The programmable store
Andy Stubbings writes: We were recently asked to present at a retail conference, (“Digital Retailing 4.0”) organized by The Store and WPP, on how mobile devices will change shopping.
On the surface, this already seems to be quite a familiar future, with a familiar set of litanies (“shopping will be freed from the confines of physical space”; “all shopping becomes social”; “mobile will be the ultimate disintermediation device” etc). That’s not to say they’re not true, but there are plenty of other blogs where you can find this sort of thing.
We wanted to understand the patterns, to identify a coherent theory to explain the effect of technology on the evolution of retail (this would also help make sense of some of the more familiar visions of the future in a more systematic way). To do this, we went back to first principles about how the system of retail works and how it might change, basing some of our thinking on the TRIZ model of the evolution of technical systems. The theory and evidence on the TRIZ model is complicated – engineers and inventors have spent whole careers understanding it and applying it – but in essence it can be used as a way to understand how systems and their components evolve over time, from rigid, to modular, to programmable through to autonomous states (you can read more here). One simple analogy might be the evolution from a single toy brick (rigid), Lego (modular – can be combined and moved around in the system, albeit not dynamically), to Lego Mindstorms (programmable – components in the system can communicate with each other dynamically), to an automated artificial intelligence Lego system (autonomous – components respond themselves to changes in the environment).
This theory of the evolution of systems works quite well for retail. Simplistically, we can identify the components in the ‘system’ of a store as four Ps:
- People (staff, customers, suppliers and others, e.g. passers by)
- Products (inventory, display products, customizable products)
- Places (displays, exterior, payment points, ambient environment)
- Prices and information (product information, advertising, service information)
When you look at it this way, shopping really hasn’t changed that much over the last 2,000 years or so. We have gone from a ‘rigid’ state (fixed stalls dispensing one type of product), to a ‘modular’ state (department stores and big box retail with movable concessions, changeable in-store environments and more control over inventory), and we are now moving to a ‘programmable’ state.
The main technology in enabling the transition from rigid to modular was electrification. For the shift to the programmable store, the key technology will be mobile devices and a whole host of information and communication technologies (ICT) that allow data to be stored, transmitted, analysed and displayed between people and things.
What will happen when a store becomes programmable? In essence it allows different elements in the system of retail (our new 4 Ps) to communicate and interact with each other in a dynamic way. So we night see:
- data (including prices) dynamically linked to products, meaning that prices can be changed on the fly more easily (or different prices will be visible to different consumers)
- products linked to other products (meaning that you will be able to create associative tags between products to form shopping lists or unique categories like ‘Scottish’, ‘ethically sourced’ or ‘related to the life of Robert Burns’)
- places – the distributed store continues to ‘talk’ to its products about their maintenance status throughout their working life
- people (not just staff), controlling the retail environment (e.g. changing the lighting or wallpaper in store, or looking through the walls of a store from outside)
These are just some first thoughts, and I’m sure there are more. We plan to return to this subject, to develop our thinking on the idea of ‘the programmable store’, so we’d be interested to know what you think.
And the autonomus store? That might have to wait.
A future of advertising
Andrew Curry writes: I have been meaning to post this for a while, but better late than never. The Wire, which is the in-house magazine of WPP, our parent company, had a feature in its last issue on how advertising would change over the next ten years. 16 contributors, 150 words each, you know the kind of thing. The editor warned us off social media as being too obvious, and I stayed away from data analytics because others in the group know far more about that than I do.
Sadly, the whole piece is behind a firewall, unless you happen to work for a WPP company, although it would seem like a good opportunity to showcase thinking within the group. But here’s my contribution:
Advertising is being squeezed from two sides. The generation of millennials now cresting into adulthood, brought up with screens surrounding them, can de-construct an advertisement quicker than you can say “Roland Barthes“. There’s no trick you can play without them noticing it, storing it, and tagging it for the next time. Governments meanwhile, squeezed for budgets, have noticed that the public purse tends to pick up quite a lot of the costs of private consumption, and are increasingly willing to regulate advertising in an increasing range of categories, darkening markets or persuading companies to darken their markets themselves. Sao Paolo passed its ‘clean city’ legislation which banned outdoor advertising four years ago, and it has huge support from its citizens. Other places have followed suit, if on a smaller scale, an early sign that Adbusters’ Mental Environment Movement is just starting to gain traction. Advertisers will be able to say less and less about less and less. End of message.
The picture of Sao Paulo is from the blog Out of Home Media, and is used with thanks.
Climbing Mount Everest one stair at a time
Amy Esser writes:
Prompted by recent work with clients on changing behaviours in the area of physical activity, I decided to enrol London office employees in a fitness challenge; to collectively climb the height of Mount Everest in four weeks by climbing the stairs at work.
So, doing the sums, Mount Everest is 29,029 feet high, or 8,848 metres, which equates to 58,070 steps or 3,871 flights of stairs. There are 10 flights of stairs leading up to our office, which means in order to complete the climb in four weeks (20 working days) we need to complete a total of 388 climbs – an average of 19.4 times a day. There are around 40 people in the office on a typical day which means that each individual needs to climb the stairs every other day – but will they? …
So far I am feeling positive – by Day 2 we had already reached the height of Ben Nevis, and if we continue like this we will reach the top of Mount Everest in half the time, although I sense enthusiasm may decline as the days go by.
My theory is that we need to change people’s habits so they fit exercise into their daily routine. Our challenge is about getting people to ditch the elevator for the stairs. And it’s tougher than it should be – our office building has been designed to lure you straight into a lift as you enter whilst the stairs have been hidden behind doors and corridors. One of the first questions I was asked about the challenge was, ‘where are the stairs?’! The actual experience of climbing the stairs is poor and uninspiring. The walls are grey, there are no windows, and our building managers prohibit us from putting up any motivational posters in the stairwells.
What we have been able to do is to encourage people and to communicate the benefits of taking part. One stair climb burns 30 calories, climbing the stairs will tone your legs and bum, and increase your confidence. Having a visual representation of the climb also really helps people engage. We have a log sheet where people sign their names after they have finished a climb, and this act of making your mark gives a sense of achievement and a sense of being part of a group activity.
Personally I’ve found this rewarding: I started a small social movement, and people are thanking me for it, so it seems that some people did want to be prodded to act. And I’ll be interested to see what happens once the challenge is over – will people continue to take the stairs instead of the lift?
Water pressures
Lindsay Kunkle writes:
A group of us from the Chapel Hill office went to a lecture at the University of North Carolina’s business school this week on the future of water. The speaker was Charles Fishman (author of The Big Thirst, as well as The Wal-Mart Effect). Mr. Fishman was quite engaging, and the clear implication of his talk was that our perceptions of water – that it is safe, free, and unlimited – are already out of date.
Some of the stories that he told about water issues, in the US and elsewhere, were alarming. A few highlights:
- Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S., and the water source for Las Vegas, is now half empty; areas of the reservoir that were once 100 feet deep are now bone dry.
- 70% of the people in India’s hospitals are there because of water related problems (treatment of diarrhoea is a huge cost for the country—and could be resolved almost completely by providing the population with safe drinking water)
- Still in India, one-sixth of the population still relies on “foot carried” water—in order for a family to have water the wife and daughters transport water from a well (often not close) to the family’s home.
However, Fishman stresses there is no ‘global water crisis,’ but rather there are local and regional water problems—conserving water in North Carolina will not help India have more water (just as cleaning one’s plate every night as a child did not help feed starving children in Africa, no matter what parents said.
And despite the portents, Mr. Fishman was hopeful about the future of ‘smart water’. In the U.S., Las Vegas is the poster child as the ‘smartest water city.’ The city has enacted many laws to control water use and to increase the amount of water that can safely be recycled for continued use. For example, it is illegal to let sprinkler water hit the sidewalk; new homes aren’t permitted to have pretty green front lawns; and as a result, 94% of the city’s water can be be reused.
And there are implications for the future of how we manage water.
- As long as water is ‘free’, it decreases consumer and business willingness to invest money or time in smart water solutions. And since American consumers drink on average 4 bottles of water per a week, they are not completely unfamiliar with the idea of actually paying for water.
- There is an emotional connection to water (think a hot bath on a cold day or diving into the cool ocean as a kid) that can be promoted to drive more creative smart water solutions as well as more creative water management in general.
- Water needs to be marketed! Promoting water through marketing campaigns that educate consumers on their water sources and how water gets to their homes is a good first step in working towards solving the water problems so many face.
It happens that this is an area in which The Futures Company has already engaged with a wide range of clients, both commercial and in government. It’s clear that water needs to rise up the agenda of most businesses and organisations – wherever they are based.
The photograph of Lake Mead at the top of the post is from the Scripps Institute at UCSD, and is used here with thanks.
The new normal is still here, and here to stay
Eleanor Cooksey writes:
“I’ve found the cost of living has gone up substantially and it has had a huge impact on my life. I am not buying luxuries as often and I will change the way I deal with my finances.”
This sobering quote comes from a Scottish man we spoke to as part of our fifth in-depth review of how UK consumers are responding to the current economic situation. In our breakfast briefing held in London last week to launch this review, we highlighted four themes which describe the current environment:
- The New Normal is firmly embedded: Reflecting the broader economic uncertainty, individuals feel the outlook is gloomy: 25% feel the UK economy is going very badly these days, an increase of 10% compared to when the survey was last carried out six months ago. People are even less optimistic about their personal financial situation with almost half thinking they will be worse off over the next 12 months. The message is clear: no one expects things to go back to how they were and we are learning how to cope.
- Rising prices are hurting:Though inflation has recently dropped a fraction, our data showed levels of anxiety about rising prices similar to those seen in 2008. Many of the people we spoke to were highly sensitive to these changes, whether this was about an increase in the cost of petrol or bell peppers.
- Savvy shopping matters to consumers: 43% of consumers have had to dip into savings to make ends meet and they are trying hard to make their money going further. Deals and special offers are still very much part of this, but consumers are doing more than that: they are giving serious thought to what they really need and what they really don’t. One lady in Staines realised she didn’t have to spend £70 every six weeks at the hairdresser and could use a £3.50 home dye kit instead. However, she wasn’t going to cut back on her expensive make-up and perfume.
- It’s a constant struggle to stay on top of things: In our last survey, we identified three groups who represent the various responses to the current financial downturn, and this time round, ‘All Hands on Deck’ were the only group which had increased in size. Though people in this group feel the struggle to make ends meet most acutely, making the most of your budget is relevant to everyone, even for the relatively unaffected ‘Plain Sailing’ group. All want to feel they can loosen their belt without losing it.
I’ll finish with a quote from a young woman in Sheffield which sums up the dilemma the New Normal presents for some:
“I could lose my job tomorrow, so I should plan to protect myself against that – but then again, I could lose my job tomorrow…so why not live for the moment?”.
There are limited places available for a repeat of this breakfast briefing on 12th May. To find out more please contact Karen Kidson.
From fear to pleasure
Alex Oliver writes:
Looking for better sex? Interested in ways to save money and lose weight? Want to be a better parent and live a long and happy life?
If these questions got your attention, they certainly grabbed mine at the recent Global Social Marketing Conference held in sunny Dublin last week, where Josh Hunt and I spent an intense couple of days presenting our recent behavioural insight work, chatting to academics and practitioners from across the globe, and attending seminars on the latest thinking in social marketing theory.
The conference covered a range of social policy challenges from contraception in African sex workers to breast feeding amongst Texan minority ethnic groups, to reducing extreme racist behaviour in deprived inner city London councils, and a whole bunch of interesting subjects in between. But in amongst the many theoretical debates, one basic but hitherto understated insight was repeatedly reinforced for me. That traditional social marketing theory has relied far too heavily on fear as the lever to challenge behaviour, rather than using pleasure or happiness as a motivator to drive change.
Academic research does show that fear can be a highly effective lever in motivating behaviour change. When it comes to men and drink driving, for example, the more that risk of death is highlighted, and the more grisly the description of death, the more likely the subjects are to report a change in attitudes. And it’s not difficult to think of any number of government campaigns across the globe that have applied the same principle – the famous AIDS campaign of the 1980s, the motorcycle campaign (which I still can’t watch – my husband being the owner of a BMW 850R), and the ‘Heroin Screws You Up’ campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s. (The posters for these became fashion statements, opening up the idea of ‘heroin chic’.)
But it’s possible that over-exposure to these many frightening messages over time has de-sensitised us, or worse, made us angry and caused us to reject the moralising messenger? This was the compelling case argued at the conference by Professor Nadine Henley from Edith Cowan University Western Australia.
She proposed an alternative: that social marketers should make their subjects the heroes of the campaigns rather than the villains or victims. So, instead of scaring people with the consequences of diabetes and heart disease, we might celebrate weight loss through game shows like The Biggest Loser. Or we accept that teenagers will have sex and tell them what types of contraception fit best with their lifestyle, however debauched it may be.
In practice, good social marketing campaigns will always use a range of levers and messages. But whether supported by academic research or not, intuitively it makes sense that we need to feel good about ourselves and the world we live in – a lesson that commercial marketers have certainly learnt, but governments perhaps need to think a bit more about.
The happiness question
Rebecca Nash writes:
If you’ve been following the ‘happiness debate’, you’ll know that policy makers are increasingly asking if it is potentially a better indicator of social progress than the economic measures represented by GDP. But diving into the happiness sciences you quickly find that it raises as many questions as answers: What is happiness? According to whom? Can it be measured? And if we can measure it, what will the policy response be to unhappiness? What practical steps can be taken to make people happier?
And another question from our end: What does happiness mean to business? Generating happy moods is nothing new to consumer goods manufacturers, where short-term happiness and consumption go hand in hand. But there are a number of potential happiness platforms which business can work from to create more sustainable happiness – building social justice, delivering meaning and value, employee satisfaction on organisational levels, and simply being associated with happiness in its pure form (but beware of ‘happy wash’).
In the research on this which I’m leading for The Futures Company, I’ve become really interested in ‘restoration’ – an approach to happiness which involves making people happy who once were not, and I think it produces challenges that matter to both business and government. When I attended a happiness panel earlier this year at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, panellists drew strong links between happiness sciences, psychotherapy, and opportunities to self-repair. Psychotherapist Phillipa Perry advised a laughing audience that, if we want to be happy, we should ‘choose our mothers very, very carefully’. She also gave us tips on how to be happier if early childhood didn’t give us the personal tools we needed for a happy life.
Perry’s take on happiness as something that needs to be re-learned drew some connections for me between what is happening on individual and broader social levels. It reminded me of a recent drivers scan we did for our Government 2020 project, a project on the future of government. One of the most influential drivers of change which emerged – to our surprise – was a trend toward anger, which shaped a few of the future worlds we brought to life. Happiness is more private (although the notion of ‘social wellbeing’ can give it a public face). Anger is evident and more public, and we’re seeing more of it, more often, in public protest, in generational conflict and in economic frustration.
A key challenge, then, for any organisation taking on happiness, is how to tackle other complex emotions – because as we’re seeing, if happiness goes public, so too can its opposite.
The picture at the top of this post is taken from Stephanie Price’s Borderline Personality blog, and is used with thanks.
A future made of screens
Alex Steer writes:
There was a lot of discussion in our London and New York offices last week about a short video called A Day Made of Glass. It’s produced by Corning, which makes specialized glass products, including mobile and tablet touchscreens, and the video explores a day in the life of a family in a not-too-distant future in which (surprise) there are screens, especially touchscreens, in just about everything.
The first thing that struck us was Corning’s imaginative approach to the dry task of selling high-tech glass. It’s a great illustration of what can happen when you apply a bit of futures thinking to your brand. It’s also smart as a piece of brand planning, focusing on the consumers at the end of the supply chain, not Corning’s B2B customers. Creatively, it’s well executed.
But it’s the futures aspect which has provoked the debate. The video is cheerfully optimistic about the screenification of the entire world, as you’d expect from a sales tool, and cheery optimism runs through the creative work too, presenting a perfect upper-middle-class family – mum, dad, kids, all so happy and healthy-looking – that feels more like a nod to the heyday of Madison Avenue than a look to the future.
Some of the futures thinking isn’t bad. Consumerism is one of the strongest forces defining technology innovation, and this trend is everywhere in A Day Made of Glass. Glassland is about user experience, good design and straightforward, seamless interaction. All the devices assume a world of rich information and always-on connectivity.
Which is what also makes this an extreme scenario.It assumes there are no limits to our attention, or our wish to interact with everything in the way we currently interact with our phones or tablets. The prevalence of touchscreens led one of our Senior Consultants to compare it to another video, for Microsoft’s Future of Work scenarios. In both, ‘the future looks very much like the waiting room at Heathrow Terminal 5’.
In information-rich markets like the US or the UK, the desire to stay updated is already clashing with the recognition that there’s too much information, and we’re looking for more efficient filters. There’s also an emerging awareness of the importance of continuous partial attention in our interaction with media, and the need for interfaces that are useful even when they don’t have our full attention (such as radio or TV).
The continuous interested multitasking imagined in Corning’s world seems, frankly, exhausting. Said one of our SVPs: ‘The woman emailing from her bathroom? I can pretty much guarantee that if you email me anything before I’ve washed my face and brushed my teeth in the morning you’re not going to get a “yes”.’
So in the end we were a bit sceptical. We also worried about the sheer energy cost of all those screens. But hats off to Corning for producing a thought-provoking piece of work that got us talking about the future of media and technology.
The World in 2020
Andrew Curry writes:
I’ve been working on a Futures Company report on The World in 2020 for the last couple of months, and since I’ve end up doing much of the work in the evening I’m delighted to say that we’ve just published the summary edition, and the full version has just gone into production. The summary edition can be downloaded from our website, although registration is required.
The World in 2020 is the first in a series of ‘Futures Perspectives’ reports which we’re publishing over the next few months.
It takes a high level view of the big drivers which are shaping the world, and looks at some of the innovation spaces which may emerge as a result. Here’s are a couple of extracts:
The financial crisis of 2008 represented an ending, but not a beginning. We are in a liminal moment, betwixt and between, when there are more questions than answers, but when, increasingly, our assumptions about how the world works are open to challenge and interrogation. … Liminal moments such as this one can last a decade or more, before opinion coalesces around a new set of operating assumptions about how the world works.
Over the next decade, we’ll see much tougher resource constraints – energy, food and water, and resources will all be under pressure – as well as the continuing long economic shift towards Asia. Issues involving technology and inequality will also be influential. It will be harder to make money in the coming decade. As a result, businesses will have to rethink their approach:
The changing economic environment creates the dilemma of new yet alternative prospects for different types of customers. The emerging middle class across much of Asia and Latin America will be very different from the debt constrained consumers of Europe and the United States. Globally, the
costs of basics such as food and energy are likely to rise over the next decade, so discretionary income will be lower than some project. In the richer countries, the experience of recession will create demands for more social behavior from businesses.Business critic Umair Haque talks of the “meaning organization” that builds “authentic prosperity.” As he writes in a blog post, “An isolated notion of ’profit’ is obsolete: it’s an arid industrial-age conception of a currency-focused construct that’s built to trivialize everything but what a firm owes its ’owners’.
Finding the future in the Oscar nominations
Alex Steer writes:
Did you know there are more people with genius IQs living in China than there are people of any kind living in the United States?
That’s the first line of The Social Network, one of two hotly-tipped films fighting it out for the Best Picture award at tonight’s Oscars, and it’s about change. I am writing this before the show begins, so before the post-match analysis begins (although by the time this is posted you will know the winners), here’s a thought about the two Best Picture frontrunners.
The other is The King’s Speech, and on the surface it couldn’t begin more differently. It starts with a radio announcement:
Good afternoon. This is the BBC National Programme and Empire Services taking you to Wembley Stadium for the Closing Ceremony of the Second and Final Season of the Empire Exhibition.
The Social Network begins with a look forward: a driver of change shaping the balance of power, pointing towards an uncertain future. The King’s Speech seems to offer us a look back to the reassuring institutions, technologies and fashions of the past. It’s been a criticism of the big movies of the last few years (as of contemporary fiction and science fiction) that it is focused on the rear view, and is losing a sense of the future. Is The King’s Speech part of that backward tendency?
I don’t think so. Look again at that opening line. A closing ceremony, a final season, a fading empire. The King’s Speech, like The Social Network, begins with change. The film’s entire premise is based on the struggles of two men (King George VI and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue) to defend an ancient institution – Britain and the crown – against threatening forces of change. As in the most interesting and uncertain futures, the challenges are several: the abdication of Edward VIII, the rise of Hitler, the dawn of the era of mass radio communication, the declaration of war.
The Social Network is a story not of resilience but of disruption. Its creation mythology for Facebook involves a group of outsiders finding a way to beat the conventions of an elite social institution, the Harvard Final Clubs, through sheer ingenuity. In doing so they create a phenomenon that disrupts and reconfigures the social connections between people across the world.
So both this year’s frontrunners are films about finding new ways to communicate in times of disruptive change: one about a leader challenging itself, another about a challenger taking the lead. Whichever takes the statue (and by the time you read this, you’ll probably know), both reflect widespread mixed feelings of uncertainty and opportunity, and both have lessons for organizations, brands or individuals wondering how to take control of their futures.
