Transcript

The amount of digital transformation we have seen in retail is incredible. And it's not just in e-commerce, it's not just online, but in physical bricks and mortar, there's been a huge adoption and desire to really dial up digital experiences. I've really seen this take off in the last seven months with clients we were talking to about two or three years ago as concept and in a strategy consultation, they're coming back now and saying, oh, that VR stuff that you guys showed us three years ago, we need to do it because we gotta be different and we gotta get people back in physical bricks and mortar and we gotta dial up experience. And really, I think that's been the talk track for the industry lately. It really has all been about experience.

I hosted a webinar with author, James H. Gilmore, who co-wrote the Experience Economy. We discussed the notion of trying to vie for a customer's time as a brand, knowing that the more time a customer can spend with your brand, the more likely they are to become invested in your brand, become an advocate, and ultimately spend more money with you. Jim uses a phrase that I absolutely love, which is "time is the currency of experience". I think that holds truer now more than ever, because as consumers have become used to shopping online, the way that they choose to spend their time now is gonna be more careful and more thought out than ever before. So brands are really gonna have to dial up on that reason for them to want to come back to physical bricks and mortar. And I really believe that digital experience is gonna be able to play a huge factor in helping that to happen.

Digital Experience is allowing us to take the best of online shopping and pair that with the best of the physical store. And the best of the physical store is not just the obvious, which is being able to touch and feel the products. It's the social interaction. It's the congregating. It's the speaking to an expert that is helping you to curate your shopping journey. For many years now in the banking sector, we've seen the trend where tellers have been replaced with financial experts that are knowledgeable about all financial products so that they can counsel you and give you advice on what the best products are to help you with your financial wealth and growth. The same thing is happening in retail. Sales reps have to become experts.

If we look at some of brands that have been dealing in that digital transformation for a long time, and sorry, I hate to use Apple because everybody always talks about Apple, but obviously, when it comes to an omni-channel experience and great customer service experience in retail, I mean, they really do it like no one else,. They've had their Apple geniuses in stores for a really long time now, and tons of them. Like you walk into a store and it's incredible the ratio of Apple geniuses to people shopping. They probably have more people in their store than anyone else. And Apple is one brand if they wanted to could just communicate with digital tools, but they're not. They're letting the digital tools sell themselves. They're letting customers buy into that brand ecosystem and culture. They're empowering their sales staff through digital technology to be able to have more human connection and interaction with brands.

I was listening to a podcast that you had in your list, and you had a speaker that was talking all about how for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, it's all about having this type of community culture. Retail stores are becoming community hubs where people of are like-minded interests are coming together to congregate and partake in a brand experiences. Malls have always been an escape, a congregating area. Especially for teenagers and young adults. You know, some malls are also a gathering spot for a lot of older people that are getting some exercise and walking around. Those things are not going to change.

The luxury retail category in particular has seen significant growth both online and in-store. They have led the charge to open bigger and more incredible stores, to really dial up experience. In Canada, Toronto is the market that's leading that trend. I think a lot of it has to do with the growing luxury retail category. We have more than 6 million people, many of which are high earners, and a lot of them are very wealthy consumers. Many foreign brands have caught on to this trend, and they're making their way into Canada.

Their have been large expansions across the country as well. In Montreal, a 250,000 square foot Holt Renfrew Ogilvy opened. Within their house of brands, they have almost 100 luxury retail brands in this space. One of those that's really unique is the Prada boutique, which has digital experiences all over it. We are also seeing the flip side of this with Canadian brands. Canadian luxury retail brands that are expanding, not just in Canada, but globally. I have done quite a bit of work with Canada Goose and Moose Knuckles, both are competing luxury outerwear brands that pairwith hertitage and luxury with streetwear fashion respectively. My team has worked on several flagship locations for both brands, globally, The discussions with them are all about how are we goning to wow customers? How are we gonna stand out? What types of technology can help drive that experience?

We have donw some amazing things with 3D scanning, object recognition, computer vision, and AI leveraging technologies like virtual mirrors to try things on that allow skeletal tracking and separate users from the background. We have incorporate massive, beautiful, DVLED canvases throughout the stores to attract consumers in, wow them, and then really engage when they're in the store. This is a real trend in the luxury retail category, as I was saying, that everything's bigger, it's bolder, it's disruptive. Customers share and socialize their experiences on all their channels. This drives more physical store visits and also to online channels, and that starts that cycle all over again.

One thing I find fascinating is the power of AI and machine learning to be able to recognize imagery. A lot of people think, okay, if you wanna make a connection with a digital screen, you gotta do something hokey, like have a QR code or you gotta manually put in the information that you want or say what you're interested in. And that's not necessarily true. There's some really sophisticated tools available from companies like Google and others that allow machine learning to be able to pick out what somebody's wearing, recognize aspects of that apparel, do a query in the cloud, look through millions of images, find the suitable match and come back with results on what that person is wearing, or be able to just use that as insight to then make recommendations for things that are being offered in store that might be relevant for that user.

Good experiences are bringing together different devices and different technology to work in an ecosystem. One example that stands out for me is adidas, who I have worked with for many years. In one of their experiential stores in Europe, called the Run Genie. These little Run Genie pods you attach to a customer's shoe in the store, and then they ask the customer to go for a little run. These sensors are able to pick up and detect how their feet come in contact with the ground and understand things like how are they running. How are they balancing their feet. What the shoes do to their stride. Where are they losing the momentum or speed. Where are things possibly uncomfortable because of their foot and how it actually sits. All of this in real time. They're able to pull that data into a tablet that a sales associate is using allowing have that sales associate to make recommendations based on how the user is actually feeling and performing. They can then get the best pair of shoes to help improve on all of that, let them try it on, and instantly have them feel better about it, and all of that without the customer even having to explain how they're feeling, which I think is just incredible.

I'm gonna use a line from Jim Gilmore again, he says, "experience is theater". He associates theater or a an immersive show to what a retail experience should be. So how do we give customer's an experience that's immersive and meaningful and emotive that makes them want to immerse themselves in their surroundings? Here's where I think digital experience can really play a key factor for that. I was talking about the Run Genie pods that Adidas has. Well, the part that I forgot to talk about is, around this treadmill where they're running, they're surrounded by huge floor-to-ceiling digital displays that transport them to different locations where they're running, whether it's a mountainside or down a cityscape or on a track, and then provides them insights and information as they're partaking in a physical activity. They have a sales associate that's providing them insights that are relevant to their specific needs, and they're immersed in a theater-like experience that is just amazing and wows them. So that, for me, is a formula for delivering on an experience that really is immersive. I think that's where retail needs to be and I think that's what brands need to do, Find ways to create experiential moments and stage events that are gonna immerse customers convert them into Experiential Partners".