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Who’s Really in the Driver’s Seat?

Retailers must recognize the importance of brand voice

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Having recently attended the World Department Store Forum, April 23-24, I was astounded by a recurring theme present throughout my two days in Rome (it also echoed what I've heard for far too long stateside).

It’s the confounding notion that brands no longer own the relationship with their customers. And if you feed into the hysteria, your new view will become that the consumer is solely in the driver’s seat and Brand X is in the passenger’s seat, just tagging along for the ride. Of course, this is rooted in everything we think we know or have heard, researched and speculated about the Millennial segment. God help us with whatever the alphas strong-arm us into once they’ve gotten out of diapers. It has a whole lot of folk in a very defensive position, if not a downright fearful one.

“Retailers don’t own the relationship between brand and consumer, consumers do,” is a defeatist attitude, and one that will lead unconfident brands to be reactionary in lieu of guiding that relationship. The conversation desperately needs reshaping. It’s not about chasing and bending to the whims of a nebulous demographic, like the Millennials (or, for that matter, any demographic). The conversation needs to revolve around your brand having a voice – and a loud one to ensure you’re heard. But the real key here is getting “your brand’s” voice heard (not a mutation of your voice filtered through a segmentation study).

And this is where a deeply rooted understanding of Gen X, Millennials, baby boomers, Gen D – all of the generations – needs to occur. Understanding target customers will enlighten retailers to better adapt to the appropriate channels of engagement. One shouldn’t crowdsource a brand positioning. They are created by passionate operators who feel they have a distinct product or service that people want. The saying, “if you build it, they will come,” is still relevant. That is to say if you present your brand with distinction and passion. That is the essence of successful brands .

The tone at the moment is very different, however. It seems the strategy for some brands is to completely change what they are, not adapt. This is a seriously flawed strategy. Once a brand loses sight of what they are, the very shoppers they hope to attract will identify their disingenuousness. And there lies the true ambition of the shopping public: They want authenticity and sincerity. That is a brand’s armor … and once removed, well, it’s history.

Retailers also tend to make the simple complex. Not to say the business of retail is simple, far from it. But conversations are cluttered with too much speculation of what’s going to make a fickle group of consumers happy at each turn. Brands must make themselves happy first, before they have any chance of pleasing the buying public. Also, retailers shouldn’t aspire to appeal to everyone. This can only lead to dilution of a brand’s position. And it’s surprising to see how far-reaching a focused message can be when stated with truth and conviction.

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I suppose my view is, while there are monumental shifts in how customers find, discuss and engage with brands, the core motivator hasn’t changed. If you have something they want, they’ll buy it. The key is to insert yourself into consumer conversations, and that’s tricky business. Still not as tricky as trying to “guess” what they want. Simply, they want what you have, not what you think they want.

The truth of the matter is that brands own the dialog with customers. That hasn’t changed, despite what you may have heard. And while this tech-savvy landscape is shifting how we do what we do, the responsibility of a brand’s voice is still squarely on the shoulders of the retailer. Brands, above all others, are their greatest ambassadors.

So would one willingly choose to ride in the passenger’s seat while an inexperienced teenager’s in the driver’s seat? That’s where true terror sets in – preparing to merge into the fast lane of Autostrada can be unsettling, but not quite as scary when you’re behind the wheel.

With nearly 30 years of experience in the retail industry, Eric Kuhn’s role as Design Leader with BHDP Architecture (Cincinnati) is to provide leadership and inspiration, guiding the BHDP design team and its clients through the inception, development and manifestation of strategically driven projects. Throughout his career, Eric has always appreciated the complexities of retail design and the dynamic each individual challenge offers to cultivate solution that propel brands forward.

Be a part of the conversation at Eric's retail design panel session (“Consumer X: A Love Story“) at IRDC this year, Sept. 9-11 in Austin, Texas! For more information about IRDC, visit IRDConline.com.

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