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Keeping Retail Social, Fresh and Real: Situational E-Commerce

November 3, 2011 By 5 Comments

Just as we saw with the music and the publishing industry, retailing has had to evolve. This is not an easy task to acomplish within a multi billion-dollar industry because the supporting infrastructure around retail, alone, has its’ own eco-system.

We are all familiar with the arguments surrounding the publishing industry that reading needs to be tangible. To hold something, actually turn pages, smell the paper and ink and browsing bookshops offer compelling reasons against change. Ultimately, efficiencies, convenience and price have prevailed.

The difference with retail is that ‘shopping’ is social and personal in ways that books and music aren’t. Fashion, for example is tied to our ego and our individual shape. We need to both gain our peers’ approval as well as ensure it flatters and fits. When we do buy online we consider it more of a purchase or transaction instead of really shopping.

Even with the many ‘social apps and tools’ that accompany our ecommerce, we fail to capture the essence of shopping as a social activity. However, just as with music and books, more and more of us are transacting in unexpected and new ways; and as a result our high streets are at risk of dying if they fail to adapt. Ecommerce is fast becoming a necessary element of a retailer’s integrated sales strategy.

But looking at this as purely “brick and mortar versus online” risks missing a trick and discounting the social or situational context. We are not people who live in either a physical world or a digital world, but rather social beings that traverse the two. The proliferation of smart phones and the affordability of data brings new possibilities to truly marry social shopping, situational or impulse shopping, and ecommerce. We cannot look at this as either commerce, or ecommerce or m-commerce but rather as retail. What needs to be done to ensure our products are made available to our customers in a way that induces profitable sales?

Experience, mood and association are always going to be an important attribute of branding. Putting your product in front of people where they are most likely to feel the compulsion, or impulse, to buy will provide a competitive advantage. This may be physically, or virtually. The ability to tell a story and bring a product to life through social tools within a physical, social context and then provide a way for our audience to act on their impulses allows us to reinvent the way we consume.

Retail is evolving. Elements of brick & mortar, ecommerce, affiliate style curation, social and situational ecommerce will all play a part in the next generation. You cannot take the social out of shopping.

What are your thoughts on where retail is heading?

 

Photo by David Blackwell

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Social Media 2010 – Focus and Approach

February 4, 2010 By 3 Comments

Author: Alasdair Munn

I have been thinking about the latest trends for using social media.

Through participating in twitter chats like #smchat and #innochat I have been spotting some trends. Another huge area of learning for me has been looking at how people in situations where resources are limited, are approaching social media tools, technology and context. Several things have become obvious.

  • The new generation are simply using technology to discover new ways to re-purpose old behaviours. Everyone gets lost in the tools. They think they are inventing something new, yet, if we take an objective approach, and study human behaviour, we can see there is little that is actually new, just different approaches.
  • The disconnect between business and social media evangelists rests in the inability for the two to speak the same language. Fixing number 1 above will assist in bridging this gap.
  • Social media is a social science, not IT. Taking a behavioural approach and understanding how people work within communities, within cultures, at work, at play and within themselves has to be a starting point. The other is understanding objectives, purpose and resources.
  • Technology and software are no longer the barriers. Even in the most remote and technology unfriendly locations, current technology solutions and open source software can be adapted to meet the local resources and needs. The greater stumbling blocks are context, content, purpose and revenue models.
  • Keeping your eye on the bottom line and seeking a profit generating model is not greed, it is an essential and valid way of ensuring a project is sustainable and can reach its objectives. This does not loose sight of the fact that there needs to be authenticity, transparency and truth.

This year I continue to study people. I will trust my entrepreneurial experience and I will be driven by purpose, objectives, context, available resources and sustainability.

What drives you in 2010?

Photo by Howard Gee
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tcg’s 10 ways Social Media and Sustainability Align in the Corporate World.

September 19, 2008 By 6 Comments

I would first like to thank Max Gladwell for his blog entitled, Ten Ways that Social Media and Sustainability Align, which sparked the idea for this blog post.

At face value, social media and sustainability are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Social media is inherently intangible and lives online, while sustainability is concerned with the very real and tangible environment and earth. Yet when we drill down and examine these as human concepts, we get a sense that they are both involved in the same paradigm shift.

Most definitions for social media focus on its technologies; however this is a very static and limited view. At tcg we acknowledge that social media is a growing phenomenon enabled through adaptable technology; however, it is also about connecting people and facilitating collaboration, engagement, learning and the progression of ideas.

When it comes to defining sustainability, there are a number of definitions out there, which widely vary depending on who is talking and what their objectives are.

The World Commission on Environment and Development suggests that sustainability is defined as forms of progress that meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”

I rather like the definition of environmental sustainability by Griffith University:

“Environmental sustainability refers to the environmental actions or impacts of what we do. In moving towards sustainability, we are attempting to reduce our ecological footprint or to tread more lightly on the Earth. This equates to reducing the amount of resources we use (and buy), the waste we produce and the emissions we produce. With every action impacting on the planets ecosystems, from the local to the global, the world is changing and it is not just the climate.”

Here are 10 ways in which we believe that social media and sustainability within organizations are aligned:

1. Shifting in the way we do things

  • We are in the process of a global paradigm shift. The way in which we think about and approach business is changing. As with any paradigm shift, the process is gradual involving conflict between the new paradigm thinkers and the holdouts of the old paradigm.
  • The rapid growth and change of social media has opened it up to scepticism, with protagonists suspicious of the technologies and the idea of open collaboration and the sharing of thoughts. This is a far cry from the closed, exclusionary and suspicious practices from the last century.
  • The sustainability movement is gaining in momentum, yet it does not make sense to individuals or institutions that are heavily invested and ensconced in their industrial mindset.

2. Grew from grassroots movements into having mainstream application

  • Social media tools and sustainability practices both started as grassroots movements. For example, social media tools and applications, developed for social networking sites, have grown to have wider commercial uses. Think about how Facebook radically changed how organizations aggregate news stories and information through the introduction of news feed. The sustainability movement started out as a co-op for sourcing bio diesel fuel or sustainable produce and has escalated to achieving mainstream attention and buy in.

3. Real gains/viable alternatives

  • In order to achieve buy in, both social media and sustainable practices have to prove they will provide real gains and provide viable alternatives. Organizations exist to achieve a return on investment (ROI), be it profit, achievement of social causes, etc. Both have the potential to achieve these objectives; however, this potential is largely misunderstood and miscommunicated.

4. Whole system thinking

  • Social media strategies and corporate sustainability programs only work if there is whole system thinking. Merely adding a blog to your website does not constitute a social media strategy. Changing products’ packaging and labelling without addressing the whole value chain equally does not equate to a sustainable program. Also, for a sustainability program to work it needs to touch every aspect of a corporation. The authors of a program will be remiss if they did not take a whole system philosophy. The same applies to social media.

5. Specific problems, specific strategies, specific executions, specific resolutions

  • There is no one size fits all strategy for corporations when it comes to developing a sustainability program or a social media strategy. Each organization has its own business rules, methods and objectives. Trying to reshape an organization to fit a predetermined strategy or set of tools and processes cannot lead to efficiencies or congruence.

6. Integration

  • Once a strategy is put in place, all elements need to be integrated to allow for a flow of information, efficiencies of resources and a clear action path.
  • Social media is a phenomenon enabled through adaptable technology. It is about connections, facilitating collaboration, engagement, learning and the progression of ideas. It also uses tools such as CMS, LMS, tagging, intelligent search, wikis, communication tools, etc. to connect and integrate all elements of an organization.

7. Internal buy in followed by external roll out

  • For any social media strategy or sustainability program to work it has to be embraced internally by the entire organization before it can be rolled out externally. This includes education, discussion, participation and belief that both projects will bring real value. Once there is internal buy in, the program can be rolled out publicly with the benefit of sincerity and purpose.

8. Integrity

  • Openness, transparency and a true belief and commitment are essential to both sustainability programs and social media strategies. An increasingly sceptical public are increasingly capable of spotting opportunists.

9. The future

  • Both sustainability programs and social media strategies are about changing the way we do things now so that our organizations survive and flourish in the future. Adapting the way we use our resources so as to ensure we allow for the regeneration of resources for future production makes sense, as well as the way we communicate, learn, share and disseminate information so we keep up with people’s learning styles, expectations and technology usage ensures we are heard, now and in the future.

10. Mutually enabling

  • Rolling out a sustainability program within a corporation takes hard work, determination, communication and commitment. Social media tools and applications help with the integration, communication, learning, participation and momentum. Once these elements are sorted out internally, the same social media tools and applications can be used to externalize the message and objectives. Adopting a social media strategy within and organization so that it truly integrates all elements only works if it follows a sustainable model. Tagging on bits of technology, or trying to participate in social media externally to the organization cannot lead to lasting or holistic results.

http://twitter/ajmunn

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The Changing face of Social Media

August 7, 2008 By 2 Comments

In relation to the timeline of communication tools, websites are only a millisecond old. Even if we disregard paintings on cave walls and the formation of the alphabet and just start from the first printed word, websites are mere saplings against the giant redwood.

Yet it is hard to imagine a life without websites; they have become so pervasive in our lives. They have grown and adapted. New tools, uses and applications are added all the time. The pace of change is phenomenal. Never before has communication had to adapt and change so fast. And never before have people needed to adapt their communications strategies so quickly.

The underlying philosophy of how organizations make their business decisions has been shaped by our journey through the industrial revolution. One thing the industrial revolution instilled in us is the need to automate, to do away with the individual craftsman, and to make things cheaper. To relate this to the evolution of the websites, the highly individual skill and craftsmanship of coding a website in HTML gave way to software that allowed any competent person to build a website in frames. Predetermined templates were created where you could just drop in a few photos and a bit of text and hey, presto, there was your website. As Henry Ford once said “You can have any color you want as long as it is black”, the web developer’s mantra is: “You can have anything you want as long as it fits into one of these templates.”

With the increasing adoption of social media, static templates are no longer adequate for organizations. As a result we are seeing a move towards templated social media solutions, choosing the template that most closely resembles what we think we need. But it is more complicated than that. We can no longer try to fit our organizations identity into a predetermined template. In order to keep up with the pace of change we need to alter our thinking. Today we need to make our message available on new media devices and portals. We need to integrate all our online assets. We want to weave our community into our brand so that there is a seamless integrated brand experience.

The changing approach we need when considering our online strategy is not limited to our online assets. We are seeing a general shift in the world’s consciousness. The establishment is being questioned. Alternative medicine’s holistic and spiritual approach is challenging the conventions of western medicines prescriptive antibiotic regime. There is a realization that blind allegiance to the production methods used in the industrial revolution is leading to climate change, wasted resources and dissatisfaction as value, creativity, purpose, collaboration and community give way to price, products, waste, exclusion and consumerism.

Within industry, through the research and thought leadership of organizations such as The Rocky Mountain Institute, a think tank and research institution, we see that by changing the way we approach the methods of production in industry, we can make real gains and savings through effective resource management and processes. We have had an excellent uptake of tcg’s Green Prepare™ programme, not because companies want to save the planet, but because there is a realization that in order for industry to survive, it needs to address the reality of our planet’s dwindling resources.

The ideology of production is wasteful and ill considered; yet these production methods are entrenched. It is difficult to throw this thinking away and accept alternative ways of producing, even if those methods lead to increased production and a stronger bottom line. Looking at organizations in a holistic manner and designing production so there is true integration of all aspects requires a shift in approach. Embracing alternative fuels, alternative build and engineering and new, considered production processes is not taking a step backwards; it ensures we can carry on producing way into the future.

This shift in consciousness is not about supplanting one way of doing things with another. It is about taking the best of all disciplines and changing the way in which we think about the relationship.

Similarly, the way we build out our technology is more important than ever. It is no longer a case of just having the best applications, widgets and tools; it is also about how that technology is structured and how relevant it is to your organization. Each organization has its unique business rules, structures and objectives. As an organization integrates and streamlines its operations, the same thinking needs to be carried forward into its online presence. More than ever, online tools and applications are becoming the way in which brands communicate with their audiences. As windows to our brand, websites are extending beyond the computer screen to a host of mobile devices, 10 foot interfaces and portals, some of which we still have to discover.

We are seeing a shift in how we think about our online property. The new social media platform has to embrace and enable this. It has to have tools that powerfully enable the user, yet it cannot be a rigid structure. It has to allow for unique business needs and it must integrate all aspects of the organization. Like any movement away from the established norm, not everyone gets it and not everyone at first will want to embrace it. Yet once the “ah-ha” moment comes, it all clicks and there is no going back.

http://twitter.com/ajmunn

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Social Media in a Business Setting: Part Two

July 18, 2008 By 1 Comment

I had intended to talk about social media in a business setting from the point of view of technology, tools and applications. After mulling this over in my head for a few days I realised that I was falling into the trap that so many people fall into. Social media cannot be defined by its technologies. Social Media is a phenomenon. It is about connecting people to each other, be they individuals, organizations or the whole spectrum in-between. It is about learning through collaboration and creating a new social structure to enable this to happen. This is not static: it is changing constantly. These connections are enabled through technology, and so, if we follow this train of thought, the technology and the way we use technology cannot be static either.

At tcg we have two areas of focus, Professional Services and Technology. Both feed each other but stand apart. Our Professional Services really drive our understanding of the phenomenon of social media. It allows us to truly understand each situation from the perspective of our client and the audience, stakeholders or users. We don’t only look at the now, but we look at where they have come from and where they are going.

Our second area of focus is Technology. It became clear to us that technology cannot be produced in isolation. It needs to be relevant, and yet it is not financially or time viable to start from scratch in every engagement. That would be silly. This is why we have created our technology in a modular fashion that can constantly change and adapt. We recognize that technology needs to talk to legacy applications and it needs to be expandable to incorporate new technologies, ones that we have not even thought of yet. Not only do we expect new applications, tools and widgets to become more relevant to a business over time, we also recognize that the business rules and uses of existing tools and applications are going to change. Our clients should be able to effect change quickly, efficiently and without great cost.

A good example of this constant change is to look at the altering landscape of portals we use to connect to each other. We are already seeing a migration of social media away from the exclusivity of computers to mobile and portable devices as well as 10-foot interfaces and other media portals. Can anyone really say that have a technology platform that extends to all these portals? No, because they have not all been defined yet, nor will we ever be at a place where progress will sit still for an hour so we can get the definitions down. What we can say is that we are prepared for this; we know it is happening and we are building our technology to adapt, to integrate and to expand.

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Social Media

July 2, 2008 By 2 Comments

Social Media has everybody talking, but are they all talking about the same thing? Social Media is such a vast subject, with many different nuances, disciplines, approaches and reference points.

What do we use social media for? I asked a sample of people, male and female between the ages of 16 and 40. Here are some of the answers.

  • To share pictures, videos, links and posts with friends.
  • To connect to friends and family.
  • To find out stuff.
  • To keep in touch.
  • For entertainment. Etc.

Perhaps the most interesting answer came from a 16-year-old female. (I will call her Emma)

“I don’t use social media for anything specific. It is not like I set out to use social media, it just exists. It is a part of my life. This is a dumb question. You don’t ask people what they use a telephone for. I could list a thousand instances where I would use a telephone, but really everyone knows that a telephone allows you to talk to people over distances. Well social networking allows you to do this better. It is a fuller experience.”

Emma’s answer makes sense to me. Social media allows us to communicate with people in ways we never thought imaginable. It provides us with easy to use, intuitive tools that cross over multiple learning styles, allowing us to be a part of that communication. We don’t think about how this happens, we just accept it. Providers of these tools think for us. We want to run with these tools from the offset. We accept that it can exist in real time, that we can mix sound with visuals, with text and participate in multiple dialogues. We do not only accept it, we now expect it.

Right? Well, these are our expectation. These expectations are what a handful of social media sites have engrained in us. But this is not always the case. So many social media providers don’t think for their users, they don’t even talk to them. They get fixated in the technology. This is pretty dismal for a discipline that is all about people and communicating. The how is important I agree. There is a need to have world-class technology in order to supply a world-class service, but that technology needs to be applied correctly, with understanding and after dialogue.

When we think social media, we need to think people and connections. If we understand our audience, I mean really understand the audience and then marry that understanding with our objectives, the right technology, applications and tools will follow.

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