#future of commerce

What Does Blockchain Technology Mean For the Future of Art and Business?

@linacreated What do you see in the future? #web3 #cryptoinvesting #blockchaintechnology #nfts #gaming #financialservices ♬ Lo-fi hip hop – NAO-K By Angelina Henry Hey, what’s up? Do you ever think about this new blockchain technology? –all these new ways of doing things digitally and ask yourself what kinds of ideas are going to come out in the future or what products we’re going to be using?…

Building better analytics to serve consumer segments of 1.

At Starbucks one brilliantly cold and sunny morning in December 2009 David Meerman Scott suggested…even demanded (thank you) …that I launch a blog and start writing about my passions for leveraging technology platforms to enable, deliver, and scale personalized consumer experiences.  I picked up a copy of his New Rules of Marketing and PR, and started writing soon after.

When hunting for a URL, it felt like it had to be consumer focused and after a few Google searches: Neytenda.  It’s the Icelandic word for consumer.  With 337,780 consumers, Iceland has only 0.0000438961% of the world’s population, and is rarely the focus of any new global product or service launch.  

It’s always been a struggle to profitably serve small markets and even smaller market segments. Neytenda is a metaphor for my focus on ideas, tools, and an industry that has gone from aspirational to actionable in the ten years since.

Quantum Metric is one such actionable platform I first learned about when a reader sent me a link to a recent Quantum blog post. Their founder and CEO was also recently interviewed by Forbes. His riff on the necessity for building better customer analytics for any enterprise to scale engagement and revenue is well worth the read.  

Leveraging AI to enhance efficiency in the New Normal

It’s a critical time to be demonstrating the incrementality of your value to your enterprise prospects and channels.  Thought provoking article out this week from the MIT Technology Review on how business process automation and outsourcing are driving rapid changes in delivery models with IBM Watson and BPO’s like Teleperformance: The pandemic is emptying call centers. AI chatbots are swooping in 

Scaling the impact of AI across the enterprise

C-level executives who are upskilling their employees by enabling them to have stronger digital dexterity skills stand a better chance of winning the war for talent.

The New Normal continues to accelerate the need for high impact efficiencies that AI brings to enterprises of all sizes.  Improving customer experience, stabilizing and increasing revenues, and reducing costs are more than ever top of mind for all businesses today who must deploy AI effectively to optimize outcomes. As Louis Columbus points out in his latest Forbes post: The most successful AI use cases contribute to all three areas and deliver measurable results. 

From my inbox this AM: NYC’s Simon Data just raised $20MM on its differentiated CDP model of democratizing access to the data sets it harmonizes.

From the press release: Simon’s disruptive platform vision of blending the messaging and orchestration capabilities of a marketing cloud with the critical infrastructure offered by an enterprise-scale CDP quickly attracted major customers such as Airbnb, OpenTable, and Blue Apron.

Disparate siloed data sources have long hobbled legacy businesses in their path to incrementally monetizing trapped data.  Despite billions invested by customers in data solutions, those solutions haven’t gone far enough, and have left access and utilization of the data in the hands of too few. What Simon seems to offer is a hybrid customer data platform + marketing cloud that enables individuals across an organization’s marketing, support, and sales functions to orchestrate and execute high-impact conversations with consumers. 

Function trumps brand as consumers buy the category in the midst of COVID-19 panic-buying and shortages. 

At the onset of COVID-19, brand relevance evaporated as consumers shifted focus to meeting functional needs and bought the category (as long as it’s bathroom tissue, who cares…).  For 2nd and 3rd tier brands this spiked sales and drove trial in ways they could never have accomplished on their own.

Now, as Numerator points out in AdAge, it’s still TBD if these brands will be able to harness the equity in this recent wave of trial purchases and convert that momentum into lasting brand growth.  1st Tier CPG’s are not leaving this to chance.  Assortment has been chopped and the majors are focused on minimizing manufacturing downtime that line changes cause, and are focusing on restocking the shelves and channel: making sure that consumers can get an OREO…instead of a Hydrox or otherwise, when they next visit the shelf...or via Instacart.

1st Tier CPG’s have already learned hard lessons from DTC disruptors on the importance of customer retention and LTV. Keeping their brands on the shelf is mission-critical to ensure that any bump in sales/consumer engagement for 2nd and 3rd Tier competitors is short-lived.

Constrained choices: trust, comfort and convenience are driving consumer shifts in the New Normal.  

From AdAge today comes insights into items that are making a resurgence during COVID, including beer and American cheese.  With meat plants shutting down across the Midwest and choices across the grocery store limited by availability and price, consumers en masse are shifting their consumption to foods they can count on.

It’s a critical time for CPG’s to build their consumer franchises by understanding and capitalizing on shifting market dynamics to grab minds and wallets for the New Normal beyond COVID-19.  As Andy Mantis from 1010data has noted, COVID is creating a market opportunity to build loyalty that will last post-pandemic for many items that have previously struggled with sales declines. Analytics providers like Nielsen and 1010data deliver the insights CPG’s need to optimize assortment and investment to grow share:

After decades of category dominance by Ben & Jerry’s and Häagen-Dazs, IRI tells us that Halo Top has become the most popular pint of ice cream in America. Halo Top has achieved this with Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms to build a fan base much like any savvy musician does today: taking a personality-forward approach to the cultivation of a presence...a persona...that creates interest, engagement, and buzz.

The obligatory quote from their CEO in the press release is telling: “The reason we’ve taken the number one spot is simple: We have amazing fans. We are eternally grateful to them for even allowing us to exist, let alone thrive,” said CEO and Founder, Justin Woolverton.”