Customer Centric

It is today a real challenge to find the appropriate path to foster a great consumer experience across the different marketing channels. The On and Off line merchandising is taking more and more space thanks to new technologies: unique on-line navigation, augmented reality, interactive shopping windows or in-store tablet PC for sales staff.

On-line experience
New Web design techniques and the development of broadband technologies allow traditional websites to shake the visit of consumers.

Nike became an expert in terms of clarity and turning the visit into something easy and straight forward while maintaining a high level of quality and execution.
They just Do it

Doritos has reached an expertise in enhancing the content of their website through  story telling micro-sites, interactivity and synergy across multiple channels. Their viral campaign with Hotel 626 is a good illustration of their unconventional brand activities.

The Brand Experience
Augmented reality does represent certainly a major breakthrough for engaging the brand with consumers.
It could take different forms: in-store product display, facilitating the on-line decision process or using packaging for interacting with consumers.

Lego has developed interactive merchandising units in stores where kids could see an animation of the toy they have chosen.

The pure web player enjoysunglasses.com has transformed the user experience for purchasing sun glasses on-line into something personal and unique.

Doritos is again ahead the wave with an interaction between packaging and augmented reality on-line while offering a unique interaction with the brand.
It is a bit long to start but it is great!

Shopping window
This is not common to get the opportunity to interact with the shopping window. The watchmaking brand Hublot lets you piloting from their website a webcam in a physical store to zoom in and out on a Big Bang watch. They innovated as well at the watchmaking fair Basleworld with a watch dial appearing and disapearing by transparency directly in the glass of the shopping window.

Hublot Fusion explorer

Hublot dynamic shopping window

Interactive shopping experience
Once the shopper is in the  point of sale there is still one job to be done…Selling!
There are many very promissing initiatives. I have selected some of them based on the type of product environment.

Hypermarket: Carrefour innovates in France with interactive product display units which provides the consumer with product information and can connect the client with a salesperson.

Selective distribution: Tissot (watch sector) is using Multi-touch tables for displaying product features.

Luxury store: Vacheron Constantin supported the launch of their personnalized watch Quai de l’Ile through a tablet PC. It helps their sales staff to design the watch, provide a lot of information about the brand and could trigger the supply chain process. The success of this initiative led the Federation of the Swiss Watch industry to propose this technology as a platform for other high-end watchmaking brands.

Innovative Merchandising is taking new forms but the technical performance is not an end as such.

Success factors for the Engagement with consumers would be certainly:
- Alignement of the brand content and consumer experience
- Synergy across different marketing channels (from searching information on-line to browsing and purchasing in a physical store)
- Ability of brands to customize the interaction with consumers depending on their status (new comers, loyal consumers, info seekers…).

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