brands, categories, retail and consumers it’s developed a powerful, cost-effective tool. Providing brands with visual and actionable e-commerce trends that marries e-commerce intelligence with that from bricks and mortar retailing giving a whole market view.

This is an end-to-end service with Gekko consulting, building and managing this customisable and flexible service and providing brands with the data and insight outputs via an intuitive dashboard. GWS is capable of extracting hundreds of thousands of data points across multiple retailers in a matter of minutes each day, allowing unrivalled up-to-date information and insight. The service enables brands to track share of voice, availability, pricing and promotion, ratings as well as shopper reviews. Brands can consolidate their online product space into one insightful clear and concise dashboard that will enable them to make more effective data-driven commercial and marketing decisions.

Daniel Todaro, Gekko MD comments: “The GWS solution enables us to combine real-time performance data with our in-depth understanding of shopping and shoppers, to help brands enhance product performance. It’s a very competitive landscape and intuitive brands often succeed using as much insight as possible to fuel their decision making. GWS from Gekko enables a brand’s sales and go-to-market teams to look at a myriad of layered scenarios, from how competitor products and new launches may have affected a brand’s market share to showing the relationship between promotions and Share of Voice (Share of Shelf).”

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Mar 01 2024
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Good CX cannot exist without good staffing

The recent Centre for Retail Research figures showed that around 120,000 retail jobs were lost last year. While some job losses could not be avoided as behemoths of the UK’s high street collapsed, other retailers are reducing staff numbers to cut overhead costs and align with reduced footfall. But what does this mean for customer experience? And how could that impact retailers’ ambitions?  

The truth is that cutting staff overheads requires a careful balance to maintain good experience for the customer, whatever sector(s) you’re working in. If you have too many staff members, then revenue will struggle to cover operational costs, which is devastating in a sector with increasingly tight margins. At the same time, with too few staff you will struggle to deliver against expectations, in terms of customer experience, sales volumes or both. 

There are issues for companies either way, but having too few staff could be catastrophic for businesses that are already precariously close to the edge. From managing staff morale and turnover, to making big-ticket sales and generating loyalty, there’s a lot to consider. Furthermore, the human interaction that physical retail offers is one its principal USPs over the online shopping experience.

Burnout and lose out

In a global survey by McKinsey, an average of one in four employees were experiencing signs of burnout, resulting in cynicism, exhaustion, and emotional distance. Understaffing, resulting in overwork and poor working conditions, can often be a significant factor in burnout, often affecting multiple team members who are left to pick up the slack. 

Not only can undervalued and demotivated staff have the obvious impact on customer service, long-term understaffing is likely to lead to higher turnover, and the resulting loss of knowledge and skills that can help drive sales and deliver a more engaging customer experience.  It is not just the experience (and its impact on sales) to consider though. 

A little encouragement goes a long way

When it comes to considered purchases, consumers are unlikely to part with a sizeable proportion of their monthly budget on products and services based merely on a snap impulsive decision. When it comes to ‘big-ticket’ items or other considered purchases, particularly in the retail sector, our own research reveals that around one in five (18%) of consumers will head to a physical store to seek expert advice. But what happens when they get to the store, and the experience isn’t quite what they had hoped based on a lack of service, attentiveness, knowledge or customer journey.

Of course, staffing is always about balance, whatever sector you work in, but having too few staff or poorly trained team members could result in lost sales, your customer heading to a competitor or worse, not buying into a brand at all based upon their experience. When we’re talking about products like TVs, white goods, sofas etc. developing the customer journey is essential to secure sales. In the current climate, making cuts is inevitable but if you are reducing staff levels to the point where you can no longer fulfil customer needs, your customers may just stop shopping with you all together.

Innovation only increases staffing needs 

Looking at some of the products coming out of CES – LG’s transparent OLED TV, virtual reality headsets and microwaves in handbags – and thinking about our general societal shift towards smart devices and products, the need for knowledgeable staff will be essential for providing a good customer experience, and ultimately developing new and existing categories through sales.

Products are becoming more complex every year, and there is more choice. For many consumers, the wide array of brands, products and features can be overwhelming, and that is where customer experience becomes even more important. While they will research products online, many people like to head into a physical store to see the products in person and get some guidance, support as well as reassurance before making a considered purchasing decision.

Investment in training is essential to develop the customer journey and brand experience, which enhances staff retention due to personal development and job satisfaction. In many cases, brands are taking things into their own hands, as they have done for many years, by installing trained staff into stores to ensure that their products are well-explained to customers seeking help, owning the customer journey. 

Work smarter, as well as leaner

The brands and retailers that get it right and enable customers to get the support they need – whether that is in-person or online – will ultimately win out. Once consumers feel an affinity with a particular store or brand, they will return if they receive consistency and service that they enjoy and can trust. 

To read the published article written by Dan Todaro, Managing Director please visit CXM

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Feb 07 2024
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Keeping Pace with the Evolving Consumer

Shopping online became the de facto route to market for consumers in 2020 driven by necessity due to store closures. The ONS reported the proportion of online retail sales peaked at 38% in January 2021 vs 20% the year previous. While the average sales split has returned to 26% since this peak, the manner that both experienced and less experienced online consumers engage with brands and retailers, across multiple channels, has rapidly evolved. With considered purchases, in particular technology but not limited to this, it has sparked a greater importance for a brand’s omni-channel customer journey. This in turn has encouraged a race for retailers to enhance their operational agility in e-commerce to remain competitive and appealing. To play in the e-commerce space is not to simply offer a transactional site online but a well-considered data stack that ultimately understands the customers’ needs at each touchpoint and marries them up to the retailer’s unique proposition.

Further market uncertainty in 2023 continued to drive evolving consumer behaviour. This will continue in 2024 as retailers brands adapt their strategies to convert on the now normal, lengthening online consideration phase due to squeezed budgets. Retail website traffic is increasing year on year, and mobile as a share of that is also increasing. The purchase cycle is likely to lengthen, becoming normal, as consumers sit in the consideration stage for longer across multiple touch points. This is likely to increase as we shop on mobile devices cluttered  with a multitude of content at their fingertips, from social media, bloggers and reviews.

Offsite and onsite content needs to meet the demands of the consumer, wherever they are on their route to purchase. Here we have highlighted three key elements brands can focus on to drive audience engagement and discoverability on partner retail e-commerce, increasing operational agility to succeed amid uncertain market factors.

The potential of data in e-commerce

As known, Google will in a bid to make the web more private, phase out all third-party cookies by the end of 2024, currently deprecated for 1% of Chrome users as of January 2023, which represents approximately 30 million users. This move restricts the ability to track a user’s activity across multiple websites and in turn, the major resource for marketing and sales teams to personalise and deliver targeted ads. The implication for retailers and advertisers alike that rely on paid media via 3rd party cookies to target consumers and measure brand and sales impact, is about to reshape how marketing and advertising works online.

Retailers are looking to harness and better optimise their consented 1st party data to offer better solutions. The potential is positive due to the relevance of data and the control retailers will have to improve the quality of ads and personalised experiences. To realise the full potential, retailers using data as a platform to form stronger partnerships with brands and suppliers will likely uncover a better understanding of their customers and shape the narrative.

Whether it be brand-building initiatives or first-party cookies direct from transactional sites, retailers will be mindful to sensitively use the data they have on their customer’s behaviour. The current reality is low metric transparency from retail websites to the brands as retailers increasingly look to monetise their online store to brands. This highlights the importance of growing data and insight models in synergy with a brands growing media portfolio, to ensure brands see their platform as a viable solution to learn from the consumer, in a trustworthy way, to better serve their customers.

Data unlocking Retail media potential

Retail media is a rapidly growing medium of advertising on retailer e-commerce sites. Global advertising revenue is forecast to exceed television revenue by 2028 and account for 15.4% of total ad revenue. Brands are following the consumer shift to digital commerce with the added appeal of reaching consumers with personalised advertising within the category. Retailers enable varied promotional formats and tools on their owned channels and sell inventory to brands and in turn boost profitability. The benefit to brands is to show up across multiple touchpoints in both physical and digital shopping environments. The ever important omni channel journey demands content that strikes the right chord, wherever the brand is consumed. Continuity of the consumer’s purchase journey with consistent brand messaging, is proven to likely lead to increased trust and confidence to bring the consumer closer to a purchase.

Retail media networks sit in the transactional channel and so appeal to bring brand messaging closer to the point of sale. An ideal touchpoint for brands to engage with their prospective customers and brand awareness amongst the target audience since visits to a retailer’s website or store is not solely to purchase but also to research the products available to them. Tech stack will drive improved accessibility and likely standardise as the shift to retail media grows. Unlike traditional TV, which retail media is set to surpass, the measures and ROI reporting available from purchase behaviour and browsing trends will in turn elevate the brands demands for transparency in metrics and insight.

The race to play in the retail media network space and maximise inventory can potentially de-prioritise the partnership of data and insight to brands. This should be guarded with caution, as retail media supply increases so will the standardised retail media and brands expectation to manage campaigns across multiple networks. Retailers with considered campaign control and insight reporting will unlock the potential of the data to truly drive innovation in the space and grow brand partnerships.

Digital shelf analytics to track e-commerce on site performance

Understanding the full potential of data and highlighting channels in e-commerce to understand consumer needs and trends only stand up with considerable thought into the digital shelf. Brands need to be discoverable quickly on listing pages and relevant search terms, showing up with accurate and consistent content across multiple retailers, customer reviews and how their pricing and promotion strategy stacks up against competitors.

While physical retail has evolved into finely tuned budgets to drive in-store presence, in-store advocacy and inventory management, e-commerce is a lesser-known channel. The digital shelf is the equivalent of someone exploring products in a physical store, the digital experience on a retail site in which consumers discover, learn, compare and purchase products. By first identifying the elements of the consumer experience available with physical retail that e-commerce is unable to match, for example, trained sales colleagues to assist the customer’s purchase decision, we can then identify digital shelf assets to compliment the omni-channel journey. Ratings and reviews from like-minded consumers as well as engaging, informative ‘top features’ videos on product pages will all help close down the sale successfully and are elements that consumers expect to see on e-commerce platforms.

On-site performance metrics are key to measuring impact and shaping activity in the future of marketing campaigns and content to name a few. Along with benchmarking vs competitors on pricing and presence on product listing pages. The valuable source of data on retail sites is a vital cog to brands. Brands should consider investing in a web scraping solution to automate this process and enable their sales and marketing teams to better understand their e-commerce performance both in isolation and against the competition. Like media channels, clear insight reporting of the digital shelf drives understanding of a customer’s interactions and partner retail opportunities. 

So as 2024 begins to take shape, brands should be prepared to work closely with 3rd-party retail partners to adapt to the changes coming to cookies and shopper data, as well as exploring retail media opportunities. Keeping track of on-site metrics is also vital, keeping e-commerce managers informed and enabling them to influence their brands’ presence and performance on partner sites.

To read the published article written by Dan Todaro, Managing Director please visit PCR Magazine

Photo from PCR Magazine

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Feb 05 2024
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Fast Foward – AI Will Dominate in 2024

There is one main trend that has taken the world by storm in 2023 and it will only increase and improve its presence and capabilities into 2024. This is for some, the elephant in the room….AI. Contrary to popular belief, AI has actually been around for many years but not as prevalent as it is now, its resurgence has completely changed the game. From writing entire books and songs to being implemented into consumer electronics and domestic appliances to make the products more intelligent. If you take a look at some of the big players in the market you’ll notice more and more are adopting AI, whether this is for energy-efficient washing cycles or improving picture quality on TV, the use cases are becoming less niche and more general. 

2024 will see a huge shift in focus to implementing AI into many products, some that many may find surprising and will no doubt continue to enter every category. It will be used as a selling point, in the context of productivity. As evident with Microsoft who is actively using AI (Copilot) to carry out a plethora of tasks in a matter of minutes that would otherwise be considered either time-consuming or tedious processes. Alongside this, automation will see a rise in 2024, with AI becoming more intelligent and its capabilities increasing, allowing users to automate many more processes and streamline work, in turn making them more productive in a short period of time.

Integrate this capability with artificial intelligence, which helps track patterns in your laundry, cooking, and cleaning routines. This integration allows the AI to seamlessly update the software of your connected appliances, akin to updating apps on your phone or tablet. The AI features enhance efficiency, optimising processes like a more energy-efficient wash cycle that maintains excellent cleaning results through seamless connectivity.

2024 will also see the rise in sustainable technology which we saw becoming a focus in Q4 2023. The front runners of Google and Apple making their products either out of sustainable materials or providing continuous support to their products for years to come in an effort to reduce e-waste. Gone are the days when your phone would have a 3-year life cycle before needing to be replaced.

This scrutiny on sustainability extends to every device and appliance on our person and in your home and AMDEA, I think, explains it best:

“Over the last twenty years AMDEA members have focused on design and new technologies which have dramatically and continuously reduced energy and water consumption of appliances in our homes. With 170 million essential large appliances in the 28 million homes across the UK, the technology in each machine that contributes to mitigating climate change can collectively make a major contribution to carbon neutrality”

Visit https://www.amdea.org.uk/campaigns/sustainability/ for more information

Another trend that will be sought after by many businesses rather than consumers will be cyber security. With more and more companies falling victim to cyber security breaches with countless consumer data being leaked subsequently, 2024 will be the year companies double down and invest. Research has shown that one in two businesses fall victim to a successful cyberattack in the past three years with the cost of these attacks to the industry expected to grow to over $10 trillion by the end of 2024.

In the context of the independent retailer whilst you may think that these trends do not necessarily apply to your business immediately, don’t delay to understand their importance. Generationally the relevance of sustainability is huge as will the shift to AI in the context of improved functionality, ease and sustainability.

AI is our friend, not a foe. It not only helps us magically enhance the photos we take on our smartphones, it helps us save money on our wash cycle and improve our cooking skills and so much more. Get to grips with it and understand it as you won’t be able to avoid the conversation in the context of your range, sales process and customer experience. It’s going to dominate in 2024 and that was evident from IFA and will be again at CES this coming January.

To read the published article written by Dan Todaro, Managing Director please visit ERT Online

Photo by ThisIsEngineering

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Dec 08 2023
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Has Black Friday lost its gloss?

When Black Friday first emerged onto the scene just over a decade ago, retailers could expect queues out the doors, and on some occasions even fighting in the aisles as consumers sought bargain deals. When Cyber Monday entered the fray, retailers’ websites regularly crashed under the strain of excited bargain hunters.

While these events used to provide a boost across the board, there are now clear winners and losers as Black Friday discounting loses its shape and starts to merge into the Christmas shopping. With marketing and sales events starting earlier each year, is now the time for a re-think?

Pressure on retailers

It has been a tough year for retailers. Again, we have seen big names disappear from the high street, and for those that remain the environment is challenging. Increases in production and supply chain costs muddled with competition from big online retailers are reducing profit margins, leaving leaders with tough decisions to make.

Many larger retailers can afford to discount their products as brands support margins and economies of scale apply. However, it is not the case for smaller independents who have to take the hit. They feel they need to take part in Black Friday to compete, and unfortunately, this is adding to the strain they face in keeping their doors open.

Poor deals result in underwhelming sales

Those retailers who can afford to offer site or store-wide discounts are still doing well, but the deals available on Black Friday are not what they once were. Many offers are only applied to end-of-line items or overstock that were heading to the sales anyway.

As a result, many consumers are left underwhelmed. With the cost-of-living crisis, consumers have been spending more carefully than before too. While Nationwide announced a 2 per cent increase in transactions, Barclaycard transactions were down 0.6 per cent year-on-year, suggesting that consumers were happy to spend, but less comfortable with borrowing than they have been in previous years. This hesitation to spend means that consumers are often only prepared to spend on items they were already planning to buy.

The offers created are typically determined by scale and buying power of the retailer, so while large retailers can offer bigger discounts on more products, small retailers are forced to be more selective, leaving them with a smaller piece of the pie, or with severely cannibalised margins.

Lack of differentiation makes Black Friday pointless

We started out with just Black Friday – just one day of epic discounting – and over the years this has expanded to include the weekend, and the following Monday (which is, of course, now known as Cyber Monday), then the weeks before and after, and now the entirety of November, it seems.

Not only has the Black Friday discounting period expanded, but Christmas promotions, supported by seasonal adverts, also seem to start earlier and earlier. It is tough to see any differentiation or even a gap between when one event ends and another begins. Diluting Black Friday only serves to make it disappear into the ether.

The expansion of the sales window means retailers can take a chunk of the seasonal revenue in November as there’s no longer the frenzied buying for Christmas in December. And for consumers, there’s no panic to buy over black Friday weekend as they know there will be other sales, which is understandable and makes commercial sense.

Do consumers care if Black Friday dies?

Recent research from PwC reveals that online interest in Black Friday has dropped from 61 per cent in 2022 to 44 per cent this year. This is mirrored by Google Trends data, which reveals that ‘Black Friday’ as a search is less than half as popular as it was four years ago. With waning consumer interest, it’s clear that Black Friday just doesn’t hold the same intrigue it used to.

Rather than thinking about what we could do to rejuvenate Black Friday, perhaps it’s time to think about whether we should. Black Friday certainly isn’t working for all retailers, in particular independent retail, and it is starting to lose consumers too. It no longer delivers the same benefits for consumers: excitement, buzz and big bargains, or the same, sizeable sales uplift for brands. In some cases, it is coming at the expense of the customer experience, which threatens the long-term performance of brands.

Is it actually worth retailers’ time and effort? My hunch is that it has detracted from the millions invested in Christmas advertising campaigns that now seem almost irrelevant, and blend in as white noise as we skip through the ads to go make a brew.

To read the published article written by Dan Todaro, Managing Director please visit BDaily

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Nov 07 2023
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IFA 2023 – A Core Ingredient in the Evolution of CE

Once again IFA 2023 was the place to be seen for all technology brands and not just those from the CE category. With the show sold out across 26 halls covering 130,000 sqm of exhibition space, filled by 2059 brands from 48 countries, there is no other show that competes. IFA 2023 affirmed its position as the de facto CE showcase, forecasted to host 180,000 visitors from 144 countries over 5 days.

The fact that we have witnessed all markets contract in every category, shrinking by an average of 7% and in particular CE which is down 12.4% globally. The EU market outlook is looking increasingly positive at a more palatable contraction of 4.5% year on year. No doubt this is making the rest of the world a bigger problem for those whose presence is not as prevalent in the EU market, compared to other brands. The economic reality is that the globe is in a  Polycrises, a simultaneous occurrence of several negative global events such as war, extreme weather events, food and energy Inflation which is compounded by increased Interest rates and social unease, unsurprisingly stops people from spending. Therefore the need for a brand to increase its voice rather than remain silent is critical and to do this with a new perspective. Doing so through a new lens that better understands the pain points consumers are experiencing and appeals to the user’s pleasure points. Perhaps achieved through ethical practices, practical time and cost-saving innovations that help ease the pain on a macro level, rather than add to the global situation. That’s why IFA as a cultural hub, is so much more than an exhibition, its place is essential to the industry as the centre stage for the globe’s CE brands not just to brag but to demonstrate how to solve the problems we share as we coexist on this planet. Making IFA a core ingredient in the evolution of the consumer electronics industry.

All brands, big and small, were in attendance with 350 of those 3059 brands being CE startups from across the globe. These included all manner of concepts and categories and there were several robotic floor care startups displaying and showcasing, however, one that caught my imagination was Dreame’s Revolutionary Flagship Robotic Vacuum L20 Ultra with Industry First AI-Driven Mop Extend™. Which is definitely worth a look. However one of my most memorable chats was with the haircare brand SharkNinja and its ultra compact SpeedStyle hairdryer. The irony is, as a follically challenged man, I’ve not owned a hairdryer for 30 years yet I was enthralled by its functionality, design and huge potential consumer appeal, it’s going to be a Christmas wish list essential item.

The themes were consistent across every manufacturer and focussed on Sustainability – Renewables – Connected by AI and  Premium. Let’s start with the latter as while aspiring to be a premium brand is admirable there, in relative terms, there can only ever be a few brands who genuinely sit in the category otherwise it defeats the terminology of ‘premium’. It’s down to the consumer’s perception of what constitutes premium based on how much they are prepared to pay for your products and brand. What you and I may think of as being premium may well not be the view of others and is likely to vary greatly, depending on whether you’re Gen Z or Gen X.

These generations and to be fair, everyone now, wants quality as standard and brought to them at a reasonable price, as well as being produced ethically in all aspects including the manner in which those products are brought to market. Whilst GfK expects the global CE market to still be in the red by the end of this year, the trend is for consumers to replace appliances, as home tech becomes increasingly more innovative, making even those devices and appliances of five years ago look exceptionally dated in look and functionality. Today many want technology which most now consider commonplace in the home, not luxury or the unattainable.

Almost all appliance brands included smart connectivity in their product line-ups presented at IFA 2023, which enables you at a basic level of connectivity, to control your appliance from your phone, hub or television. Personalisation is the next step in the development of your smart home where you can not only change the panels and the lighting of your cooling appliances such as the LG MoodUP Instaview Freezer but also create your own wash program and save it as your personal wash cycle as LG have also done as part of their wider LG THINQ UP 2.0 concept. Taking cooking to new levels of perfection as Haier has done with the ID series featuring a unique style and the exclusive Bionicook technology. With the ID Series, you can not only view what’s cooking in your oven with its built-in camera but also see it on your phone or TV and the built-in screen on the oven’s facia. It’s opening up the options for personalisation in your home tech to meet the needs of the household to a unique level of personal satisfaction.

Combine this with AI, assisting in noting your trends on laundry, cooking and cleaning, which enables it to update the software on your connected appliances as you would update the apps on your phone or tablet. The AI functionality improves the efficiency of, for example, a more effective wash cycle so that it uses less energy while still giving you a great wash thanks to the connectivity and the hOn app which allows users to get the most out of their Candy Machine. Increasing innovation and enhancing sustainability credentials which for many brands also extends throughout the entire product, and not just its materials. With almost all brands now adopting a policy where a percentage of all products are made utilising recycled materials and not just its packaging. At the forefront of this message was both LG and Samsung who were championing this throughout their product categories. Taking the initiative a step further, linking these credentials into the aspirational brand qualities, which many consumers are now looking for in a true premium brand.

So what’s different this year is that people are asking more questions and drilling down on the specifics. While 74% said they will search online before buying, search data also shows sustained growth in terms containing questions — up 25% compared to the past three years during the same period — and searches for “which is best” and “where to buy” continue to garner momentum in the shopping category on Google Trends. Those searching online, we know like to shop in-store when it is a considered purchase. So make sure you feature on that where to buy ist.

Whilst the wealth of bands at IFA 2023 were vast, you could not miss one brand in particular whose branding adorned the neck of almost everyone with its very clever lanyard sponsorship. That brand was Hisense who was this year, IFA’s headline sponsor and gave the opening keynote delivered by its Global President,  Fisher Yu whom also announced the brand’s sponsorship of the Euro 2024 Football tournament due to be held in Germany. When you are a brand that not only makes TV but also appliances and applications, it’s easier to integrate your devices and with VIDAA at the heart of the ecosystem, Hisense products and its fellow brand stable mates can integrate via the VIDAA interface making the TV in your home, the hub of the household that connects your smart home ecosystem. Making the screen the focus of your living space where you control your appliances around the house via your Smart TV. With ViDAA now in 180 countries and connected to 22 million devices, the task for Hisense is perhaps slightly easier than it may be for other brands in the CE sector. Coupled with the shift from content to services the next step is how to monetize this conversion and its integration with responsive and predictive AI, to further enhance the user’s experience and lifestyle. Easier done when you own the platform and make the devices it connects to.

It’s fair to say that the outlook for retailers is exciting with increasingly more innovation in all categories and an enhanced social responsibility tone that now takes on many more subject matters. These include AI and sustainability which are now common parlance in the sales approach by brands to their target consumers, old and new. For those amongst us who ignore the trends that come out of IFA, do so at some risk, as these trends will inevitably become standard messaging across every category and brand within the year, not the distant future. It’s crucial for the success of all within the industry to embrace, understand and develop these trends to create meaningful consumer conversations.

To read the published article written by Dan Todaro, Managing Director please visit ERT

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Nov 02 2023
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Are pop-up shops marketing gold or is it time to fold?

Pop-up shops are literally popping up everywhere and they’ve been hugely popular with consumers, but can you have too much of a good thing?

And does it still work as a good use of marketing spend or is consumer fatigue setting in?

The Guardian today reported that pop-up shops have increased by 18% this year, no doubt fuelled by the plethora of empty shops around the UK and available at accessible rates.

But are they still working for brands? When there’s so many, do they drive intrigue, awareness or bring in incremental revenue, or have we reached a point of consumer fatigue?

Pop-ups require significant investment, so it’s crucial to think about the objectives you need it to deliver. If it’s purely an exercise in increasing sales, you may be sorely disappointed.

If your pop-up is in a high footfall area, it’s more likely to increase brand awareness and if your business doesn’t ordinarily have a high street presence, it can elicit valuable feedback on your product or brand.

And of course, pop-up shops are also a great way to create talkability and shareability on social media, offering consumers and influencers the ability to create eye-catching content that will see your brand splashed across their channels.

But to achieve this and avoid consumer fatigue, your pop-up needs to be more than just a shop. It needs to be creative and novel, relevant and aligned with popular culture, and add value to the everyday customer experience.

Inspired creativity

Think about how to pack a punch for your brand with collaborations that are creative, add that novelty factor and give customers an experience they can’t get elsewhere.

We saw this in the Summer with Anya Hindmarch’s The Ice Cream Project. Instead of hosting a pop-up shop to sell handbags, Anya Hindmarch came up with the idea of creating exclusive ice creams using her favourite cult food brands including Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Lea & Perrins and Coca-Cola.

Linking back to her village and café, it was clever, novel and had people queuing round the street. It had that all-important talkability and shareability, which raised awareness of the Anya Hindmarsh brand in general and the creativity at its heart.

Link to popular culture

In June we worked with sports lifestyle brand ’47 on a pop-up in Soho, just in time for two Major League Baseball (MLB) games coming to town.

With the increased awareness of the MLB, ’47 was perfectly primed to welcome fans of the US sport, giving them another way to soak up celebrations beyond the ballpark.

With no UK store, it was timely, relevant, and it fulfilled the unmet appetites of US fans living in the UK as well as Londoners intrigued by the spectacle coming to their city.

Plus, with the start of the NFL season in September the ‘47 pop-up is getting a fresh surge in custom.

Be timely

Ensuring that there is appetite for the type of pop-up shop you have in mind is essential. Do you have customers who will come out specifically for your pop-up?

Does the trend or pop-culture moment you are linking with have enough fans? If your audience will not be excited by your pop-up, it’s time to think again.

Recently, we saw SHEIN, the global fashion brand, opening a pop-up shop in Birmingham with queues weaving around the Bull Ring.

The brand has exploded in popularity, and it was the first time that consumers had been able to physically engage with the brand in the UK, offering them something new, and the added awareness and talkability created demand from new customers – the hype was immense.

It is particularly sad to see an empty pop-up shop – and if you don’t have the audience or creative for the experience to go viral, then you need to invest in creating the demand yourself with additional marketing.

This adds to the cost, so it is important to understand what you are trying to achieve and what success would look like in terms of ROI before you commit.

To read the published article written by Dan Todaro, Managing Director please visit MediaShotz

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Oct 25 2023
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The collaboration advantage: A new frontier for competitive businesses

When the going gets tough, the tough get going and businesses are having to dig deep right now. Whether it’s big businesses like FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) or start-ups – we’re seeing the business economic model in full swing. Lay people off, put more pressure on those staff that remain because of squeezed costs and paddle as hard as you can to keep your head above water.

As the saying goes, a problem shared is a problem halved, so why aren’t we tackling more of these challenges collaboratively? Collaboration is nothing new, but when we think about it within a business context, it’s often talked about as a people strategy – how do we get people to work better together to improve our outcomes?

So how can we work better together as businesses to do the same, especially within SMEs? If we look at this cross-sector – retail, FMCG, technology etc – there will be thousands of businesses investing money in the same things, whether it’s R&D, resource, product innovation, supply chain, marketing, national/international expansion, or business process.

Change the narrative

We need to encourage collaborative discussions to happen and change our language. Often when businesses meet, it’s one selling to the other, rather than enhancing the narrative of how can we help and elevate each other.

If we look at the way we physically work these days, with so many more shared offices, there’s never been more of an opportunity to collaborate. According to Statista, the volume of flexible office workspace in the United Kingdom is expected to have nearly doubled between 2019 and 2023, reaching 167 million square feet in 2023.

However, if you walk into a WeWork, TOG or similar managed building, I wonder how many businesses are collaborating rather than just sharing a physical space? We need to be bold and brave – if you don’t ask, you don’t create opportunities and facilitate a group culture that goes out and gets.

Never rely on Government

We’ve seen how ineffectual the Government really is at supporting businesses to flourish, particularly SMEs, including the hike in corporation taxes, failure to reduce business rates or even introduce an online sales tax to level the playing field with the likes of those registered offshore.

So where do we look and how do we take the initiative? Perhaps industry trade bodies can do more to support and, let’s be honest, almost every sector has one. Many are great at celebrating success, offering training courses and providing a forum for solving industry problems but they could play a far greater role in bringing organisations together in a commercial, rather than a ‘club’, approach to help solve their individual problems.

Ask your trade body to create a collaboration work stream and be the one to set it up. You may only need to ask one question and there might be someone right there, right now, that could save you a lot of money. It’s a way of moving from a competitive advantage to a collaborative advantage. We can all learn and win that way.

Start simply with finance and marketing

Sharing just one thing could make a big difference so start simply. Sharing financial and admin resources is an easy route into collaboration. But I really think SMEs are missing a trick when it comes to sharing marketing costs. Marketing is the budget that SMEs always wish they had more of – more visibility often means more sales – yet it’s the one that gets squeezed the most in turbulent times. I think there are so many ways for businesses to do this.

Social media brand collaborations on platforms like Instagram have opened new audiences for SMEs. Think about how you could partner up with a like-minded brand for a ‘real-world’ marketing campaign. It will make media far more accessible if you share the cost, for example, of an out-of-home campaign.

An SME doing this really well is the cereal brand Surreal. The brand is looking to disrupt the cereal space and recently partnered with like-minded businesses Numan, Cheesegeek and Gymbox for a throwback to Daft Punk in an online mock-up ad. Four simultaneous ads read ‘Harder, Feta, Faster, Stronger’ for those in the market for erection medication, online cheese, high-protein cereal, and an unconventional gym brand. It was super fun, and engaging, created a huge amount of talkability and was cost effective too!

If you’re purely an online brand, think about creating a collaborative pop-up shop that will drive in-person trials for your brand and product. Do it collaboratively with complementary brands that alone could never afford to be on Oxford Street. Yes, the busiest shopping street in the UK, is achievable.

If you’re on the high street, why not create a marketing committee that maybe works alongside your local Business Improvement District (BID) and challenge them to do more than just turn on the Christmas lights? Retail is 365, not just for the holidays. Get everyone to work together to fund a local marketing campaign, it could be a discount Wednesday or a 10% off day every month at every door irrespective of the retailer, independent or multiple.

There’s no doubt that collaboration comes with challenges but, if you pick partners wisely, with the same goals, culture, and values, it could be just what you need to develop and thrive in today’s tough economic climate.

To read the published article written by Dan Todaro, Managing Director please visit Business Leader

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Oct 04 2023
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‘Inevitable’ fall of Wilko explained – ‘atrocious’ online to ‘ghost ship’ stores

“They were occupying an ex-Woolworth’s size store with 2,500 square feet, if not bigger, and paying excessive amounts of rent, excessive amounts of rates, with very little support from the government,” Daniel said. “The average basket value was low and they were never going to make a huge amount of money as margin, when you consider all of their overheads including salaries.

“But they didn’t appeal to a mass audience and they didn’t make themselves known to a younger audience, who ultimately probably would have enjoyed shopping there on the basis that it would have fitted in with their budget, but it just did not appeal to them in that way. It puts shoppers off to walk into a giant store that is half empty. They could have sectioned off 500 square foot of the store and put everything in there to create a more appealing shopping environment rather than feeling like you were in a ghost ship.”

But it was ultimately their failure to have a strong online presence that left Wilko ultimately vulnerable, Daniel added: “Their online offering was atrocious, it was appalling,” Daniel said. “In the space of nine months, they borrowed 105 million pounds. Was there no consideration of that money that they borrowed to help develop that online proposition and create a new audience. You have to question where did this money go?

“As an organisation, they were struggling to appeal to a certain demographic, couldn’t sell enough of their low-end products to make enough margin to keep these stores going – so did no one think about investing part of that to just develop some kind of online proposition?

The general demise of the high street also played a big part in Wilkos downfall with the loss of big high-street stores such as Debenhams, which entered administration twice throughout its 242 years but finally collapsed for the final time in 2020. Other big high street losses included Sir Philip Green’s retail empire, Arcadia Group, which included brands such as Topshop, Topman, Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Miss Selfridge and Evans. It fell into the hands of administrators in 2020, under the weight of a £750million debt pile. Another brand previously owned by Sir Philip Green and one of the most famous on the street, BHS, had fallen into administration a few years before in April 2016.

“Once one starts to fall, it’s a domino effect for town centres because if they’re not drawing that portfolio, then it’s very difficult to draw somebody to the town, park up and wander through,” Rick said. “Then there’s the demise of the town where a lot of people were saying that it’s dirty and people were generally being put off because the shutters were up, the wrong people were in the towns, and its demise was setting in from the big boys leaving those locations. It’s just generally been a slow strangulation of the High Street and when one goes its a domino effect.”

Daniel agreed, adding: “Wilko was never a destination store – you didn’t come into town to shop at Wilko, you wandered into Wilco after visiting the bank or going to M&S or the post office. Debenhams’ loss decimated certain towns where it was literally the anchor store in the most prominent position in the high street. Part of their downfall was that there wasn’t the footfall. The high street needs help, not just from the government and local council, but from responsible retailers too.”

When the pandemic hit in 2020, people were forced to use online to order shopping and deliveries, only hammering home Wilko’s failure to make it online. “Places like Wilko had the benefit of a broad offering of toothpaste, pet food and everything, but their model is where the problem lies and instead people went to places like Asda online and got there, instead of the high street,” Rick said. “Wilkos didn’t have its foot in the market early enough for it to capitalise on it when things started to go wrong.”

Even when the cost-of-living crisis hit, Wilko, as a budget high-street store, may have been expected to survive – but there were other competitors out there. Rick explained: “Places like The Ranch have sprung up over the years and been able to give Wilko clients an offering not only just in store but online.

“In these times, it’s about sifting the wheat from the chaff and inevitably those that are strong, and have good contingencies and can weather the storms will always prosper out of this. But unfortunately Wilkos from one reason to another reason, to another reason just couldn’t weather this type of storm.”

For Wilkos’ former employers, Daniel said he hopes they are redeployed into other stores, but in reality, fears they will “fade into the rest of the unemployment figures”. This, he says, is only more reason why the government needs to get involved in saving the high street.

“Do you really want another lead wave of redundancies happening on your High Street, which is then going to further impact your entire local economy and what it costs the taxpayer to then support them?” Daniel said. “This is a very short sighted view that this government is taking that will actually cost more in the long run than if you had done something to support the High Street and to help the high street thrive and survive, as opposed to letting it die.”

To read the published article written by Dan Todaro, Managing Director please visit Mirror

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