Category — CMOs

Retail is where cyberspace meets the marketplace. A discussion featuring Kensuke Suwa of Uniqlo, Jon Abt of Abt Electronics, Christophe Garnier of Totsy, Stephen Hoch of the Wharton School and Tina Manikas of Draftfcb.

How do you see the future of retail? Kensuke Suwa: The gap between what is sold in the store and what is sold online is getting smaller and smaller. More people are becoming accustomed to operating the smartphone and also e-commerce. So, the ratio of sales coming out of e-commerce is becoming bigger and bigger.

For Uniqlo, this means the online experience has to improve, because you can’t try on clothes online the way you can in the store. That is the biggest challenge for us. What is the best way to buy something without touching it? That is more difficult compared to what we do at the store level. It is a big part of the future of retail … read >>

Retailers are defined less by what they sell and more "by whom they serve and how they serve them," says Stephen Quinn in a Fortune magazine interview by Geoff Colvin (12/26/11). Stephen is, of course, Walmart’s chief marketing officer, and says that the people Walmart serves "are value-oriented." In some cases, this means they are on a budget, and Walmart’s role is to help "them stretch their dollars." But in other cases it is people "who just love to save money, and some of them are actually quite well off." For them, says Stephen, "the key is to have the merchandise they really want to buy."

This balancing act is what led Walmart to expand assortments in certain categories, such as fishing, which can appeal to both groups. He admits that Walmart erred by reducing assortment in some categories to a point where shoppers went elsewhere, but they’ve now addressed that and, says Stephen, "the customer is responding dramatically." These and other changes are based on a brand relaunch four years ago, which Stephen says was "based on something Sam Walton said" about giving "the world an opportunity to see what it’s like to save and to have a better life." This led to the "save money, live better" tagline, which is now "the main vector" of Walmart’s commmunications.

Knowing what shoppers want, says Stephen, depends on "the ability to look at data and bring some kind of meaning to it … Like almost everybody else," he says, "we are trying to figure out how to get all that data into the same place so we can see how these data interact with each other." He sees the retailer’s recently launched 3,500 Walmart Facebook pages as a way to "build communities, even local communities, around our stores" and translating that "into doing a better job at the store level." He also thinks it’s the marketer’s job to shake things up. "Way too many marketers get focused on the advertising and the marketing communications messages … and they don’t play enough of an activist role … to get the company to the do the things we know we have to do to be successful for the customer."

Truly breakthrough ideas are both easier and harder to come by. A roundtable discussion featuring Deborah Conrad of Intel, Tony Post of Vibram USA, Ralph Santana of Samsung, Robert Walcott of Kellogg Innovation Network and Beth Ann Kaminkow of TracyLocke.

How should innovators think about consumers? Deborah Conrad: Innovation is about presenting information in a way that’s easy for consumers. Several years ago, marketers had a push mentality, where we were shouting from the highest building and hoping that consumers would sort it all out themselves.

Digital and social media now give us the ability to offer different solutions to consumers when and where they need them. So, it’s about using that innovative platform and not just relying on things like television ads. There’s a real intersection between the consumer searching for solutions and our opportunity to get them excited about what we have to offer … read >>

Steve Phelps navigates innovative pathways at NASCAR. By Tim Manners. Baseball, football, basketball, hockey — all are great American pastimes with amazing stories to tell. But it’s hard to name a sport more organically rooted in American popular culture than stock-car racing — popularized, as it was, by bootleggers trying to outrun revenuers in the 1930s and ’40s.

Steve Pinetti of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants wants to put a smile on your face. By Tim Manners. Dog biscuits at the front door. A goldfish in your room. Animal-print robes in the bath. If you’ve ever stayed at a Kimpton hotel, it’s all very familiar. The complimentary wine hour at five. The extra-long bed (if you’re 6-foot-8). The level of personal attention that Steve Pinetti, Kimpton’s senior vice-president of inspiration and creativity, says transcends mere “customer service” and provides “genuine, heartfelt care.”

If you think you’ve never stayed at a Kimpton hotel — or the name doesn’t quite ring a bell — it’s probably because there is no hotel called Kimpton: For the most part, each of Kimpton’s 54 boutiques has its own name. Maybe you’re familiar with Hotel Allegro in Chicago, the Muse Hotel in New York City, or Nine Zero in Boston. All of them are Kimptons … read >>

Barry Judge of Best Buy re-imagines retail in 140 characters or less. By Tim Manners. With some 18,000 followers on Twitter and more than 2,000 tweets to his name, few marketing chiefs have embraced emerging media as personally as Best Buy’s Barry Judge.

As music and movies migrate from discs to downloads, and consumer-electronics devices grow ever smaller, the acres of retail that once were so formidable suddenly may not be so desirable anymore. As a big-box retailer, Best Buy has no choice but to figure out how to make digital media part of its solution, and Barry is thoroughly absorbed in that challenge … read >>

Authenticity in brand identity is hard to fake. A discussion featuring Tony Pace of Subway, Jeff Murray of the University of Arkansas, Jim Geikie of Burt’s Bees and Dave Fiore of Catapult.

What makes a brand authentic? Jeff Murray: I see three or four strategies at work. One is what I call a “staged” authenticity, where a larger company tries to connect locally in some way. Walmart is doing this with its smaller format stores, for example. A second strategy is to mark your competitors as inauthentic, which Dove does with its “Real Women” campaign. It’s their way of saying that they are honest and transparent, while implying that their competitors are inauthentic … read >>

After 125 years, Coca-Cola marketing chief Joe Tripodi says the best is yet to come. By Tim Manners. Five score and 25 years ago, John Pemberton devised a sweet, effervescent beverage, an innovative mix of syrup and carbonated water, flavored by coca leaves and kola nuts, which some believe he intended to market as a patent medicine.