CONFERENCE: Internet Week | May 19th - 22nd


By Alex Suazo
In a perfect world, I would have sat in my seat in front of the Evolve Media Stage, at Internet Weeks’ HQ, the entire week of May 19th. Instead, I could only attend one day but nonetheless learned so much from a variety of different marketing and digital industry professionals. The focus of conversation on the Evolve Media Stage Tuesday, hosted in tandem with social CRM enterprise Oracle Social, was retail and smart commerce. Panels and presentations included discussions around, “Harnessing Social Media for Authentic Commerce”, “Behavior of Shoppers – Truth About Shopping”, “Intelligent Packaging”, just to name a few.


One of the key learnings that I felt echoed across all the panels was the fact that shopping is still a very emotional human behavior despite technology innovation; the reasons why we shop haven’t changed, it’s how we shop that has. Retailers are doing themselves a major disservice by trying to only focus on the “how” – the technical part of the experience. According to India Wooldridge, Deputy Director, MCann Truth Central, Consumer Intelligence, there are five main shopper mindsets that, no matter the technology, shop the same way consistently:


• Zombie (shopping is clock work)


• Student (they like to touch, play, learn)


• Lover (wants to be seduced by a brand)


• Adventurer (likes to try new things – most open to technology)


• Fighter (well researched and knows exactly what they want).



While any shopper can exhibit any one of these at once, it is important to remember that we need to balance this emotional, as India called it, “art of shopping”, in a world of algorithms and new technology. Side note: this world of algorithms came up many times as well on the panels including references to Amazon’s recommendation/upsell algorithm and Target’s “knowing” a teenage was pregnant before her Dad did. There is a fine line for retailers and all this data they’re collecting; retailers must “personalize with caution” – according to a “Mo’ Mobile Mo’ Problems” panelist.


So how can retailers balance technology and the “art of shopping”? India provided five 
different approaches:


• Be Seamless – being seamless with the experience throughout purchase path.


• Be Sensorial – based on India’s research, following a group of shoppers for one week
that could only shop on their mobiles, mobile is a “window shopping” experience –
users aren’t entirely ready to buy everything on them yet.

How else can you experiment?

• Be Serendipitous – Deliver control and discovery.


• Be Secure – Privacy Policies and Philosophy


• Be Social – Not the new “social” social media, but the old social – shopping with Mom or your best friend – people want to connect with other humans.


India also provided a great example of a brand balancing the “art of shopping” and technology which, not surprisingly, is Disney. New to “My Disney Experience” this year is the MagicBand (or card). MagicBand is a secure “all-in-one” wristband that allows visitors to keep all of their park admission passes, hotel room key, charge food and merchandise purchases, and more. Just in this example, Disney is being seamless, sensorial, serendipitous, secure, and social.


Dan Shust, VP of Emerging Media/Innovation at Resource, provided another great example of a brand balancing human emotion and technology during his “Intelligent Packaging” presentation. Last year, Haagen Dazs created a new ritual around eating ice cream by teaching the world about “tempering”. Fundamentally, Haagen Dazs should be enjoyed after 2 minutes of the ice cream softening – allowing the ice cream to reach the right texture and consistency. Knowing consumers don’t really want to wait 2 minutes, Haagen Dazs created an augmented reality app called “Concerto Timer” to entertain them while they wait. After downloading the app, consumers scan the top of the ice cream that then launches a virtual violin performance of Bach Inventions No. 14. Users can share to FB/TW while it’s happening and once the 2 minutes are up, the ice cream is ready to enjoy properly.


In brief, the future seems less emotional and a lot more technical. From this day at Internet Week though, I think we can all understand that no matter how technical or innovative an experience, humans still need the emotional piece of the puzzle to truly engage, experience, and purchase.

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