Reid Nakou, Chief Experience Officer at The General Store, explores four core provocations that set the stage for three powerful principles. This essential playbook unpacks the lessons and strategic observations of the world’s best brands. Learn how to adopt these guiding practices to shape best-in-class retail and customer experience.
There has never been a more exciting time to be in retail.
As we continue to shape the future of retail in all its forms, from stores to shopping centres and everything in between, there has never been stronger commonality, a richer set of lessons nor greater fluency in the way the world’s best brands and businesses are thinking, operating and growing. This relentless reimagining of what retail can be is anchored in three key principles, underpinned by a series of themes and strategic observations. The combination of these begins to write a compelling playbook for how the future of retail looks and feels – and shapes some guiding practices to support bringing this playbook to life.
The provocations
First and foremost is clarity. The best retailers, developers and owners understand their customer and the culture that surrounds them on an incredibly intimate and almost obsessive level. This understanding informs a powerful decision-making tool, from the big moves to the smallest details, ensuring truly meaningful and impactful execution across all facets of the customer-experience spectrum.
Second, is courage – the power of taking on big bets, acting with conviction, confidence and ambition. “Be comfortable with being uncomfortable” is the sentiment that best embodies this philosophy, taking risks, thinking differently, and trying new things. The future of retail belongs to the brave.
Third (and my personal favourite), is fluency – a celebration of lateral thinking and being fluent in the places we look to for inspiration, borrowing techniques and cues from adjacent sectors and categories. The best retail companies today are not looking within their own category for inspiration or solutions. They are looking sideways, at hospitality, music, sport, art, technology, and bringing those influences back to their world in ways that generate real cut-through and distinction.
Lastly, and underpinning all of this is totality – a commitment to consideration across the entire customer experience spectrum and everything we say and do as businesses. This holistic approach is what builds the most impactful, exciting and connected brands and businesses – creating worlds for their customers and communities.
These themes and observations set the stage for the three following principles to shine and shape best-in-class retail and customer experience.
The principles
Perhaps the most obvious principle behind retail that excites us most, is creativity.
The brands and businesses shaping the future of our industry lead with innovation and perceive creativity as a key commercial vehicle and differentiator.
Design and the theory of ‘expansive creativity’ are core to this, a build on the preceding theme of fluency and genuine expansion of a customer value proposition, coupled with imaginative and inspiring design.
This idea that ‘we eat with our eyes’ is a great way to capture the role of design in driving engagement, curiosity, connection and memorability. The architecture that shapes our environments, the visual language and identity of a brand, the texture of a space, the way a product is presented, are all key to realising this principle. The best brands have given themselves permission to have fun with creativity, driving unique emotional responses that fuel connection and commercial growth.
Supporting design – and equally important as what we do – is what we say and how we say it. Our tone of voice is one of the most underestimated levers in retail. How a brand or business speaks can be as impactful as anything it does physically or experientially. In a world of sameness, a distinctive voice cuts through in ways that are surprisingly rare, and surprisingly powerful.
The second principle is cult.
If we reflect on the brands and businesses driving change across the sector, their connection to customer and culture, and their ability to foster a sense of community is a foundational part of their success. Cult brands relentlessly hunt for opportunities to deepen connections and relationships with customers, shaping real reciprocity and loyalty. Maintaining these relationships requires constant attention, investment, and inspiration – driving engagement through exciting, engaging and novel interventions. The best part about this particular principle is the sheer breadth of opportunities it affords. When coupled with the preceding and forthcoming sentiments, it becomes an incredibly powerful vehicle for growth.
The third principle is commercial.
Perhaps the best way to tighten the scale of this sentiment is to categorise commercial into hard and soft metrics. Hard metrics tell us what is happening, and soft metrics tell us why; the two present independently but they are inextricably linked. Sales and revenue, traffic and engagement, loyalty and retention, are all at the mercy of how we make customers feel. Trust, joy, satisfaction and sentiment (Net Promoter Score, etc.) represent key drivers of commercial growth, with the best retail executions using both metric types together to diagnose frictions and design impactful experiences.
In a more physical sense and architectural light, the most exciting brands and developers are becoming increasingly savvy with space – both in terms of use and adaptability (such as repurposing of space), as well as functionality and role (such as reimagining the role of the store and capabilities of physical space). The world’s best retailers are relentlessly reimagining and stretching the role of their assets to deliver environments and experiences that are highly creative, intimately connected to their customer and market, and critically, human.
We like to call this philosophy built for more. It’s the simple idea that a shopping centre or store can be much more than just a place to shop, whereby retail becomes a unique facilitator for other activities.
The playbook above is simple and ambitious. Clarity, courage, fluency and totality represent four provocations that, when genuinely embraced, unlock a powerful set of principles to guide the future: to lead with creativity, to build cult-like connections with customer and culture, and to think differently about the commercials underpinning such ventures, balancing both hard and soft metrics delicately and strategically.
- This article by Reid Nakou was first published in SCN magazine – CBD Guns edition
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