Two of the world’s leading experts in retail marketing, David Roth, CEO of WPP’s The Store, and John Bird, Global Managing Director of Labstore came to #SxSW to talk about “Ten inventions that will revolutionize Retail”. More than 250 people joined their session which had a funny opening. People were supposed to stand up and watch in silence a list of well know retail brands that disappeared from the market over the last couple of years. Furthermore, the two experts showed how traditional malls die and turn into Zombie Malls, but they invited the audience to look at the phenomenon in a different way. To look at it more as an opportunity to create the future of retail, rather than saying the future just happens.
Based on innovation labs around the globe, they identified major retail trends, that can be clustered in three segments: changes regarding The Face of Retail, The Bones of Retail and The Brains of Retail.
Regarding the ace of retail, Roth and Bird found in (1) Holostores and Augmented Reality a rising trend. They presented an augmented reality mobile app for the Kansas City Union Station which brings to life historic moments inside the walls of the railway station.
(2) Washable Bluetooth tokens inside clothes are a second trend. An app used in Israel helps a person identify on the street what brands a person is wearing and immediately go online to shop it.
(3) Smart vending machines are trend number three. What started in 1815 in London with a vending machine for postcards has grown to full-size, automatic stores for brands like Nespresso.
Moving into the bones of retail, David and John presented various examples on how stores can sense their visitors and improve their shopping experience by using (4) smart shelving. Dove has done worked with fully interactive shelves with touch screens that react on the products people take out.
Even more innovative are the shopping experiences around (5) On-Demand Merchandise. Product customization will change radically in the near future with 3D Printers. David showed a 12 cm copy of himself, created with a high end 3D printer.
(7) Off The Grid Retail, frees retail solutions from electrical infrastructure. Heineken, for example, uses solar powered coolers and adds a sustainability component to retail marketing. (8) Near Field Communications and wearable payables are also a rising trend. Barclay’s credit cards now include this technology as well as New Zealand Tourism. In the future, people will be able to pay by simply wearing rubber bracelets with NFC technology inside.
Regarding the brains of retail, the innovations in this area are more data related. (9) Vibrant Data connects a person’s data cloud with the data cloud in a retail store to enhance the customer experience. Finally John and David showed, with a little robot, how (10) Artificial Intelligence can influence shopping processes.
A great presentation of WPP’s retail expertise and innovation power. One thing is sure, retail will change radically and quickly.