Digital has greatly improved the shopping experience with quality-of-life improvements like free shipping and advanced personalization. At the same time, the drive for online innovation led by industry giants has been tough for many retailers to keep up with. But two retail industry events in New York this week painted a rosy picture an industry re-energized and well-equipped build meaningful, new connections with consumers through tech: New York Retail Innovation Week this week, which gathered together leadership from top retail brands and their innovation partners, and the NRF 2020 Vision conference.

MediaMonks participated in PSFK’s event, hosting a panel session in our New York office. Focused on in-store experiential retail, the panel featured Russell Kahn (VP of Retail, PUMA North America) and Alissa Allen (VP Group Director of Insights and Strategy, The Integer Group), and was moderated by our office’s Managing Director, Jason Prohaska.

Because just over a third of retail sales are influenced by digital, it will be increasingly important for retailers to understand how to trace the journey from online to off—or totally blur the boundary between those two states. As new technologies emerge (like 5G, which allows for in-store VR and AR demonstrations with zero latency), retailers will become even better-equipped to connect with their consumers.

So even though digital technology has put pressure on retailers, Allen reminds us that “Diamonds are formed under pressure.” That sense of energy, excitement and desire to reinvent the wheel is palpable in the retail today, ushering an optimistic vision of the industry’s tech-infused future.

Topics of the week ranged from purpose and intention to how retailers can offer unforgettable experiences by leveraging tech. To that point, YourStudio’s Co-Founder and Creative Director Howard Sullivan eloquently said before speaking at NYRIW, “We’re moving into an era of selling emotions and feelings, not things.” The good news: retail is the perfect stage to grant these experiences to consumers.

Retail’s Renewed Purpose

Retail faces challenges at all sides: there’s fierce competition from direct-to-consumer brands, a need to play catch-up with disruptive ecommerce giants and the increasing imperative to connect with the consumer through content and personalization at scale. A great place to begin thinking about retail’s future amidst each of these challenges is to ask why retail continues to be relevant today.

The answer? Retail offers an environment to instill loyalty by building meaningful connections that go beyond a simple transaction. According to PSFK’s Future Of Retail 2020: Retail As Personal Utility report, “73% [of consumers] are interested in shopping at a store that offers other useful services besides selling products.” This is the philosophy behind the opening of PUMA’s first flagship store in the US, which opened on Fifth Avenue in August last year.

At our NYRIW panel, Puma’s Russell Kahn mentioned how the store’s customization studio delivered on that promise by providing a personalized service to consumers, while keeping the space fresh with new partners and unique experiences (like bedazzling your new or old shoes with Swarovski crystals). “People want experiences, not products,” he said. “If they want products, they can go to Amazon. We thought about what reasons bring people to the store, and what that experience can be.”

The Rise of Experiential

Speaking of experiences, both Kahn and Integer Group’s Alissa Allen discussed the rising role of experiential retail. We’ve worked with both on high-profile experiential projects; PUMA’s store features a state-of-the-art F1 racing simulator on par with those used by real racers. And in collaboration with The Collective (part of The Integer Group) and AT&T, we built the Batman Experience, a large-scale interactive exhibition that includes an immersive virtual reality skydiving experience.

While the Batman Experience was one of the most buzzworthy exhibits at San Diego Comic-Con last year, the project began from humble roots. “We had the most boring brief ever: sell more fiber optic cable,” Allen told the panel audience. Admittedly, selling tech can be tough—so The Collective started by considering who buys fiber optic and why.

“Fiber optic is important for gamers and is even a deciding factor in where they choose to live,” she said. Suddenly, everything clicked: with AT&T having recently acquired the rights to Warner Bros. and DC Comics’ Batman IP, The Collective could showcase the strength of AT&T’s fiber optic product while delivering strong relevance to its audience. “Batman is a superhero powered by tech,” Allen said. “AT&T powers the tech that’s in the background of everything we do. So how can we take that and give consumers the feeling of having superpowers?” By going into a wind tunnel, strapping on a VR headset and gliding through a virtual Gotham City, of course.

Paying Attention to Intention

The discussion above shows how critical customer intention has become in the retail experience—whether online or off. At NRF this week, Amy Eschliman (SVP Client Engagement, Sephora) discussed how the retailer’s social content is built to support a transition from the news feed to a check-out button. Still, “In beauty, people have to deal with the products in person—there’s no other way,” she said. “So we needed to drive traffic into the stores.”

The challenge, then, is getting into the consumer’s mindset, wherever they operate: understanding what they want to achieve and how to position the brand to meet those needs. In Allen’s work with AT&T, she thinks of each store as a theater. “Every person goes into that theater with purpose and intention.” Kevin Plank, Executive Chairman and Brand Chief at Under Armour, made a similar point on stage at NRF. “When a consumer walks into a retail store, there’s two things they need to understand: what’s your personality, and what’s your point of view?”

The PUMA store manages these concerns by “[placing] the biggest representations of the brand around the store, so the consumer can choose which to spend time with and build a connection.” Visitors can explore the multifaceted brand through several lenses, perhaps based on their favorite sport, for example. Measuring time spent with any of those experiences and displays is key for understanding each one’s impact and influence. “The biggest learning is the consumer journey,” said Kahn. “Tracking the user journey through the store has been invaluable.”

Retail just isn’t what it used to be. The Apple Store is no longer just a store, but is branded a “town center” where shoppers can pick up skills, and Amazon Go stores are revolutionizing retail by offering close integration with its website’s digital features. And it’s not just the future-focused tech brands that are reinventing retail; even the most stalwart retailers like Macy’s are poised to put their fun spin on the old formula, as seen in its new store-within-a-store, “Story.”

The thread that connects each of these developments is the effort to provide consumers with an experience as they shop. But while this discussion is still largely an abstract one in the west, the transformation from storefront to product showroom is already complete in eastern markets like China. “Going in-store gives customers the opportunity to see and interact with the brand’s products, but the purchasing is still usually done online here,” says Thomas Dohm, a Sr. Producer at MediaMonks based in Singapore.

The retailers Dohm is talking about have adapted to customer’s online shopping behaviors rather than try to fight against them. And this is a smart approach, because digital touchpoints and brick-and-mortar retail have a symbiotic effect on one another: in its “The Art And Science Of Retail eCommerce” report, Forrester Research estimates that “digital touchpoints impacted 51% of the $3.7 trillion total US retail market in 2018,” though only 14% of the US retail purchases occurred online, according to the same report.

These findings suggest that digital touchpoints play a significant role in offline purchasing decisions as well as online ones, which provides brick-and-mortar retailers an opportunity to better utilize digital (through which consumers often initiate product research) to support their business. In-store installations provide a unique way for brands to marry their digital strategies with in-store visits. Using two examples of in-store installations hailing from the east, we’re diving into what makes an effective, compelling experience that gets feet through the door.

Plan Around the Store Environment

Retailers must plan the in-store experience around the environments that will host them. A flagship location, for example, can offer plenty of space for high-profile experiential—and it may already attract throngs of shoppers who can participate and build buzz. Digital experiential can help put general store locations on the map, but retailers must understand the variables present—such as local market differences, square footage available, flow of foot traffic and more—when seeking to translate an experience across different stores.

“Local markets have all sorts of budgets, available space in store and of course maturity in experiential activation,” says Dohm. Dohm worked on a retail experience for Calvin Klein’s 37.5 line of thermoregulating jeans, which rolled out to APAC markets and walks users through a poetic VR experience that prompts them to reflect on temperature. This experience came in several tiers depending on the space and resources available in the stores where it was installed: “We approached the Calvin Klein 37.5 activation in a way that would be modular and flexible to cater to these factors,” says Dohm.

Retailers must begin by zeroing in on the core of the experience that would fit within any store—for the Calvin Klein installation, this included the VR headset and accompanying touchscreen device—then developing tiers of experience that enhance it where possible. With the Calvin Klein activation, for example, stores with the space to spare included a tiny house installation that drew attention and provided shoppers with a partitioned space to strap on the headset. In its largest iteration, dressing room-inspired places could be used to fully immerse the shopper.

The difference between experiences doesn’t have to be drastic. For example, Nike got shoppers running to six of their Chinese stores by prompting them to launch a rocket through the power of their sprint on a treadmill. At their flagship location in Shanghai, Nike offered a multiplayer variation in which users could compete with their friends. The difference here is minimal, yet adds a remarkable competitive layer on top of the experience by making the most of the space available.

Understand Local Market Differences

If you plan on rolling your experience out to several markets, don’t treat localization as an afterthought. Good localization isn’t just a matter of translating aspects of the experience; you’ll also need a clear understanding of behaviors that are unique to the different markets that you target. As retail provides a direct touchpoint for consumers to meet and engage with your brand on an individualized level, it’s crucial that your retail experience is relevant and comprehensible to local audiences.

This can be as innocuous as a registration form. The Calvin Klein 37.5 activation, which rolled out to four APAC markets, prompted users to provide contact details. For stores in China, it made sense to enable signups through WeChat—the reigning messaging app in China that many shoppers use as an e-wallet. For markets where WeChat is less common for retail and commerce, registration via email was the default channel. Brands should likewise identify the channels that are most popular or engaging for shoppers to understand the best way to tie the in-store experience back to an overall digital strategy.

Planning around the nuances of a local market at early stages of the creative process also highlights opportunities for transcreation to save time. An important feature of the Calvin Klein experience is a meditative narration that focuses the user’s attention on the temperature around them, prompting them to reflect on the elements, but the poetic narration posed a challenge for offering relevance among local audiences. “The nature of the experience was intentionally very abstract,” said Dohm. “But this was not something that translated easily into Mandarin, so we transcreated the copy to make it more pragmatic.” Effective transcreation enabled the team to roll out to all markets within eight weeks.

Give Shoppers Something to Take Away

Shoppers love to share their experiences, and in-store installations should support this need for maximum effectiveness. This not only reminds users of the product your experience promotes, but can also expand its reach by driving user-generated content (UGC) through social. While the main goal in providing a digital takeaway should be to commemorate the experience, providing a suggested hashtag or offering a digital portal that collects UGC can also prompt shares.

“It’s great to give people something to remember their experience by,” says Dohm. “If it was a positive experience, they’ll hopefully share that on social media channels.” Content that best fits this purpose is that which documents the experience: a photo, video or even a gif that captures the magic of the experience in a personalized way. The Calvin Klein activation lets users walk away with a heatmap selfie—a clever way to distill the experience’s concept behind the promoted thermoregulating jeans. The Nike experience, meanwhile, provides shoppers with a video of their sprint that includes their personal record to encourage sharing via WeChat.

In essence, digital retail experiences should not only inform shoppers, but provide a sense of fun. In-store experiential that pulls this off successfully delights consumers while helping them understand the unique features or value of your products. As retailers are still adapting to an industry disrupted by digital and ecommerce in the west, brick-and-mortar retailers should act now to carve out a space and land on top.

Today’s consumers privilege experiences over things, while brands seek to capture audiences’ attention in unique and innovative ways. A natural trend in response to both is the brand activation: moments or events that reinvent the space around them or make the impossible, possible.

Experiential events may range from offline installations to comprehensive, larger-than-life livestreams that compress time and space to deliver wild experiences to far-flung audiences. Experiential and brand activations typically build buzz around a brand or product, but most importantly they should celebrate what makes those things unique through creative, inventive spectacles.

At the 2019 SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas, for example, on-demand food delivery service DoorDash celebrated the festival’s love for tacos and its own penchant for fast, dependable delivery by inviting attendees to a tiny home installation, where hungry participants could experience at-home delivery away from home. By ordering through a custom app and even answering a door to get their meal, the activation made for a fun twist on the experience of dining out—or in.

While this style of experience is rewarding for those who are able to attend, why not share the fun with a wider audience? Bolstered by streaming platforms, live activations add a new layer to the experience through audience interaction. “Live experiential is all about building innovative and interactive experiences while amplifying their online reach through livestream opportunities,” says Ciaran Woods, Producer at MediaMonks São Paolo. Through live experiential, brands can scale up the experience and go beyond simply building buzz.

Tiers of Amplification

Every experience has an air of FOMO (fear of missing out) about it, making them great for prompting user-generated content and social buzz whether online or off. For simpler experiences that aren’t broadcast to live platforms, this can manifest in providing Instagram-ready spaces or share-worthy moments. When influencers are added to the mix, you can take the conversation even further. For example, laundry detergent brand Skip invited influencers to try on outfits in front of a smart mirror that measured their excitement about them, allowing them to take home anything that scored high on the excitement meter. The event resulted in footage and UGC that drove conversation online about the brand.

But social only goes so far, and is often one-sided in terms of audiences living vicariously through the fewer in-person attendees. Live experiential can offer all the social amplification discussed above, while also providing a more level playing field on the amount of influence and enjoyment that distant audiences can have with the experience. And that interactivity is key: according to Woods, “Viewer interaction must be ingrained in the experience. The viewer has a say.” In other words, live experiential should not only ask viewers to watch, but to act.

Portraying the Brand Value

The best experiential activations reflect their brands’ offerings in a fun, unique way. Take Xfinity’s “Project Dead Zone” for example, in which paranormal investigators broadcasted their exploration of the Winchester Mystery House—the largest haunted house in the US—to an audience of over 3 million live viewers, who offered the investigators words of encouragement via Periscope and Twitter.

In this case, the tech behind the broadcast itself highlighted the brand’s value. In order to broadcast all throughout the spooky house, the crew made use of Xfinity’s xFi Pod series of WiFi extenders. As viewers watched in horror while investigators disappeared one after another, one thing that never went missing over the course of the stream was a stable connection.

Finding this value and creatively building upon it is among the most fun parts of designing an experience. It can also be the most challenging, especially when it comes to making such ideas a reality. For organizations that don’t know where to start their idea (or how to execute loftier goals), a creative and production partnership can help to lend shape to the experience—all by keeping viewers’ experience in mind. “What makes these experiences cool is having a commentator booth you can cut to, or a reporter on the ground,” says Woods. “Basically, treat it like the Super Bowl.” Because a key aspect of live experiential is how it will be broadcast to far-away audiences, it’s important that brands don’t lose sight of production needs.

Supporting User Interactions

Because viewer interaction is essential to live experiential, brands interested in hosting such activations must familiarize themselves with interactions and features unique to the livestreaming platforms available. While live experiential can be platform agnostic, designing your experience with specific interaction triggers in mind helps to make it the best it can be.

Perhaps the most feature-rich of the major livestreaming platforms is Twitch, which supports open-source, custom “Twitch Extensions” that prompt viewers to interact with a stream in unique ways. These can include minigames that relate in some way to what users are watching, heatmaps tracking viewer cursors, scoreboards, voting and more—because the technology is open-source, the possibilities are endless.

The fact that Twitch has such robust viewer interactions supported lends to the fact that it’s purely a livestreaming platform. It also has a more niche audience, though alternatives such as YouTube and Facebook offer massive userbases and reach. Facebook’s major interaction outside of chat is its emoji-style reactions: viewers can select an emoji that represents how they feel about what they’re watching in that specific moment. And don’t forget more mobile-focused broadcast platforms like Periscope and Instagram, which are lighter in terms of features but lend a unique level of authenticity.

No matter the platform (or platforms) you choose, “the trick is to build a system that can translate those interactions into real-world effects,” says Woods. This requires a mature technical understanding and a flair for innovation—and is an area in which working with a creative partner from the earliest stage of the project makes the most sense. In addition to making these interactions possible, a partner may also develop an entire content package for how the experience can enjoy a life beyond the initial broadcast—like through film.

No matter the type of experiential you seek to support, the key is to highlight what makes your brand unique in a fun, innovative way—then reward your audience for their enthusiasm to engage with it. Integrating online platforms through social sharing or livestreaming helps to spread that sense of fun far and wide, providing brands with the opportunity to lead the conversation that surrounds them. It’s time to go big or go home—but no matter where you go, ensure your audience is provided with opportunities to engage.