How to be Brave in retail?
Retail, hospitality, design has gone through some major changes over a very short period. Being a retail brand in the future is
going to look like nothing like it did in the past.
The fears of the new world in these times of immense change and opportunity is challenging many brands in many sectors.
We believe now is the time to be Brave.
The following pages recognise and address our fears in this new world and showcase how we can…
Be Brave.
What does it mean to be Brave?
For many people, it can mean many different things, but ultimately the formal definition of brave is:-
“Having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear or difficulty; having or showing courage.”
Now the next question for you is, are you brave? Will you challenge yourself to move on and not let comfort and fear hold you back?
Bravery and courage are intertwined, maybe two sides of the same coin — and on the other side, lies fear. Fear is anything new, including the future, the unknown will produce a certain amount of fear. To be brave is to acknowledge the fear, and once it’s identified it can be conquered. Bravery can be a matter of survival.
So bravery isn’t a trait we possess or don’t, bravery is something we do. Which means that it is available for everyone.
Recognising our fears?
Even before COVID-19, retail has been undergoing a significant transformation towards a customer experiences that blends the best of online convenience and real-world immersion.
Yes, the storm will pass, humankind will survive, most of us will still be alive - but we will inhabit a different world.
Many short-term emergency measures will become a fixture of life. That is the nature of emergencies. They fast-forward historical processes.
—Yuval Noah Harari Financial Times
At BRAVE the new normal only reinforces our belief that experiential retail, the conversations retailers can have with their consumers can start anywhere -not just in-store, but also at home.
At BRAVE we believe brands need to become ‘meaningful’. An understanding of how brands bring value to consumers and how they provide meaning and relevancy to their lives.
How do you become meaningful?
To become a meaningful brand, the general rule is to understand the functional and personal benefits you can bring to the consumer.
Consumers have wised up to the marketing techniques of old. They have a greater amount of choice to deal with, they are much more opinionated and their influences are stretched long and wide.Consumers are looking for a new control for their experiences and how they spend their quality time.
Finding ‘me time’ will get harder, there will be more scrutiny for brands to rely on consumers ‘me time’. The basic premise being if you can’t give time, whatever you do don’t take it away.
1.Innovation & Creativity
The global economic doom and gloom has brought an upside to retailing in the UK. Brands understand they have to work
harder to keep their consumers. They have to find more ways to engage them in order to
justify ‘me time’
On-line digital retail is here to stay, we see some of our retail stores disappearing through accusations, eg ASOS snapping Topshop and Debenhams own brands bought by Boohoo. For these brands the pandemic was the perfect match, not the perfect storm.
But consumers don’t think in channels, they want to shop everywhere.
For many other brands and consumers who are looking for new experiences, on-line is not the only channel, physical retail is still essential as ever before.
Retail brands will be forced to evolve to a consumer base yearning for something different. The norms of yesterday will no longer
suffice. The winning retailers of tomorrow will switch from an
omni-channel mentality to a completely “frictionless” customer experience that meets consumers wherever they are.
The ability to innovate migration from one channel to the other will be key.
How innovative and creative a brand is will determine its survival . This is a must across all areas. It isn’t necessarily about big dollars, it’s about big ideas and originality.
2. Authenticity and consistency
With the lure of the product and regardless of customer segments, authenticity, consistency and most importantly experience has become more relevant.
Authenticity and consistency can come in a variety of ways. Leading retail brands have embraced the evolving needs of their consumers, increasing their authenticity by being more local, social, personal, experiential, sustainable and seamless.
.
The future of stores will primarily be to deliver
“what Amazon can’t” in the form of an elevated experience, brand story and provenance, infused with emotion and
garnished with a high-value, data driven human interaction.
Consumers can find everything on-line, so the in-store experience must give them something that is much better. They serve to reinforce and educate their consumers in the authencity and consistency of the brand by being relevant, fresh and engaging.
Owning labels is not enough, they must also offer an emotional connection, interaction, theatre and excitement.
52% of consumers choose brands that “align with their personal values while standing for something
bigger than just their products and services”.
Consumers today are more astute and see through traditional
marketing spins than ever. Brands need to champion the values of their consumers in order to be authentic and consistent in todays fast moving socially aware world.
Brands like Patagonia and Nike have successfully used their stores to champion new community ‘civic retail’ – where a store is not just a store, but a place to support communities with free education, access and services.
Authenticity and consistentcy is in turn helping retailers extend their value in order to build long-term connections with their consumers.
3.Experience
Coupled with the authencity and consistency of the brand, experience is everything in any environment.
Physical retail environments will be considered to have more potency as an interactive interface to compensate for the sensory deprivation we have all suffered.
The emotional currency of the brand experience is crucial. According to the Harvard Business Review, connecting emotionally across the brand experience generates 52% more customer value.
It’s also been scientifically proven that emotional experiences imprint better in our memory, therefore brand experiences must embed products and services in a way that evokes strong and long-lasting emotional responses.
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Maya Angelou - American poet
Retail brands that can identify and deliver personal benefit and enhance customers’ lives will be the ones that achieve the
greatest success.
After all we all know of one or a few wonderful stores we have experienced. If we were to list such favourites, we are most likely to end up telling a story.
The way it looks, the way it smells or feels. It’s about the staff behaviour, the music, the selection, the philosophy, the changes, and the activities.
4.1+1=3
Retail has always been about creating that unexplainable magic moment, that ‘wow’ emotional connection. The ingredient that can’t really be explained but felt and experienced with your senses.
This story is the element that has made an impression, and you are instantly emotionally engaged.
So when we as consumers encounter a fantastic store, a store that is worth our attention, time and money, we are really seeing a minor miracle and a major business feat, something magical.
It’s what draws us in to explore and discover and it’s what transforms ‘customers’ to ‘fans’ in retail.
But today’s retail is not just about applying the same formula as before anymore. It compromises all of the our basic pillars to create an emotional customer experience that compliments the transformation of the environmental design.
An environment design that could simply comprise a light fixture, a fixture detail or a take-away bag. But the sum of all help to enhance the experience, the story to be shared with others and repeated again and again.
Harnessing this power of storytelling is what drives the customer experience (CX) and it takes courage. We believe this is part of the crucial difference that is needed to drive retail in these times of immense change and opportunity.
