consumer

The Future of Books

For a 1 year old, is a magazine simply an iPad that doesn’t work? Are we seeing a new generation for whom printed content is essentially broken? I just recently saw the above video on Youtube and it got me thinking about what the future will be for how we will read and consume content. Like I touched on in my Technology vs Advertising post, what we consider technology is predicated by the age in which we experience it. What is considered technology by us now will just be stuff to children who grow up exposed to it. With the release of the iPad, Apple essentially brought to the mainstream a new way to experience content and we are already seeing a change in behaviour as many newspapers struggle with a downturn in readership as people go online for their content on a daily basis. Also printed content is obviously alot more expensive and time consuming to create and produce so we are seeing not just a change in how we consume content but a change for how the industry creates and distributes it as well.

Tablet devices are already impacting upon how people consume content, with more and more people reading books and getting their information from them. I for one enjoy reading the Financial Times on their web app. Reading books and consuming content in this way opens up new opportunities for how we engage with it. About a year ago now, IDEO put together the below concept video illustrating three different concepts for how technology may change the experience of reading for people.

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

Nelson: Contextualizes books within popular opinion and debate to provide reference and easy cross-checking of information

Coupland: Contextualizes books within your professional social network to make it easier to identify what’s worth reading

Alice: Adds a game layer to the experience of reading, in a sort of choose your own adventure meets geo-targeting scernario.

The key technology linking all the concepts together is that through the internet feeding tablets and mobile we are able to be constantly connected wherever we are which enhances how we find and consume content. New layers of utility can be added to the reading experience that couldn’t be before. As tablets become cheaper and a device for the masses, I believe this will be an area of significant growth. I do however feel there will be a place for printed books for a long time to come. I can see them becoming almost a luxury item such as many of the thriving printed magazines are these days. Since it will be alot more expensive to print a book, it will be left in the domain of the quality publications.

On the other side of the coin though there are wider reaching implications for the industry itself of digitalisation. Firstly, if you remove the printed nature of books, the definition of what one is becomes blurred somewhere between a tweet, an article and a 500 page novel. In the digital environment there aren’t the same parameters as there are in the printed world. Not only that but since the cost is lower and the whole process of producing content is faster, it puts pressure on the current distribution model. The traditional delay of up to a year between a books completion and publication was due to the work required to print, distribute and market but also allowed a means of stock control for retailers with the constraints of shelf space in their store. They needed to sell through one lot of books before they could take on more. Now books can be sold and distributed via the internet, it means book stores need to look at their business models and rearrange them.

What does this mean for the future of book stores? Much like I discussed in the Continuous Channel – Future of Retail post, people will always have a reason to go to stores but retailers will need to design them and consider the service offering as a whole with the online one. Not only does the online offering support the stores but allows the long tail of the back catalogue of books that aren’t held instore to be taken advantage of. I think we will end up with a situation where book stores will still have a place, but just a more specialised and service driven one. We are still seeing stores like WH Smith looking to triple their stores in air ports for example, capitalising on the sales of books in the moment when people need them. Whilst they will be supplying their e-book reader Kobo from this location, they will have a selection of paper backs too. They still currently see the e-reader as incremental to their paper back sales, as two thirds of their sales come from children’s books and non-fiction whereas 90% of all downloaded e-books are fiction (WH Smith plans to triple airport stores – FT.com).

Digitalisation of the book industry impacts not only how we as consumers experience the content but how the industry delivers it. Through the internet and new devices we are constantly connected with easy access to books and content, with new layers of utility added to them. For the industry it means a radical change in the distribution models and looking at their service offering, including an online product as part of it. All that said, there is still something about holding a good quality printed product on high quality stock in your hands.

Alex

The Continuous Channel – The New Retail Frontier?

I recently watched a presentation by Steve Nave, former SVP & General Manager of Walmart.com and in it he raised the concept of the continuous channel as a new frontier for retailers. He talked about rather than seeing retail as a multi channel process, we should be taking a step back to look at the entire brand, letting customers shop the way they want to shop and bringing it all together into one continuous channel. Essentially instead of serving customers through individual channels, we serve them at touch points across channels by optimising the organisations processes and technologies. The picture on the left is a trial advertising program by Tesco in South Korea. In a “virtual store” concept, people could shop with their mobile phones whilst waiting for a train directly from an ambient installation set up to look like a store and have their groceries delivered to their home hours later. This is a great example of allowing shoppers to purchase in new ways, on their terms and across channels.

Traditionally there were only three channels which organisations could utilise to actively generate sales, the stores themselves, direct sales (phone/direct marketing) and printed catalogues. These channels essentially each only had a single touch point within them. This has now all changed with the advent of the internet and the establishment of ecommerce as a legitimate channel. The internet differs from the three traditional channels in that it doesn’t simply create one touch point but a vast array of new ones. It feeds emerging technologies as it expands into mobile, tablet, TVs, instore, cars and not to mention social media. The key thing to note here is that when you think about it, none of these new touch points are actually a new channel in themselves, they are all being fed by the existing internet channel. The opportunity here for retailers is that increasingly everything is becoming a touchpoint with which consumers can transact with your organisation. Whilst this may sound similar to the concept of multi-channel retailing, the difference is in the thinking of how the channels and touch points intersect together and how the organization responds to the customer across them to drive sales.

For this to work, information, and data must flow freely between channels on the customer end and within the business units of the organisation, no silos. Customers more and more expect to be able to shop across channels, for example purchasing an item via mobile and collecting it instore. They need to be able to shop when and how they want to, customers shop with your company as a whole, not with an individual channel. With this in mind we can look at new ways to intersect them. I think whilst it may be very hard to truly get to a point where this is fully achieved but it is a good journey to be on and will help drive retailing into the future.

The Walmart example that Steve discussed is a good one to look at in terms of a big retailer testing out initiatives which cross the channel boundaries. Walmart has implemented the below strategies with their ecommerce platform that go some way to letting the customer shop their way and intersects both instore and internet enabled channels:

Site to Store – customers could purchase products online and have them sent to their local store for collection.

Pick Up Today – customers can view a stores stock online, purchase and put it on hold knowing it’s ready for them when they arrive in store to collect it.

Scheduled Delivery From Store – customers can order something online from a store and schedule the delivery for when they want it to arrive at their home.

These strategies are interesting in not only do they cross the typical “channel” boundaries, but really add utility for the customer.

Looking forward, Steve identified the below future milestones he thought to be criticial to driving the continuous channel strategy going for Walmart:

–Social – not just in a setting up a Facebook page way but really looking at what the intersection is between business and social. They started an initiative called “Walmart Labs” to explore new technology around understanding what people are talking about in social media. With that insight, then as brands we can come to people and be relevant to them and the local community TODAY in new ways. For example we could use the information to influence what store staff talk to customers about when they enter the store, the POS instore, or what new initiatives stores can do for people. It’s about more then just sending emails of a relevant sale to people who have indicated they like blenders on Facebook.

-Mobile – This will help drive the continuous channel as a future for ecommerce. Customers are turning to mobile devices more and more for information when they want it quickly. To help keep pace in this area, Walmart are going so far as acquiring tech company start ups to remain agile and take advantage of the latest advances in technology.

-New Store Models – Can ecommerce begin to help influence store layout? Walmart are now siting the online division at the table when discussing how stores are designed to help bring online into the bricks and mortar channel. For example we don’t necessarily need the store floor space to show all products if we can back it up with online channels. For example you could show just 3 digital cameras in each price point, knowing 300 more are online which we can get to store for someone today, or to their home.

Whilst we won’t see the end of bricks and mortar stores, customers will always have something to do instore, (a point I touched on in my post Why Bricks and Mortar Stores Will Always Have a Role to Play) retailers will need to rethink their operational strategy to keep up with how consumers expect to be able to shop, on their terms, across channels.

Alex

Technology vs Advertising

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Technology

Through creation and innovation technology provides people with new material objects, networks and services. I’d like to note also that I think it is predicated by age, in that what is considered technology by us now, will just be stuff to children who grow up exposed to it.

Of interest to me, is how technology, more specifically technology involving or related to the use of computers, impacts upon  how we reach and engage with people as advertisers.

Computer technology changes our media consumption habits, from how we gain information, how we interact socially and even how we shop. As media consumption patterns change, so to must the way we deliver advertising messages to people. Needless to say the advertising and media industry has always had to adjust to changing media habits, from radio to television, how people consume media has continued to change, and will always do so. What doesn’t change though is the basic principal of what we do, to create great work which inspires the desired behaviour change.

To help us understand what is driving the rapid progress of the computer technology causing these changes, we can consider three laws which I heard Faris Yakob put forward a while back, his blog is at http://farisyakob.typepad.com

The first, is Moores Law – The number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. (Computers get faster for less money.)

The second is Kryders Law – Computer storage space doubles annually while the cost roughly halves. (Computers store more for less money, trending towards marginal freeness.)

As a side note, Kryders Law is one of the key reasons that Youtube and  Facebook are able to be viable businesses as storage space will continue down towards marginal freeness which essentially means they can store huge quantities of user content without charging anything. We now see the likes of Dropbox and Cloud systems which take advantage of this also.

Finally, we have Gilders Law – The total bandwidth of a communication system roughly triples every 12 months. (Faster internet for less money.)

Take these three laws together as a whole and you get faster more compact computers and devices, virtually unlimited storage capacity and high speed internet allowing greater amounts of data to be transferred, all at a falling price. This drives the creation and widespread adoption of new computer devices which impact our media consumption.

So what does this mean for advertising?

As people become more “connected” through computer technology, they expect media content tailored to them when and where they want it across multiple devices. These devices have enabled a new form of connected social networking to thrive, people now want to engage with their favourite brands and share these associations with their peer groups online as a form of establishing themselves within the social landscape.  There are now new opportunities for selling that aren’t confined to a bricks and mortar stores and huge volumes of data with ways to listen to customers which would never have been possible before.

All this change is forcing us to adapt in how content is delivered through each medium and changing advertising from a one way message to “consumers” into a combination of messages and conversations with people. A scary thing for brands as they loose direct control.

To survive in this environment, agencies may need to start acting more like start ups and software companies, building and prototyping agile solutions for engaging consumers across platforms.

On that note, lets get innovating.

Alex