It was great to meet and reconnect with industry friends and associates at the P2PI Shopper Marketing Summit. With the event squarely in the rearview mirror, what did we learn? Were there any true breakthrough innovations? Will Bluetooth beacons point the way to future enlightenment?
Well, I can’t answer that, but I do feel comfortable saying that the pace of change within the CPG/Retail/Shopper industry is accelerating. It’s digitally-driven and we’d all be well advised to follow the example of industry thought leaders, like Andy, who are driving this evolution forward.
All digital, all the time
Our fellow exhibitors within the Summit’s Solutions Gallery were highly digital focused. No great surprise there. While most solutions are sound and serve a client’s needs, it’s clear the greatest potential lies in figuring out how to best aggregate complementary companies against influencing the entire path to purchase, ideally with a common analytics platform.
Organizational Influence
Yet, as an industry, we’re a fairly conservative lot. An early mover advantage is often stunted by internal cultural and organizational resistance. This very topic came up at an event our company hosted last week for dozens of our current clients and partners, highlighted by a panel discussion in which each spoke openly of the challenges they face internally as they endeavor to steer their companies further down the digital path.
It’s hard. Firmly entrenched organizational habits die hard. Supplanting the simplicity and predictability of yesteryear’s tactics with a mix of digital/mobile/social solutions is no easy task. Those of us providing services and solutions need to do the heavy lifting to provide true insights, not just campaign reporting. We can start by aggregating our experiences across brands and categories in order to benchmark performance and best practices.
The solutions providers who will lead the way had best be able to embrace the language of their Shopper Summit brethren which, as far as I heard, goes something like this. Tongue in cheek, deep breath now…
Leverage Big Data to unlock new Insights and deliver Relevance and Personalization in Real-time, while driving Engagement and Activation in our Omnichannel environment across all Digital, Mobile and Social channels, boosting sales from Bricks to Clicks, with Online to Offline Revenue Attribution.
Sounds easy enough to me – so let’s get after it!
