C, its a powerful letter lately. Awhile back trend watching.com ran an article profiling “generation C”. Generation C is about how some segments of the market, people are part of the creation, control and collaboration of their interactions both with other like minds and with brands. After thinking about it I too started to see generation C and not just on the web, I started seeing it everywhere.
In my latest report here at work, the team and I outlined 4 C lettered words that summarised the jist of what we uncovered in our research – convienence, control, communication and comfort.
Yesterday I got the new VM+SD, (Visual Merchandise? + Store Design magazine) and flipping thru there I came across an article about the Retail Design conference that happened just a bit ago. In that article they talk about 4 more C’s – Comfort, Conversation, Clarity, Creativity from a future trends retail design perspective. They conference members all ranging in various fields of the retail design industry brainstormed on those 4 C’s and came up with new ones.. and yes more C’s – Customisation, Culture, Connection and Choice.
C is a damn popular letter lately.
Today in our team meeting we talked about our brand offer, our solutions that we plan to offer around brand research. Personally I think there is a ton to gain from farming the web for information on people. Tribes is a popular theme lately. Generation MySpace, another article i came across today, reveals a wealth of information and trends that are right out there now, tools accessible by all really to step into peoples lives, habits and get a taste for who they are– but its only a taste. Research needs to follow up on that, back that up and go further but its a helluva leveraging tool and process to start.
Course that gets me thinking about what next. I’ve been reading.. well more like listening to The World is Flat on audio cd this going to and from work. What an excellent book – get it. It spells out so much of what's happening out there, the world is getting flatter and flatter every day. People can do more and more and more by just tapping into the web. And thats one of many fatteners happening out there.
I started thinking about the research I just wrapped. About how people absorb experiences and transfer them to other brands. How ebay treats me affects how i want bank one to treat me, or how my experience with Subway effects how i perceive subs in general should be like. Can I build a persona off potential experiences on the web? Can i reverse the process, instead of building up from the user, can i drill down into them? What could a user who lies virtually naked on the web due to an open source mentality regarding their pictures, book-marks and blogging habits tell me about them in the real physical behavioural sense? Can i profile tribes? I’m sure i’m not the only one thinking about that. But consider the possibilities. In alot of our research we have participants go thru priming exercise to “get them up to speed” on what we’re about to talk about. But with the web these days, consumers are laying out the road map of priming like exercises everyday. The challenge to get them out of the collective hive mind and back into the individual really.
VM+SD’s article sums up some tasty considerations of consumers in the retail space. Where are they going tomorrow, everyone wants to know. I see their results and consider the parallels in our own research and in my obsessive info gathering I do on the web. I see them all connecting.
They report, that yesterday consumers wanted “experience and everyday luxury”, and that today consumers want “culture and connection” and that tomorrow consumers want “knowledge and culture”. In my own recent findings I’d agree, and studies don't match really, yet i find that the theme of knowledge is consistent between the two.
Looking at more results from conference here I start think about how this is all feeling like one big wave. It starts with early adopters and geek pioneers on the web crafting for need and just cause and its a hit or miss system of acceptability on the web and then that starts the buzz and that buzz starts to infect consumers and then they start expressing the need to take that buzz of wave to new places not just the web, and then it starts to spring up in brands, corporations take notice, retail stores begin to cater to that collective cash in model, entertainment begins to complement it, consumers return to the hive mind and the wave starts over again.
The conference report goes on to toss out some more goodness. The designer focus (from a retail stand point) yesterday was “broad market segment” cater to all is what that says to me, today is about the “targeted niche” and that is so true, so many niches out there, so many big brands are breaking out into speciality niches to grab consumers because the niche is seen as fresh and quick to change. Lastly tomorrow will be about “human touch and connection”. Human was a word in our most recent study that kept coming up. People want a human connection for certain activities, especially on ones that involved risk or possibility liability regarding the web. Its nice to know people still matter really, considering the state of where we are these days.
Lastly the conference broke out some big ideas that retailers should consider developing. I like that, I like the big brainstorm but then I want the go to action item, even if its a possible miss, go do something. For Baby Boomers the idea is a “memory broker”, and right away I agree. Just seeing the influx in media being created out there, people love to remember, and the photoalbum of old is gone, people cant easily attain it, not like they used to. Before it take pictures, get developed, insert physically into an album, its was DIY but you could do it, nothing fancy, today its a hodge podge of possible outcomes, technology make it easier to take pictures and view them but made it hard for us to remember, in a physical form. Remember is different than archive. I personally archive, however my mother wants to remember.
For X gens the idea is a travel exchange program that gives people the opportunity to exercise one of the big C’s, customisation, choice, control – they can help design a product or specific cultural experience. This isn't a real “new” thing, in fact none of these ideas are really new. Let me wrap my brain around this, what does travel exchange program mean really? Could that be like IKEA asking me, little ole me, to help them design a store? How cool could that be in getting me excited about their offerings to me as a consumer? And as a bonus I educate the hell outa them on what I would want? Seems like a massive win all the way around.
For millennials its all about clothes. There’s alot happening on the empowerment of clothing customisation scene. I’ve done it, threadless, neighborhoodies, very cool offerings, I’ve always wanted to design clothes really, i see looks in my head, visual cues that would seem to be pretty cool, everything from shirt slogans and cool long sleeve button down shirts appear in my head. I think it comes from being tall and having jack for options growing up. The big idea here is “design-your-own” apparel, you pick the fabrics, features and so on… and again its retailers seeing the trends, the wave thats happening right now online and seeing how demand for it ignites an deciding when to jump in. Threadless and all the other custom clothing companies on the web have paved the road and created the awareness in the consumers to help drive a concept in a physical store to be a real reality for them. It would work.
For the wee generation that is to be, another concept that isn't new really, its been done but at the time, the world just wasn't ready. The music store thats a cafe, bar, and wire/wireless tech haven for people. Whether this rolls out in the look and feel of a startbucks I don't know. But its an old idea. And I’m not convinced it will work. People do this already. I can create the whole experience in my car provided i got a forty on me and my wireless device. They called this one, the global trading post cafe. Trading post makes me think of the auction house in World of Warcraft. That is a popular place really. Add the niche market developers and put them all in this physical retail space and then wire it to the global net with cool visuals and audio and get starbucks or red robin or something to sponsor the cafe like atmosphere and maybe you have a concept there.
BREAK!
Ok so now think about this. We do this everyday. Jen in my office mentions how tom cruise is buying an ultra-sound machine to watch his baby grow – immediately after telling me she smirks saying quitely “whack job”. Now she has a perception of Tom, yet its purely based on hearsay, i mean we dont have Tom here in our office, its news, news thats been translated and retranslated and reworded who knows how many times, it could be hrs old, moments, hell even days, but she has a read on him.
We start talking about that read. How accurate do we think the label “whack job” is for Tom Cruise? She’s not just factoring in the news, or the progression of news and events over time that Tom has no doubt appeared in. She also factors in her “gut”, or womens instinct. So thats now playing into that as well. Then I add, hell what about the social influence of others, can we add that too? Before ya know it, we starting talking about accuracy of that “vibe” that Tom is a “whack job”, we agree it could be as high as 50 to 75% correct. Holy Shit folks, we’ve haven’t even done the research and we’re leaping to a 50–75% read accuracy on tom cruise being a “whack job”? And we did that in what a few minutes? Sure there was a history of reads Jen has taken in via the web. I think thats massivily interesting that we feel complelled to research to discover truths for others yet we ourselves will cut to the chase so to speak on matters for ourselves.
If we can do that on tom, why cant we do that on people in general. I mean we do that almost out of sight and mind really. We absorb and act, assume and react. What I think is interesting is how accurate we feel the answer is. We beleive it to be true until another source tells us it isnt. We are blank canvases ready to be drawn on at any moment. Our minds are so hungry to assess and analyze and take in new data.
Maybe the flattening of the world via the web is bad in someways. Truth doesnt matter as much as content. We dont seek out the truth, we seek out answers, or more so answers find us before we even have time to think of a question. Good marketing answers my need before I even realize I need it.
So many tasty ideas, so many different kinds of fuel to act on, think about, from social networks, to the ramblings of the soon to be yet its really here already web2.0. Much much to do.
