Filed under: content communities, Digital culture, Innovative retail, Innovative stimulus, Nice Design, Nice products, unbusiness | Tags: pop up retail, Rachel Shectman, retail ideas, retail interior, STORY retail concept
(Photo courtesy of Story)
Part retail visionary, part editor, Rachel Shechtman wants to make shopping fun again. Her new Chelsea, New York-based concept store, Story, isn’t just about shopping. It’s about the experience at the store, which changes its theme every four-to-eight weeks — merchandise, decor and all. Of course, the gorgeous gifts inside don’t hurt.
How did you get involved in “concept” shopping?
I’ve always been fascinated by the creative side of things, and the business side of things. [I got to thinking that] there’s been all this innovation online, but we live in real life. And other than the Apple store, it’s hard to really think of other innovative retail experiences. The concept [of Story] is pretty straightforward. I describe it in simple terms as a magazine that comes to life. Our version of editorial is the merchandise that we curate around a certain story, and the events that we also host during that story. Our publishing side of the business is our sponsorship. Benjamin Moore was the sponsor for our “Color” story, General Electric [sponsored] our “Making Things” story. Our holiday story will be in partnership with Hewlett-Packard and Quirky.
When will the holiday story begin? It opens November 14.
It’s called “Home for the Holidays”—the store’s going to be designed like an apartment. The whole concept is a gift guide that comes to life. So our dining room will be “something for everyone.” Our playroom will be for the kids. In the men’s study, you’ll have a pool table. We’ll have a hot chocolate stand on weekends, and [you can] make your own ice cream.
What have been some of your favorite concepts that you’ve done so far?
My favorite one is whatever the next one is, because all we’re doing is snowballing our learnings and our experiences from each story to become better storytellers. People always say, “who’s your market?” And I always say I only have two rules. Every story needs to appeal to someone between the ages of 5 and 80, and there has to be something for sale that’s $5, and it can go as high as $5,000.
Why do you think pop-up shopping resonates with sponsors and with consumers, especially at the holidays?
If you think about it, we have our mobile devices, and our iPads, and everything around us, and we get new content every two seconds. Everywhere we look, there’s news and there’s information. And yet, you walk into a store on a Monday, and you walk into a store on a Friday, and it’s the exact same experience. So I think what works and resonates for us, is that we’re always changing, even within a story. We will put in new items in week three that weren’t in week one. The truth is that all we’re doing is mirroring behaviors and patterns in other parts of people’s lives in an experience that no one has delivered yet. And I also think that as people have less time—and the ultimate luxury on the planet right now is time—they want more out of their experiences. In the past, you could compete on price, quality and service. I think what people compete on now is surprise and delight, and the experience factor. For us, I think that’s what makes people come back.
As both a retailer and a shopper, what are you seeing for the holidays that is a bit different this year than in years past?
With all this change—you have an election, a horrendous natural disaster—the focus to some degree becomes less on material luxuries and more on the luxury of time and place and people. I think products and experience related to that
will become important.
Source: Huffington Post
Here > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/concept-shop-story_n_2103800.html
Filed under: Digital culture, Future of Media, geek, Geek stuff, Innovative stimulus, Social media
Remember the good old days when an online company didn’t need a revenue model because simply being an entrepreneurial innovative online business was enough? I remember those days well because very early in my advertising career we wrote strategies for many of those businesses who never ever got it together thanks to the dot com crash and a swift return to reason. As the market re-settles and new revenue models emerge, one thing remains true: like any business, you have to find a way to charge for what you do. Yes content is still super important and many sites still rely on advertising or lead generation rather than content to fund their models but as categories become more sophisticated, so too do their revenue models.
Anyhoo i found this site which offers an overview of top tech companies and their revenue models across ads, subscriptions, affiliates, data, freemium, and royalties. For those of you looking for an little innovation stimulation or just to feed your inner geek, have a gander – it’s a fun way to get a quick sense of how the bigger brands are tackling the market.
Filed under: Digital culture, Future of Work, Gen Y, Get another life, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Looking for insights, Research Methods, Social media | Tags: innovative recruitment methods, online identity & persona
A great post from WSJ via Yahoo on the changing nature of recruitment . . .
Union Square Ventures recently posted an opening for an investment analyst. Instead of asking for résumés, the New York venture-capital firm—which has invested in Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga and other technology companies—asked applicants to send links representing their “Web presence,” such as a Twitter account or Tumblr blog. Applicants also had to submit short videos demonstrating their interest in the position. Union Square says its process nets better-quality candidates —especially for a venture-capital operation that invests heavily in the Internet and social-media—and the firm plans to use it going forward to fill analyst positions and other jobs.
Companies are increasingly relying on social networks such as LinkedIn, video profiles and online quizzes to gauge candidates’ suitability for a job. While most still request a résumé as part of the application package, some are bypassing the staid requirement altogether.
We all know about the dangers of posting too much about yourself online but how many candidates have considered what a positive, active and engaged persona online can do for their future job prospects? If you’ve ever had the task of hiring new staff you’d know that a resume tells you surprisingly little about a person. Yes it details their experience and at what level they’ve worked, it can tell you whether they’ve committed to education or jobs for any significant period of time, but it can’t tell you much beyond that.
After many mishaps at our end we’ve taken to Googling all prospective staff members prior to the second interview. It doesn’t necessarily tell us any more than we already know unless they have a significant web presence, but it does go some way to colouring in the picture of the person.
A résumé doesn’t provide much depth about a candidate, says Christina Cacioppo, an associate at Union Square Ventures who blogs about the hiring process on the company’s website and was herself hired after she compiled a profile comprising her personal blog, Twitter feed, LinkedIn profile, and links to social-media sites Delicious and Dopplr, which showed places where she had traveled.
John Fischer, founder and owner of StickerGiant.com, a Hygiene, Colo., company that makes bumper and marketing stickers, says a résumé isn’t the best way to determine whether a potential employee will be a good social fit for the company. Instead, his firm uses an online survey to help screen applicants. “We are most interested in what people are like, what they are like to work with, how they think,” she says.
Questions are tailored to the position. A current opening for an Adobe Illustrator expert asks applicants about their skills, but also asks questions such as “What is your ideal dream job?” and “What is the best job you’ve ever had?” Applicants have the option to attach a résumé, but it isn’t required. Mr. Fischer says he started using online questionnaires several years ago, after receiving too many résumés from candidates who had no qualifications or interest. Having applicants fill out surveys is a “self-filter,” he says.
IGN Entertainment Inc., a gaming and media firm, launched a program dubbed Code Foo, in which it taught programming skills to passionate gamers with little experience, paying participants while they learned. Instead of asking for résumés, the firm posted a series of challenges on its website aimed at gauging candidates’ thought processes. (One challenge: Estimate how many pennies lined side by side would span the Golden Gate Bridge.)
It also asked candidates to submit a video demonstrating their love of gaming and the firm’s products.
Nearly 30 people out of about 100 applicants were picked for the six-week Code Foo program, and six were eventually hired full-time. Several of the hires were nontraditional applicants who didn’t attend college or who had thin work experience.
At most companies, résumés are still the first step of the recruiting process, even at supposedly nontraditional places like Google Inc., which hired about 7,000 people in 2011, after receiving some two million résumés. Google has an army of “hundreds” of recruiters who actually read every one, says Todd Carlisle, the technology firm’s director of staffing.
But Dr. Carlisle says he reads résumés in an unusual way: from the bottom up.
Candidates’ early work experience, hobbies, extracurricular activities or nonprofit involvement—such as painting houses to pay for college or touring with a punk rock band through Europe—often provide insight into how well an applicant would fit into the company culture, Dr. Carlisle says.
Plus, “It’s the first sample of work we have of yours,” he says.
Ok so I was just reminded by our friends over at Design Milk to have another peek at the social media propaganda posters that Aaron Wood did a while ago. Delightfully cute and great stimulus for a workshop when you want to push around social media. Here they are. Enjoy.
Filed under: Futures, Futurists, Innovative retail, Innovative stimulus | Tags: digital platforms, future of retail, innovative retail, mobile phone use, retail game, retail trends, target consumers
A good pointer from Linked In I looked at this morning was this article on the 14 Transformations that will define the future of retail shopping in 2020. If you’re in the retail game or just focusing on conversion more than just consideration, have a sticky beak, it’s an interesting read >
14 Transformations Define Future of Shopping In 2020 By Brian Regienczuk
The lines between online and offline shopping will continue to disappear as we move closer to 2020. There will be many transformations: tagging things you like on the street, on shows you watch and items in ads you see. This will streamline much of how we shop; getting shoppers to physical stores that carry things they like, telling stores more about what their target consumers want, and allowing each shopper to emerge in virtual shopping experiences.
Join the transformation in how we shop by 2020, and bring your own thoughts and links to the table at the end. (more…)
Filed under: Advertising, Futures, innovative education, Innovative stimulus | Tags: positive posters
On the 10th November Positive Posters announced that Christopher Sousa Ebels from Australia was awarded first place in their 2011 Positive Posters competition. Christopher’s entry, “The Real Carbon Tax”, was chosen by the panel of judges as the winning poster out of over 2,500 entries. Second place was given to Dee Choi from Australia with “McVegetables” and third place went to Anita Wasik from Poland with her entry “Corporate Abuse”.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Positive Posters it’s a not for profit group started by two Aussies wanting to make a difference with design. Check ‘em out.
Filed under: Community, happiness, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends | Tags: Bhutan, GDP, GNH, wellbeing
borrowed from evilcabeeza's photostream @ Flickr
Gross National Happiness (GNH) is an attempt to define quality of life in more holistic and psychological terms than Gross National Product.
The term was coined by Bhutan’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck in 1972. It signalled his commitment to building an economy that would serve Bhutan’s unique culture based on Buddhist spiritual values. Like many worthy moral goals it is somewhat easier to state than to achieve, nonetheless, it serves as a unifying vision for the Five Year planning process and all the derived planning documents that guide the economic and development plans to the country.
While conventional development models stress economic growth as the ultimate objective, the concept of GNH is based on the premise that true development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other. The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance.
Measuring our Progress
On the 16th of November Bhutan hold their annual forum on Gross National Happiness A country that has facinated many of us for decades since the King of Bhutan refocused the country’s vision to include and more importantly measure, the country’s happiness in an effort to start to manage that as effectively as it would traditionally seek to manage economic growth. Below is an article from The Australian suggesting that Bhutan’s goal of happiness could be a lesson for us all. I’ve also posted some additional research reports from the global wellbeing studies from the nef in the UK that you might also find interesting.
Filed under: eco marketing, farm to table, Food trends & info, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends | Tags: Carrie Brownstein, Fred Armisen, Portland, Portlandia
And while we’re on the subject of Portland, which by the way if you’ve never traversed that far is an absolutely wonderful city.. It’s progressive, it’s considered, it’s design focused, you can eat well easily, people value organic and it generally feels like an all round healthy approach to life and life style. On that note,if you’re into the whole farm-to-table thing you absolutely need to check out this episode of Portlandia. Portlandia is a series created by local musician Fred Armisen and his partner-in-crime Carrie Brownstein. It’s a hilarious series covering the various aspects of what makes Portland weird. . . ["Keep Portland weird" by the way is a self titled motto bestowed upon Portland by the locals who live there]. We all love a bit of organic produce, we all care about the provenance of our food but this is perhaps taking it a little far . . . It’s genius. Enjoy.
You can check out more about Portlandia here. Better still, check out the real thing.
Filed under: Digital culture, Innovative stimulus, Social media, Thinking | Tags: Digital culture, Google, lynete webb, online
For those of you who don’t know Lynette Webb, the insights manager at Google – you can read the previous posts here and here. For those of you who do, here’s another doozy:
“The idea for this slide came from a recent article in the NYT about how the internet is impacting literacy:
“Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends. Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”
It’s a nice thought. When you think about how you read, surf, scan, think and communicate online . . it’s anything but linear. In fact, there’s a sense in which much of the activity that happens online is about joining the dots and redrawing them, than it is reaching some tangible end or defined goal. I like Lynette’s pics because they also pick a poignant point and sum it up perfectly with a great quote and an emotive image. She’s a great resource for inspiration stimulus if you want to get people thinking differently, especially about the impact of the net.
Check out the live link here
Filed under: FMCG innovation, Innovative stimulus, new product, Nice Design, Nice products | Tags: innovative packaging
I know it’s not fashionable in this eco-ridden-hessian-wearing-let’s-eat-organic-and-recycle-the-packaging-and-omygod-didn’t-you-bring-your-own-shopping-bag age but..I love a bit of fabulous packaging.
Don’t get me wrong I care about the planet and try to do the right thing. I have for instance a total of about 35 Coles eco shopping bags sitting in my kitchen as we speak [I keep forgetting to bring them so I buy more each time I go] which I get isn’t the point by the way, but even just walking to the car with those cheap plastic bags which are so eco terrible makes me feel less whole some how…
But I digress. The point here is that there is beautiful packaging in the world. You wouldn’t know it at Coles in Surry Hills and it sure isn’t on the shelves in my local Woolworths either but for those of you who are very much into package design, here are a few of my favourite links.
The DieLine site is without a doubt the best site I’ve seen for packaging porn. Look at the image above, who ever thought butter could look so good? Check out the sites and bookmark them for the next time you’re looking for a little eye candy or perhaps some stimulus for a preso or a workshop.
The DieLine is brilliant, full of good res packaging design images [free to search]
Global Package Gallery is another one full of product examples from around the globe [free trial then subscribe]
Another site is Under Consideration although not as good as DieLine [free to search]
