Looking back to when I started in retail, more than 40m years ago, and actually just prior to the rise of the e-commerce channel, the couch for consumers was where to shop, on a high street or in a mall. As a business leader is was somewhat simple to where your consumers were and where to serve them best. Real Estate executives wield power of place as traffic was king to penetration. Fast forward to today and if you’re not on Tick Tock , X, Facebook and others, your not connecting with your audience and potential consumers.
Back in 2013, businesses were beginning to see the power of e-commerce channels, social media was hardly active, especially not in Branding and Commerce. Back then it took gigantuan efforts to remove silos from Channels and become Direct to Consumer or Omnichannel.
This is still a huge challenge today as teams incentive plans have not progressed along with the consumer preferences of where they can shop a brand. This is one of many challenges brands face in aligning teams to serve the consumer where, when and how they want to shop. Consumers are demanding optionality and while different channels require different skills to be able to connect with the consumer through content and services, ultimately a Brand and their teams must show up in a ubiquitous way to optimize the opportunity for loyalty and streamline brand messaging and impact.
Today Omnichannel is wider and more diverse than ever before. The impact of influencers is more powerful than ‘Shop Windows’ or ” Offers’ in how brands build their brands fans.
How Brands are transiting to this challenge is critical to drive success. Teams can no longer live in single channels and Silos but be rewarded by creating brand loyalty no matter which channel it originates in and where the consumers choose to shop.
Organizational development, based on a mission to serve the consumer where they choose to be be served, is the new ‘edge’ that brands need to sharpen and deploy. Teams may have a level oof cross functional expertise and collaboration that we have previously not seen. While data gathering is huge, today AI cannot develop strategies, this is a human task , a team task, one that needs data, needs AI analysis but success depends on teams working together to understand the brand mission, the customer preferences and how they go together to create roadmaps to be able to be there when they want to shop, be there with common shared values, be there when relevant to be so, be there to nurture the relationship.
This is todays Omnichannel challenge, its no a straight line, its more complex than Brands have ever seen before, but unfortunately the offer of a ‘shiny object’ like AI, is taking away a fundamental truth. Teams are what will make the difference, aligned in common missions across multi channels , teams who know how to use the data available today, teams who are empowered to move in agile ways and the shape of the marketplace can change at a moments notice.
