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INTRODUCTION

If the future of modern brand-building lies in creating meaningful and memorable experiences then there is no more fiercer, or important battleground than the retail sector.

With the breakneck pace of Amazon's innovations forcing competitors to scramble to keep up, the pace of change in the market is intense. Wall Street firm Needham predicts Amazon will have a 50% share of all ecommerce sales in the US by 2021.

Amazon is changing the retail landscape as we know it

As if that was not enough pressure, Amazon is now launching its own physical retail stores and overnight it acquired a large physical store footprint through the acquisition of Whole Foods.

The continued rise of Amazon, reflects a new era of extreme-convenience where brands increasingly shape their offering to fit in with consumers' busy, multiplatform lives. At the other end of the scale retailers are focusing on transforming themselves into destinations in their own right to help stem the trend of customer spend diverting from "owning stuff" into leisure activities and experiences.

Retailers operating in the UK are having to contend with Brexit-related uncertainty and spiralling inflation, which means more creativity is needed than ever to win a customer's share of wallet.

As new shopping behaviours emerge amid this fiercely competitive environment this report is designed to unpack key trends and their effect on brands today and tomorrow, and reveal what they must do to avoid disappearing into irrelevance.

Beyond omnichannel

The meteoric rise of Amazon and ecommerce as a whole was responsible for creating an obsession with omnichannel retailing. The unforeseen consequence was a disconnect between internal teams within retailers as they focused on their individual fiefdoms, whether that be in-store, ecommerce or any other number of "channels".

However, a sea change is occurring in how businesses approach omnichannel, despite the landscape becoming ever more complex as new channels such as voice add to the bewildering array already in existence.

Argos claims it was the first UK retailer to pass £1bn of annual sales through mobile

"There is no such thing as a typical customer journey any more," says Jill Ross, managing director at Accenture's retail consulting practice. She believes the only true channel in the future of retail is the consumer, rather than the old platform distinctions between shopping in-store or online.

"I don't very often hear customers talking about 'channels' or 'journeys' or even 'experiences', customers just tell us they want to go shopping," says Argos digital director Mark Steel. "Our challenge is to build connected experiences, irrespective of the device, so that customers can enjoy a great shopping experience whenever, wherever and however they choose."

He continues: "It's important to ensure the organisation is aligned around 'end to end' customer experiences, rather than thinking about store versus online." However, despite this platform neutral approach he warns against overlooking the opportunity different devices or channels can offer.

Argos claims it was the first UK retailer to pass £1bn of annual sales through mobile, and Steel says this was a result of focusing on creating a "great shopping experience" on smartphones.

Argos concentrated on the 'end to end' customer experience

From platform to purpose

Karen McCormick, chief investment officer at venture capital firm Beringea, believes the attempt to avoid the pitfall of focusing too much on individual channels can be "nebulous and difficult so we try to bury our heads in the sand to avoid it". Retailers can rise to the challenge by developing a sense of purpose that runs through all activities.

"Our brand promise is grounded in inspiring our customer to lead a more interesting life," says Mary Beech, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at luxury design house Kate Spade. "Our goal is to continually be telling our story across a variety of platforms, ensuring we create thoughtful, unique programming and engaging with our customer whenever and wherever she wants."

Kate Spade most recently put this into action with an augmented reality campaign to publicise the launch of its Paris store. The experience included "Joy Walks" that used AR to allow people to see real world Parisian locations with a Kate Spade twist, including unexpected moments such as pink flamingos frolicking in the Seine and a New York City yellow cab bustling down a street.

Kate Spade's new campaign uses Augmented Reality to publicise the launch of its Paris store.

Dom Robertson, managing director at shopper marketing agency RPM, says that while having a purpose is important it does "not need to be saving the world". It should instead focus on the brand's product and services and their benefits.

This sense of purpose provides consumers a reason to shop with a retailer at a time when Amazon is dominating the price proposition and brands and marketplaces selling direct to consumer are disintermediating the traditional retailer. Robertson believes the "path to purchase is incredibly challenging at the moment" but it comes down to a "human truth" of understanding the consumer and what the right message is at the right time.

Advancing technology means it is now easier to attribute the role of each moving part in pushing the customer towards a sale. For instance, McCormick is an advocate of the rise of "pay per visit" advertising being pioneered by Blis Media, which can track when someone has visited a store after viewing an online ad.

"The consumer journey from online to offline is going to continue to marry up and that is not just in advertising that is in all the ways that brands and retailers deal with their consumers," says McCormick.

The experience gap

The evolution of retail has created a chasm between the online and offline experience. Shopping in-store and online with the same retailer can feel a totally different brand experience. The transactional nature of online has created a consumer expectation of ultra-convenience, which is often not reflected when the consumer visits a store. Meanwhile, shopping online can feel an impersonal experience devoid of brand equity.

"Ecommerce in the last twenty years has been all about the endless aisle where you can order anything you want and it is fantastic and convenient but it is incredibly transactional," says Adam Levene, founder of Hero. "Retailers spend millions of pounds building these brands where they want to emotionally connect with their shopper but at the same time they use very transactional shop windows online."

Hero's technology seeks to add an ecommerce layer to the physical retail space by allowing sales assistants to message and hold video calls with online customers when not serving customers in-store.

Research by Hero has found 67% of ecommerce brands that have received funding of over $6m have opened a physical store within the last 36 months as they recognise the importance of having a physical presence. Their belief in the power of the retail store appears well founded. Accenture's research found 60% of Generation Z, who by their very definition are digital natives, prefer to purchase in-store.

Hero's technology seeks to add an ecommerce layer to the physical retail space

However, there is much work to be done on making the store of the future fit for purpose. The IBM 2017 Customer Experience Survey found the sophistication of the digitally integrated in-store experience is rated adequate or worse for the vast majority (91 percent) of brands.

"Everyone has been talking about the death of the physical store but I don't think there is anything less true than that. I think it has to be the case the retail store is shifting and it is going to be experience and technology-led," says Levene.

Nathan Watts, creative director at retail and brand consultancy Fitch, says retailers are starting to "gamify" their stores by "blurring the lines between retail and experience to make that a more fun experience".

"Shopping malls over the years have started adding many more leisure and entertainment elements to their experiences and reducing the number of standard stores, and increasing the number of flagship stores," says Watts.

83% of respondents think stores are important as they allow people to see, touch and feel a product

Nike Town and Topshop's flagship shop on London's Oxford Street are held up by Watts as an example of what a great store can look like.

"The big shift we are seeing is the role of flagship stores," says Robertson. "People still want to touch and feel, and meet humans. The retail store will change for sure but the need and want for human interaction is still really apparent."

The sensory desire to touch and feel is borne out by Mindshare's Future of Retail research, which found 83% of respondents think stores are important as they allow people to see, touch and feel a product.

The concept of maintaining the "human touch" runs deep among today's retail marketing experts. Fitch is a believer in the "smaller human rituals" that delight customers and make them feel like honoured guests.

Watts believes the UK needs to refocus on these rituals and take a leaf out of the book of cultures such as Japan or India, where there is a "100% expectation you will treat me well".

This refocus is needed because some are prone to forgetting the retail basics and expect retail technology will fill the gaps, according to Watts.

Rather than detracting from a personal in-store experience, technology can add to it if handled correctly.

Technology and data offers the possibility of extending "clientelling", the practice of sales assistants establishing long-tem relationships with key customers, beyond just the luxury sector.

"What if you could know everybody?" asks Matthew Drinkwater, head of the Fashion Innovation Agency at London College of Fashion. "What if every consumer that went into your store received that level of service? In a way it is weird because it is just returning retail to what it used to be - going to your local store and them knowing who you are."

Drinkwater says the best implementations of in-store tech should "hide and disappear" and avoid adding another layer to the consumer experience.

This is exactly what Amazon is attempting to do with its Amazon Go checkout-free store concept, which uses sensors to record the items customers pick up and then charges them to their Amazon Prime account.

"By and large, technology by its nature tends to intervene in what is a retail experience," says R/GA technical director Kaustav Bhattacharya. "Where technology is really assistive is when it blends into the background and becomes a passive and non-invasive experience."

Connected Commerce

Boundaries within retail marketing are blurring all the time to create a multi-layered shopping ecosystem.

One area this is most evident is the increasing amalgamation of retail and social. Accenture's research discovered Generation Z are most likely to use social media to begin their research prior to making a purchase.

Social media is allowing some retailers to punch above their weight and disrupt the dominant players in the market by innovating in the area of discovery

The social media sites have been quick to recognise this and are now introducing "shoppable" functionality to their websites.

"Instagram has become a new leader," says Beech. "With shoppable posts, consumers can instantly purchase something they see their favourite influencer wearing on the social platform."

Social media is allowing some retailers to punch above their weight and disrupt the dominant players in the market by innovating in the area of discovery.

"The companies making the most of this opportunity are not the big, established players, but start-ups and disruptors," says Facebook director of commerce Martin Harbech. "On Facebook and Instagram we have seen the same thing happen in pretty much all areas of retail. In each area, disruptors have realised that on mobile they don't have to wait for purchase intent, they can create this themselves."

Retailers are even going as far as creating their own social media networks. Ian Charles, chief executive of online gardening retailer Primrose, says his company's Gardens.Primrose social network has been set up as a means to allow users to "share their garden" with other enthusiasts.

The site is currently in beta but the idea is users will eventually be able to buy product from within the platform.

"We are trying to disintermediate the publishing houses by having our own content," says Charles.

Bhattacharya believes two key areas for the future of retail evolution are augmented reality and voice.

Apple's ARKit, Google's ARCore and Microsoft's HoloLens are all helping bring down the barriers of entry to AR and accelerate its adoption.

Numerous powerful use cases of the technology are already on show such as Charlotte Tilbury allowing customers to virtually "try-on" numerous make-up looks through an AR-powered digital mirror.

"Augmented reality is going to be massive," says Bhattacharya. "We've now reached an inflection point where the AR technology has truly put the tool in the hands of the creatives and technologists who can rapidly and easily envision and create real life working production ready experiences."

When it comes to voice, Amazon is once again blazing a trail with Echo and Alexa. While currently limited to Q&A-style functionality, which is hit and miss at the best of the times, the future possibilities of voice are tantalising.

"In the near future it will move to a true dialogue," says Bhattacharya.

Amazon director of international ad sales Dan Wright told delegates at Dmexco that voice technology "will open up a green field for innovation and creativity".

The technology is destined to revolutionise search marketing. Joint Microsoft and iProspect research forecasts half of all search queries by 2020 will be carried out through voice.

While innovations including voice and chatbots are exciting prospects for retailers in themselves, it is artificial intelligence that is stitching them all together.

The final piece of the tech puzzle for retailers in the near future is virtual reality.

McCormick predicts the prospect of shopping in a virtual environment is not far off. The technology is already being used on a business-to-business basis to help retailers with their visual merchandising. The natural next step is to extend it to allow the consumer to shop.

"I think we will have the technology to start making 'v-commerce' commercial within 12 months," says McCormick.

Watts predicts: "VR will perhaps dominate more in engaging an enhanced online experience from the home, whereas AR may have more of a role in-store."

As is always the case, how these technologies are most effectively implemented must come back to the needs of the customer.

"There are lots of hot topics across retail right now - AI, voice, bots, VR, to name a few," says Steel. "Rather than thinking about the technology involved, I think it's important to put customers first, and think about how the technology can help to create a fantastic shopping experience."

Conclusion

Retail is evolving faster than ever and customer expectations are off-the scale, but fortunately for retailers technology is at hand to ease the transition.

"Time is more and more limited, and the noise in the marketplace is enormous," concludes Beech. "Standing out with authenticity is imperative, as is being where she [the customer] is already spending time - and being there in a unique way. We always think about the ideal method - digital or otherwise - to immerse our customers in the world of Kate Spade."

Maintaining a strong purpose and keeping a laser-like focus on remaining relevant and serving customer needs is imperative for a retailer to flourish.

New technology can and should play an assistive role in this process and either disappear into the background or delight the consumer. Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar stores still clearly have a key role to play despite previous predictions of their downfall because in an increasingly digital world customers are still yearning for the human touch.

Retail faces its fair share of challenges but for those with the right approach the future should hold tremendous excitement for them and, more importantly, their customers.

***

Five trends in retail marketing

1. Product personalisation

Personalisation of products is about to hit an unprecedented scale due to robotics and 3D printing. Drinkwater believes technology advances will allow the instant production of consumer products to order.

A glimpse of this future can be seen in Adidas' partnership with Silicon Valley start-up Carbon, which has technology that allows the creation of the midsole of a shoe that is the perfect fit for a customer's foot through an additive manufacturing process called "digital light synthesis". The initial roll out will involve the production of 5,000 pairs of the Futurecraft 4D shoes this autumn/winter, while 100,000 pairs could be made in 2018.

FUTURECRAFT 4D: CREATE - adidas

Meanwhile, subscription services like Birchbox and Stich Fix have recognised this personalisation trend and are using customer data to tailor each item in a customer's delivery. Some 76% of Generation Z are interested in such subscription services, according to Accenture.

2. Turbo-charged discovery

Shopping used to require a great deal of effort from the consumer to find the perfect product. However, now all the heavy-lifting can be done by retailers. Harbech says: "This is ultimately about the shift from 'people finding products' to 'products finding people' - which is what consumers want."

Advances in machine learning are allowing retailers to sift out the noise and create a complex picture of the customer through big data.

"There are online retailers that are specifically targeting and sometimes almost exclusively selling through Facebook," says Bhattacharya.

"On Facebook and Instagram we have seen start-ups and disruptors make the most of the opportunity to create purchase intent, rather than wait for it," adds Harbech. "Start-ups in the mattress industry like Simba, Eve and Casper have completely disrupted this model by creating desirable products, and then ensuring those products find the right people through social feeds."

3. Extreme convenience

King of convenience Amazon has driven this trend and it is influencing every single touchpoint. Customer expectations have been raised sky high by online retail and this is now filtering through to all aspects of retail.

Amazon is now bringing convenience to the physical environment with its checkout-free store format Amazon Go. Start-ups are also tapping into this trend. US-based Happy Returns, for example, partners with ecommerce brands to allow shoppers to return items bought online at bricks-and-mortar locations.

As ever, Amazon's rivals are fighting hard to keep up with its innovation. Sainsbury's is piloting its own version of a checkout free shopping experience. The technology is not quite as sophisticated as Amazon's sensor-based technology, but instead lets shoppers scan and pay for items through an app on their smartphone in order to avoid queuing for a checkout.

Will checkouts soon be a thing of the past? Sainsbury's is piloting a checkout-free shopping experience

4. Retail theatre

At the other end of the scale from convenience is the idea of creating retail theatre. Retailers are seeking to provide a reason to visit a shop at a time when customers' attention is being diverted to leisure experiences.

"It would be churlish to ignore the experience side," says Robertson. "The experience economy is rising massively, people are looking for music, gigs, festivals and bars."

The recent troubles of Toys R Us in North America have highlighted the importance of making the store a fun place to visit.

"Toys R Us stores are not places where you would queue outside to go in and play like Hamleys or Lego stores," say Jon Copestake, chief retail and consumer goods analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit. "If they were to change every store into a funfair, and completely revamp their brand then there may be a renaissance. Sometimes things stop being relevant and I think Toys R Us is verging on the irrelevant."

LEGO House Grand Opening Ceremony

5. Conversational commerce

The advent of social media has already created an environment where consumers are used to having a conversation with brands, but this is about to hit a whole new level.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence have also paved the way for innovations including chatbots and voice technology.

Voice will soon allow a true dialogue, and could even understand intonation, which will add an extra layer of context to search marketing as brands are able to gather much more data on the intent of a search request.

Chatbots are becoming ever more complex and mainstream. Some 27% of people have already used a chatbot, while six in ten 25-34-year-olds prefer to chat to brands via text, online chat or messenger app, according to research from Mindshare.

Facebook reveals there are 100,000 active bots on the Messenger platform, and nearly 20m businesses exchange messages with people every month.

***

From retailer to content brand - How Very redefined retail marketing
Very.co.uk is an online department store selling fashion, homeware and tech from over 1300 brands, with an array of payment options. Established in 2009, Very aimed to become a go-to retailer for women aged 25-45. Challenges
As a retail newcomer, with no bricks and mortar presence, Very's brand visibility depended entirely on marketing communications.

Since the launch of the brand the media landscape has been transformed. By 2015 the audience was consuming eight hours of media a day across five devices and multiple channels. In response, multiple teams were producing comms across a vast array of touchpoints.

Very needed an approach which would unify its communications, and take awareness to the next level. It became clear that Very needed to think less like a retailer and more like a content provider.

Execution

Looking at the plethora of touchpoints and platforms available, Very needed a compass to navigate. Very's brand agenda was defined as: "Helping our audience 'get more out of every day', giving her effortless access to a world of possibilities." This would act as the guide for all content.

Looking through the customer's eyes, it became clear that to earn her attention, everything Very put out into the world needed to be of value. Whether it was entertaining, useful or both, the audience needed to gain something from it. And, of course, Very had to get the credit so every piece of content had to be branded.

Inspired by the broadcasters - BBC 2, Channel 4, ITV - who combine branding and content, Very developed the pink cube, a flexible branded asset that represents the brand agenda. A delivery box you could literally "get more out of". The pink cube unifies comms across touchpoints.

To ensure Very was telling its story consistently, it was also necessary to define the brand's body language: casting, styling, product selection, tone of voice. This approach allows Very to flex the level of branding in a way that's appropriate for the channel it is in.

Media shifted to an "always on" approach, ensuring that Very would reach the customer when she was most receptive. Kenyatte Nelson, the group marketing director of Very's owner Shop Direct, observes: "Being 'always on' means we can consistently reach our customer at the right time, in the right way. Combine that with inspiring and increasingly personalised content, and we have a huge chance to win in those moments of truth."

An example of the new approach is Very's new idents for ITV's This Morning. Running from 27 October, each ident is a little life hack that helps the viewer get more out of their day. Very does sell the products that enable these life hacks, but the focus is on the value to the audience, rather than being an overt sales pitch.

Results

The fragmented, multi-channel landscape requires a compass and a new kind of joined up creativity. By thinking like a content provider, within 18 months spontaneous awareness of Very almost doubled. Very is now a go-to retailer for 1 in 3 of its target audience, compared to 1 in 10 before the new approach. Very turned over £1bn in sales in its 7 th year.
Shop Direct group marketing director Kenyatte Nelson and St Luke's chief executive Neil Henderson spoke together at IPA Eff Week, on marketing's role in "Turning a legacy business into a world class digital retailer"
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The marketer view
Ben Cook, brand marketing manager at Uniqlo, on retail's experiential future
Q: As you open your new Oxford outlet what role do bricks and mortar stores have in your brand strategy?

A: Our stores are still the heart of our business, they're the place where our customers can pick up and touch our products and try them on to make sure they get the best fit.

Q: Does social media demand more of an element of theatre in the in-store experience?

A: Sometimes as marketers we are guilty of thinking that it does, but ultimately customers are looking for things that make their shopping experiences either better or easier. We have hosted a lot of events at our flagship store at 311 Oxford Street over the last year; we had a talk from Victoria Pendleton, music events in partnership with NTS Radio, art related events in partnership with Tate Modern and even yoga mornings on our rooftop. The thing that works best is giving customers something that they want or something that they can't get anywhere else.

Q: How do you balance the brand experience in store and online?

A: Our product is central to our brand - as a company we exist to make clothing that makes our customers' lives better, that's why we talk about LifeWear. We see our website as a digital flagship, it's where you can see our full product range, read the full information about it and read reviews from other customers. However, our stores are where you can pick product up and touch it and this is sometimes essential to purchasing clothing. We like to think that our ecommerce site and stores exist side by side as we know that the customer journey is rarely linear these days so we need to make it as easy as possible for our customers to shop our product. That's why we offer next day delivery click and collect or why we work with shopping delivery service Drop It, to make the experience as smooth and easy as possible for customers.

Q: How do you see the experience in-store evolving?

A: Over the last few years we have seen (and even tried) lots of trends in the retail environment. The only ones that will last will be the ones that make customers' experience better or easier, the gimmicks will come and go quickly.

Q: How do you bring excitement to the in-store experience?

A: We're really big on hosting events in stores, things that bring a smile to our customers' faces. We're going to have a Lego event in our flagship store to celebrate our Lego kids' range and the new Ninjago film giving kids (and parents) a welcome break from shopping on Oxford Street. In the past, we have hosted product launch parties, yoga mornings, running clubs, mindfulness workshops and even a tennis event for kids with Kei Nishikori. Our LifeWear ethos is all about creating clothing that makes people's lives better, whether that's keeping them warmer or more comfortable. We follow the same guidelines for our in store experience, we want to make our customers' lives better.

Q: What role does working with other designers and brands, such as your recent JW Anderson, bring to the shopping experience?

A: Designer collaborations are a great way to add news and excitement to our seasons, it enables us to work with some of the best talent in the industry to reimagine our products with touches of their aesthetic. It's a really great way of generating excitement about the brand for existing and new customers.

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How retail marketers are transforming tomorrow's shopper experience

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If the future of modern brand-building lies in creating meaningful and memorable experiences then there is no more fiercer, or important battleground than the retail sector. With the breakneck pace of Amazon's innovations forcing competitors to scramble to keep up, the pace of change in the market is intense.

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The Mall of America's terrazzo floors, glazed white like doughnut frosting, ribbon out in every direction, creating a vast mirror maze of consumerism with 520 glassy storefronts. Shoppers, who have escaped an endlessly gray Bloomington, Minnesota, sky on a Monday morning in October, drift through the largest mall in the United States like tourists at an Atlantic City buffet. A couple holding hands strolls into a Zales while buttery perfumes emanate from an Auntie Anne's next door. Kids and some willing parents fling around on the SpongeBob SquarePants Rock Bottom Plunge roller coaster, one of 27 rides at the Nickelodeon-branded amusement park on-site. Distant echoes of saxophone Muzak clash with both elevator whirs and bubbly pop songs. Somewhere in this otherworldly commercial expanse are five Lids stores and four Sunglass Huts.

When the mall opened, in 1992, it represented the pinnacle of retail convenience and a mecca for young people to gather and spend. But the $650 million megamall was always "vaguely unreal . . . exuding the ambience of a monstrous hallucination," as novelist David Guterson described it in a 1993 Harper's article, calling it "monolithic and imposing." Two years later, Jeff Bezos launched his online book marketplace, which quickly grew into a new type of Everything Store, one that fundamentally redefined the shopping experience and led some to argue that commercial centers like the Mall of America would become gaudy relics of an antiquated era.

Now, Wall Street analysts say, the retail apocalypse is upon us. Amazon dominates e-commerce and has gobbled up 5% of total U.S. retail sales. Some expect that the company will own half the online market within the next five years, a period during which, Credit Suisse predicts, a quarter of all malls will close. By the end of this year, more than 8,600 stores will have shuttered in 2017, the worst year on record.

But here's the thing about the Mall of America: It's fighting back. "I hear all this doom and gloom in the industry," says the mall's SVP of business development, Jill Renslow, with an upbeat, Midwestern delivery. "I'm like, 'Folks! Keep your chin up! There's so much opportunity!' " The mall completed a $325 million expansion in 2015, says Renslow, who started working there as an intern in the mid-1990s and has seen it endure recessions and upheaval before. A new 342-room JW Marriott has opened upstairs, and retailers like Zara and Anthropologie are being lured to the space. The mall is experimenting with new leasing models to attract pop-ups and younger players like Untuckit and Toms Shoes. Renslow, who is eager for people coming to Minneapolis for the 2018 Super Bowl this February to visit the mall and be surprised, doesn't view Amazon as a competitor but as a partner; she recently worked with Amazon to install a set of pickup lockers at the mall. She believes retailers in general can "bring online shoppers to brick-and-mortar." I ask her directly: Is physical retail dying? "Not at all!" she says.

Renslow isn't feigning enthusiasm. Despite Wall Street's pessimism, industry leaders sound downright bullish on the future of traditional retail. Why else, they argue, would Amazon spend $13.4 billion to buy Whole Foods? Sure, the competition is fiercer than ever, and icons such as Sears and JCPenney are dying. But they believe that the narrative has been oversimplified. "Amazon alone isn't holding the knife," says NYU Stern professor of marketing Scott Galloway, who studies the retail industry. Cultural tastes have changed. Malls grew too quickly, at twice the rate of the population, from 1970 to 2015. Many retailers succumbed to quarterly earnings pressures, invested in share buybacks rather than their stores, became saddled with private-equity debt, or failed to keep pace with digital trends. What we're seeing now, industry executives say, is a rational, albeit painful, course correction. One study from retail-research firm IHL Group found that a mere 16 chains, including RadioShack and Payless, account for nearly half of all store closings, and that there will be a net increase of more than 4,000 stores in 2017 and 5,500-plus in 2018.

"Retail is under huge pressure, but the death of stores is greatly exaggerated," says Galloway, who believes that while Amazon will continue to disrupt the market, an increasing number of competitors will discover new ways to respond. "In the age of Amazon, retailers must leverage assets that [Bezos] doesn't have: When Amazon zigs, retailers must zag."

This fall, Fast Company embarked on a journey to learn from those retailers that are flourishing in the age of Amazon. After all, more than 90% of retail sales still happen in the real world, and as relentless as Bezos is, it's not likely he'll swallow up all of brick-and-mortar on his own. The truth is that the bigger Amazon gets, the more opportunity it creates for fresh, local alternatives. The more Amazon pushes robot-powered efficiency, the more space there is for warm and individualized service. The more that people interact with Amazon through its AI-based assistant Alexa, the more they will crave the insight and personal connection of fellow humans.

"The idea that everybody needs to be terrified of Amazon is completely wrong," says Brian Spaly, who cofounded two e-commerce-centric startups, Bonobos (menswear) and Trunk Club (a wardrobe-in-a-box service), which sold to Walmart and Nordstrom, respectively, for nine-figure sums. "Everybody needs to figure out what makes them special and use those weapons to compete."

Successful Retailers Will Feature Products That Customers Can't Get Elsewhere

A 15-minute drive north from the Mall of America are the downtown Minneapolis headquarters of Target. The company's $7 billion bet on its future is coming to life in a series of spacious rooms littered across several floors and filled with mannequins, racks of colorful apparel, and fashion magazines. It's here that Target is designing its own goods, refocusing on the aesthetic sensibility that fueled its success in the early 2000s. "While others are shrinking their footprints, reducing head count, or trying to save their way to the next quarter, we think there's opportunity for us to take more market share," says CEO Brian Cornell, who launched the initiative last February.

On the fourth floor, at the studio for Cat & Jack, Target's new children's clothing line-which blew up in its first 12 months to become a $2.1 billion brand-mood boards display photos of smiling tots at a July Fourth block party and a family movie night. Julie Guggemos, Target's SVP of product development, describes the spirit behind the design as "positivity, happiness, saving the world," citing the adventurous tweens in Netflix's Stranger Things as an inspiration for the team. "We listen to Mom and Dad, but we have these kids in mind when we're designing," says Guggemos, a 27-year Target veteran.

Guggemos and her team of 400-plus designers will be rolling out more than a dozen high-quality, affordable, Target-exclusive brands by the end of 2018. They have already introduced a boutiquey children's decor line called Pillowfort, a modern furniture collection called Project 62, an athleisure apparel line for the post-yoga brunch crowd called JoyLab, and a dapper menswear brand called Goodfellow & Co, which even Esquire described as "elevated." Guggemos has just come from a product review for a new line, slated to launch next year. "We're designing everything from the bottom up, 100% original," she says.

When consumers can get seemingly anything and everything online, what can Target offer that Amazon can't? That question was top of mind for chief merchandising officer Mark Tritton when he joined the company from Nordstrom in 2016. Target had fallen into a trap of licensing outside brands like Cherokee, which makes children's apparel; even its in-house kids' label, Circo, felt dated. "I thought, Wow, this stuff isn't right," recalls Tritton. "It feels tired and disconnected."

In other words, Target had strayed from what made it "Tar-zhay." Two decades ago, the company had distinguished itself from other big-box retailers by teaming up with celebrated architect and designer Michael Graves to craft a collection of mass-market housewares, partnering with high-end fashion designers like Isaac Mizrahi for custom fashion lines, and nurturing emerging brands such as Method through forward-thinking curation. "There would be no retail if it weren't for merchandising, so why isn't anyone talking about it anymore?" wonders Rachel Shechtman, founder of Story, the novel Manhattan concept store, which reinvents itself regularly (and collaborated with Target in 2014). "Merch assortments designed by spreadsheets and algorithms" is what's killing department stores, she says.

When I meet Target COO John Mulligan at Target's flagship, which sits just a block away from the Cat & Jack studio, he's eager to compare the store's $10 million renovation with printed-out photos of the old layout, which hadn't changed much since the flagship was built in 2001. "It was gondola hell, right?" Mulligan says, referring to the basic shelving units you see in stores. "Just rows and rows of stuff. No sight lines." Mulligan shakes his head as he points to a depressing image of the in-store Pizza Hut that used to greet customers.

The layout has been reorganized around Target's new brands, and the presentation is crisp and contemporary. (Inexplicably, the company didn't have a visual merchandising department until just two years ago; Cornell has since poached talent from J.Crew and the Limited.) As Mulligan ushers me through the store, he beams at the displays, each of which will now be refreshed monthly, which is double the previous rate: There's an autumn-themed collection from Cat & Jack; sporty JoyLab leggings designed in partnership with Clique, whose Who What Wear line has been a hit at Target since it launched in 2016; and modern dining chairs and walnut tables from Project 62. "Before, it was a dead zone back here," he says of the home-essentials area. Other parts of the store feature bright new arrangements of exclusive products from e-commerce upstarts such as Harry's and Casper, and even the fitting room looks more like what you'd find in a Club Monaco. As for the Hut? It's been replaced by fresh groceries and a liquor and craft beer shop. Target will remodel an additional 1,000 stores in a similar fashion by 2020, while also rolling out more localized stores with smaller footprints.

The redesigned "Tar-zhays"-there are around 110 of them so far-have delivered up to a 4% jump in sales at each location, but the more promising return from this investment has come from the house brands themselves. Cat & Jack customers, for example, spend 50% more in surrounding kids' retail areas, Mulligan says, adding that their total basket size is 23% higher than other customers'. Most significantly, Target's consumer research has shown that its brands have become a "trip driver": People come to the store for Cat & Jack as much as they do for essentials like laundry detergent or bread or milk. "Target has always won with a spirit of design that their competitors didn't have. I don't see any other move for them: They're not going to beat Amazon on e-commerce," says a high-level retail expert who has advised the company on strategy.

Indeed, Target's digital efforts continue to lag. When Mulligan takes me to the back to show off the redesigned storeroom, I don't see any floor-roaming robots or automated conveyer belts, despite the fact that Target has stated that it plans to use its more than 1,800 stores as fulfillment centers (80% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Target). Instead, I find just one store clerk manually taping cardboard boxes for in-store pickup. Later, when I arrive to retrieve a $14.99 Goodfellow Henley shirt I purchased via Target's app, the cashier asks for my ID because the flagship store's smartphone scanner is broken. When I test Target's new curbside-pickup service to buy paper towels, it fails at three consecutive outlets within the Minneapolis area. Ultimately, I give up.

The company needs to improve e-commerce and store pickup, but its future success does not depend only on these services. "Target is going to have to win on stuff that nobody else has," the high-level expert says. "And that's great retail, right?"

Successful Retailers Will Deliver A Satisfying Experience

A time zone away, in the sixth-floor showroom of Warby Parker's SoHo offices in New York, cofounders Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa are squinting at a backless shelving unit displaying their designer glasses. Customers mill about just steps from the co-CEOs' desks, a dynamic that helps them relentlessly monitor and surgically adapt Warby Parker's high-touch experience. Blumenthal is eyeing a wood shelf, which is missing a centimeter-tall lip, so that if a customer slides a pair of $95 Chamberlains too far back, they'll slip onto the floor. "This does not make me happy," he grumbles. Addressing these tiny details has proven crucial to the eyewear brand's success. If they're not fixed, "we'll hear about it, like, 'Fucking shit is falling off [the shelf]!' " Blumenthal says, with an effervescent laugh. "I don't know if it's right for policing, but broken-window theory definitely applies to retail."

The 37-year-olds, who on this sunny Friday morning are both wearing slim-fitting button-downs, black sneakers, and patterned glasses-imagine the Black Keys as merchant princes-visit a Warby Parker store each day, hunting "for anything that needs to be refreshed, anything that's out of place," Gilboa says. This could be off-kilter frames or neglected customers. As much as the two consider themselves disrupters of competitors like Luxottica (Warby Parker's $10.5 billion rival, which owns everything from LensCrafters to Ray-Ban), they're students of retail history and find inspiration in such leaders as hospitality guru Danny Meyer, Apple Store legend Ron Johnson, and Mickey Drexler, the merchandising titan famous for reviving Gap in the 1990s and J.Crew in the 2000s.

Drexler, an early Warby Parker investor and board member, taught them that good experiential design is about solving customer problems. Gilboa describes how Drexler would walk into stores, zoom by Warby's managers, and head straight to associates to interrogate them for unvarnished feedback. "He'll isolate them, ask each of them the same questions, and then triangulate: Is he hearing consistent or conflicting answers? Then he really digs in, surfacing nuggets of wisdom hidden even by stores with great numbers," Gilboa remembers.

When Warby launched its first store, in SoHo in 2013, the mission was to eliminate everything annoying about buying glasses. Blumenthal hated the "little shit vanity mirrors" at optometry shops, while Gilboa couldn't stand the merchandise locked away in glass cases and the awkward interactions with often-pretentious store associates. They wanted approachable store greeters, an ask-us-anything reference desk, and a warm aesthetic, which they modeled after Sweden's Stockholm Public Library, complete with its dark-wood shelving. Anthony Sperduti, cofounder of design studio Partners & Spade, who helped Warby Parker conceive its early stores, says they needed to feel like an authentic extension of the e-commerce brand. The high-quality materials of its eyewear products, he says, are reflected in "the brass details, marble counters-this incredible weight, this classicism." To transform an intimidating experience into a fun and social activity, Warby Parker added photo booths and full-length mirrors so groups can check themselves out together. "If you're born online, you better have a really good reason to do brick-and-mortar," Sperduti says. "You better come out swinging."

Warby now operates more than 60 stores, and on this particular day, it's opening three new locations simultaneously-in Milwaukee; Fort Worth, Texas; and Harvard Square. Analysts estimate that the company will generate around $250 million in 2017 revenue. As the operation grows, it only gets harder for Blumenthal and Gilboa to keep this experience fresh. Before committing to risky new territories, the company often tests low-cost pop-up shops, rather than get stuck in the kind of expensive, long-term leases that have suffocated many traditional retailers and led them to try to save costs by building out one-size-fits-all stores. The Warby Parker team has developed modular components so that each store shares an identity but there's room for local flourishes. Vernors ginger ale, a Michigan favorite, is on tap at the Detroit store, honoring the 151-year-old soda maker that once operated a pharmacy at the same location. The Miami store, which opened in 2015, features floors painted to look like swimming lanes, so that photos taken from the ceiling-affixed cameras make customers in sunglasses look like they're floating in a pool-images that shoppers can then share on social media.

Big retailers and digital-native consumer brands alike cite Warby Parker as an inspiration and seek to mimic, even reverse engineer, what they believe is the core of its hip but inviting store experience. But refashioning stores with a certain wood finish or outfitting employees in a distinctive smock doesn't make you Warby Parker any more than painting your store white makes you Apple. Piling on frivolous attractions in an attempt at authenticity, as Brooks Brothers did by opening a Stumptown at one of its Manhattan locations, drives the Warby Parker team bonkers. "The way people are defining experience today is way off," Blumenthal says. "The idea of adding coffee shops to every store is ridiculous," because it's driven not by solving a customer problem or introducing a novel experience tied in some way to a brand, but by a hackneyed attempt to boost foot traffic. Equally jarring to them is Amazon's new Go store in Seattle, which Gilboa recently explored, in which an array of sensors and computer-vision technology enable the ultimate in grab-and-go shopping. "Play that [concept] forward and you can imagine this dystopian experience where you have no human interaction at all," he says.

Warby Parker is just as maniacally focused on efficiency as Amazon: Its next big initiative is a $15 million optical lab, in upstate New York, which enables greater quality control and faster product delivery. But the company knows that its true value lies in its elevated and personal experience, and Blumenthal and Gilboa never want to stray too far from what Drexler taught them. "We want to reinvent, but we sure as shit don't want to reinvent the wheel," Blumenthal says. "Startups sometimes take it too far, like, 'Oh, we're an innovator! We'll just ignore what [traditional] retailers have done!' Ignore best practices, get crushed."

Successful Retailers Will Challenge The Fundamental Assumptions Of Commerce

What does the store of tomorrow look like? Amazon Go is certainly one experiment, and seemingly every big brand, from Mastercard to Sephora, is dreaming up its own vision of the future inside whiz-bang concept labs. Ask around the retail industry and you'll hear endless, breathless predictions about the potential of in-store augmented reality, drone delivery, or bitcoin payments.

So far, these technologies have amounted to little more than gimmicky distractions. "Customers don't want stupid disco balls with lasers and holograms," says Healey Cypher, founder of Oak Labs, which, yes, makes an interactive "smart mirror," but is more focused on customizing the dressing-room experience. Target, too, seems to have come to this realization. Earlier this year, the company shuttered its much-ballyhooed "store of the future" project built on glitzy tech. "Ultimately, we didn't want to build a Jetsons-like store just because we can," COO John Mulligan says.

Vibhu Norby and Phillip Raub, cofounders of B8ta, a San Francisco-based consumer-electronics retailer that has raised $19.5 million to reimagine brick-and-mortar, are thinking different. Rather than depend on a cut of sales from products, like Best Buy does, their company charges brands for the privilege of being featured in B8ta's 10 stores. By selling only a limited selection of trendy gadgets, B8ta's store associates act as ambassadors for the products-the true stars-educating consumers on their features and offering white-glove service.

Norby and Raub believe that all physical retailers-Amazon included-need to rethink the business entirely. Norby, B8ta's CEO, argues that historic metrics for success are completely irrelevant today. Who cares about sales per square foot when products reach customers via Uber and Prime Now? Why do year-over-year same-store sales comps matter when 56% of customers test products in-store but buy online? "Designing stores for throughput is how we ended up with 10-by-10 walls of Tide at Safeway," Norby says. Perhaps most radical is the new idea that retail can be unbundled from transaction. Bonobos's "guideshops," for example, offer fittings and fashion advice, with the assumption that customers will order their apparel online afterward. Decide to buy in-store? Bonobos will ship it for free. "I'm starting to see it more, where retailers are not expecting you to walk out with a bag of their stuff," says Partners & Spade's Sperduti.

Some of these ideas might strike industry veterans as heresy, but B8ta's cofounders view it merely as a shift in thinking about how physical space can be monetized. On a recent Saturday afternoon at B8ta's downtown Palo Alto location, store associates demonstrate Boosted electric skateboards out front on the sidewalk. Inside, the store has a relaxed vibe, with homey carpets and armchairs occupied by gadget-shoppers' patient loved ones, though it takes obvious inspiration from Apple's minimalist stores. Customers sipping bubble tea toy with unboxed gadgets set up on long tables-Oculus Rift VR headsets, August door locks, Onyx walkie-talkies-while B8ta staff politely chats them up. These associates are not pushy at all, because they're not pressured to sell units. They're happy to answer questions and are knowledgeable about everything from the Nebia ionizing shower ("It turns your droplets into even smaller droplets," an employee explains) to the finer points of four different Bluetooth trackers. B8ta's market advantage is its well-trained staff. The cofounders, who met at the smart-thermostat company Nest, know firsthand how difficult it is to get customers interested in, let alone grasp, the benefits of new hardware products.

For electronics brands, B8ta stores are an excellent (and relatively inexpensive) marketing portal, and an even better data tool. "The real magic happens behind the scenes," says Raub, the company's chief business officer, who previously worked at Gap and Nintendo. Every product featured in the store is wired to track how customers play with it. Store associates, called "B8ta testers," also gather qualitative feedback on why a shopper did or didn't buy a product. "Why did they look at it? What didn't they like?" says Raub, listing off a couple of common data points, which he compares to how e-commerce players monitor checkout cart abandonment. "Now brands can know that customers may have liked a product, but gave up once, say, they found out it wasn't compatible with Android." In a world where consumer products often end up languishing on shelves at Best Buy or forgotten amid Amazon's catalog of an estimated 350 million-plus items, this data is more valuable than the sale itself. Traditional retailers now want what B8ta can offer: In late October, the startup announced that 70 Lowe's locations will add a smart-home-focused B8ta, and Macy's will soon feature B8ta outposts in its flagship stores.

Successful Retailers Will Resurrect The Art Of Selling

During my reporting, I quizzed each person I spoke with about which stores get retail right. People picked one place more than any other: MartinPatrick3.

An extravagant, 17,000-square-foot cathedral of high-fashion menswear in Minneapolis, MartinPatrick3 looks like what would have happened if Willy Wonka had gone to Parsons School of Design. At once boundless and intimate, the store's colorful rooms naturally transition to the next, each its own pristinely wrapped Christmas present. In one, a collection of hand-stitched bow ties lie near $5,500 Brunello Cucinelli suits, a shiny black Vespa, and a modern steel cocktail table by a local designer. Down the hall, a white-accented men's grooming shop stocked with shaving creams and bottled fragrances practically glows. There's an in-store tailor, a barber, a full-time jewelry designer, and sharply dressed store associates, all with bouquet-like pocket squares blooming from their blazers.

Eleven years ago, Greg Walsh, an upscale interior designer who also sold home furnishings from his studio in the city's hip North Loop neighborhood, began showcasing men's accessories he'd collected during his travels: cuff links, watches, wallets. Customers loved them. Walsh brought on his better half, Dana Swindler (they're "partner partners," as Swindler puts it, smiling), to build out a stand-alone store in 2008. "The rule was that nothing could have sizes," Walsh says. "That totally went out the window," he laughs, explaining that the scope quickly grew to include apparel and much more.

Local Heroes: Five independent retailers who get it right, through curation, service, and offering something you'll never get at Amazon

Walsh and Swindler approach retail drastically differently from any merchant I encountered. Each display in MartinPatrick3, no matter how exquisite, is designed to be ephemeral. "We're constantly reinventing. We can completely remodel a room within 24 hours," Walsh says. They pride themselves on always paying vendors within 30 days-uncommon in the industry-and rushing new products into store collections often within days. ("This would take nine months at Nordstrom," Walsh remembers one vendor telling him.) Whereas the traditional rules of brick-and-mortar dictate that sales matter above all else, store associates at MartinPatrick3 are encouraged to dole out sincere fashion advice, and if it means counseling a guest away from a higher-priced item or directing him to competitors' shops, so be it. The payback comes in the lasting relationships such honesty builds. The company hosts events for free-even weddings-which it sees as a natural arm of its service, particularly if it has helped outfit the groomsmen. (There are shelves stocked with prosecco in a cozy VIP lounge.) In April, Walsh and Swindler even took down their e-commerce site. "It's been funny. People in the industry keep saying, 'You did what?!' " Walsh says. "But we decided we're all about brick-and-mortar-that's what we do really well-so let's focus all our energy there."

The self-financed retailer is growing fast. Walsh and Swindler guide me through back doors into 4,000 additional square feet of empty, brick-walled warehouse space adjacent to the store. This unfinished part of the 131-year-old building they moved to in 2010 is what Walsh is targeting as the company's fifth addition. Down the hall, in their design studio, where MartinPatrick3's "board of directors"-Cole and Ella, finely groomed poodles-lounge about on a green-mohair dining settee, Swindler cracks open a thick three-ring binder full of store statistics. (Swindler, who previously ran an engineering firm, is as meticulous about data as Walsh is about design.) Revenue has jumped an average of 40% annually since the company's founding, with some years reaching triple-digit growth. "We work our asses off," Swindler says proudly.

The pair can't quite articulate their secret, but they know other retailers don't have it. Others move too slowly, they feel, and simply aren't creative enough. "We started in the recession. We're used to hustling," Swindler says. "The retailers we meet, they don't do anything all day! Their give-a-shit factor is way down; they're not on the floor every day like we are. Now that they're making less [money], what do they do? The same thing as before, over and over and over again."

MartinPatrick3 (the name comes from the ones Walsh's father almost bequeathed him) offers sophisticated taste, expert curation, and a concierge-like, almost old-fashioned level of service that's increasingly hard to find. Yes, it's a store mostly for the 1%, but there is much here that Amazon can't copy, time-honored lessons of merchandising and customer attention.

Retailers don't need to chase a futuristic version of themselves that they might never attain; they first need to remember what made them special in the first place. The answers are all here. The talent, too. If Wall Street is right and the industry continues to decline, then this will be what we lose: the art of selling. MartinPatrick3's store manager once worked at Nordstrom. The self-described concierge, who welcomed me to the store, made helpful recommendations, and even offered to assist with dinner reservations while I was in town, is an expat of Neiman Marcus, another shrinking department store trying to find its footing in the age of Amazon. You don't need to sell mid-four-figure Cucinelli suits to offer this level of hospitality-Warby Parker does it with $95 frames-you just have to care enough to treat customers with the consideration and cordiality they deserve.

I roam through MartinPatrick3 by myself for a while, and eventually end up at Marty's, the in-store barbershop with a classic candy-cane pole out front. Christopher Hernandez, my stylist, is dressed in a black vest and a gray flat cap like a 1920s newsboy. He previously worked at the barbershop inside the downtown Minneapolis Macy's. Last March, Macy's shuttered the location. "Most of us have a background in some big department store that's closed," he says as he snips away. "We're all orphans here."

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The Future Of Retail In The Age Of Amazon

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The Mall of America's terrazzo floors, glazed white like doughnut frosting, ribbon out in every direction, creating a vast mirror maze of consumerism with 520 glassy storefronts. Shoppers, who have escaped an endlessly gray Bloomington, Minnesota, sky on a Monday morning in October, drift through the largest mall in the United States like tourists at an Atlantic City buffet.

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Amazon

Amazon has opened a pop-up store in London's Soho Square to raise awareness of its upcoming "Black Friday" sale event.

Visitors will be able to try electronics, toys, jewellery, and beauty products that will go on sale on Black Friday, which is the biggest shopping day of the calendar year.

Doug Gurr, country manager of Amazon.co.uk, said in a statement: "We are showcasing some of our biggest and best Black Friday deals - which will be shoppable through our app - as well as offering some fantastic sampling experiences and interactive workshops with some of our Marketplace and Handmade sellers.

"We really hope visitors to the pop-up will have a great time and make a good start on their Christmas shopping, if not finish it, while they're here!"

The 3,000 sq ft Amazon pop-up store is designed to look and feel like a home. It contains a kitchen, living room, bedroom, gaming zone, kids room, and a creative area. Customers can take part in workshops and win prizes at the store, where there will also be a number of special guests, according to Amazon.

Amazon is yet to open its own permanent physical space in the UK but the online shopping giant has started opening some grocery stores and book stores in the US.

The London pop-up store is open to the public from November 21 to November 24. Black Friday takes place on November 24.

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Amazon has opened a pop-up store in London's Soho Square

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Amazon has opened a pop-up store in London's Soho Square to raise awareness of its upcoming "Black Friday" sale event. Visitors will be able to try electronics, toys, jewellery, and beauty products that will go on sale on Black Friday, which is the biggest shopping day of the calendar year.

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Marks & Spencer has been usurped by online rival Asos in what has been described as the high street's "Tesla moment" as old retailing stalwarts get overtaken by new online rivals.

The 17-year-old fashion website has been biting at M&S's heels for several months but on Friday its shares gained 2%, boosting its market value to £4.89bn, making it a more valuable business than the 133-year-old high street giant, now worth £4.88bn, according to Reuters data revealing the number of shares in issue.

Earlier this year, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Mark Photiades predicted Asos would leapfrog M&S as the website, aimed at fashion hungry twentysomethings, grows in stature just as traditional store groups struggle to grow.

Earlier this month, M&S's new chairman, Archie Norman, accused the struggling store chain of "drifting" for more than 15 years: "This business has been drifting, underfulfilling its customer promise not for five years, not 10 years but 15 years and maybe beyond."

The shift in retail power is being compared with the automotive industry, where the electric carmaker Tesla sped ahead of the 114-year-old Ford Motor Company in April to become the US's most valuable car manufacturer. Similarly, the online retailer Amazon is now worth nearly twice as much as Walmart, after overtaking the American grocery chain in 2015.

Photiades said that 20 years ago, when online shopping was in its infancy and before Asos was established, M&S had a market value of £16.9bn. When Asos floated on the stock market in October 2001, it was valued at £14m, compared with £7.8bn for M&S.

The market valuation of a company reflects expected future earnings: M&S remains bigger both in sales and in terms of profit. Asos recorded sales of £1.9bn last year, compared with £10.6bn at M&S. Profits were £80m and £176.4m, respectively.

Profits have been going backwards for several years at M&S despite its position as the UK's biggest clothing retailer. It was making full-year profits of more than £1bn in 2008 but that figure has been whittled down by a long running slump in clothing sales.

Since taking over a year ago the M&S chief executive, Steve Rowe, has stabilised the performance of its clothing arm and shut loss-making stores overseas. Unlike Asos, Rowe also has to grapple with the challenging economics of its large store portfolio as sales migrate online and fewer shoppers frequent the high street.

Asos brags that it puts around 5,000 new items on its site each week - the equivalent of an entire Oxford Street shop - and is constantly adding new features to the site such as visual search, which allows customers to upload photos from social media to search for a similar outfit.

Rowe says M&S's "destiny" also lies online, setting a target ofone-third of sales online by 2022. But he warned M&S will need to plough investment into its infrastructure to reach it.

* Follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk, or sign up to the daily Business Today email here.

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Asos overtakes M&S - is this the UK high street's Tesla moment?

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Marks & Spencer has been usurped by online rival Asos in what has been described as the high street's "Tesla moment" as old retailing stalwarts get overtaken by new online rivals.

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INTRODUCTION

If the future of modern brand-building lies in creating meaningful and memorable experiences then there is no more fiercer, or important battleground than the retail sector.

With the breakneck pace of Amazon's innovations forcing competitors to scramble to keep up, the pace of change in the market is intense. Wall Street firm Needham predicts Amazon will have a 50% share of all ecommerce sales in the US by 2021.

Amazon is changing the retail landscape as we know it

As if that was not enough pressure, Amazon is now launching its own physical retail stores and overnight it acquired a large physical store footprint through the acquisition of Whole Foods.

The continued rise of Amazon, reflects a new era of extreme-convenience where brands increasingly shape their offering to fit in with consumers' busy, multiplatform lives. At the other end of the scale retailers are focusing on transforming themselves into destinations in their own right to help stem the trend of customer spend diverting from "owning stuff" into leisure activities and experiences.

Retailers operating in the UK are having to contend with Brexit-related uncertainty and spiralling inflation, which means more creativity is needed than ever to win a customer's share of wallet.

As new shopping behaviours emerge amid this fiercely competitive environment this report is designed to unpack key trends and their effect on brands today and tomorrow, and reveal what they must do to avoid disappearing into irrelevance.

Beyond omnichannel

The meteoric rise of Amazon and ecommerce as a whole was responsible for creating an obsession with omnichannel retailing. The unforeseen consequence was a disconnect between internal teams within retailers as they focused on their individual fiefdoms, whether that be in-store, ecommerce or any other number of "channels".

However, a sea change is occurring in how businesses approach omnichannel, despite the landscape becoming ever more complex as new channels such as voice add to the bewildering array already in existence.

Argos claims it was the first UK retailer to pass £1bn of annual sales through mobile

"There is no such thing as a typical customer journey any more," says Jill Ross, managing director at Accenture's retail consulting practice. She believes the only true channel in the future of retail is the consumer, rather than the old platform distinctions between shopping in-store or online.

"I don't very often hear customers talking about 'channels' or 'journeys' or even 'experiences', customers just tell us they want to go shopping," says Argos digital director Mark Steel. "Our challenge is to build connected experiences, irrespective of the device, so that customers can enjoy a great shopping experience whenever, wherever and however they choose."

He continues: "It's important to ensure the organisation is aligned around 'end to end' customer experiences, rather than thinking about store versus online." However, despite this platform neutral approach he warns against overlooking the opportunity different devices or channels can offer.

Argos claims it was the first UK retailer to pass £1bn of annual sales through mobile, and Steel says this was a result of focusing on creating a "great shopping experience" on smartphones.

Argos concentrated on the 'end to end' customer experience

From platform to purpose

Karen McCormick, chief investment officer at venture capital firm Beringea, believes the attempt to avoid the pitfall of focusing too much on individual channels can be "nebulous and difficult so we try to bury our heads in the sand to avoid it". Retailers can rise to the challenge by developing a sense of purpose that runs through all activities.

"Our brand promise is grounded in inspiring our customer to lead a more interesting life," says Mary Beech, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at luxury design house Kate Spade. "Our goal is to continually be telling our story across a variety of platforms, ensuring we create thoughtful, unique programming and engaging with our customer whenever and wherever she wants."

Kate Spade most recently put this into action with an augmented reality campaign to publicise the launch of its Paris store. The experience included "Joy Walks" that used AR to allow people to see real world Parisian locations with a Kate Spade twist, including unexpected moments such as pink flamingos frolicking in the Seine and a New York City yellow cab bustling down a street.

Kate Spade's new campaign uses Augmented Reality to publicise the launch of its Paris store.

Dom Robertson, managing director at shopper marketing agency RPM, says that while having a purpose is important it does "not need to be saving the world". It should instead focus on the brand's product and services and their benefits.

This sense of purpose provides consumers a reason to shop with a retailer at a time when Amazon is dominating the price proposition and brands and marketplaces selling direct to consumer are disintermediating the traditional retailer. Robertson believes the "path to purchase is incredibly challenging at the moment" but it comes down to a "human truth" of understanding the consumer and what the right message is at the right time.

Advancing technology means it is now easier to attribute the role of each moving part in pushing the customer towards a sale. For instance, McCormick is an advocate of the rise of "pay per visit" advertising being pioneered by Blis Media, which can track when someone has visited a store after viewing an online ad.

"The consumer journey from online to offline is going to continue to marry up and that is not just in advertising that is in all the ways that brands and retailers deal with their consumers," says McCormick.

The experience gap

The evolution of retail has created a chasm between the online and offline experience. Shopping in-store and online with the same retailer can feel a totally different brand experience. The transactional nature of online has created a consumer expectation of ultra-convenience, which is often not reflected when the consumer visits a store. Meanwhile, shopping online can feel an impersonal experience devoid of brand equity.

"Ecommerce in the last twenty years has been all about the endless aisle where you can order anything you want and it is fantastic and convenient but it is incredibly transactional," says Adam Levene, founder of Hero. "Retailers spend millions of pounds building these brands where they want to emotionally connect with their shopper but at the same time they use very transactional shop windows online."

Hero's technology seeks to add an ecommerce layer to the physical retail space by allowing sales assistants to message and hold video calls with online customers when not serving customers in-store.

Research by Hero has found 67% of ecommerce brands that have received funding of over $6m have opened a physical store within the last 36 months as they recognise the importance of having a physical presence. Their belief in the power of the retail store appears well founded. Accenture's research found 60% of Generation Z, who by their very definition are digital natives, prefer to purchase in-store.

Hero's technology seeks to add an ecommerce layer to the physical retail space

However, there is much work to be done on making the store of the future fit for purpose. The IBM 2017 Customer Experience Survey found the sophistication of the digitally integrated in-store experience is rated adequate or worse for the vast majority (91 percent) of brands.

"Everyone has been talking about the death of the physical store but I don't think there is anything less true than that. I think it has to be the case the retail store is shifting and it is going to be experience and technology-led," says Levene.

Nathan Watts, creative director at retail and brand consultancy Fitch, says retailers are starting to "gamify" their stores by "blurring the lines between retail and experience to make that a more fun experience".

"Shopping malls over the years have started adding many more leisure and entertainment elements to their experiences and reducing the number of standard stores, and increasing the number of flagship stores," says Watts.

83% of respondents think stores are important as they allow people to see, touch and feel a product

Nike Town and Topshop's flagship shop on London's Oxford Street are held up by Watts as an example of what a great store can look like.

"The big shift we are seeing is the role of flagship stores," says Robertson. "People still want to touch and feel, and meet humans. The retail store will change for sure but the need and want for human interaction is still really apparent."

The sensory desire to touch and feel is borne out by Mindshare's Future of Retail research, which found 83% of respondents think stores are important as they allow people to see, touch and feel a product.

The concept of maintaining the "human touch" runs deep among today's retail marketing experts. Fitch is a believer in the "smaller human rituals" that delight customers and make them feel like honoured guests.

Watts believes the UK needs to refocus on these rituals and take a leaf out of the book of cultures such as Japan or India, where there is a "100% expectation you will treat me well".

This refocus is needed because some are prone to forgetting the retail basics and expect retail technology will fill the gaps, according to Watts.

Rather than detracting from a personal in-store experience, technology can add to it if handled correctly.

Technology and data offers the possibility of extending "clientelling", the practice of sales assistants establishing long-tem relationships with key customers, beyond just the luxury sector.

"What if you could know everybody?" asks Matthew Drinkwater, head of the Fashion Innovation Agency at London College of Fashion. "What if every consumer that went into your store received that level of service? In a way it is weird because it is just returning retail to what it used to be - going to your local store and them knowing who you are."

Drinkwater says the best implementations of in-store tech should "hide and disappear" and avoid adding another layer to the consumer experience.

This is exactly what Amazon is attempting to do with its Amazon Go checkout-free store concept, which uses sensors to record the items customers pick up and then charges them to their Amazon Prime account.

"By and large, technology by its nature tends to intervene in what is a retail experience," says R/GA technical director Kaustav Bhattacharya. "Where technology is really assistive is when it blends into the background and becomes a passive and non-invasive experience."

Connected Commerce

Boundaries within retail marketing are blurring all the time to create a multi-layered shopping ecosystem.

One area this is most evident is the increasing amalgamation of retail and social. Accenture's research discovered Generation Z are most likely to use social media to begin their research prior to making a purchase.

Social media is allowing some retailers to punch above their weight and disrupt the dominant players in the market by innovating in the area of discovery

The social media sites have been quick to recognise this and are now introducing "shoppable" functionality to their websites.

"Instagram has become a new leader," says Beech. "With shoppable posts, consumers can instantly purchase something they see their favourite influencer wearing on the social platform."

Social media is allowing some retailers to punch above their weight and disrupt the dominant players in the market by innovating in the area of discovery.

"The companies making the most of this opportunity are not the big, established players, but start-ups and disruptors," says Facebook director of commerce Martin Harbech. "On Facebook and Instagram we have seen the same thing happen in pretty much all areas of retail. In each area, disruptors have realised that on mobile they don't have to wait for purchase intent, they can create this themselves."

Retailers are even going as far as creating their own social media networks. Ian Charles, chief executive of online gardening retailer Primrose, says his company's Gardens.Primrose social network has been set up as a means to allow users to "share their garden" with other enthusiasts.

The site is currently in beta but the idea is users will eventually be able to buy product from within the platform.

"We are trying to disintermediate the publishing houses by having our own content," says Charles.

Bhattacharya believes two key areas for the future of retail evolution are augmented reality and voice.

Apple's ARKit, Google's ARCore and Microsoft's HoloLens are all helping bring down the barriers of entry to AR and accelerate its adoption.

Numerous powerful use cases of the technology are already on show such as Charlotte Tilbury allowing customers to virtually "try-on" numerous make-up looks through an AR-powered digital mirror.

"Augmented reality is going to be massive," says Bhattacharya. "We've now reached an inflection point where the AR technology has truly put the tool in the hands of the creatives and technologists who can rapidly and easily envision and create real life working production ready experiences."

When it comes to voice, Amazon is once again blazing a trail with Echo and Alexa. While currently limited to Q&A-style functionality, which is hit and miss at the best of the times, the future possibilities of voice are tantalising.

"In the near future it will move to a true dialogue," says Bhattacharya.

Amazon director of international ad sales Dan Wright told delegates at Dmexco that voice technology "will open up a green field for innovation and creativity".

The technology is destined to revolutionise search marketing. Joint Microsoft and iProspect research forecasts half of all search queries by 2020 will be carried out through voice.

While innovations including voice and chatbots are exciting prospects for retailers in themselves, it is artificial intelligence that is stitching them all together.

The final piece of the tech puzzle for retailers in the near future is virtual reality.

McCormick predicts the prospect of shopping in a virtual environment is not far off. The technology is already being used on a business-to-business basis to help retailers with their visual merchandising. The natural next step is to extend it to allow the consumer to shop.

"I think we will have the technology to start making 'v-commerce' commercial within 12 months," says McCormick.

Watts predicts: "VR will perhaps dominate more in engaging an enhanced online experience from the home, whereas AR may have more of a role in-store."

As is always the case, how these technologies are most effectively implemented must come back to the needs of the customer.

"There are lots of hot topics across retail right now - AI, voice, bots, VR, to name a few," says Steel. "Rather than thinking about the technology involved, I think it's important to put customers first, and think about how the technology can help to create a fantastic shopping experience."

Conclusion

Retail is evolving faster than ever and customer expectations are off-the scale, but fortunately for retailers technology is at hand to ease the transition.

"Time is more and more limited, and the noise in the marketplace is enormous," concludes Beech. "Standing out with authenticity is imperative, as is being where she [the customer] is already spending time - and being there in a unique way. We always think about the ideal method - digital or otherwise - to immerse our customers in the world of Kate Spade."

Maintaining a strong purpose and keeping a laser-like focus on remaining relevant and serving customer needs is imperative for a retailer to flourish.

New technology can and should play an assistive role in this process and either disappear into the background or delight the consumer. Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar stores still clearly have a key role to play despite previous predictions of their downfall because in an increasingly digital world customers are still yearning for the human touch.

Retail faces its fair share of challenges but for those with the right approach the future should hold tremendous excitement for them and, more importantly, their customers.

***

Five trends in retail marketing

1. Product personalisation

Personalisation of products is about to hit an unprecedented scale due to robotics and 3D printing. Drinkwater believes technology advances will allow the instant production of consumer products to order.

A glimpse of this future can be seen in Adidas' partnership with Silicon Valley start-up Carbon, which has technology that allows the creation of the midsole of a shoe that is the perfect fit for a customer's foot through an additive manufacturing process called "digital light synthesis". The initial roll out will involve the production of 5,000 pairs of the Futurecraft 4D shoes this autumn/winter, while 100,000 pairs could be made in 2018.

FUTURECRAFT 4D: CREATE - adidas

Meanwhile, subscription services like Birchbox and Stich Fix have recognised this personalisation trend and are using customer data to tailor each item in a customer's delivery. Some 76% of Generation Z are interested in such subscription services, according to Accenture.

2. Turbo-charged discovery

Shopping used to require a great deal of effort from the consumer to find the perfect product. However, now all the heavy-lifting can be done by retailers. Harbech says: "This is ultimately about the shift from 'people finding products' to 'products finding people' - which is what consumers want."

Advances in machine learning are allowing retailers to sift out the noise and create a complex picture of the customer through big data.

"There are online retailers that are specifically targeting and sometimes almost exclusively selling through Facebook," says Bhattacharya.

"On Facebook and Instagram we have seen start-ups and disruptors make the most of the opportunity to create purchase intent, rather than wait for it," adds Harbech. "Start-ups in the mattress industry like Simba, Eve and Casper have completely disrupted this model by creating desirable products, and then ensuring those products find the right people through social feeds."

3. Extreme convenience

King of convenience Amazon has driven this trend and it is influencing every single touchpoint. Customer expectations have been raised sky high by online retail and this is now filtering through to all aspects of retail.

Amazon is now bringing convenience to the physical environment with its checkout-free store format Amazon Go. Start-ups are also tapping into this trend. US-based Happy Returns, for example, partners with ecommerce brands to allow shoppers to return items bought online at bricks-and-mortar locations.

As ever, Amazon's rivals are fighting hard to keep up with its innovation. Sainsbury's is piloting its own version of a checkout free shopping experience. The technology is not quite as sophisticated as Amazon's sensor-based technology, but instead lets shoppers scan and pay for items through an app on their smartphone in order to avoid queuing for a checkout.

Will checkouts soon be a thing of the past? Sainsbury's is piloting a checkout-free shopping experience

4. Retail theatre

At the other end of the scale from convenience is the idea of creating retail theatre. Retailers are seeking to provide a reason to visit a shop at a time when customers' attention is being diverted to leisure experiences.

"It would be churlish to ignore the experience side," says Robertson. "The experience economy is rising massively, people are looking for music, gigs, festivals and bars."

The recent troubles of Toys R Us in North America have highlighted the importance of making the store a fun place to visit.

"Toys R Us stores are not places where you would queue outside to go in and play like Hamleys or Lego stores," say Jon Copestake, chief retail and consumer goods analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit. "If they were to change every store into a funfair, and completely revamp their brand then there may be a renaissance. Sometimes things stop being relevant and I think Toys R Us is verging on the irrelevant."

LEGO House Grand Opening Ceremony

5. Conversational commerce

The advent of social media has already created an environment where consumers are used to having a conversation with brands, but this is about to hit a whole new level.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence have also paved the way for innovations including chatbots and voice technology.

Voice will soon allow a true dialogue, and could even understand intonation, which will add an extra layer of context to search marketing as brands are able to gather much more data on the intent of a search request.

Chatbots are becoming ever more complex and mainstream. Some 27% of people have already used a chatbot, while six in ten 25-34-year-olds prefer to chat to brands via text, online chat or messenger app, according to research from Mindshare.

Facebook reveals there are 100,000 active bots on the Messenger platform, and nearly 20m businesses exchange messages with people every month.

***

From retailer to content brand - How Very redefined retail marketing
Very.co.uk is an online department store selling fashion, homeware and tech from over 1300 brands, with an array of payment options. Established in 2009, Very aimed to become a go-to retailer for women aged 25-45. Challenges
As a retail newcomer, with no bricks and mortar presence, Very's brand visibility depended entirely on marketing communications.

Since the launch of the brand the media landscape has been transformed. By 2015 the audience was consuming eight hours of media a day across five devices and multiple channels. In response, multiple teams were producing comms across a vast array of touchpoints.

Very needed an approach which would unify its communications, and take awareness to the next level. It became clear that Very needed to think less like a retailer and more like a content provider.

Execution

Looking at the plethora of touchpoints and platforms available, Very needed a compass to navigate. Very's brand agenda was defined as: "Helping our audience 'get more out of every day', giving her effortless access to a world of possibilities." This would act as the guide for all content.

Looking through the customer's eyes, it became clear that to earn her attention, everything Very put out into the world needed to be of value. Whether it was entertaining, useful or both, the audience needed to gain something from it. And, of course, Very had to get the credit so every piece of content had to be branded.

Inspired by the broadcasters - BBC 2, Channel 4, ITV - who combine branding and content, Very developed the pink cube, a flexible branded asset that represents the brand agenda. A delivery box you could literally "get more out of". The pink cube unifies comms across touchpoints.

To ensure Very was telling its story consistently, it was also necessary to define the brand's body language: casting, styling, product selection, tone of voice. This approach allows Very to flex the level of branding in a way that's appropriate for the channel it is in.

Media shifted to an "always on" approach, ensuring that Very would reach the customer when she was most receptive. Kenyatte Nelson, the group marketing director of Very's owner Shop Direct, observes: "Being 'always on' means we can consistently reach our customer at the right time, in the right way. Combine that with inspiring and increasingly personalised content, and we have a huge chance to win in those moments of truth."

An example of the new approach is Very's new idents for ITV's This Morning. Running from 27 October, each ident is a little life hack that helps the viewer get more out of their day. Very does sell the products that enable these life hacks, but the focus is on the value to the audience, rather than being an overt sales pitch.

Results

The fragmented, multi-channel landscape requires a compass and a new kind of joined up creativity. By thinking like a content provider, within 18 months spontaneous awareness of Very almost doubled. Very is now a go-to retailer for 1 in 3 of its target audience, compared to 1 in 10 before the new approach. Very turned over £1bn in sales in its 7 th year.
Shop Direct group marketing director Kenyatte Nelson and St Luke's chief executive Neil Henderson spoke together at IPA Eff Week, on marketing's role in "Turning a legacy business into a world class digital retailer"
***

The marketer view
Ben Cook, brand marketing manager at Uniqlo, on retail's experiential future
Q: As you open your new Oxford outlet what role do bricks and mortar stores have in your brand strategy?

A: Our stores are still the heart of our business, they're the place where our customers can pick up and touch our products and try them on to make sure they get the best fit.

Q: Does social media demand more of an element of theatre in the in-store experience?

A: Sometimes as marketers we are guilty of thinking that it does, but ultimately customers are looking for things that make their shopping experiences either better or easier. We have hosted a lot of events at our flagship store at 311 Oxford Street over the last year; we had a talk from Victoria Pendleton, music events in partnership with NTS Radio, art related events in partnership with Tate Modern and even yoga mornings on our rooftop. The thing that works best is giving customers something that they want or something that they can't get anywhere else.

Q: How do you balance the brand experience in store and online?

A: Our product is central to our brand - as a company we exist to make clothing that makes our customers' lives better, that's why we talk about LifeWear. We see our website as a digital flagship, it's where you can see our full product range, read the full information about it and read reviews from other customers. However, our stores are where you can pick product up and touch it and this is sometimes essential to purchasing clothing. We like to think that our ecommerce site and stores exist side by side as we know that the customer journey is rarely linear these days so we need to make it as easy as possible for our customers to shop our product. That's why we offer next day delivery click and collect or why we work with shopping delivery service Drop It, to make the experience as smooth and easy as possible for customers.

Q: How do you see the experience in-store evolving?

A: Over the last few years we have seen (and even tried) lots of trends in the retail environment. The only ones that will last will be the ones that make customers' experience better or easier, the gimmicks will come and go quickly.

Q: How do you bring excitement to the in-store experience?

A: We're really big on hosting events in stores, things that bring a smile to our customers' faces. We're going to have a Lego event in our flagship store to celebrate our Lego kids' range and the new Ninjago film giving kids (and parents) a welcome break from shopping on Oxford Street. In the past, we have hosted product launch parties, yoga mornings, running clubs, mindfulness workshops and even a tennis event for kids with Kei Nishikori. Our LifeWear ethos is all about creating clothing that makes people's lives better, whether that's keeping them warmer or more comfortable. We follow the same guidelines for our in store experience, we want to make our customers' lives better.

Q: What role does working with other designers and brands, such as your recent JW Anderson, bring to the shopping experience?

A: Designer collaborations are a great way to add news and excitement to our seasons, it enables us to work with some of the best talent in the industry to reimagine our products with touches of their aesthetic. It's a really great way of generating excitement about the brand for existing and new customers.

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How retail marketers are transforming tomorrow's shopper experience

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If the future of modern brand-building lies in creating meaningful and memorable experiences then there is no more fiercer, or important battleground than the retail sector. With the breakneck pace of Amazon's innovations forcing competitors to scramble to keep up, the pace of change in the market is intense.

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Retail is no longer being compared against the rise of e-commerce - they are now both part of the same selling strategy. Increasingly, brands are now attempting to create their online experience offline - the exact reverse of what was happening a decade ago when e-commerce was in its infancy. Offline is not dead - it is cool again. Brands no longer need to make a compromise between online and offline - they need to do both. Mobile pop-up retail can offer the solution for many brands.

At The Clear Idea we are constantly seeking to innovate and we are very excited to be riding the crest of this new trend in consumer retail. For a fraction of the cost of traditional bricks and mortar we can create a pop-up mobile retail solution for any brand or concept. Our pop up containers can be located anywhere you want and moved as often as you want. We can even handle all the roadshow logistics. The mobility of our structures is the real bonus for the brand owner. Brands can plan nationwide or international roadshows to gain maximum exposure for their latest products with no compromise on quality. This is particularly relevant as we approach the festive season and brands are seeking to engage their audiences in a limited time frame.

We are also very excited about the fast paced changes in technology. Our containers can be fitted with LED walls, touch screen glass and projection screens to create an all-encompassing audio-visual experience for our clients. These interactive technologies truly engage your customers and create memorable experiences. Tablets can also act as cash registers and the interactive touchscreens are browsable stores inside stores.

The modern store is being run more like a website: on-line traffic is foot traffic, unique visitors are individual shoppers, conversions are point-of-sale systems and this information is captured via devices placed in stores that monitor shoppers' behaviour. These devices can anonymously track shoppers' mobile phones, and, if they pass in front of the store, relay the time they enter the store, their path through it and how they spent at certain displays. Some of these devices are small cameras, wi-fi trackers or smartphones and some may not even need hardware at all.

Euclid Analytics has even made its retail tracking technology available for free - aiming to make customer monitoring mainstream. This means that any retailer will be able to implement an analytics package to receive information such as footfall outside the store, engagement (how long customers spend inside stores) and whether customers are repeat shoppers, at no cost. The end result is that businesses are becoming just as data driven offline as they are online although there is a lot of catching up to be done.

Check out this video to learn more about Euclid: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/153333562290781083/

If you are looking for pop ups structures with an emphasis on a luxury look and feel, please get in touch and we'd be happy to discuss the options available.

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The future of retail is pop-up | The Clear Idea

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Retail is no longer being compared against the rise of e-commerce - they are now both part of the same selling strategy. Increasingly, brands are now attempting to create their online experience offline - the exact reverse of what was happening a decade ago when e-commerce was in its infancy.

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Analysis: Four secrets of customer experience success

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Rachel Arthur
Rachel Arthur is an award-winning business journalist specialising in fashion and technology. She contributes to titles including Forbes, Wired, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Business of Fashion. She is also the founder of tech-focused news site FashionandMash.com and the vision behind the global #FashMash community. An expert in all things digital, she otherwise acts as a strategic brand consultant within the fashion and luxury space, future-proofing businesses by bringing them first-to-market insights and bespoke solutions surrounding the evolving retail, technology and communications landscape. She regularly speaks on such subjects at conferences around the world, including SXSW, CES, Web Summit and the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, and serves as a mentor on various start-up accelerator programmes in London. Rachel was awarded trade/B2B fashion journalist of the year by Fashion Monitor in 2015.

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Artificial intelligence dominates the retail conversation at Shoptalk Europe - Fashion & Mash

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Rachel Arthur Rachel Arthur is an award-winning business journalist specialising in fashion and technology. She contributes to titles including Forbes, Wired, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Business of Fashion. She is also the founder of tech-focused news site FashionandMash.com and the vision behind the global #FashMash community.

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From recent headlines you might assume that sales in brick & mortar stores must be falling off a cliff. You'd be wrong. Yes, e-commerce is growing at a much faster rate, but revenues in physical stores remain positive (1%-2% growth depending on the source). There is also a sense that online shopping is becoming the dominant way most people shop. In fact, even with a dramatic share shift, e-commerce still represents less than 10% of total retail sales and is expected to remain below 20% even 5 years from now.

Moreover, if physical retail is dying somebody should tell well established (and quite profitable) retailers like Aldi, Apple, Costco, TJX, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Nordstrom, H&M, Ulta and Sephora. Collectively they've announced plans to open about 3,000 stores. Newer brands--think, Bonobos, Casper, Warby Parker--that were once dubbed geniuses for their "digitally native" strategy are now opening dozens of physical stores as their online-only plans proved limited and unprofitable. A little outfit from Seattle also has recently made a pretty big bet on physical retail.

So the constant media references to a "retail apocalypse" may serve as great clickbait, but they lack both accuracy and nuance. I believe we're all better served by not painting the industry with too broad a brush and spinning false narratives.

Nevertheless, it is crystal clear that years of overbuilding, failure to innovate on the part of most traditional retailers, shifting customer preferences and market-share grabs from transformative new models that aren't held to a traditional profit standard (mostly the little outfit in Seattle) are creating fundamentally new dynamics. Physical retail is not going away, but digital disruption is transforming most sectors of retail profoundly. Here are a few important things to bear in mind:

Good enough no longer is. Mediocre retailers were protected for years by what was once scarce: scarcity of product and pricing information, scarcity of assortment choice, scarcity of strong local competition, scarcity of convenient ways for product delivery. Digital commerce has created anytime, anywhere, anyway access to just about everything and the weaknesses of many retailers' business models have been laid bare. Traditional retailers' failure to innovate over the past decade has put quite a few in an untenable position from which they will never recover. It turns out they picked a really bad time to be so boring.

E-commerce is important. Digital-first retail is more important. The rise of e-commerce is having a dramatic effect on shopping behavior but it is not the most disruptive factor in retail. What's far more transformative is the fact that most customer journeys for transactions that ultimately occur in a brick & mortar location start in a digital channel--and increasingly that means on a mobile device. In fact, digitally-influenced physical stores sales are far greater than all of e-commerce. Many brands' failure to understand this reality caused them to waste a lot of time and money building strong online capabilities at the expense of keeping their stores and the overall shopping experience relevant and remarkable.

Physical and digital work in concert. A retail brand's strong digital presence drives brick & mortar sales and vice versa. When different media and transactional channels work in harmony, the brand is more relevant. When any aspect is unremarkable or creates friction, the brand suffers. Too often, traditional retailers treat digital and physical retail as two distinct entities when most customers are, as some like to say, "phygital." Moreover, with the exception of products that can literally be delivered digitally (books, games, music), there is rarely any inherent reason why the rise of e-commerce should make a substantial number of physical stores completely irrelevant. Retailers that are closing a lot of stores most often have a business model problem, not a "too many stores" problem.

The future will not be evenly distributed. Clearly, there are brands and retail categories that are being "Amazon-ed." There are also sectors that have been in long-term decline (department stores and many regional malls), whose troubles have little to do with what's transpired most recently. Still others have remained largely immune from the disruptive forces that are hitting others so hard. Off-price chains, warehouse clubs, dollar stores and gas stations all come to mind. Grocery shopping has also seen little impact, though that's likely to change. It's also important to note that some forces that are shaping the industry have little to do with e-commerce vs. physical stores shopping or the notion that Amazon is eating the world. Many sectors are being hit by a fundamental change in shopping behavior (a shift to experiences away from stuff, a tendency to trade down to lower price points) that has nothing to do with how spending is being reallocated away from brick & mortar to online. Your mileage may vary.

To be sure, a degree of panic is appropriate in some circles. It's obvious that many retailers spent more time defending the status quo and burying their heads in the sand during the past decade than they did understanding the consumer and being committed to innovation. Some retailers need to adapt. Some need to transform the customer experience fundamentally. Others just need to go away. Most need to take bold and decisive action to stay relevant and remarkable in a very different and constantly evolving world.

The big question is whether they will act while they still have time.

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Physical Retail: Definitely Different, Far From Dead

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From recent headlines you might assume that sales in brick & mortar stores must be falling off a cliff. You'd be wrong. Yes, e-commerce is growing at a much faster rate, but revenues in physical stores remain positive (1%-2% growth depending on the source).

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Ultimately, that means marketers must commit to the creation of incredible mobile experiences. Fast and frictionless is now table stakes, and the basics-like load time-can make or break you. In fact, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load. But we aren't there yet-the average mobile site takes 22 seconds to fully load. We've actually seen that for every one second delay in site load time, conversions fall by 12%. To test your own mobile site speed, give a spin. It even provides instant recommendations to make your mobile site more instant. Test My Site

Consumers have higher expectations than ever for right here, right now experiences. We'll continue to share additional insights about their search behaviors, as well as examples from brands who are effectively winning them over.

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Immediate need for flawless mobile experiences - Think with Google

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Ultimately, that means marketers must commit to the creation of incredible mobile experiences. Fast and frictionless is now table stakes, and the basics-like load time-can make or break you. In fact, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load.

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Baldock told Drapers the rise of AI was the next big digital disruptor, and said Shop Direct has chosen to be at the forefront of the change: "We've chosen to be on the front foot of this wave of change. It's coming whether businesses are ready or not.

"We've made some big bets in the past on mobile and data, and our next big bet is on AI and personalisation. AI will allow us to take our next big leap forward. It will allow everyone to have their own personal shopper and one who knows what she wants before she does."

Later this financial year, Shop Direct will launch the AI-powered, "natural language" version of its customer service chatbot within the MyVery app. The AI-powered conversational user interface (CUI) can answer 32 different types of customer query, recognising over 4,000 written phrases and responding accurately. Shop Direct said its long-term vision is for Very Assistant to develop into a personal shopper for every customer

In 2018, the company will also apply AI to its credit-decision capabilities, meaning faster, more personalised outcomes for customers, and better credit decisions and risk discipline for the business.

"The app understands English, the power behind it is on steroids and it has the ability to learn," Baldock explained. "This will help us crack that inspiration challenge. Everything we do is mobile first and to be successful in mobile you need to personalise. We have three seconds to hook our shoppers' attention and by personalising and using our data we can ensure we are showing them the right thing."

Baldock was speaking as Shop Direct announced group sales increased by 5.6% on a like-for-like basis to £1.93bn for the year to 1 July, driven by sales growth of 14.6% to £1.26bn at Very.

Underlying profit before tax was up 10.2% to £160.4m, while group gross margin was maintained at 40.8%.

As a proportion of online sales, those made on mobile devices - smartphones and tablets - were up 7 percentage points to 69%. Sales via smartphones made up more than half (53%) of online sales for the first time, up 10 percentage points compared with 2016.

Clothing and footwear sales grew by 6.4% year on year, fuelled by a 21.8% uplift in sportswear.

Baldock said the etailer was now the number one online sports retailer in the UK.

"We're not resting on our laurels," he added. "We see athleisure continuing to be a big seller, along with our own brand V by Very and our new Very range with actress Michelle Keegan."

Baldock said it had been another "tough year" in fashion retail and added that although the difficult macro-environment was likely to continue Shop Direct was in a good position to weather the storm: "We're seeing a weaker picture in terms of housing, and consumer confidence and real wages are being squeezed, but our [credit] model makes us resilient. Our customer comes to us in good times and bad and that is reflected in our performance so far this [financial] year."

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AI will transform every retailer, says Shop Direct boss

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Baldock told Drapers the rise of AI was the next big digital disruptor, and said Shop Direct has chosen to be at the forefront of the change: "We've chosen to be on the front foot of this wave of change. It's coming whether businesses are ready or not.

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TechCrunch has learned that Amazon has acquired Body Labs, a company with a stated aim of creating true-to-life 3D body models to support various b2b software applications - such as virtually trying on clothes or photorealistic avatars for gaming.

One source suggested the price-tag Amazon paid for Body Labs could be $100M+. However a second well-placed source suggested it's closer to $70M than $100M - so we're pegging it at between $50M and $70M.

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on the acquisition.

New York based Body Labs was founded in March 2013, according to CrunchBase, and had raised more than $10M across two investment rounds - closing an $8M Series A in November 2015.

The company says its AI, computer vision, and body modeling expertise stems from research started at Brown University and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.

Co-founder and CEO Bill O'Farrell lists a number of prior exits in his Body Labs' biog: namely SpeechWorks, acquired by Nuance; CoSA acquired by Adobe; and OpenAir acquired by Netsuite. Apparently he can now chalk off a fourth.

At the time of writing Body Labs had not responded to requests for comment.

The company's social media accounts have been quiet since August, which may indicate the deal closed recently.

Update: A note on Body Labs' website has now confirmed the acquisition, saying the startup "look[s] forward to innovating on behalf of customers".

Modeling the human body

Video demos on Body Labs' website show its tech being used to augment a human with digital content as the person moves around by cladding them in a full-body gaming avatar 'suit' or adding boxing gloves and bunny slippers to a dancing man.

Body Labs also says its "SOMA Shape API" can be used to "accurately predict and measure the 3D shape of your customers using just a single image", suggesting this can power "custom apparel" or be used by fashion ecommerce retailers wanting to offer sizing recommendations.

The company also suggests additional uses-cases for its 'fat and all' 3D body modeling tech in health and fitness tracking, and even equipment design and manufacturing.

In a video from 2015, O'Farrell suggests highly accurate 3D body scans will enable "the body itself [to] be delivered as the platform and around which goods and services are designed, manufactured, bought and sold, recommended."

It's not clear exactly what Amazon intends to do with Body Labs but there are plenty of potential use-cases that mesh with and could extend its existing business interests if the startup has the tech chops to deliver accurate 3D body models at scale.

For example, as well as selling other brands' clothes via its ecommerce marketplace, Amazon has been ramping up its own fashion business in recent years, expanding and growing its private label fashion brands.

Being able to offer custom fit could give Amazon's private label fashion brands an edge, even as improving sizing predictions generally for Amazon shoppers could help drive clothes shopping across its platform and help shrink returns from clothes that don't fit.

A recent Amazon Prime member perk offers free returns for a try-before-you-buy clothes service called Amazon Wardrobe. And the service would clearly be cheaper for Amazon to run if fewer people returned fewer items of clothes.

CEO Jeff Bezos has long listed fashion as one of two key areas he sees underpinning his sizable ambitions for Amazon's ecommerce empire ( food being the other).

The company also has big extant interests in another potential area where Body Labs' tech could fit: gaming.

It runs its own games studios - fed by earlier acquisitions such as Double Helix Games, which it picked up back in 2014. It also distributes Lumberyard, a free AAA game engine integrated with AWS and Twitch; and offers GameLift, a managed service for deploying and managing servers for multiplayer games.

This summer it emerged the company had acquired GameSparks, a "backend as a service" for games developers too. So it has a well established interest in pushing the envelop on video game content - say by being able to offer gamers photorealistic avatars.

And that doesn't even scratch the surface of how 3D body model technology could play in the VR world, if you're taking a longer view on potential use-cases. (Or indeed, for AR and AR gaming purposes.)

Games is generally an area of strategic interest for Amazon not only because the content can be highly popular and lucrative in its own right, but as another way to drive usage of its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services. The more content it can host, the more revenue AWS can generate.

Yet another potential use-case for 3D body model tech could be in the comms space where Amazon has recently been making a new play, including in the visual communications space - as part of a much bigger push to own the smart home by releasing a blitz of connected devices housing its Alexa voice AI.

This May Amazon outted an Echo device with a screen aimed at family videocalling.

Oh hey there, Echo Look

It has also released another Echo device (called Look) that's specifically designed for taking style selfies. So it's possible the company might be interested in tech that can power visual transformations for fun and fashion-based purposes - such as by being able to add real-time effects to people's faces and bodies during an Echo Show videocall, for example, a la Snapchat selfie lenses.

And Body Labs has a mobile AI called Mosh for adding special effects photos using based on its tech detecting and adapting to the person's pose.

Or - for more practical, ecommerce-related purposes - to enable users of its Echo Show to virtually show off a fashion item they're thinking of buying by having computer vision software digitally animating it on a photorealistic body model. So they could, for example, ask their mum for a second opinion on the dress they've been eyeing up - and then just ask Alexa to buy it.

How Amazon could do much more with Echo by adding a camera to drive blended reality into the living room was a topic TechCrunch dug into back in 2015.

However one key consideration here, in the specific case of Body Labs, is it's not clear exactly what core technology the company is using for generating accurate 3D scans.

In some of its video demos Body Labs can be seen using person-sized scanners to generate highly accurate body models - a technology that clearly does not scale for the kind of massive consumer purposes Amazon would be after. Though it also claims to be able to extrapolate body models from "everyday photos or videos".

One of its co-founders, and also its science advisor, Dr Michael Black, is a computer vision expert who has worked on modeling realistic 3D human avatars by extrapolating pose data from photos - and that kind of approach, if it proves robust enough, would offer a more viable route for Amazon to scale viable body models to millions of consumers.

So it's also possible the Body Labs acquisition is mostly an acquihire for Amazon, aimed at picking up talent and expertise for handling the data it's hoping to gather via its Echo Look device which - notably - contains an on-board depth sensor so could be used to extract 3D data on body form via users' style selfies.

As we wrote in April, the Echo Look style selfie device very much looks like a way for Amazon to harvest people's full length selfies to start to build its own dataset for size and fit, which neatly dovetails with its ecommerce fashion ambitions.

Bezos could therefore be hoping to put Body Labs' team to work on reverse engineering the body data it pulls off Echo Look and arrive at viably accurate 3D body models without consumers needing their own shower-sized in-home scanners. Instead they'd just need to have an Echo Look sitting on their shelf.

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Amazon has acquired 3D body model startup, Body Labs, for $50M-$70M

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TechCrunch has learned that Amazon has acquired Body Labs, a company with a stated aim of creating true-to-life 3D body models to support various b2b software applications - such as virtually trying on clothes or photorealistic avatars for gaming. One source suggested the price-tag Amazon paid for Body Labs could be $100M+.

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Stephen Lam/Reuters

Google may have announced lots of new hardware on Wednesday, but the software it demonstrated might actually be cooler.

Among the new offerings: Google Lens, a visual search engine that will come loaded on every new Pixel 2 phone.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai first announced the feature back in May, but we got a more comprehensive look at how it works on Wednesday.

Google says that for now, Lens is just a "preview," which may be Google-speak for a beta version. And since it lives in the Pixel 2, most people won't be able to try it out. But Lens is still an exciting peek at what's to come.

Lens basically works like a "smart" magnifying glass. Using the Pixel's camera, you can look up things like artwork, landmarks, and movies - all you have to do is point your camera at the object and press the Lens button in your camera app. Lens can then identify what it is you're looking at and pull up relevant information for you to peruse.

Google

Another cool feature of Lens: You can point it at something like the flyer above and it will automatically detect a URL, email address, or phone number without you having to manually type it in. If you scan over an email address, for example, Google will prompt you to send that person a message using Gmail.

And Google said it plans on adding features on an ongoing basis, including the ability to use Lens inside Google Assistant. This could mean the Lens feature will eventually arrive on iOS devices, since you can currently use Google Assistant on your iPhone.

Here's what Lens looks like in action:

Google Lens is similar to a feature Pinterest introduced last February, also called "Lens." But Pinterest Lens has a slightly different focus from Google Lens: inspiration.

Pinterest Lens lets you point your camera at a pair of shoes, for instance, you'll be able to see similar styles on Pinterest and get ideas for how to wear them. Pinterest's Lens feature is less focused on identifying an exact item than it is on showing you similar or related items.

Still, there's a clear trend in technology like this: visual search tools that can "Shazam" the world around you.

Get the latest Google stock price here.

SEE ALSO: Everything Google announced at its big hardware event

NOW WATCH: I won't trade in my iPhone 6s for an iPhone 8 or iPhone X - here's why

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Google added a visual search engine called 'Lens' to its new Pixel phones - here's what it can do

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Google may have announced lots of new hardware on Wednesday, but the software it demonstrated might actually be cooler. Among the new offerings: Google Lens, a visual search engine that will come loaded on every new Pixel 2 phone.

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Online commerce giant Shopify is ready for its Instagram moment: The one-stop shop platform provider is opening up its Instagram integration to thousands of its merchants leading up to the holiday season. The platform expansion adds yet another sales channel to the considerable quiver Shopify providers sellers, which includes Facebook, Messenger, Buzzfeed and others, too.

Instagram's shopping feature has been in testing at Shopify throughout 2017, but this most recent expansion will essential open the floodgates to a much broader user population. Instagram's shopping feature allows tagging of products that are available for sale, and then letting users purchase them directly within the app. Shopify's integration of Instagram's shopping experience simplifies the process of getting this set up, especially for Shopify users already selling goods via the commerce provider.

Shopify notes that Instagram is already a "significant" driver of Shopify merchant store traffic, so being able to convert said traffic right on the platform instead of round-tripping could result in a big boost of additional sales.

After this rollout to select thousands, Shopify plans to test the integration and then turn the feature on for a much wider pool of its user base, which includes hundreds of thousands of stores and sellers.

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Shopify rolling out Instagram shopping feature to thousands of merchants

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Online commerce giant Shopify is ready for its Instagram moment: The one-stop shop platform provider is opening up its Instagram integration to thousands of its merchants leading up to the holiday season. The platform expansion adds yet another sales channel to the considerable quiver Shopify providers sellers, which includes Facebook, Messenger, Buzzfeed and others, too.

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Having recently covered what the future of retail would look like, I was curious to see some of the advanced technology I had heard about come to life. But after an hourlong visit, I left the store feeling underwhelmed by the lack of groundbreaking technology.

Stepping into the pop-up shop was less transcendental an experience than I had been expecting. There were no holographic displays, no robots to greet me, no screens that knew my name. Instead, it looks pretty much like a regular store. The area is split into three "zones," named after the magazine's sections -- Work, Play and Peak (health and fitness). Each section showcases clothes, accessories and gadgets related to its theme. In the Peak zone, for example, you'll find workout clothes and sunglasses, and there's even a "pelvic-floor-muscle exerciser" (a PG-13 way to describe a vibrator).

I loved all the goods on display: The clothes were stunning, and the skin-care products were tempting. As a tech reporter, I was far less impressed by the range of gadgets available. There's the Mighty Purse, which is really just a clutch with a built-in battery and charger, the Click and Grow smart herb-garden kit, and the Bang and Olufsen Beoplay A1 Bluetooth speaker. For Marie Claire's intended audience, though, who may be less concerned than I am about the best specs and the latest in tech, these seem like an appropriately stylish and trendy collection of devices.

Despite the unexciting selection of gadgets, it's the presentation of these products that left me underwhelmed more than anything else. In addition to the standard racks with hangers for clothes, there are also counters with items each accompanied by an iPad that shows you details like its dimensions, colors and price. It feels like shopping at home, except you're standing in front of the actual purse in a physical store. Unlike shopping at home, you don't have the luxury of time and a dozen open tabs to help you decide.

It's also not that much more convenient to purchase something in the store: You have to hit "buy" on the tablet, which will summon an in-store employee to finish the transaction. That's not as seamless as the setup at Amazon Go stores, where shoppers can simply pick up what they want and walk out.

For consumers, this doesn't seem helpful, but retailers could gain valuable insight and build a better shopping experience. Overhead cameras above these counters keep an eye on how many people walk past the display and count how many linger and how long they dwell. The iPads also track what shoppers look at and interact with, so companies can understand where they're losing and winning customers. It's all pretty bare-bones right now, but it hints at a hyperpersonalized experience the industry expects will be the future of retail.

A more sophisticated example of blending technology with a highly personal experience is the row of three smart mirrors in the Marie Claire store. Featuring Clarins branding and products, the 2-foot-tall mirrors take photos of shoppers, detect potential skin-care concerns and recommend creams and serums to target those problems.

The idea isn't new: We've seen many other companies implement smart mirrors to identify individual issues plaguing shoppers, like dry skin, fine lines, wrinkles, acne or blemishes. What's more interesting is being able to eventually use these mirrors to try on different cosmetics, sunglasses or hairstyles. Of course, you can also do all that at home, but Marie Claire Vice President and Publisher Nancy Berger believes real-world shopping isn't going away anytime soon.

Beyond the social experience, some retail setups can actually make the whole process fun. She shared a story of how her son, who normally doesn't enjoy shopping, said he would go back to a store they had visited because it had a mock basketball court on-site to help customers try out different shoes.

One of the most fun parts of shopping in the real world is trying on clothes, but it can also get tiring quickly. To ease some of that frustration, interactive fitting room mirrors can get other colors and sizes to you, saving you from having to scour the store repeatedly. You'll need to book a room with a store employee to hold it for your session. Inside, the mirror detects the RFID tags on the clothes you've brought in and list them on-screen. Oak Labs, a startup that has already worked with Ralph Lauren to integrate these mirrors in some stores, opted for RFID tech to avoid using cameras. After all, you wouldn't want anyone hacking into these systems and live-streaming what goes on while you're trying on clothes.

The mirror will also recommend other pieces of clothing based on your preferences, and you can see on the screen how they match with the items you already have. When you've made up your mind, you can check out from the fitting room, elsewhere in the store or even after you leave. That's because to pay for your clothes, you'll need to download the Marie Claire app (as opposed to using the previously mentioned iPads, which are meant for devices). Oak Labs told Engadget that the app is meant for shoppers to specify pickup or delivery options. That's still not a completely seamless experience, but a representative at the event said it's possible to build NFC readers into the mirrors to enable contactless payments inside the fitting rooms.

Again, connected mirrors in fitting rooms aren't new. Even the most intriguing demo at the store -- a giant touchscreen on its windows that lets passersby peruse and buy what's inside the shop -- has sort of been done before. But there hasn't been a store that's brought together all of these new concepts in one place just yet. And as Berger told Engadget, this experience isn't about showcasing bleeding-edge retail tech.

The Next Big Thing wants to educate Marie Claire's intended audience about what you can expect to see in stores over the next year, not what might be here 10 years down the road. The demos aren't groundbreaking, but the store provides a superficial glimpse of the technology that will change how we shop in the future.

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'Marie Claire' shop of the future is stuck in the present

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Having recently covered what the future of retail would look like, I was curious to see some of the advanced technology I had heard about come to life. But after an hourlong visit, I left the store feeling underwhelmed by the lack of groundbreaking technology.

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Online shoppers in the UK spend more per household than consumers in any other country, a report says, amid a shift from stores to the internet.

UK households spent the equivalent of $5,900 (£4,611) using payment cards online in 2015, the UK Cards Association said.

This was higher than Norway ($5,400), the US ($4,500) and Australia ($4,000).

The association suggested the frequency of debit and credit cards and the ease of delivering items drove online buys.

New figures from the association showed that £154bn was spent on the internet using cards in 2016 - up by a quarter in two years.

Cinema tickets

Entertainment - such as cinema and concert tickets, takeaway orders and music downloads - accounted for one in four online card purchases in the UK.

Some 67% of concert ticket spending and 61% of cinema, theatre and dance spending was made online, the association's figures showed.

The popularity of renewing contracts such as insurance cover online, and payments into bank accounts over the internet also meant financial services registered considerable activity online. More than a quarter (27%) of what was spent online was in financial services.

However, attempts of online retailers to make a mark in the grocery sector had so far failed in comparison to the use of cards in shops and supermarkets. Some 41% of in-store card purchases were on food and drink, compared with only 7% via the internet.

Pawn shops, laundry and pubs, somewhat unsurprisingly, registered the least online shopping activity, the figures showed.

Clicks or bricks

Traditional retailers have felt a significant impact from the online shopping habits of customers.

Earlier this week, High Street retailer Debenhams announced a change of strategy owing, in part, to fast-growing "mobile interaction".

The plan means up to 10 of its 176 UK stores may be closed over the next five years. A central distribution warehouse and about 10 smaller warehouses could also be shut.

A further cost burden was also felt, particularly by clothes retailers, as a result of online shoppers returning items they did not want during a statutory cooling-off period.

Consumer analysts Savvy Marketing compiled figures for BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme and found that among 1,000 online shoppers questioned, women's clothing had been returned by 63% of them.

Retailers said free returns were an important part of their business, but the costs had to be recovered somewhere or they risked going under.

Many shoppers still fear that online shopping opens the door to cyber-criminals, but Richard Koch, head of policy at the UK Cards Association, argued that security was improving.

"Since the early days of internet shopping there has been a host of innovations, from digital wallets to one click purchases, which bring enhanced security, choice and convenience for customers and which will lead to continued growth in the sector.

"The additional protection provided when using a card also gives consumers extra peace of mind when they are shopping online," he said.

Concerns have also been raised over internet selling fuelling a rise in shopping addiction.

Some mental health problems manifest themselves in compulsive buying, making purchases which are later regretted. This could lead those affected into a spiral of debt.

A report by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute suggested that 24-hour online shopping meant "consumers who struggle to control their spending find themselves at greater risk than ever before".

Retailers send personalised emails to customers, based on previous purchases, which may include short-term discounts and promotions.

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Online shoppers in the UK spend more per household than consumers in any other country, a report says, amid a shift from stores to the internet. UK households spent the equivalent of $5,900 (£4,611) using payment cards online in 2015, the UK Cards Association said.

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Broadcast TV is dead. Television ratings have been declining since 1981 at the latest, and have more recently entered a terminal spiral. 1981 was when the creation of the Broadcasters Audience Research Board (Barb) established a single method for calculating how many people were watching any television channel. This made the number of viewers of BBC and ITV programmes directly comparable for the first time.

Barb endures, its methods updated, and it's now used for all channels from BBC One to QVC HD +1 and everything in between. It's because of Barb that we know that the most-watched programme of 2015 - The Great British Bake Off Final - managed 16.03m viewers, and that this is just over two thirds of the audience of 23.3m that saw the most-watched UK TV transmission of 1981. (It wasn't what you think it was, by the way, we'll come back to that at the end.)

Yet, despite the explosion of multi-channel television in the thirty five years between those figures, the most-watched television programmes of any year are now, as then, on BBC One and ITV. In any given week, only BBC Two and, even less frequently, Channel 4 might have a chance of pushing into the weekly top ten, but anything further down the programme planner will be even further down any integrated chart.

"Ah, but," people say, "It's all about streaming, iPlayer and online now, isn't it?" Well, those things certainly exist, and because of them Barb's Project Dovetail, launched in 2016, incorporates data from broadcasters' online operations into their standard reports. Dovetail, though, only applies to online arms of recognised broadcasters, including those that didn't exist when Barb was created. Sky's channels are assessed through both this and more traditional methods. It's from them we know that fewer people in the UK watched Sky Atlantic's most-ever-watched episode of Game of Thrones than did that same week's episode of The Great British Sewing Bee on BBC Two. Including time-shifting, SkyGo and in-the-week repeats.

However, it's undeniably true that we don't know how many people are watching Netflix or Amazon Prime's original material. Statements are occasionally made, but data isn't shared. There are no agreed points of comparison. We do know that Netflix has c5m subscribers in the UK. So, hypothetically, if three people per account watched the same programme, it could add up to the viewership of the Bake Off Final. Given that BBC One's numbers were drawn from a potential viewership many times the size (because tens of millions more people have tellies than have Netflix) it doesn't seem likely. Frankly, if it'd happened they'd be hollering about it from the rooftops.

Intriguingly, the US company Symphony AM, which uses a technique not dissimilar to Barb's to calculate US viewership, once produced its own figures for US (not UK) Netflix use. They calculated that there were around 8.5m US viewers watching Netflix's biggest series, Fuller House, a sequel to a 1990s US sitcom with little recognition factor in the UK. Netflix called this "remarkably inaccurate", but declined to produce any figures of their own in rebuttal.

Meanwhile, Barb's first ever Project Dovetail report concluded that Cuckoo, Happy Valley and Call the Midwife were the most in-demand of "on-demand" programmes, all three being BBC series that were already doing well. There aren't, it seems, programmes that no one watches on transmission, and which gain most their viewers via catch up. (The arguable exception is imports that simulcast with US transmissions, being nominally shown at 2am before being "repeated" 20 hours later.)

Timeshift changes the numbers, but not what we watch. Something doesn't sneak up from behind the back because all its viewers, perhaps from a different (assumed to be younger?) demographic, are watching by a different method. An example: Sherlock' s 2014 premiere created an all-time record for timeshifting: 3.5m viewers. That's almost a third of its audience, arguably a significant chunk, but it's also inherently much less than half. Most people who saw the programme saw it when it was broadcast. Not afterwards.

If you ignore 2012, where the London Olympics' Opening and Closing Ceremonies pulled in extraordinary numbers of viewers, the most-watched television programmes of the year have seen a small, but definite, upswing in their ratings this decade, starting at 13.5m and building to 16.03m. This suggests either that television viewership is actually increasing, or that viewers who decamped to other methods of watching are being included again thanks to methodological changes. The repeated, stunning ratings success of the New Year's fireworks on BBC One may point to the former being true, larger audiences being a consequence of the reduced entertainment budgets of many in austerity Britain.

So, the programmes that are most seen by shiny new methods are the same ones seen on transmission, and those methods deliver fewer viewers than dusty old-fashioned broadcast? Still. Why is that? Live events, such as football matches, finals of talent shows and Royal occasions have always featured strongly in weekly and yearly top tens of programmes. Such things are generally watched live or not at all. A sense of communal watching, of shared experience, is only possible by everyone doing it at the same time, and while that inevitably means on broadcast, it no longer has to involve everyone socialising being in the same room.

Social media platforms, accused so often of driving people apart, merely provide another means of human contact. Certain corners of Twitter and Facebook come alive during televised football matches, especially those on BBC and ITV. And such things aren't confined to live events. BBC Four's Top of the Pops repeats routinely cause #TOTP to top its list of UK trending hashtags as viewers try and top each others' jokes about acts' hair or clothes, or indulge in nostalgic reminiscences of the era the episode is from.

Perhaps surprisingly, this online communalism does extend to drama series, despite the obvious fact that if you're writing and tweeting jokes about a television drama series while watching it, you're not paying enough attention to it. It may be because of things like this that this year already four drama series on BBC One or ITV, Broadchurch, Call The Midwife, Sherlock and the Moorside have been seen by more than 10m people, and several more have come close to it. In early January, when the New Year's Day episode of Sherlock reported overnights of 11.33m I confidently asserted it would be the most watched drama series of 2017, as it had been in 2016 and 2014 and 2012, but now I'm not so sure.

The UK is the historical home of television. The pre-war BBC Television Service is usually regarded as the first regular television channel and we watch, proportionately and in absolute terms, a lot of it. The 10m viewers enjoying the BBC's biggest dramas represent more than a fifth of British adults. Compare that with the USA, say, where the two biggest series on television (inexplicably The Big Bang Theory and NCIS) draw around 19m viewers a week from a population five times the size of the UK's. Television is very much our thing, and it seems like we're not letting it go, however much those who try to predict the medium's future want us to.

Online hasn't killed terrestrial broadcast TV, anymore than multichannel, catch-up or VHS did. And in each case, there were plenty who were certain it would. New delivery methods account for far less of our viewing habits than terrestrial television does, and by far the largest share of terrestrial television is still seen on broadcast. Short of another London Olympics, we'll never again see numbers like those gained by the 1981 premiere of Jaws, which knocked that year's Royal Wedding off the top of the yearly chart, but broadcast TV is not dead.

It isn't even resting.

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Predicted the death of broadcast TV? Then have I got news for you

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Broadcast TV is dead. Television ratings have been declining since 1981 at the latest, and have more recently entered a terminal spiral. 1981 was when the creation of the Broadcasters Audience Research Board (Barb) established a single method for calculating how many people were watching any television channel.

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Virtual reality is one of the latest technologies marketers are trying to wrap their heads around to figure out how to best utilize the tool to achieve brand objectives. While we're only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of impactful ways to use VR for marketing, several pioneers have found creative ways to do it well and support their unique value propositions. VR is being strategically used as a tactic to:

* Demonstrate product attributes, features, functionality (Samsung Gear VR)

* Communicate the brand's mission at point of sale (Tom's)

* Immerse users in a branded entertainment experience and add excitement at pop-up events for social media sharing ( Game of Thrones)

* Help consumers make more informed choices so they'll be happier with their purchases (Lowe's)

* Add a new, more immersive and exhilarating dimension to traditional print and video story-telling ( The New York Times)

* Show how a brand can fit into an aspirational lifestyle (Mercedes)

While the household penetration of VR headsets is in its infancy, the impact of VR based marketing programs can be far-reaching because of the viral response they can generate. Some brands have opted for providing the experience in-store or at special events through more durable, higher quality gear, while others have opted to let broader audiences experience VR at home, on cell phones, with Google Cardboard, and on computers. Here are my top six picks for smart marketing uses of the technology, that illustrate a range of ways VR can help brands achieve different marketing objectives.

subscribers, and produced a VR film, , and released another VR video, , The New York Times has been a pioneer in Virtual Reality storytelling. In November 2015 , they distributed over 1 million Google Cardboard viewers/glasses to Sunday home delivery May 2016 , they distributed another 300,000: this time, to The Displaced, to be viewed with them. In its longest tenured digital subscribers Seeking Pluto's Frigid Heart. It provided an exhilarating way for viewers to learn about and explore the planet, almost as if they were there, and experience the thrill of zooming to Pluto and soaring over it. Sunday June 5th The New York Times Magazine had a special New York issue that included the VR piece, Climbing Spire of 1 WTC (World Trade Center). Virtual reality is providing The New York Times with a new way of storytelling that keeps the old genre fresh and exciting, and captures the imagination of younger readers who have so many options of where to get their news and lifestyle information.
Tom's
Tom's is masterful at storytelling. The flagship store in Venice, California, not far from their corporate headquarters, is a cozy bungalow/shop/café, packed with Tom's messaging. There's a "virtual reality chair," next to the shoe section, which guests are invited to try. Once the VR headset starts playing, you're transported to a remote village in Peru where you experience a giving trip, starting with the drive into the village. Sweet looking kids are all around as you swivel in your chair. They're incredibly happy and grateful for the gift. It's emotional, memorable, and you want to tell others about it. It takes people closer than ever before possible, to understanding the impact of Tom's mission.
Game of Thrones (HBO)
HBO has embraced VR in exciting ways to launch its new seasons of The graphics were created by The Framestore: the firm that did special effects for the Oscar winning film, with Facebook. It's another cutting edge application of VR that can immerse viewers in the world of Game of Thrones. In 2014 they created a multi-sensory, traveling exhibition which featured the VR experience " Ascend the Wall " at places like SXSW and Singapore's Ion Orchard Shopping Mall. Viewers entered an elevator that featured blasting cool air and physical rumbling, creating the feeling they were being hoisted up 700 feet to the top of the Wall at Castle Black. ° synchronization of the show's opening credits Gravity. Though the installation was exciting and viral, it could only be truly experienced by those physically present. Oculus Rift was the headset used. For the recent launch of the 2016 season of Game of Thrones, Oculus Rift owner, Facebook, provided a VR viewing experience more available to everyone through a special 360 Game of Thrones and go viral.

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6 Of The Best Marketing Uses Of Virtual Reality

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Virtual reality is one of the latest technologies marketers are trying to wrap their heads around to figure out how to best utilize the tool to achieve brand objectives. While we're only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of impactful ways to use VR for marketing, several pioneers have found creative ways to do it well and support their unique value propositions.

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Here to stay

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Addressable TV - officially a 'thing'; Gary the Shirt is gone

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As it takes centre stage in new pitches and is wholeheartedly endorsed by WPP, Dominic Mills looks at the implications of addressable TV hitting the mainstream. Plus: A sad farewell to ITV's Gary Knight...and his amazing shirts.

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When you think of blockchain, you usually think about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. While these are interesting and disruptive in their own right, it is the non-currency applications of blockchain that could truly revolutionize how we do business.

The most obvious place we'll see this is in marketing and advertising, especially as a means of controlling or eradicating the immense amount of ad fraud across the industry.

But how many blockchain marketing technologies exist right now, and how quickly are they being launched?

To help answer that question, the first ever Blockchain Marketing Technology Landscape has been launched today by Never Stop Marketing. Inspired by Scott Brinker's scarily humongous Marketing Technology Landscape, this first iteration shows both the current situation and the immense promise blockchain technology can offer marketers and advertisers.

The most obvious target for disruption? Adtech.

"If you have a basic understanding of the potential of blockchain technology - that it will disintermediate third parties - and you have a basic understanding of the current value chain of digital advertising (there's a huge amount of waste, with 44 percent of every $1 going to middlemen), then it's fairly obvious that the industry most ripe for disruption is adtech," Jeremy Epstein, CEO of Never Stop Marketing, told me.

The speed with which these companies are cropping up is both interesting and somewhat inevitable, given the incredible growth rate seen in Chiefmartec's original martech landscape.

"What surprised me is how quickly such a large number of projects and startups have emerged to attack the lowest hanging fruit," Epstein said. "Every day, I hear about more of them, which is why this is not a one-and-done effort."

So why has this, the associated ICO marketplace, and other applications of blockchain technology exploded so quickly?

"Because people have realized that the ICO (or Token Generating Event, which is the SEC-friendly version) is the 'killer app' of the blockchain era," Epstein said. "For the first time ever, anyone can create an open source (as opposed to proprietary, closed source) software that can be utilized, modified, built upon, forked, and preserved that also has a model to provide for the ongoing support and maintenance of the project."

That's important, because it changes everything, even existing open source methodologies.

"Contrast this with the way that traditional open source projects, like Linux or Apache, are funded - these are foundations that 'pass the hat' around each year to big companies to get their funds," Epstein said. "Now, though, with blockchain-based cryptographic tokens that can appreciate in value as the amount of network utilization increases, the people who create a valuable open source project have a built-in way to monetize the value they create and support ongoing development forever, and those who support it early on can benefit immensely."

The initial landscape is admittedly a little sparse, and there is plenty of white space to fill. But there are enough blockchain-powered marketing technologies available right now to help determine if this is really going to be the disruptive force we all expect it might be.

Of course, some think blockchain is a bubble that is ready to burst, while others point to the constant power struggle as banks, governments, and regulatory bodies attempt to control the technology.

"The decentralization genie (fueled by blockchain, but not limited to it) is out of the bottle," Epstein said. "No matter what China does or Jamie Dimon says, this wave of disruption is coming. It's part of the reason we did the landscape in the first place, so people can understand what is about to happen."

Huge growth is coming, according to Epstein, but that also brings a new set of issues to deal with.

"We don't need 10 different protocols for the adtech space, so people will have to assess if Papyrus, for example, is better than the others that I already profiled," Epstein said. "We don't need all of them."

This means that blockchain will ultimately be just another normal marketplace. The majority of players will fail, and the minority will succeed.

"Ninety-five percent of the tokens and coins around today will be worthless in a year or two," Epstein said. "But the 5 percent that emerge as winners? Some of those could be trillion-dollar protocols. There will be short-term fluctuations, but this is a business model disruption the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time, so I'm tracking and building on top of that trend."

The first Blockchain Marketing Technology Landscape is available from today via Never Stop Marketing's website.

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Blockchain marketing technology has arrived and is about to explode

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When you think of blockchain, you usually think about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. While these are interesting and disruptive in their own right, it is the non-currency applications of blockchain that could truly revolutionize how we do business.

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Forget about the other tech giants: Amazon is poised to beat them all. What are the consequences for the rest of us?

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The ride-sharing company is working with USC and AARP in a new study

Ride-sharing has taken off across the country among younger commuters, but Lyft is hoping to understand what it can do to better serve older populations in a new study it's running with the University of Southern California Center for Body Computing.

Through a $1 million grant provided by AARP, Lyft will be offering free rides to elderly USC patients and other senior citizens within the greater Los Angeles area. Participants will be outfitted with wearable decides that track their behaviors, with the goal of building new services that specifically meet the needs of older populations.

According to Dr. Leslie Saxon, executive director of the USC Center for Body Computing, the lack of affordable transit options can have particularly dire consequences for seniors, including several million every year who miss medical appointments due to lack of transportation access. Lack of access is also linked to increased rates of depression and feelings of isolation among seniors.

"It's not just missing doctors' appointments," Saxon told Fast Company. "What really determines survival in an aging population is socialization-it's any trip out of the house, and how active you are. That is the number one determinant of basically who lives and who dies."

In the United States, over half of the non-driving population is age 65 and over, which means they make fewer trips to the doctors, to eat out or shop, or to see friends and family, according to data from a 2015 research study by the Surface Transportation Policy Project.

The pilot program is set to launch this fall with a group of USC Keck Medical Center patients age 60 and up, all of whom have missed at least two doctors' appointments in the last 12 months. In addition to unlimited rides, the test group will also be given FitBits to monitor their health on a day-to-day basis.

Lyft says the company sees this as an opportunity not just to expand its customer base, but to move the conversation around ride-sharing forward and contribute a type of community service. To that end, the company already said it plans to expand the study in 2018 to other cities including Chicago and Atlanta.

Lyft | USC Center for Body Computing

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Lyft Is Offering Seniors Free Rides To Understand Their Needs Better

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The ride-sharing company is working with USC and AARP in a new study Ride-sharing has taken off across the country among younger commuters, but Lyft is hoping to understand what it can do to better serve older populations in a new study it's running with the University of Southern California Center for Body Computing.

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Bia Bezamat
Bia Bezamat is a fashion journalist by trade and innovation expert with experience spanning from fashion, retail, grocery and hospitality. Originally from Brazil, she is interested in how cultural, behavioural and technological shifts influence how consumers and brands interact. She is currently a member of the Advisory team at Stylus, helping brands understand changing consumer and brand behaviours.

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Nordstrom's new store concept will carry no inventory - Fashion & Mash

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Bia Bezamat Bia Bezamat is a fashion journalist by trade and innovation expert with experience spanning from fashion, retail, grocery and hospitality. Originally from Brazil, she is interested in how cultural, behavioural and technological shifts influence how consumers and brands interact.

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The traditional shopping mall is under threat. Here is how to meet the needs of digital customers.

Digital technology is transforming global lifestyles and changing the way we live, work, shop, eat, play, and learn. Real-estate developers therefore must provide new ways to meet these needs.

One example is the shopping mall. These sit at the heart of communities in many cities in both the developed and developing worlds. But as consumers embrace digital technologies, developers must redefine the traditional shopping mall to adapt to this behavior.

In this article, we explore five consumer trends that will shape the future of the shopping mall.

Entertainment

Many millennials-adults born from the early 1980s on-prioritize spending on multisensory experiences and events over product ownership. They prefer instant gratification from entertainment and are attracted to media, gaming, and experiences that are shared socially. Half of millennials regularly go online for video games (versus 30 percent for Generation X); four in ten use social media to record their experience after using a product. Meanwhile, Gen X consumers-those born from the mid-1960s to early 1980s-are embracing digital from a different angle. For example, this segment increasingly views digital entertainment as an education tool, underpinned by smart technology and an expanding, globally connected Internet.

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Meeting the needs of these groups while responding to rapidly developing technologies, such as virtual reality and participative experiences, will be the key to providing successful entertainment.

This disruption in traditional entertainment offerings has serious implications for the real-estate industry. Here are some ways that they may react:

Food and drink

"Food is the new fashion" is the mantra that increasingly guides development. The expression reflects the idea that food has usurped fashion as a force in retail and travel. One example is the fast-growing trend toward healthy eating, driven by millennials' preferences and government policies to curb obesity. Food-focused digital platforms that see consumers routinely reading online reviews before choosing restaurants or ordering through food-delivery platforms are on the rise.

Quick-service restaurants are upscaling through furniture and technology changes. At the same time, casual-dining restaurants are transitioning to two established formats-fast casual and casual premium. On the other hand, fine dining is embracing new and niche concepts, such as multisensory experiences. The sector is also adapting itself to provide more accessible dining formats.

In response, real-estate developers are positioning more restaurants within retail areas; the idea is to create gastronomic "stop spots" to attract shoppers. Real-estate experts suggest that the gross leasable area devoted to food and beverage outlets in malls could rise to some 25 percent by 2020 from 10 percent today. Among the possible strategies are the following:

Retail

Millennial consumers want to shop for experiences as well as products. Rising demand for cooking classes, health-and-wellness sessions, and makeup tutorials means that retailers, athletic-apparel makers, and electronics companies are changing what they offer and how. Specifically, traditional department stores and shopping malls are wondering whether and how to embrace online shopping.

The traditional department-store format is driving less traffic to shopping malls as consumers move their retail activity online. With online retail creating choice overload, consumers are beginning to appreciate curated retail concepts. "Pop up" stores that provide distinctive products for a short period are one significant response. These are on the rise in a variety of markets. In the United Kingdom, for example, pop-ups accounted for £2.3 billion in sales in 2015, up 12 percent compared with the previous year.

To meet this changing environment, real-estate developers should consider the following:

Creating retail centers, that are also learning zones to bring together consumers, retailers, and entertainment. One example is a sporting-goods store that includes a fitness studio to enable the consumer to experience the product.

Experimenting with niche retail concepts such as revolving storefronts, pop-up stores, dedicated space for "glocal" brands, and offline showrooms of online players. Doing so creates a more interesting mix of tenants. It may not maximize leasing yields per square foot, but it will generate buzz and traffic.

Converting anchor retail spaces into coworking areas that are flexible and reconfigurable for other retailers and more appealing to start-ups and to millennial customers. For example, one San Francisco mall created a coworking space that provided direct access to more than 20 million mall shoppers.

Allocating reconfigurable spaces in mall corridors and piazzas to host pop-up stores for product launches and seasonal offerings.

The future of the shopping mall Read the article

Transportation

Getting into and out of the mall is an important part of the shopping experience-and often a frustrating one, when it comes to parking, safety, and convenience. Here are some approaches that real-estate developers might consider to improve this part of the experience:

Technology

By 2017, the millennial generation will comprise the largest online audience, and they will have more buying power than any generation ever. Almost seven in ten say they are influenced by friends' social-media posts; 83 percent say they trust recommendations by friends and family. They rely on peer recommendations, and increasingly discover products online before going out to shop. But they still want to touch, feel, and explore products before purchasing them. The need, then, is to create a seamless chain between online and on-site shopping. There are several technology-enabled innovations to consider:

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Digital technologies and changing shopping habits are a clear threat to traditional retail business models. But there are positive ways to respond to these trends. To embrace these opportunities, real-estate developers must get closer to consumers and figure out how to meet their evolving wants and needs. That means rethinking the role of the shopping mall, and adapting its strengths to those of the virtual world.

About the author(s)
Sangeeth Ram is a partner in McKinsey's Dubai office.

Book Excerpt

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Meeting millennials where they shop: Shaping the future of shopping malls

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The traditional shopping mall is under threat. Here is how to meet the needs of digital customers. Digital technology is transforming global lifestyles and changing the way we live, work, shop, eat, play, and learn. Real-estate developers therefore must provide new ways to meet these needs. One example is the shopping mall.

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John Lewis: has removed gender specific labels from its childrens' clothing range

The poll, conducted by Toluna among 700 parents of children aged 16 or under, found that 77% of parents think that brands perpetuate stereotypes with the clothes, shoes and toys they sell for girls and boys.

It also found that 65% think the traditional colour scheme of blue for boys and pink for girls is now outdated.

The research follows a summer where gender stereotyping by brands was never far from the headlines, with consumers talking to social media to call out stereotyping. High street shoe brand Clarks found itself in the firing line after creating a school shoe for girls called "Dolly Babe", while a shoe for boys was called "Leader".

The move prompted a wave of criticism on social media with Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon tweeting: "It is almost beyond belief that in 2017 a major company could think this is any way acceptable. Shows what we are still up against."

Gender stereotyping, particularly when it comes to children clothes, is a pressing issue for brands. The issue was driven up the agenda once again last weekend by a flurry of media coverage over John Lewis' move to introduce non-gender specific labels in our its own brand children's clothing. The coverage, which "surprised" the retailer as the changes were introduced in January, sparked praise on social media.

A John Lewis spokeswoman said: "At the beginning of 2016 we introduced non-gender specific labels in our own brand children's clothing, and this was followed by the removal of 'girls' and 'boys' signage in our shops which was replaced with photos of children modelling our clothes.

"In our shops, girls and boys clothing are still positioned in the same way as they have always been and online customers can search by 'girl' or 'boy' if they choose to."

The research reflected a more fluid approach to gender segmentation of clothing with 29% of respondents saying that of girls are allowed to wear skirts to school boys should be as well.

The argument that advertising is simply reflecting existing inequalities in society appears to be running out of steam; 65% of parents said advertising has a responsibility to drive equality.

Breaking down the barriers

The focus follows the introduction of new guidelines from the Advertising Standards Authority to tackle gender stereotyping in advertising. The sensitivity of this issue was highlighted by the reaction to the recent Dolmio ad which depicted a mum in the kitchen while the dad (Dominic West) plays videogames with his son. Almost half (49%) of parents thought it was fine for a brand to create an ad depicting this scene, while 42% objected.

This divided opinion was highlighted by consumers interviewed for Campaign by behavioural research agency Watch Me Think who had mixed views on the ad. Some viewing it as "incredibly sexist" while others said it was a reflection of reality or "a bit of fun".

Do you think advertising reinforces gender stereotyping?

Do you think brands perpetuate stereotypes with the clothes, shoes and toys they sell for girls and boys ?

Is the traditional colour scheme of blue for boys and pink for girls outdated now?

Is it OK for a brand to create an ad of a mum cooking in the kitchen while a dad and sons play video games?

"Advertisers have every right to show mums doing the cooking because this reflects reality." Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

"Advertisers should seek to challenge gender stereotypes." Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

Should boys be allowed to wear skirts to school if girls are allowed to? yes/no/maybe/don't know

Should advertising simply reflect inequalities in society or does it have a responsibility to drive equality

Would you be less likely to shop in Clarks on hearing they named a boy's shoe 'Leader' and a girls shoe 'Dolly Babe'

Do you think it is time for retailers to end gender segmentation of products in the following categories:

Source: Toluna/Campaign online survey of 702 parents conducted w/c 28th August

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Parents blame brands over gender stereotyping

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The poll, conducted by Toluna among 700 parents of children aged 16 or under, found that 77% of parents think that brands perpetuate stereotypes with the clothes, shoes and toys they sell for girls and boys. It also found that 65% think the traditional colour scheme of blue for boys and pink for girls is now outdated.

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A change is sweeping through retail and it's not what everyone assumes it is. We may think the internet is changing shopping forever, and it certainly is, but another unspoken dynamic is everywhere - the bifurcation of retail.

Every action has a reaction: a nation high from snacking on six-second videos also needs to binge-watch hours of TV. The consistency of a McDonald's or Bud Light creates the need that craft beer and pop-up food festivals satiate. Shopping is seeing the same split, moving from shopping as a branded experience and to buying as the ultimate in ease.

Buying is rife

I'm pretty sure no person in modern times has ever been so bored that they went window shopping at Amazon; the spartan CMS, the ugly product shots and the functional taxonomy have all been designed to make buying as easy and seamless as possible. But never fun.

Shopping on Amazon (when it works best) isn't an experience, it's a lack of experience. It's unmemorable. I have bought books twice because I seemingly bought the first one in my sleep. It's the purest example yet of the act of removing every possible barrier, every piece of friction. The end result of countless A-B tests to optimise for simplicity, speed and efficiency.

This is the world of buying. It's the surgical operation of a system to reduce cognitive burden, to make decisions fast, facile and frictionless, if not automatic. It started off for people who know what they want and want to get what they need without thinking, yet it's becoming the default way to acquire goods in the age of too much choice and too little time.

So increasingly the world of retail seems to work this way. We have product reviews spreading across retail with quick-to-glance stars to give us confidence. We have the Wi-Fi connected Amazon Dash Button, which allows us to procure items with a nonchalant poke.

We have limited choice retail, reducing the agony of decisions by offering fewer, easier choices.

We have Hotel Tonight showing us a small range of perfectly decent hotels for that evening that you can book in a swipe. From Casper with its one mattress and eco-friendly baby brand Honest with its simple product offering, to US on-demand streaming service Direct TV Now with its four tiered packages with easy names like 'gotta have it' and 'live a little'. Even Maple, the new food service option in New York offers a handful of curated meals each day giving consumers fewer options to think about.

Either systematically reduce complexity at every turn, or add it in the most delightful way. Don't get caught in the middle.

What's easier than buying? Not buying. Things arriving magically each month. If the ultimate in luxury is never having to think, Walmart, Target and Amazon, Dollar Shave Club and more have subscribe and save programmes.
READ MORE: Unilever makes play to become a consumer services brand with Dollar Shave Club deal
The name of the game in buying is making it as easy as possible, and then more. Things like using a PayPal plug-in to save payment details and make checkout easier; using clear, bold interfaces like Polyvore to leverage the instant messaging interface; or getting consumers to swipe with the array of "tinder for shopping apps" or stroke you to purchase via apps like Blynk and Stylet.

New interfaces will continue to advance, buying will soon envelop us, from ordering pizza via voice in the Amazon Echo, to next removing the interface with predictive retail that sends you stuff before you realise you want it.

While it started there, this isn't just online retail. After years of assumptions that modern retail was about adding screens and complexity, Amazon Go stunned the world with a hyper modern store with technology removed. Gone were iBeacon coupons, or electronic pricing labels, Amazon Go was just a stripped out experience where people did nothing. Or we have concept stores like 'the store' in Japan, which just sells the very best one example in the world of about 200 items. The easiest choice architecture being "I just want the best".

Shopping gets fun

As a reaction to the emptiness of mindless procurement and understanding life is about experiences, not efficiency, we will see the growth of retail as experience.

Even the most ardent M&M's fan doesn't believe the 25,000 sq ft of M&M's World in Times Square, New York is there to satiate the cravings of New Yorkers for chocolate at 11:45pm. Like all flagship stores M&M's World is there to impart an experience. It's shopping to be remembered, it's a journey of discovery, it's memorable, it's there to take time and savour. It's the opposite of buying.

Shopping is most often found in physical retail because it's the easiest to do with sights and smells. Shopping is the world of adding experiences. It's the interactive perfume lab in Selfridges, the selfie opportunities in Harvey Nichols, the Hardware Club experiences in Harrods or the extravagant fragrance laboratories of Le Labo. Coffee shops seem to have learned this, it's the unnecessarily long wait, the drama of the brew, the theatre of the leather-bound menu in Intelligentsia coffee.

There are different takes, the curated journey and raison d'être of a store like Story in New York, with items placed around a modern tale. It's the smart mirrors and body shape scanners in department stores. It's the dramatic design of seemingly endless sewing machines in All Saints, or interesting concepts like Bespoke in Westfield San Fransisco that mixes working startups with places to shop. It's Nike's flagship stores with fitness equipment and running club events. It's the Lululemon pamphlets explaining why they made an item and the local notice board. It's the Uniqlo stores in Japan where you vote for your favourite new products with white dots.

Buying is what drives farmers' markets and their stories of provenance, the handmade signs and the seemingly added dirt. It's the lavender oil factory store in Provence, it's the oddly expensive wine store at the Vineyard. Buying is the tailored suit made from Suit Supply where the consultation is part of the experience.

But it's not just offline. Sites such as Net-A-Porter thrive with content as commerce, we have editorialised catalogues taking over the top end of the market, and even companies like Nike making TechBook, a tactile, immersive mobile app where the clothing comes alive. We have shop the look - not only are retailers making magazines, but magazines are becoming retailers.

Move to one extreme to thrive

So while we're seeing online and offline shopping start to come together, we see retail move to each extreme. The true successes of modern retailers will be those which understand the divergent nature of modern retail and work to optimise for both. It seems unlikely people want a quasi experience. Quite quickly, you are either looking for fun or for necessity.

Retailers need to establish which type they want to be and work hard to maximise that. Either systematically reduce complexity at every turn, or add it in the most delightful way. Don't get caught in the middle.

Shopping is getting extreme, it's time to rethink it all to maximise it for the modern consumer.

Work hard to understand consumers' changing needs and expectations. Ecommerce has changed buying habits forever: we now expect to find things quickly, to never wait in line, we demand that payments are quick, that suggestions for other items surround us. We expect delivery to be fast and free, we don't mind a relationship as long as it adds value and is two way.

Old world thinking is not tolerated. We won't understand if stores don't know what items they have in stock and have to make a phone call. We don't understand why a retailer cannot predict a delivery date. Vanity sizing is no longer flattering, it's deeply inefficient, costing consumers time and hitting retailers' profit margin. We're not sure why our relationship is still with retailers and not the brands they sell. If my sister has an ecommerce business, why can't this up-and-coming fashion label?

So let's think again. Shopping is getting extreme, it's time to rethink it all to maximise it for the modern consumer. And above all else, in a changing world it's time to change.

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Tom Goodwin: Make shopping practical or an experience, don't do both

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Retail is becoming a world of extremes. Brands either need to remove complexity and make the process as simple as possible, or add it in to create a "delightful" experience, says Tom Goodwin, executive vice-president and head of innovation at Zenith USA.

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There is nothing new about platforms or marketplaces, but we're seeing the world of retail start to be less about vertical operations or integration and far more about providing thin, horizontal slices of value.

Even companies touted as being 'vertically native digital brands' are rarely such. Rather, they are more like thin, value-adding brand layers. Warby Parker doesn't make its own glasses and Dollar Shave Club sells Korean razor blades via a third-party logistics company in Kentucky - at a loss. We're seeing retail becoming a stack of thin tranches of business that seek to specialise in a part of the process, but not all. When you think like this, costs can be reduced, audiences can grow rapidly and profitability seems easier.

Unlimited inventory

The most valuable companies in history have always been those with the expertise, assets, relationships and experience to make or sell, but things are changing. The fastest-growing and most valuable companies ever known are increasingly thin, but sit on top of complex systems and own the customer interface. What does this mean for brands and retail in the modern age?

So far, not much. The weird truth about this age is how little it has changed many industries and, paradoxically, how little value it has created. We may boast of change in the modern world and think that we've understood the power of the new, but compared with the change that is coming we've seen nothing yet.
READ MORE: Tom Goodwin - Make shopping practical or an experience, don't do both
At first, new technology is always bolted on to edge of existing companies. We add iPads in-store to show that we've understood omnichannel. Tesco home delivery is still closer to its original system of faxes to store managers than an Ocado-like, purpose-built, automated distribution center.

Retail has changed little. It is still limited by physical criteria and assumptions that, frankly, no longer exist.

Inventory has always been limited by both space and money. In the pre-digital age, retailers needed to hold stock which, understandably, limited choice. However, this no longer applies. There is now no reason why every retail brand can't sell sell pretty much everything ever made.

Amazon makes far more money from being a fulfilment company to other vendors' stock than it does from its own goods. Walmart is slowly moving in the same direction. Whether it's through being an affiliate linking to others' supply chains, or through stock you process yourself, there is no reason as to why your store can't sell more.

Retail is about audiences

With close to two billion people using it, Facebook is currently the largest media owner the world has ever known. In modern retail, we need to think less in terms of real estate and more in terms of eyeballs. We see businesses clamber over each other to own that interface.

Content makers now rely on Snapchat, Twitter, or Apple News, as well as Facebook itself. This aggregation layer is coming to retail. Google Shopping seeks to make money passing leads onto others in every category. Kayak and Priceline do the same thing in travel; ASOS and Outnet do the same thing in clothing.

Shopping is as simple as asking a plastic device in the living room to confirm the purchase of my new trainers.

Realising that publishers have always been good at building audiences, we see publishing brands move slowly into this space. Gawker once made more than $1m per year on affiliate sales, and Business Insider sure does push the reader to buy. We're seeing the worlds of publishing and retail combine. Magazines want to sell stuff and retail outlets like Net-A-Porter and Airbnb want to sell magazines.

In this new horizontal landscape, the name of the game isn't optimising a purchase funnel but shortening it.

We've seen 'buy now' buttons slowly shift across the web, but this movement will soon rapidly dominate the offline world too. Shopping from ads could be a matter of using fingerprint recognition such as Apple's Touch ID. Technology like QR codes or Blippar (once it is baked into proper apps and operating systems) will make any physical surface two clicks away from a purchase. Digital six-sheet outdoor screens become large catalogues.

The death of the purchase funnel

The past decade has seen brands go direct and offer ecommerce from their own websites. However, in doing that, many brands have realised that while they can attract more revenue - and profit - from cutting out the reseller, fulfilment isn't always as easy as it seems. Building a global pick-and-pack network is difficult, and diverts attention and funding from the core brand proposition.

This is why Nike recently realised that going direct isn't the be-all and end-all of ecommerce. Its somewhat reluctant decision to start selling through Amazon implies that the company realised that although millions of fans were going to its website, millions of fans were also going elsewhere, with that share of wallet being awarded to competitors. When it comes to identifying where the retail action (ie spend) is, it's always better to be inside the tent.
READ MORE: Pepsi sees 'infinite possibilities' in ecommerce
Amazon Echo proves that there's so much life still left in retail innovation. Whatever you think of ambient interfaces, they provide an excellent, lucrative opportunity for retailers. This is where the purchase funnel is not just shorter, but also quicker. Just 30 years ago, to buy a pair of trainers we had to save up enough cash and make a trip to a sports shop - within their preset opening times. Now, it's as simple as asking a plastic device in the living room to confirm the purchase of my new trainers and I'll pay off my credit card bill at the end of the month.

While this is phenomenally convenient in a way that couldn't have been foreseen in 1987, it also presents opportunities for traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers: to make their customer service so high-quality and personalised that it compliments online one-click retail, rather than attempting to compete against it.

Such innovation also lends itself to a further squeezing of the purchase funnel and a world where everything becomes a shoppable layer. In a way, the idea of the old bazaar has gone full circle: rather than visit somewhere where you can be surrounded by every merchant, you are now constantly visited (through your phone's location awareness and notifications - and, increasingly, domestic internet of things devices) by every merchant surrounding you.

This is the principle behind beacons, but this layer will soon become constant and prevalent. While washing machines that order their own powder are a well-known near-future concept, retailers advertising products to you based on your home temperature pattern or energy usage will also come into play.

Further, anecdotal evidence suggests that retailers are already playing with the idea of physical suggestions: "because you bought Product X, we'll send you Product Y". Buy it and keep it, or just send it back. This is certainly the idea behind Prime Wardrobe from - yes, them again - Amazon; there is no better way to encourage someone to buy something than to try it out in their own environment.

We need to reconsider every aspect of the world around us. We need to see everything as a shoppable layer, every password or entry field as a barrier.
Tom Goodwin is executive vice-president and head of innovation at Zenith USA.

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Tom Goodwin: The future of retail is everything being shoppable

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In the second of three articles on the future of retail, Zenith USA's head of innovation Tom Goodwin says marketers must get used to everything being a 'shoppable layer' of retail, placing their brand wherever sales can happen and shortening the path to purchase.

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To survive in the digital age, malls will need to reinvent themselves. Here's how.

Officially shopping malls are defined as "one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnected walkways enabling visitors to walk from unit to unit." ¹ Unofficially, they are the heart and soul of communities, the foundation of retail economies, and a social sanctuary for teenagers everywhere. In recent decades, the concept of the shopping mall, which has its origins in the U.S. and became a full-blown modern retail trend there in the post-WWII years, has proliferated across the globe. The five largest malls in the world now reside in Asia. China's New South China Mall in Dongguan stands at the top of the heap with 2.9 million square meters of space.

Despite its ubiquity, the mall as it's been conceived for the last half century is at a critical inflection point. A storm of global trends are coming together at the same time to cause malls to change the role they play in people's lives. No longer are they primarily about shopping. Now, when consumers visit malls, they are looking for experiences that go well beyond traditional shopping.

The trends helping to create this change include changing demographics, such as an aging population and increased urbanization, which means more people living in smaller spaces and a greater need for public spaces in which to socialize and congregate. In this environment, malls offer a welcome watering hole, especially in cities where other public spaces are not safe. Sustainability concerns are causing some consumers to prefer mixed use developments where they can live, shop and work all within walking distance - instead of having to get into a car and drive to a crowded suburban mall. The growing middle classes in Latin America and Asia maintain a strong association between consumption and pleasure, driving the need for more engaging shopping experiences. And finally, the e-commerce revolution and the rise of digital technologies are fundamentally reshaping consumer expectations and shifting the function of stores toward useful and entertaining customer experiences.

As these trends advance across the global stage, they are forcing mall operators to rethink how they conceive and operate their properties. This identity crisis is most intense in the U.S., the country that pioneered malls and has the most malls per inhabitant. Thanks to a continued economic slowdown and rapid advance of the digital revolution, the U.S. mall industry is retracting and facing high vacancy levels. Websites such as deadmalls.com collect pictures of weedy parking lots and barren food courts, and try to explain how once-thriving shopping centers began to spiral downward.

In the face of these considerable challenges, malls are seeking to stay relevant, drive growth and boost efficiency. We see successful players investing along three key fronts.
1. Differentiating the consumer offering, with a focus on experience and convenience.
Online shopping provides consumers with ultimate levels of convenience. Malls will never be able to compete with the endless product selection, price comparisons and always-on nature of online. Nor should they try. Instead, malls need to move in a different direction, away from commoditized shopping experiences and toward a broadened value proposition for consumers.

Innovative malls are incorporating value-added elements that attempt to recast the mall as the new downtown, including concerts, arts centers, spas, fitness clubs, and farmer's markets. These services provide a level of leisure and entertainment that can never be satisfied online. Xanadu, a mall 30 km from Madrid, for instance, has gone out of its way to provide the means for parents to spend quality time with their children. The mall features a ski slope, go karts, balloon rides, bowling and billiards. Similarly, the Mall of America in Minnesota has an underwater aquarium, a theme park, and a dinosaur walk museum. In Brazil, for instance, a new focus on leisure and entertainment is already driving growth. Revenue coming into malls from these offerings grew 41 percent in 2013 compared to 2012.

An emphasis on fine dining and events is also helping to make malls the hub of the local community - a place to share quality time with friends and family, not just wolf down a meal at the food court. The King of Prussia Mall, located 30 km from Philadelphia, has a Morton's Steakhouse and Capital Grille. The Crystal Cove shopping center in Newport Beach, CA has more than a dozen upscale restaurants, including Tamarind of London and Mastro's Ocean Club.

On the tenant mix front, innovative malls are strategically rethinking the types of stores that consumers will respond to. Anchor tenants that drive traffic are still key, but we also see a new emphasis on a curated mix of smaller stores that add a sense of novelty to the mall offering. Additionally, some malls are making greater use of temporary, flexible spaces that can accommodate different stores over time. Pop up stores, showroom spaces and kiosks provide customers with a sense of the unexpected and give them a reason to treasure hunt.

Finally, malls are overcoming the commoditization problem by focusing on specific consumer segments and/or creating specific zones within the mall that allow consumers to find an area that caters to them. In the Dubai Mall, for instance, "Fashion Avenue" is an area dedicated to luxury brands and services tailored to the upscale customer, including a separate outside entrance and parking area. In the 7-story CentralWord mall in Bangkok, home décor is on the 5th level, technology on the 4th, and fashion apparel on 1-3. This approach also represents a way for malls to ensure that customers don't get lost inside the ever increasing square footage of malls.
2. Transforming the mall experience by leveraging technology and multichannel strategies.
The digital transformation of retail is not all bad news for malls. On the contrary, it presents new opportunities for malls to engage consumers throughout their decision journeys. There are three primary ways in which malls are leveraging technology:

First, they are extending their relationships with customers to before and after the mall visit. This is about engaging customers through compelling content and creating deeper bonds with them through social media and proprietary sites and apps, as well as loyalty programs. Social media can be used, for instance, to create buzz about new tenants or solicit ideas from consumers about ideas for new stores. One mall company has utilized segmented Facebook communication to speak to different communities, such as different geographies or interest groups or specific malls. Mall loyalty programs can provide the means for malls to establish a direct relationship with customers that goes beyond each visit to the mall, while allowing malls to collect precious information about customers.

Just like retailers, malls should reach out to their customers with customized offers, gift ideas and other targeted advertisements based on real time intelligence and location-based marketing. While malls face the challenge of not having direct access to shopper purchase data, this can be overcome by inducing shoppers to use their smartphone to scan purchase receipts in exchange for points that can be redeemed for concerts tickets, books, discount vouchers for participating merchants, free parking or invitations to events (e.g., a fashion show). Alternatively, technologies such as face recognition, location-based mobile ads, and beacons are already being successfully applied in order to identify and establish targeted contact with repeat customers. Such technologies are also valuable for gathering consumer behavioral data from which malls can glean useful insights.

Secondly, malls are using technology to transform mall usability as a means of improving customer satisfaction. There is ample opportunity for malls to decrease customer pain points, while simultaneously creating entirely new delight points. Technology, for instance, can be used to address one of the biggest challenges shoppers face at the mall - finding parking. Sensors located in parking lots detect how many spots are available on each level and give visual indicators to drivers. Once within the mall, mobile apps can offer quick, easy guides to help shoppers find what they're looking for at today's increasingly large and multi-level malls.

Thirdly, malls are utilizing digital capabilities to take the shopping experience to the next level. It critical for malls to take a more active role in shaping the shopping experience, either by acting more like retailers or by partnering with them. Mall players are experimenting with a variety of different business models to make this happen, but there are no certain winners yet. To introduce elements of e-commerce into the mall, Taubman partnered with Twentieth Century Fox to put virtual storefronts - "Fox Movie Mall" - in at least 18 luxury malls. There, shoppers can purchase movie tickets by scanning a QR code with their smartphone. As the barriers between online and offline blur, some mall operators are venturing into online with a complete virtual mall offering. In 2011, the Australian mall company Westfield launched an online mall (and later a mobile app) with 150 stores, 3,000 brands, and over 1 million products. The company collects a small listing fee from merchants, as well as a commission of between 20-30 percent on every sale. Driven by the knowledge that 60 percent of the 1.1 billion annual shoppers in its malls use mobile devices, Westfield also created a research lab located in San Francisco, with the mission of finding technology applications and services that can further enhance the retail experience for both shoppers and retailers.
3. Exploration of new formats and commercial real estate opportunities.
The most innovative malls today look nothing like their predecessors. Although location remains the key real estate consideration for malls, a differentiated design and structure is increasingly important. Open air malls go a long ways toward lending an atmosphere of a town center, especially when they incorporate mixed use real estate. Many of the malls being built in urban areas are open and fully integrated with the landscape. The Cabot Circus Shopping Centre in Bristol, England, for instance, has a unique shell-shaped glass roof that's the size of one and a half football fields. Incorporating environmental sustainability considerations, the mall is accessible by public transportation and features a rainwater harvesting system. Even malls that are enclosed are now incorporating more natural ambiance into their design, installing plants and trees, wood walls and floors, waterfalls, and lots of glass to let in natural lighting. Such elements help malls better blend in with their surroundings.

It is critical that malls be about much more than stores. We see the mix of tenant/public space moving from the current 70/30 to 60/40, or even 50/50. When this happens, these expanded public spaces will need to be planned and programed over the year much like an exhibition. They will be managed more like content and media, instead of real estate.

Mixed used developments offer consumers an attractive, integrated community in which to live, work and shop. They also serve to generate additional traffic for the malls while maximizing returns on invested capital. Other commercial real estate opportunities that can add alternative revenue streams are hotels, office buildings and airports.

Lastly, outlets malls are an increasingly popular alternate format in more mature markets such as the U.S., particularly after the downturn of the economy, and they have been a key driver of growth for many players. In emerging economies like Brazil, outlets are also gaining attention and we see mall operators experimenting with this format as a means of attracting price conscious consumers and deal seekers.

Implications for malls

Although these trends are expressing themselves to varying degrees in different markets around the world, we believe they are relevant globally and should be taken to heart no matter where mall companies operate. There are three strategic considerations that players should understand when figuring out how to best react.

1) Evolve the offering by defining a clear value proposition for both consumers and retailers, anchoring it on deep consumer insights and bullet-proof economics. Among the large universe of options for enhancing the customer experience, it is possible to identify initiatives that will be both ROI-positive and substantially boost the satisfaction customers have toward malls. To do this, mall players must first isolate and quantify the consumer touch points that are most responsible for driving satisfaction. Use these touch points to prioritize areas of investment and to design a cohesive customer experience program that will yield higher visit and/or spend rates, and ultimately greater consumer loyalty.

2) Increase productivity and efficiency of the current mall base through a strategic review of the tenant mix, taking into account consumer needs and retailer economics. This analysis should guide the management of rent pricing and overall commercial planning. On the cost front, the focus should be on strict management of direct and indirect costs, combined with operational efficiency, which is critical for successful customer experience transformations.

3) Think surgically about where and how to grow in a way that won't jeopardize returns. Focus on city clusters and regions that have distinctive opportunities for growth. This includes thinking purposefully about disciplined capex management and which formats are going to create the biggest impact, whether that's traditional, multi-use, neighborhood or outlet.

Executing against these considerations will often require that mall players develop new capabilities. Westfield, for example, has established a Digital Office group that reports to the CEO with the mission of spearheading digital initiatives across the organization. Other companies have created "customer experience" teams that are responsible for creating and integrating a unified vision of customer initiatives. Still others have created retail teams responsible for working on partnerships with retailers, or alternatively, operating retail operations themselves.

The world of retail is changing dramatically, but the mall still can have a central role in urban and suburban societies. To avoid becoming what one chief executive calls a "historical anachronism - a sixty-year aberration that no longer meets the public's needs," mall operators must expand their horizons of what a mall can be. They must envision themselves no longer as real estate brokers, but instead as customer-facing providers of shoppable entertainment.

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To survive in the digital age, malls will need to reinvent themselves. Here's how. Officially shopping malls are defined as "one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnected walkways enabling visitors to walk from unit to unit."

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They say that with great power comes great responsibility.

This is clearly something Keith Weed takes pretty seriously. In the same week that his "great power" was confirmed by being voted the world's most influential CMO, his company Unilever sought to display "great responsibility" by spearheading a drive to "un-stereotype" advertising at Cannes.

It's this kind of industry-wide leadership that no doubt cemented Weed's status. Having the biggest budgets is one thing, but what really counts is an appetite for driving change that spreads to other organisations, and in this regard he stands alone.

I just hope this crusade goes better than his last one.

You see, the thing about this power-responsibility stuff is that good intentions aren't enough. Sometimes you can wreak havoc even if you try to do everything right, and nobody in marketing has proved this more in the past few years than Weed. His principal crime? The promotion of brand "purpose".

Counter-intuitively, the increasing focus on "purpose" - at least as Weed and his acolytes have defined it - is leading not to a diversification of brands, but in fact a homogenisation.

Now, the word "purpose" is pretty important in business. Literally it means "the reason something exists", and it's probably fair to say that every company could do with one of those. If you don't have a reason to exist then you are by definition pointless, which naturally isn't a great marketing platform. Better purposes mean better businesses - more useful, more insightful, more unique.

You would think therefore that the industry should be indebted to the man who spearheaded the "purpose movement". Logically his legacy would be an explosion of differentiation and innovation, as each business tries to carve out its unique place on this earth, in ever more creative and helpful ways.

Alas no.

Counter-intuitively, the increasing focus on "purpose" - at least as Weed and his acolytes have defined it - is leading not to a diversification of brands, but in fact a homogenisation. Rather than prompting brands to think about their markets differently, it is in fact leading them to cluster around a handful of common spaces.

What gives?

It all comes down to definition. In short, "purpose" no longer means "the reason something exists". Instead it has been recast as a synonym for "social responsibility".

Becoming "purposeful" doesn't now mean identifying a unique value that can be brought to the world. It simply means becoming more sustainable. Or maybe supporting disadvantaged communities. Or celebrating diversity. Or indeed promoting any worthy cause that can draw attention away from the organisation's core identity and genuine purpose, which, chances are, is something they're not quite so proud of.

Check out this interview with Weed in 2015 to see this logic in action:

Weed proposes that brands with purpose deliver growth. Yup, hard to disagree with that given that, as discussed earlier, the alternative is being pointless. However he then goes on to equate that purpose with sustainability - as if Unilever and all the brands in its portfolio exist only for this cause.

If that's the case, they might as well pack up and go home. Clearly Unilever have competitors in each of their categories that are well ahead of them in the sustainability game.

It's hard to see how brands like Axe and Persil can compete with purer competitors such as Lush and Ecover in that space. Weed made the error of equating purpose with worthiness and in doing so seemingly forgot what his brands are really for.

Thanks to his influence this error has now become so common as to be the norm, thus rendering the word "purpose" essentially useless.

Now, this doesn't mean social responsibility is not a worthwhile ambition. Naturally every organisation should endeavour to be as responsible as possible. It's just that with a handful of exceptions this is not the core purpose of the majority of brands.

It's an understandable mistake make, I suppose. After all, many of the world's genuinely purposeful brands (such as Tesla, Lush, and Unilever's very own Dove) are occupying these types of spaces. However that doesn't mean that to become purposeful other brands need to copy them, in fact quite the opposite. We already have these brands, these market spaces are already filled.

Brands like Red Bull, Apple, Airbnb, Monster, Southwest Airlines, and Harley-Davidson are all clearly purposeful, but you wouldn't necessarily describe them as worthy. Worthwhile yes, but not worthy.

You need to bring something different to the party, offer something on top of your green credentials; otherwise customers might as well just go to the originals.

Brands like Red Bull, Apple, Airbnb, Monster, Southwest Airlines, and Harley-Davidson are all clearly purposeful, but you wouldn't necessarily describe them as worthy. Worthwhile yes, but not worthy. Hopefully they operate in a responsible way, but in each case responsibility is a way of operating, not the reason for operating in the first place.

So when you're thinking about your purpose, think broadly. You are not Ben & Jerry's, you are not Dove, you are not Tom's, you are you.

Your goal is not to blend in, but to stand out. And the best way to do that is to know what unique value you provide. Figure that out and deliver on it, and you'll truly be "doing good".
Alex M H Smith is the founder of Basic Arts.

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Has Keith Weed steered us in the wrong direction on brand purpose?

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They say that with great power comes great responsibility. This is clearly something Keith Weed takes pretty seriously. In the same week that his "great power" was confirmed by being voted the world's most influential CMO, his company Unilever sought to display "great responsibility" by spearheading a drive to "un-stereotype" advertising at Cannes.

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The first global analysis of all mass-produced plastics refers to the "near-permanent contamination of the natural environment with plastic waste".

From shops offering individually-wrapped bananas to apples packaged in tubes, plastic is everywhere. And news that fish are mistaking plastic debris for food, is just one example of the negative environmental impacts.

So where is progress happening? We asked readers to send us examples and here we explore three ways businesses are trying to curb plastics use. Do you have other examples? Add them to the comments below or tweet them to us @GuardianSustBiz and we'll share the best examples on our Twitter feed over the coming week.

1. Minimising packaging

If you've been at the receiving end of an online purchase that has come swamped in plastic in an oversized box you'll know how frustrating it can be. The answer seems simple - pack the product in something smaller and minimise the need for so-called void fillers such as polystyrene chips inside. Yet companies are often constrained by the limited range of box sizes available.

Meet Slimbox, a machine which helps companies create customised packaging boxes in-house to reduce cardboard and filler waste. At €25,000 (£23,100) per machine, Slimbox CEO Filip Roose says he's aware how important return on investment is to his customers.

"We've calculated that if a company sends at least 30 packages a day then it should get a return on investment after approximately two years," says Roose. "The more they send, the shorter this timeframe."

As well as reducing costs over time, Roose highlights the environmental benefits: "Yes you reduce packaging use, but you also reduce carbon emissions by being able to transport more packages at once."

Sent via Guardian Witness

By Shauni Nicque

2. Refills

A number of shops now offer people the ability to bring in their own Tupperware, bottles and jars to refill with items like pulses, nuts, grains and washing-up liquid.

Splosh has taken this concept online, enabling customers to buy concentrated laundry and cleaning product refills, which arrive by post in plastic pouches that can then be posted back to the company free of charge for re-use.

"The problem of plastic waste cannot be solved while we still buy from supermarkets, because single-use plastics are essential to their business model," says Angus Grahame, founder of Splosh."

Splosh's refillable concentrates, says Grahame, enable customers to cut plastic waste for most laundry, home cleaning and personal care products by around 95%. "We believe the move to the circular economy is about massive new business model opportunity rather than tweaking decades old systems as the likes of Unilever are trying to do," he adds. "The value destruction to existing brands when it happens, and it will happen quickly, will be awesome."

Sent via Guardian Witness

By rfrisk

3. Banning plastics altogether

London's Borough Market has pledged to phase out sales of all single-use plastic bottles over the next six months, offering free drinking water from newly installed fountains instead.

Similarly, some bars and restaurants have started to ban straws in an effort to reduce the volume of plastics that end up in the oceans. The city of Seattle is taking this a step further next month with its Strawless September campaign to get local businesses to switch to paper alternatives where necessary, and ditch straws altogether where possible.

Despite Marks & Spencer's "apple tubes" and plastic-wrapped plastic cutlery, the company has been exploring innovative alternatives to plastic packaging. By tattooing avocados rather than using produce stickers, for example, it intends to save 10 tonnes of plastic labels and backing paper and five tonnes of adhesive every year.

Cosmetics company Lush takes a very clear position when it comes to packaging: the ideal is none at all (approximately half of Lush products can be purchased without any packaging, according to the company website). By creating a solid shampoo bar, Lush claims it saves nearly 6m plastic bottles globally every year. What's more, since the bars are more concentrated than liquid shampoo, less is needed per wash, resulting in lower carbon emissions from transportation.

Sent via Guardian Witness

By Jennifer Cocking

Have you got any other examples? Add them to the comments below or tweet them to us @GuardianSustBiz.

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Tattooed avocados and shampoo bars: the businesses curbing plastics waste

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The first global analysis of all mass-produced plastics refers to the "near-permanent contamination of the natural environment with plastic waste". From shops offering individually-wrapped bananas to apples packaged in tubes, plastic is everywhere. And news that fish are mistaking plastic debris for food, is just one example of the negative environmental impacts.

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In our almost 45 years of doing business, Patagonia has never run a television advertisement. But with America's public lands under unprecedented threat, we continue our legacy of advocating for the planet by bringing our voice to the airwaves.

In a nearly $700k media buy, Patagonia has purchased statewide television and radio time in Secretary Zinke's home state of Montana reminding him of what he said, "our greatest treasures are public lands." Additionally, we have purchased television and radio in Utah because Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monuments could be recommended to be rescinded, and we will be on the radio in Nevada where Gold Butte and Basin and Range National Monuments are also under threat. We intend to spread even more awareness by promoting the ad on social and digital media and it will be on the homepage of our website.

To run our first-ever television ad, Patagonia chose this issue and this time because it is that important. We don't know of any other company currently running persuasion ads on television targeting the administration, and for us, this is an issue we have been advocating for since our founding.

In a statement, Patagonia President and CEO Rose Marcario said, "The national monuments under review are a critical part of our national heritage and these lands belong not just to us, but to future generations. We stand with the millions of Americans who spoke out in support of keeping protections in place for public lands. We hope Secretary Zinke will remember his roots and his words and protect these 'national treasures.'"

This is not about politics or partisanship - it's about standing up for places that belong to future generations. We want to raise awareness of history's lesson that when public lands are turned over to states that can't afford to maintain them, the result is the land is often auctioned off to private companies who irrevocably damage them and deny access to them for all of us. Whether you are a hunter or a hiker, an angler or a climber, we want you to join us in this fight to ensure access and protection for our public lands.

There is limited time before Secretary Zinke makes his August 24th decision on the remaining 21 national monuments and it is our hope that he will follow in the tradition of President Teddy Roosevelt and conserve our shared public lands for future generations. But no matter the outcome we won't stop fighting to protect our public lands and we believe the voices of the people will be heard.

We would welcome your coverage of this news. You can view the ad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCVNk0H9Erc. The script, as well as a list of some of the previous actions we have taken to protect public lands, are below.

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Patagonia Runs First-Ever TV Ad in Support of Public Lands

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In our almost 45 years of doing business, Patagonia has never run a television advertisement. But with America's public lands under unprecedented threat, we continue our legacy of advocating for the planet by bringing our voice to the airwaves.

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Ageing parents are two and a half times more likely to rely on their children to drive them to hospital appointments, on shopping trips and other important journeys than five years previously, research by the AA motoring group has uncovered.

On the flipside, the so-called mates' taxi is becoming less popular among teenage drivers, offering the hope of fewer multiple-fatality crashes involving cars overloaded with young passengers.

A report published by the Department for Transport shows that 30% of over-60s who have chosen not to learn to drive did so because they preferred to rely on family and friends (compared with 12% five years previously). while the figures for 17- to 20-year-olds giving the same reason fell to 23% from 30%. The proportion of young people blaming the high cost of learning to drive was 44% - down from 55% five years earlier.

Separate DfT figures show that, for the first time in recent years, the proportion of over-70s with a driving licence has dropped, from 64% to 62%. The decline relates almost exclusively to older men, down from 81% to 78%, while older women maintain the previous year's 50%.

However, it does not mean fewer pensioners driving on the road. Half a million more full driving licence holders are aged 7-plus compared with five years ago.

The statistics offered hope that the teenage driver death and injury toll would decline more quickly, the AA said. Official road casualty figures show that 29% of killed or seriously injured passengers are aged between 17 and 24.

"It looks like the mates' taxi will have to pull over and make way for 'gran and grandads' taxi - payback for all the times parents drove their kids to school, sports activities and parties," said the AA president, Edmund King.

"However, there is a worrying side. In 2010, after high pump prices led to an exodus of hospital appointment and other volunteer drivers, AA campaigning helped to convince the coalition to raise the tax threshold on claiming private car mileage expenses from 40p to 45p a mile for the first 10,000 miles. That reversed the drop in numbers and the increasing burden on NHS resources to fill the gap."

King said lower dependence on the mates' taxi was a hopeful sign. "Among 15- to 18-year-olds, 58% of accidental deaths happen on the road. Among young males in this age group, it is 55% and a staggering 63% among young women. The likelihood of dying in a crash is even higher when it is a car full of teenagers. It is such a tragic waste."

The road safety group Brake said peer pressure could encourage bad driving and led to younger drivers "showing off" to their passengers and taking more risks.

Sixteen- to 17-year-old drivers are up to four times more likely to die in a crash when carrying young passengers than when driving alone, but 62% less likely when carrying older adult passengers, suggesting it is peer pressure rather than simply the presence of passengers that raises the risk.

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Older people increasingly relying on offspring to drive them

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Ageing parents are two and a half times more likely to rely on their children to drive them to hospital appointments, on shopping trips and other important journeys than five years previously, research by the AA motoring group has uncovered.

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Tom Goodwin
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Marketers must get used to everything being a 'shoppable layer' of retail, placing their brand wherever sales can happen and shortening the path to purchase. This is an extract of the second in a three part series on the future of retail I'm writing for Marketing Week. The full piece is here, and the first piece is found here.

Alibaba is the world's largest retailer, selling more than Amazon and eBay combined to over 200 countries. And yet, it holds no inventory. It does no shipping or selling. Perhaps it's defined best by what it doesn't do.

There is nothing new about platforms or marketplaces, but we're seeing the world of retail start to be less about vertical operations or integration and far more about providing thin, horizontal slices of value.

Even companies touted as being 'vertically native digital brands' are rarely such. Rather, they are more like thin, value-adding brand layers. Warby Parker doesn't make its own glasses and Dollar Shave Club sells Korean razor blades via a third-party logistics company in Kentucky - at a loss. We're seeing retail becoming a stack of thin tranches of business that seek to specialise in a part of the process, but not all. When you think like this, costs can be reduced, audiences can grow rapidly and profitability seems easier.

Unlimited inventory

The most valuable companies in history have always been those with the expertise, assets, relationships and experience to make or sell, but things are changing. The fastest-growing and most valuable companies ever known are increasingly thin, but sit on top of complex systems and own the customer interface. What does this mean for brands and retail in the modern age?

So far, not much. The weird truth about this age is how little it has changed many industries and, paradoxically, how little value it has created. We may boast of change in the modern world and think that we've understood the power of the new, but compared with the change that is coming we've seen nothing yet.

At first, new technology is always bolted on to edge of existing companies. We add iPads in-store to show that we've understood omnichannel. Tesco home delivery is still closer to its original system of faxes to store managers than an Ocado-like, purpose-built, automated distribution center.

Retail has changed little. It is still limited by physical criteria and assumptions that, frankly, no longer exist.

Inventory has always been limited by both space and money. In the pre-digital age, retailers needed to hold stock which, understandably, limited choice. However, this no longer applies. There is now no reason why every retail brand can't sell sell pretty much everything ever made.

Amazon makes far more money from being a fulfilment company to other vendors' stock than it does from its own goods. Walmart is slowly moving in the same direction. Whether it's through being an affiliate linking to others' supply chains, or through stock you process yourself, there is no reason as to why your store can't sell more.

Retail is about audiences

With close to two billion people using it, Facebook is currently the largest media owner the world has ever known. In modern retail, we need to think less in terms of real estate and more in terms of eyeballs. We see businesses clamber over each other to own that interface.

Content makers now rely on Snapchat, Twitter, or Apple News, as well as Facebook itself. This aggregation layer is coming to retail. Google Shopping seeks to make money passing leads onto others in every category. Kayak and Priceline do the same thing in travel; ASOS and Outnet do the same thing in clothing.

Realising that publishers have always been good at building audiences, we see publishing brands move slowly into this space. Gawker once made more than $1m per year on affiliate sales, and Business Insider sure does push the reader to buy. We're seeing the worlds of publishing and retail combine. Magazines want to sell stuff and retail outlets like Net-A-Porter and Airbnb want to sell magazines.

In this new horizontal landscape, the name of the game isn't optimising a purchase funnel but shortening it.

We've seen 'buy now' buttons slowly shift across the web, but this movement will soon rapidly dominate the offline world too. Shopping from ads could be a matter of using fingerprint recognition such as Apple's Touch ID. Technology like QR codes or Blippar (once it is baked into proper apps and operating systems) will make any physical surface two clicks away from a purchase. Digital six-sheet outdoor screens become large catalogues.

The death of the purchase funnel

The past decade has seen brands go direct and offer ecommerce from their own websites. However, in doing that, many brands have realised that while they can attract more revenue - and profit - from cutting out the reseller, fulfilment isn't always as easy as it seems. Building a global pick-and-pack network is difficult, and diverts attention and funding from the core brand proposition.

This is why Nike recently realised that going direct isn't the be-all and end-all of ecommerce. Its somewhat reluctant decision to start selling through Amazon implies that the company realised that although millions of fans were going to its website, millions of fans were also going elsewhere, with that share of wallet being awarded to competitors. When it comes to identifying where the retail action (ie spend) is, it's always better to be inside the tent.

Amazon Echo proves that there's so much life still left in retail innovation. Whatever you think of ambient interfaces, they provide an excellent, lucrative opportunity for retailers. This is where the purchase funnel is not just shorter, but also quicker. Just 30 years ago, to buy a pair of trainers we had to save up enough cash and make a trip to a sports shop - within their preset opening times. Now, it's as simple as asking a plastic device in the living room to confirm the purchase of my new trainers and I'll pay off my credit card bill at the end of the month.

While this is phenomenally convenient in a way that couldn't have been foreseen in 1987, it also presents opportunities for traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers: to make their customer service so high-quality and personalised that it compliments online one-click retail, rather than attempting to compete against it.

Such innovation also lends itself to a further squeezing of the purchase funnel and a world where everything becomes a shoppable layer. In a way, the idea of the old bazaar has gone full circle: rather than visit somewhere where you can be surrounded by every merchant, you are now constantly visited (through your phone's location awareness and notifications - and, increasingly, domestic internet of things devices) by every merchant surrounding you.

To see the rest of the piece, please visit it at https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/08/07/tom-goodwin-future-retail/

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The future of retail is everything being shoppable

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Marketers must get used to everything being a 'shoppable layer' of retail, placing their brand wherever sales can happen and shortening the path to

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In this guest post, PHD strategist and Gen Y-er, Remi Baker (pictured below), says she's a big fan of brands who get this whole brand activism thing right...

Our trust in companies, politics and advertising is at the lowest it's been in 20 years.

It's therefore no surprise that we are looking to brands to have a point of view, especially when it comes to cultural, social and political issues that are important to us.

Our distrust in politics has been fuelled by a string of global events: First Brexit, then the US election and the more recent UK election. These events have brought important topics like immigration, equality and globalisation to the forefront of our agendas and have triggered a reaction, especially amongst millennials like myself. They reignited our passion to stand up for what we believe in, and with it came a feeling of responsibility; a growing realisation that it's now up to us to influence change.

Which in turn, altered what we expect from brands. We no longer want them to simply sell us something, we want our brands to stand for something.

And don't the big brands know it.

You just need to look back to the Super Bowl earlier this year, which was a show reel of brands trying to save the world.

They make it easy for us. I mean, what better way to feel like we're making a difference than without actually having to venture away from the comfort of our day to day: buying a latte from a barista whose coffee supports refugees, investing with a bank dedicated to driving marriage equality and driving a car that supports gender equality. It requires minimum effort, but still makes us feel like we're doing our bit. Like our purchases are helping save the world, even if it is just one frothy coffee at a time.

There's been a lot of negativity around brand activism recently: Is it right? Are brands simply jumping on the bandwagon? It's brought debate and divided opinion. Do brands have a right to play in this space? As a Millennial, I think they have a responsibility to... providing they play by the rules.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying every brand should be mindlessly badging their name onto a cause. That's exactly the problem. There needs to be a clear, meaningful and authentic connection between the brand and issue. If there isn't, we're not buying it.

So just how can brands foster authentic activism to help connect with this notoriously sceptical audience? Below are a few guiding principles:

Build around a single-minded brand purpose - The best brand activists have a clear and unwavering brand purpose that runs through everything they do. Their activism is a natural extension of their existing positioning and they are single minded in their approach. It's therefore important that your brand chooses its cause wisely and focuses on only one. Brands who try to do too much end up undermining and diluting their message.

Policy not politics - Don't focus on a political stance or going up against a party or leader as that means venturing into very dangerous territory. Instead focus on a policy or issue that is important and relevant to your brand and your audience. The key word here is 'relevant'. Tiger beer recently launched their 'Clean Air Gallery' campaign, partnering with Air-Ink to help transform harmful pollution into harmless ink. Whilst a nice idea, without an intrinsic link between the brand and cause, it seems a little meaningless.

Practice what you preach - Make sure your brand aligns its external and internal values. Trust me, if they don't, we will find out and it will bring everything you say into question. A good example of a brand who practises what they preach is US clothing brand Patagonia, who are committed to social and environmental conservation. Not only do they spread a message promoting conservation, but they live by the premise, with their clothing made from almost 100% recycled materials.

Demonstrate your commitment - Go beyond traditional marketing, from rallying governments to leading petitions, put what you say into action. Take Air B&B as an example who are a global brand that believe in equality. How do I know that? Not just because they tell me they do in their ads, but because their actions show me that they do. From their 'Ode to Acceptance' Super bowl ad, to their commitment to providing free accommodation to 100,000 refugees.

Stick to your guns - Every cause has two sides and when you champion a POV, there are always going to be haters. How you manage those with opposing viewpoints will say an awful lot about your brand and a brand that sticks to their guns will earn greater respect. When Holden partnered with Mardis Gras earlier this year, the biggest star to come out of the campaign was their social media team. Whilst the brand received a torrent of negative comments across their social channels, the responses from Holden remained positive and true to their cause.

Brands need to fight harder than ever to get our attention and having a point of view can be a point of difference for a brand. Yes, there's risk involved, and the few brands that have dared tread into this territory have seen a mixed response. But those who live up to their promise and truly believe in what they say, have seen the benefits and earnt respect amongst millennials.

So, I guess it comes down to one question: who will be brave enough to take a stand?

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A Millennial's View On What Works (& What Doesn't) In Brand Activism - B&T

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In this guest post, PHD strategist and Gen Y-er, Remi Baker (pictured below), says she's a big fan of brands who get this whole brand activism thing right... Our trust in companies, politics and advertising is at the lowest it's been in 20 years.

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No one wants to look like a plank when talking about the video landscape. It's a hot topic full of hype, stats, launches, boasts and innovations. The noise can sometimes drown out the nuance. You need to keep your video marketing game tight.

The latest news in the world of video is Netflix's recent Q2 results. They were better than forecast with the subscription video on demand (SVOD) service adding 5 million subscribers to take its total number of subs worldwide to more than 100 million ( a billion households have internet access).

Wall Street is relieved, but should marketers care? What does this mean? What should you know? Does it matter?

Allow us to help. We've spent years being asked what Netflix means for TV and we have answers to all the major questions - backed up with proper research rather than the hope or guesswork that fuels some of the video debate.
How much of my ad budget should I give to Netflix?
You can't advertise on Netflix (or Amazon Prime for that matter). Netflix accounts for 0% of the video advertising we see in the UK. YouTube, for example, accounts for 0.7%. TV is 94% - and that is before you take into account the quality of the advertising environment.
Is Netflix an apocalyptic, end-of-the world style threat to TV as we know it?
No. Much of Netflix is TV. Netflix and other SVOD services are a part of the TV industry. They commission high quality, premium TV series - which expands the TV production industry - and buy archive shows from broadcasters around the world providing them with extra revenue. (The time may come when broadcasters air Netflix shows, and then brands could advertise around them.)

We need to see Netflix in perspective: it generates a lot of interest but it accounts for less than 4% of the average person's video consumption in the UK. TV accounts for 75%.
But Netflix says it is 'replacing' scheduled TV?
It has been claiming that for a long time. But it is speaking to shareholders and journalists, not to the facts. The fact is that scheduled TV and Netflix co-exist very happily. In fact people who subscribe to Netflix tend to also subscribe to the biggest TV packages - they are telly addicts.

Yes, Netflix has probably pinched a bit of the time people used to spend watching scheduled TV - as have the broadcasters' own VOD services. But a replacement it is not. On demand services like Netflix have mainly replaced Blockbusters and to a certain extent physical DVD box sets.
Why won't it replace scheduled TV?
If live, scheduled TV didn't exist, we'd have to invent it. People like it and miss it when it is gone (we've got video footage of people going cold turkey when we took live TV away). TV fulfils basic human needs to share, belong and not miss out - especially scheduled TV, where FOMO comes into play, fuelled by social media.

On-demand TV doesn't satisfy all our different emotional viewing need-states. It is great at more personal, indulgent viewing, but less good at the social side of things which is such a fundamental human need. Only live TV does that, which explains why, despite the myriad on-demand options available, the vast majority of TV watched is live.
But they've got some good shows?
Yes they have - as does Sky, ITV, Channel 4, the BBC, UKTV, Viacom, Turner, Fox, NBC, CBS and other TV broadcasters around the world. We are spoilt for choice and the broadcasters invest eye-watering amounts into their TV shows. For example, UK broadcasters spend £6bn a year on programmes. That's just in the UK. Netflix invests less than that globally.

And Netflix's content - like SVOD generally - is quite limited. It is predominantly eye-catching drama and film, which is great but not universally appealing. We cannot live by film and drama alone. For instance, people really enjoy local TV shows (as in particular to their country, rather than village). They also love topicality and live TV events. They like watching Pointless and Countdown too.

When Netflix invests in marquee shows like The Crown or House of Cards it is very much a marketing investment to attract subscriptions. In terms of their business model, they're less concerned with viewing time and more concerned with payment of the monthly subscription. That's perhaps a reason why they and Amazon Prime don't release viewing figures; it isn't how they are judged.
So how much time do people spend watching Netflix?
Well, they don't release viewing figures. However, our analysis of the best available industry data (such as BARB, Ofcom, IPA, and comScore), estimates that Netflix is a proportion of the 4% of total video time that is accounted for by SVOD. In total, the average viewer in the UK watches four hours, 37 minutes of video a day, so that would put total SVOD at under 11 minutes a day. Given that Amazon Prime is in that same SVOD 4%, let's say Netflix is about two thirds at around eight minutes a day.

However, not everyone in the UK watches Netflix; it is currently in 7 million households in the UK, which is roughly one in four. These households obviously watch more than eight minutes a day. Given the population average is eight minutes a day and one in four homes have Netflix, then average viewing in Netflix homes would be four times the population average, so 32 minutes a day.

This is below other attempts to calculate Netflix viewing, which can get up to an hour and a half a day. But these aren't UK figures, they are global averages, and the UK TV market is very strong. It makes sense that UK Netflix viewing would be lower than a global average that is heavily skewed by the service's popularity in the US.

There is also reason to believe that average Netflix viewing is decreasing as the enthusiastic early adopters have been joined by subscribers who dip in more occasionally or perhaps joined to watch a specific series and carried on subscribing.

So there you have it. Netflix is a valued new part of the TV world, some additional choice for viewers, but ultimately not that much use for marketers.
Matt Hill is the research and planning director at Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK.
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Debunking Netflix: the essential guide for marketers

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No one wants to look like a plank when talking about the video landscape. It's a hot topic full of hype, stats, launches, boasts and innovations. The noise can sometimes drown out the nuance. You need to keep your video marketing game tight.

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Rachel Arthur
Rachel Arthur is an award-winning business journalist specialising in fashion and technology. She contributes to titles including Forbes, Wired, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Business of Fashion. She is also the founder of tech-focused news site FashionandMash.com and the vision behind the global #FashMash community. An expert in all things digital, she otherwise acts as a strategic brand consultant within the fashion and luxury space, future-proofing businesses by bringing them first-to-market insights and bespoke solutions surrounding the evolving retail, technology and communications landscape. She regularly speaks on such subjects at conferences around the world, including SXSW, CES, Web Summit and the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, and serves as a mentor on various start-up accelerator programmes in London. Rachel was awarded trade/B2B fashion journalist of the year by Fashion Monitor in 2015.

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ASOS launches visual search tool to aid inspiration and discovery for shoppers - Fashion & Mash

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Rachel Arthur Rachel Arthur is an award-winning business journalist specialising in fashion and technology. She contributes to titles including Forbes, Wired, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Business of Fashion. She is also the founder of tech-focused news site FashionandMash.com and the vision behind the global #FashMash community.

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The BBC is collaborating with Microsoft to develop an intelligent update to its iPlayer streaming service which would allow it to eavesdrop on living rooms to assist it in suggesting programmes to watch.

By harnessing voice data emanating from the world around it the BBC wants to go head to head with the likes of Amazon's Alexa and Google Hom e to offer a more personalised service.

The scope of this nascent iPlayer is such that it should be able to work out who is watching it and even whether they are viewing a second screen while doing so, enabling it to tailor suggestions more precisely - suggesting PG content when children are present or more adult fare after hours for instance.

Cyrus Saihan, BBC head of digital partnerships, wrote in a blog: "Just by listening to the voices in the room, your TV could automatically detect when there are multiple people in the living room, and serve up a personalised mix of content relevant to all of you in the room.

"When your children leave the room to go to bed, BBC iPlayer might hear that the children are no longer there and then suggest a different selection of content for you and your partner. All of this personalisation could happen without anyone having to press a button, sign in and out or change user profiles."

This would amount to a marked change in emphasis from the current player which prioritises the human touch over algorithms.

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BBC and Microsoft partner to develop an iPlayer capable of identifying users by their voices

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The BBC is collaborating with Microsoft to develop an intelligent update to its iPlayer streaming service which would allow it to eavesdrop on living rooms to assist it in suggesting programmes to watch. By harnessing voice data emanating from the world around it the BBC wants to go head to head with the likes of Amazon's Alexa and Google Hom e to offer a more personalised service.

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Thought there was something interesting in this in terms of benefits - maybe something to think of in 'beyond'?

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Because I am a horrible person and a worse mother, my initial thought about the premise of last night's Old People's Home for 4 Year Olds (Channel 4) - whereby a group of the latter are introduced into the former for six weeks - was that it came straight from a list of horror movie outlines unable to get studio funding because of their bottomless depravity. My son is six. A retirement home full of silent, immobile adults is my dream. If a production company tried to introduce anyone under 60 into that beautiful scenario, I'd sue. Imagine decanting a classful of youngsters into a retirement home for anyone other than convicted war criminals. The average pensioner has paid their stamps. Let them rest in peace before they - well, rest in peace.

It is an initiative from the US, of course - a nation full, at least until very recently, of gregarious, outward-looking people who have taken to intergenerational education and entertainment schemes in a big way.

In last night's opening episode, four-year-olds Nelson, Eva ("When you are old you go in a bungalow"), Millie, Solomon and friends met 10 volunteers for the scheme in the St Monica Trust retirement community. They included 87-year-old Michael, who looked younger and fitter than I do; Zina, who is suffering from depression after her husband's diagnosis of dementia; best friends Sheila (86) and Lorna (92); and the rather wonderful Hamish, who has an artificial leg and wore an attitude of bemusement towards the whole thing. "I can't quite see what great difference it's going to make."

He - and I - had our cynicism gently sloughed away as the first half of the six-week experiment wore on. Anything different is welcome in a place that - although obviously of a very high quality - is still, as one resident put it, full of passengers on a journey on which there is only one stop. And if that something is 10 bundles of exuberant joy, youthful curiosity and unselfconscious affection, then so much the better.

There were no earth-shattering revelations. Walking is easier if you are with someone to whom everything is new and exciting ("I sawed a robin!") rather than traipsing up and down the physio's office. Watching ducklings hatch is more thrilling than eight hours of television. A trusting little hand in yours will get you out of your seat even if you are feeling down. In many ways, it would have been better done as a mood piece rather than structured as an experiment. The breaking down of human interactions into categories and tickboxes only took away from the programme's delights.

Hamish - a bachelor without immediate family and clearly nervous rather than curmudgeonly - was soon casting aside his walking stick and hunkering down on the floor to be a sleeping lion who will wake with roars terrifying enough to delight all his young companions. David, an 89-year-old retired geologist who once led expeditions to the Arctic but who now sits in his chair since being widowed four years ago, joined the group and lost his heart to Eva ("She's a poppet"). Zina's face lit up when one of the children chose her to help with a memory game.

It was heartbreaking and uplifting all at once, and I've at least partially changed my mind. When I'm 80, you can let the children in again. Once a week for six weeks will either kill me or cure me, and by that time I'll be more than ready for either.

***

Is It Safe to Be Gay in the UK? (BBC2) was a beautiful film about ugly, ugly things. Some of the one in four LGBT people who experience a homophobic attack in their lifetime told their stories - sparely, powerfully - of dealing with such violence. The attacks ranged from ABH to attempted murder - Connor's assailant left a hammer embedded in his skull - to, in 62-year-old Ian Baynham's case, actual murder. His sister Jenny, who is also gay, spoke of how they had always planned to live together in later years. "I miss him more and more the older I get."

The programme wisely, and movingly, dwelt not just on the violence itself but on its lasting effects on survivors and their families. The grandmother who raised him misses the old Connor. Dain and Jamie's relationship is strained by their different reactions to being brutally beaten on a night out; Dain has become more determined to be visible, Jamie more wary.

It is not safe.

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Old People's Home for 4 Year Olds review - a moving and uplifting experiment

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Because I am a horrible person and a worse mother, my initial thought about the premise of last night's Old People's Home for 4 Year Olds (Channel 4) - whereby a group of the latter are introduced into the former for six weeks - was that it came straight from a list of horror movie outlines unable to get studio funding because of their bottomless depravity.

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LONDON, United Kingdom - When Beautycounter launched Countermatch, a lightweight moisturiser designed to hydrate, feed and oxygenate the skin, all 25,000 units of the product sold out within 12 hours. The moisturiser attracted over 10,000 names on a waitlist and when the product was restocked a month later, again, it flew off shelves, selling out within a week. "I got mine today and cannot stop touching my face. This product is incredible," wrote one fan online. Another despaired: "Oh no, I didn't get to order mine!"

The success of Beautycounter - which was founded by Gregg Renfrew in 2011 and is currently on track to generate $225 million in annual revenue by the end of 2017 - is particularly impressive given that the company doesn't spend any money on traditional advertising. Instead, Beautycounter, which only sells products it says are free from harmful chemicals, relies largely on direct peer-to-peer sales by a network of over 25,000 independent consultants.

Pioneered by the likes of Avon, Mary Kay and Tupperware, the concept of peer-to-peer selling has been around for decades, having emerged as an early way for non-working women to earn extra money. Now the approach has new momentum, thanks to social media and the rise of the "gig economy," a term coined at the height of the financial crisis in 2009 to describe the growing shift to more part-time, short-term or freelance work arrangements.

Whether it's an opportunity for people wanting to supplement their income or a lifestyle choice, more and more people are working as independent contractors than ever before. In 2016, the number of freelancers in the US hit 55 million, according to a survey by the Freelancers Union, a non-profit advocacy organisation based in New York.

As a result, direct selling is picking up steam. "Direct selling is the original 'gig economy' employment. Decades before people worked to a schedule, direct selling gave people flexibility that traditional jobs did not," says Katherine Hutt, director of communications for the Better Business Bureau, a non-profit focused on advancing marketplace trust.

It's important to feel good about the products you are selling, especially since you will be mostly selling to your family and friends.

But direct selling has always had a bit of a stigma. Some people call it a "pyramid scheme," while others are swift to underscore the difference between pyramid schemes and what is known as multi-level marketing (MLM), a strategy often used by direct selling companies to encourage existing distributors to recruit new distributors by paying the existing distributors a cut of the sales made by their recruits. "The essential difference is whether the seller is primarily selling goods to consumers or primarily recruiting 'down line' sales consultants," explains the Better Business Bureau's Hutt. "In some pyramid schemes, there is no product at all, just a pool of money that requires new participants to invest, in order for the current participants to receive any profits - and usually it is only the scheme's founders who receive anything worthwhile at all."

Yet allegations of deceptive misconduct have been raised against several direct selling companies, including Herbalife and Team Beachbody. The Federal Trade Commission in the US has argued that Herbalife cheated hopeful salespeople out of hundreds of millions of dollars, while Team Beachbody has been criticised for requiring sellers to pay a monthly fee and continually buy products themselves. "It's really important for people to research the company, read the contracts and agreements carefully, and understand what they are getting into as a direct seller. It's also important to feel good about the products you are selling, especially since you will - at least in the beginning - be mostly selling to your family and friends," says Hutt.

Not all MLM companies depend on a constant churn of recruiting or require their consultants to stock up on as much inventory as possible, of course. "We're not the typical 'get started for $99' churn-and-burn type of business that largely profits from consultants' personal product consumption," says Lynne Cote, chief executive of Cabi, one of the largest direct selling womenswear businesses in the US. "We support those who are serious about building their own business, and who are willing to begin with a solid investment coupled with a true entrepreneurial spirit." The company, which this year celebrates its 15th anniversary, hit over $255 million in revenue in 2016 and now works with 3,500 independent "stylists" in the US, UK and Canada.

As for Renfrew, she first got the idea for Beautycounter after seeing "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary film about former US vice president Al Gore's campaign to educate people about global warming. When she couldn't find many beauty products free from potentially harmful ingredients, she realised she had a business opportunity on her hands. It was then that the "Never List" was conceived: a roundup of more than 1,500 potentially unhealthy ingredients that Beautycounter has pledged never to use in its products.

This is why the brand favours one-to-one selling sessions, during which consultants can explain the importance of safer ingredients, says Renfrew. But whatever the reasons, it's a strategy that is driving results. "Our growth continues to be explosive. We've seen strong revenue growth for the past few years [about 200 percent year-on-year] and we expect to reach over 30,000 independent consultants by the end of 2017," says Renfrew.

She credits the rise of social media for enabling today's direct sellers to more easily maintain a far greater number of personal relationships than ever before, thereby significantly extending their reach and driving stronger results. Indeed, these days, Facebook live parties, Instagram and personalised websites are all part of the direct seller's arsenal.

Stella & Dot, a "social selling" jewellery and accessories company launched by Jessica Herrin in 2003, made more than $220 million in sales in 2013, up from $100 million the previous year, thanks, in part, to the company's integration of new technology.

These days, Facebook live parties, Instagram and personalised websites are all part of the direct selling arsenal.

Today's social sellers also benefit from data analysis. "We provide analytics to our sellers on a weekly basis, whether it's how many items they sold, how many people liked their products, and we also have a league where they can see where they stand in terms of traffic rankings. It can be very competitive," says Maria Raga, chief executive of Depop, a social shopping platform with over 7 million users worldwide.

Poshmark, another player that has adopted a peer-to-peer sales strategy, has pivoted away from its origins as an online reseller site. "The key to our success was not to be another resale company, but to build a platform to support people to start, run and grow their own businesses," says Tracy Sun, co-founder of Poshmark. The San Francisco-based marketplace, which has over 2.5 million registered users, is currently on track to double its revenue to $100 million by the end of 2017, up from $50 million in 2016. The previous year, the company launched a wholesale business allowing pre-qualified sellers to buy merchandise from brands at wholesale prices and sell it on their pages for a profit.

Glossier, a direct-to-consumer beauty brand launched in 2014 by Emily Weiss, the founder of beauty blog Into the Gloss, has also taken a page from the direct selling playbook, introducing a referral initiative where customers can get a $10 credit for each friend referred by email or social media, who goes on to make a first purchase (friends receive 20 percent off). This was the first time Glossier has offered monetary compensation to its most engaged audience. Fans quickly caught on - there is now a dedicated Reddit thread where users debate whether or not Glossier has gotten "too close to MLM territory" - although this kind of marketing strategy is becoming standard practice inside and outside the beauty industry.

Earlier this year, Glossier launched a more formal representative program. According to a spokesperson at the company, there are currently over 500 'reps,' all of which have been selected by hand. Some even have their own landing page on the Glossier website with a video introduction and their favourite products.

Oakland-based Adia Adores was one of the beauty bloggers invited by Glossier to be part of the program. "I'm a huge fan of Glossier, so of course I was blown away... to be part of the Glossier rep program. Lots of makeup brands use big influencers, but the Glossier program is really driven by their most loyal and involved customers (like me)," she said in a blog post. Being part of the rep program means that sellers earn a commission if users click on their unique link to purchase a Glossier product. "Just think of it as a way to support me and my blog," said Adia.

But for Beautycounter, a traditional store could be the next step. "Gone is the time when you could tell your customers how to shop. Now, they dictate to you how they want to shop. We want to meet our customers wherever they want to be met," says Renfrew. Today, Beautycounter's products can be purchased via the company's e-commerce site, through strategic partnerships with retailers like Target and J. Crew, at a pop-up shop on Nantucket Island or, of course, through peer-to-peer sellers, which remains the brand's largest sales channel. "[Beautycounter is] not a direct-selling brand. We consider ourselves as a direct-retail brand: direct to consumers through multiple channels."
Related Articles: Will Social Selling Work in Fashion? Jessica Herrin of Stella & Dot on Remaking Direct Sales for the Digital Age

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Beyond Avon and Mary Kay, Why Social Selling Still Works

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LONDON, United Kingdom - When Beautycounter launched Countermatch, a lightweight moisturiser designed to hydrate, feed and oxygenate the skin, all 25,000 units of the product sold out within 12 hours. The moisturiser attracted over 10,000 names on a waitlist and when the product was restocked a month later, again, it flew off shelves, selling out within a week.

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This deal isn't just important because it involves big numbers and even bigger artists. It signifies what's next: SoundCloud is gearing up to become the next Spotify competitor.

For years, SoundCloud's quest to become a freemium music subscription service has been an open secret in the online music world. It's a strategic shift for SoundCloud, which initially embraced the so-called "YouTube for audio" model-allowing users and creators to upload new music, mixes, and podcasts in the hopes of becoming a comprehensive hub for all kinds of listening.

That's a noble goal, but a tricky business model: Free music doesn't generate nearly as much revenue as paid subscriptions, even if "free" is supported by advertisements (SoundCloud's advertising is minimal). To date, SoundCloud's business has banked primarily on the willingness of artists to pay more for added perks like longer upload times, deeper analytics, and promotional tools. But there are only so many artists in the world, let alone those willing to pay $7 (pro) or $15 (unlimited) per month. But there are 175 million active monthly listeners on SoundCloud. Why not hit some of them up for money?

The UMG deal also saves SoundCloud from the looming threat of copyright lawsuits, at least from Universal. Although with so many user-made remixes and "mix tapes" on SoundCloud, it's unclear exactly how this deal will affect that segment of SoundCloud's content trove. It's also not known if this clears UMG content for inclusion on the free version of SoundCloud, although as VentureBeat points out, "UMG will retain control over which of its artists are made available on the free version of the platform."

Unlike Spotify, Deezer, or Apple Music, which launched as on-demand subscription services, SoundCloud would be retrofitting its service for the premium subscription model, which is likely no easy task.

It remains to be seen exactly how a premium version of SoundCloud would look and function. But with so much usage-SoundCloud hit 4.9 billion monthly streams in the middle of 2015, nearly doubling year over year-it's hard to imagine the company messing with the experience of its free users too much, if they can help it.

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SoundCloud Wants To Be The Next Spotify. Will You Pay?

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This deal isn't just important because it involves big numbers and even bigger artists. It signifies what's next: SoundCloud is gearing up to become the next Spotify competitor. For years, SoundCloud's quest to become a freemium music subscription service has been an open secret in the online music world.

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Anyone in the movie business who tells you they're not scared stiff about the future is probably lying.

This story first appeared in the March 28, 2017 issue of Variety.

There's ample reason to be fearful. It's been 128 years since Thomas Edison first helped usher in theatrical exhibition with the creation of the Kinetoscope, an early motion picture viewing device. In the ensuing century, cinema has given audiences Garbo and Rin Tin Tin, introduced "May the force be with you" into the cultural lexicon, and dazzled crowds with man-eating sharks and dinosaurs so massive and menacing they could barely be contained on even the most cavernous of screens. Despite that history, there is mounting anxiety among theater owners, studio executives, filmmakers, and cinephiles that the lights may be starting to flicker.

As consumer tastes and demands change, Hollywood is scrambling to adapt. Instead of surrendering to existential dread, studio chiefs and exhibitors are showing a greater willingness to experiment, particularly when it comes to releasing movies in the home within weeks of their theatrical debut for between $30 and $50 per rental. If that comes to pass, it would represent the biggest distribution and exhibition shakeup since the introduction of the DVD created a home-entertainment windfall in the late 1990s.

Some industry veterans are unconvinced that the business can pull it off. Structurally, these studios and the agencies and exhibitors that orbit them are too sprawling, too slow-moving, and too entangled in a dizzying web of antiquated business practices and associations to respond effectively to the digital era.

"The major studios have not been choreographed or run to be entrepreneurial," says Amir Malin, managing principal and co-founder of Qualia Capital, and former CEO of Artisan Entertainment. "It's a system that's been intoxicated with a 'cover my ass' mentality. Simply put, it's a defective system, and when a business paradigm is defective, very good people start doing things that are counterproductive."

There are two major problems gripping the industry. Younger audiences are becoming more interested in streamable content that is accessible on their iPhones or tablets. They'll still turn up at the multiplexes to see the Avengers save the world or watch Han Solo slide behind the wheel of the Millennium Falcon, but despite a few massive blockbusters, the zeitgeist continues to shift from the big to the small screen.

"I think the proof is right in front of us with what's happening in cable and streaming services," said Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer of the Transformers films. "Directors want to go there, because they're able to tell interesting stories.... That's where the chances are being taken. That's where the action is now."

The other problem is that the financial underpinnings of the business are showing signs of strain. Nowhere is this clearer than the barriers that are springing up between Hollywood and its most reliable sources of capital. The smart money left the business years ago, partly because of Silicon Valley's promise of fortune, but also because investors were put off by creative studio accounting that turned hits into financial losers.

Now new money - particularly that which has been pouring in from China - appears to be drying up. Chinese authorities are putting tight restrictions on foreign investment, limiting the flow of capital into the entertainment industry. That resulted in a failed $1 billion sale of Dick Clark Productions to Dalian Wanda, and the potential collapse of another $1 billion slate-financing pact between Paramount and two Chinese players, Huahua Media and Shanghai Film Group.

"They think Chinese companies are overpaying for Hollywood and they're slowing it down," says entertainment attorney Schuyler Moore, a partner at Stroock who has been involved in arranging slate-financing deals for the likes of DreamWorks and Warner Bros. Moore thinks that Chinese investment may be gone for good, and that other forms of venture capital will transition away from film to emerging forms of popular entertainment such as virtual reality. "The interest is not in the traditional film model," says Moore. "All investors see there is trouble."

Optimists maintain that revenues are still growing. The domestic box office hit a record $11 billion in 2016, and the global box office reached a new high-water mark of $38.6 billion. Three months in, 2017 has already fielded such blockbusters as "Beauty and the Beast" and "Logan." But that growth is being driven by higher ticket prices and inflation. Simply put, fewer people are going to the movies. U.S. and Canadian attendance has failed to match the 1.5 billion admissions the industry hit in 2004.

"You're spending more money to reach less people and to less effect," said Adam Goodman, former Paramount president and founder of Dicotomy. "You're opening movies only to see them burn out at the box office."

Just-released figures by the Motion Picture Assn. of America reveal that attendance in 2016 remained flat.

Gone are the days when studio chiefs were true moguls, ruling over the lots like sultans. Today, studios are a small piece of sprawling media and technology empires. Most of the movies are made far away from Los Angeles, in cities like Atlanta or New Orleans where tax credits are the most generous. All of the studio executives who make greenlighting decisions have bosses higher up the corporate ladder, and the films they produce are becoming less and less integral to the bottom line. The Comcasts and Disneys of the world make more money from their cable or consumer product lines than from movie ticket sales.

Source: MPAA

Perhaps it's the mounting fear that an iceberg is approaching, but studios and exhibitors do seem closer to signing that grand bargain which would enable films to get early home entertainment releases for a higher price. As an enticement, distributors are willing to cut theaters in on a percentage of their digital sales. Six of the seven biggest studios - a group that includes Fox, Paramount, Lionsgate, Sony, Warner Bros., and Universal - are having unilateral discussions with major theater chains like Regal and AMC.

Currently, big theatrical releases are supposed to wait roughly 90 days before they're available to be sold or rented.

But studios argue that's too long, and they want to shrink the window in which theaters have exclusive access to their films. With the DVD market fading fast, they need to find a way to prop up home-entertainment revenue. There is a belief, accepted as dogma in some studio boardrooms, that streaming services like Netflix have conditioned consumers to access content whenever and wherever they would like it.

"It's just such an obvious thing that has to happen," says Jessica Reif Cohen, an entertainment and media analyst with Bank of America, adding that she thinks offering films earlier in the home may be attractive for people with young children.

"It may be an impulse buy, or they don't have a babysitter, or have other reasons for why somebody doesn't go," she says.

Source: MPAA

At the very least the two sides are talking. In the past, exhibitors have been hostile when studios have tinkered with release windows. They've long believed that if movies are made available to rent or buy within weeks of their release, then customers might steer clear of multiplexes. Not wishing to become handmaidens to their own destruction, theater operators have warned of cannibalistic consequences, ready to man the barricades at any incursion.

A plan by Universal to release 2011's "Tower Heist" two weeks after it premiered in theaters, for instance, was kiboshed after theater owners threatened to boycott the comedy. Paramount waded into the issue again in 2015, this time convincing AMC and others to allow them to release "Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension" and "Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse" as soon as they stopped being shown on a certain number of screens. Chains like Regal refused to show the film.

"A lot of the problem has to do with the unknown factor of consumer behavior," says Eric Wold, an analyst at B. Riley & Co. "Will the consumer want to see a movie opening weekend regardless of knowing it's only coming out on-demand a few weeks later? It's going to be tough to come to something everyone agrees on."

The talks have proven to be unusually complex. Because of antitrust laws, each studio must negotiate with every exhibition chain on an independent basis, making it difficult to establish an industry-wide model.

Both sides have invested millions of dollars researching at what price and after how many weeks a film is released in the home will consumers begin abandoning the cinema for the pleasures of the couch. Among the entertainment companies, Universal and its filmed entertainment group chairman Jeff Shell and Warner Bros. and its CEO Kevin Tsujihara are seen by exhibitors as being the most aggressive in pushing for a deal. Shell and Universal believe that $50 is too high a price for rentals, and are backing a lower-cost model. The studio would like all of the films it makes to come out on premium video-on-demand at a set time, likely in the range of between 20 to 30 days. Warner Bros. has been more willing to have a window of between 30 to 45 days, although it, too, would like to see the price come in at around $30 a rental. The Time Warner-owned studio thinks that some movies, particularly the bigger franchise films, might not be right for an early release.

Source: MPAA

There are corporate reasons that these two media companies are showing the stiffest spines around the negotiating table. Shell was sent to Hollywood by Universal's corporate parent Comcast with the express purpose of finding a more efficient way to distribute movies. Comcast's main business is cable TV, providing systems in the home to consumers, and creating content to flow through its cords via its NBC division. Similarly, Time Warner, Warner Bros.' parent company, is poised to be acquired by AT&T, a telecom giant that wants to push films and shows to its network of smartphone users. They interface directly with customers in a way that studios don't, and they make the bulk of their profits from subscriptions and transmission fees, not from the box office.

Many of the studios that are more dependent on ticket sales seem more flexible. They may be willing to agree to a model where films could reach on-demand platforms as soon as they fall below a certain screen count. The thinking is that if a film is no longer attracting crowds in theaters, there's no reason it can't be offered in the home.

Studios and exhibitors are hitting the negotiating table armed with data they argue shows that, at a certain point and for a specific price, premium on-demand either becomes additive or it cannibalizes the exhibition business. Then there are questions about how the films will be distributed. Will it be through iTunes and other popular rental services, or via some other third party armed with antipiracy technology? Because of their size, studios have largely limited their discussions to the country's biggest chains, but if they reach a domestic agreement, that will likely change terms for foreign exhibitors.

Executives who have been involved in the talks say the issues are thorny, and the parts that intersect and must be addressed are myriad. But they seem willing to engage as never before.

"From my perspective, the people that fund movies should have a loud and strong and important voice in how they recoup their investment," says Tim League, founder of Alamo Drafthouse, an independent theater chain. "I don't think theaters are grandfathered in to having a long, exclusive window. ... I just hope that however we decide to experiment with windows, it's based on data and made rationally with all the players invited to the table."

The uncertainty surrounding the film business and the direction it needs to take in order to survive is also being manifested in the corporate suites. Sony Pictures is struggling to find a replacement for outgoing CEO Michael Lynton, having cycled through likely candidates such as former Disney COO Tom Staggs, while considering more offbeat options like former Hulu head Jason Kilar.

Then there's Paramount, in desperate need of a turnaround, which appears to be close to hiring former Fox film chief Jim Gianopulos. "I don't remember a transition like this, with two studios without studio heads," says producer Beau Flynn. "I think people are concerned about taking those jobs because there's a little bit of a reboot going on. What does a major, global motion picture studio look like in 2017? There are real questions about how your studio fits into this new world."

Even as the names at the top change, filmmakers are trying to figure out a way to keep pace with rapidly evolving tastes. Projects can take at least two to three years to develop and put into production. They require an enormous outlay of capital and an appetite for risk.

"The big question you lose sleep over every night is, with everything that can change in 12 to 18 months, is a great story with great characters unique enough to still attract an audience?" says "Arrival" producer Glen Basner, CEO of FilmNation.

When studios have faced competition in the past, they've adhered strictly to a formula of size matters. In the 1950s and '60s, for instance, the growing influence of television prompted studios to invest in elaborate biblical epics and, later, musical extravaganzas as a way of differentiating the big screen experience. This impulse toward gargantuanism continues. To beat back against the YouTube tide, studios are flooding theaters with superhero adventures, reboots, and animated fare.

No one can top Disney in this realm. With an arsenal that includes LucasFilm, Pixar, and Marvel, the studio has sucked up the rights to everything from "Star Wars" to "The Avengers." The company earned 61% of total industry profits in 2016, according to research by Cowen & Co.'s Doug Creutz, at a time when the movie business's earnings shrunk 19%. That's left the non-Disney pack with blockbuster envy.

In this climate, studios are steering away from mid-budget dramas, seeing them as too dicey a proposition with a limited upside. That's led to fears of comic-book fatigue, as studios dive deeper into sprawling graphic-novel universes. For now, the strategy is working - four of the top 10 highest grossing films last year were based on Marvel or DC Comics characters. But there are fears that these movies lack the spark of freshness that inspired past generations, and that, ultimately, they'll lead to diminishing returns.

"I do worry that we'll get to a point where today's tentpoles grow so homogenized that movie-going will radically drop off," says producer Mike De Luca. "But before that happens, I hope more studios learn to chew gum and walk at same time - that they produce not only tentpoles, but invest in original, diverse storytelling as well."

The irony is that it's easier to make movies today than ever before. Digital cameras have made it cheap to shoot, and editing software is readily available to average consumers. Aspiring directors can literally make a movie on their iPhone, as director Sean Baker did with 2015's "Tangerine."

At the same time, Netflix and Amazon have entered the movie scene looking for content, and Apple is supposedly weighing the idea of buying films to distribute exclusively. Even off-beat companies are looking into the film business. PepsiCo was at last year's Sundance looking to snap up projects that could connect with a younger, music-loving crowd, while companies from Best Buy to BMW are wading into original programming to sell televisions and luxury cars. There are more buyers than ever before for films, and more ways to get them in front of audiences.

"It's the Wild West in terms of content," said De Luca. "All the old traditions and formats are up for grabs."
James Rainey contributed to this story.

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The Reckoning: Why the Movie Business Is in Big Trouble

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Anyone in the movie business who tells you they're not scared stiff about the future is probably lying. This story first appeared in the March 28, 2017 issue of Variety. There's ample reason to be fearful. It's been 128 years since Thomas Edison first helped usher in theatrical exhibition with the creation of the Kinetoscope, an early motion picture viewing device.

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Writing for THR, analyst Richard Greenfield argues that streaming could pave the way for film companies looking to capture consumers' dollars
This story first appeared in the Sept. 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
The consumer's media consumption has undergone tremendous change over the past decade. With the dramatic fall in large-screen HDTV prices, a high-quality home-theater experience is now being enjoyed by mainstream consumers. But that is only the beginning of the transformation, as we now have access to all forms of content (video, music, gaming) on devices with stereo sound and HD screens that fit into our pockets. We increasingly pay for "access" to content, forgoing the need to "own" that content. Content no longer needs to be watched live thanks to ever-larger DVRs, a wide array of on-demand offerings tied to cable/satellite subscriptions and the rise of subscription VOD over-the-top video services such as Netflix. Social media creates a nonstop stream of content (text- and video-based) that is far too large to be consumed by any one person.

In the midst of this change in the consumer's media experience, the movie industry remains remarkably similar to what it was a decade ago and even multiple decades ago. If you and your family wanted to watch Disney's Frozen the day it was released, you had no choice but to buy tickets and head out to the local movie theater. While theatrical release windows have shrunk, and continue to do so, the movie industry has focused on using technology to improve the moviegoing experience, with higher-quality sound and projection systems, incredible special effects and 3D technology. The goal has been to ensure that consumers continue to buy ever more expensive movie tickets, helping to mask a slow, secular decline in domestic attendance (albeit, year-to-year, content has created significant volatility). All the movie industry's growth in attendance has come overseas, benefiting from a rapid expansion of the installed exhibition base in markets such as China, Russia and Latin America.

The technology-led transformation in the media industry will continue to accelerate and force the movie business to evolve or suffer the consequences. We are now entering an ultra-high-def TV world; with the click of a button, unlimited content can be binge-viewed without commercial interruption from the comfort of your living room. Spend eight hours watching season one of True Detective back-to-back on HBO GO; you would be hard-pressed to find a movie that is as compelling to watch. Consumers will shift their time, attention and money toward television if the movie business resists change for much longer - meaning attendance declines will accelerate. With technology transforming the industry globally, overseas attendance will also peak and ultimately suffer the same challenges facing the domestic business.

The key factor insulating the movie business from this threat is consumers' desire for a shared movie experience. There is no denying that watching Mr. Chow jump out of the trunk in the original Hangover is so much better in a crowded theater. Yet everywhere we look, we are witnessing a personalization of the consumer's media experience, with shared experiences becoming less important. Virtual reality in the near future is also likely to enable incredible immersive entertainment with the ability to create a shared viewing experience.

By 2024, the concept of a multimonth window between a movie's theatrical and home entertainment release will no longer exist. The initial catalyst will be online distributors (think Netflix) growing large enough to finance movies on their own terms and release them across all platforms, including theaters (offering movie exhibitors a far more robust split in the process). Many consumers will still choose to experience a movie in a theater, while others will prefer to enjoy the film at home with prices varying based on the level of convenience offered. The other catalyst to collapse release windows will be the rising threat of piracy. As movie piracy shifts from sketchy websites to beautiful interfaces ( such as Popcorn Time), with one-click streaming to IP-enabled TVs, movie studios will use cross-platform, global day-and-date releasing to capture consumer attention and dollars. By 2024, consumers will be able to pay for and access content whenever they want and wherever they want on a device of their choice.

Look for movie studios to transform themselves into continuous storytelling factories, with the initial "movie" being just one aspect. Think of how online games create new extensions, features and content to maintain consumer interest to capture a steady stream of players' dollars. Consumers will pay to subscribe to a stream of content from a movie studio, whether that be the initial movie, sequels, online video content, interactive games, immersive virtual-reality experiences where you are placed inside the content, etc. Shifting consumers from a la carte movie-ticket and home entertainment purchases to content/franchise subscriptions will also reduce fears around collapsing sequential release windows.

In a sense, movie studios will need to morph into television studios, which tell ongoing stories. This is a logical evolution for a movie industry that is now obsessed with the creation of "franchises," with increasingly little to no interest in midbudget films. How many wannabe Jedis and their families would pay for an everything Star Wars subscription? Avengers? Frozen? Spider-Man? Batman? Avatar? Whereas the movie industry has resisted change in the past decade(s), major change over the next decade feels inevitable.

Read more from The Hollywood Reporter's "Future of Film" special report:
Producers Opt for Foreign Talent, Far-Flung Locations to Boost Box Office Even Bigger Screens and, Yep, Cinema Selfies 4 Experts Predict How Moviegoing Will Change in 10 Years VFX Legend Douglas Trumbull's Plan to Save the Movies Why Oculus Rift Was Worth $2B to Facebook Richard Greenfield is a media and technology analyst at global broker dealer BTIG.

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Future of Film: Studios Will Have to Take Their Cues From TV Networks

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This story first appeared in the Sept. 12 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. The consumer's media consumption has undergone tremendous change over the past decade. With the dramatic fall in large-screen HDTV prices, a high-quality home-theater experience is now being enjoyed by mainstream consumers.

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As Los Angeles continues to develop its technology economy, Hollywood remains the area's strongest marketplace. Though making movies seems like fun (and often is), the strategic elements can be challenging -- namely financing, promotion, and distribution.

Crowdfunding and online marketplaces have gained traction, and new opportunities are opening up for new filmmakers (and established ones). And as the tech economy further develops itself in L.A., there may be greater chances for startups to collaborate with larger studios and production companies. Some foresee a symbiosis that would benefit both established houses and early-stage ventures.

This week, Hollywood-based incubator io/LA hosted a panel, including:

Darren Marble, CEO of FilmBreak, an online marketplace that connects filmmakers with investors and fans; Taylor McPartland, President of FilmBreak; Evan Ferrante, Producer of Reckless Productions; Robert Tercek, FilmBreak Advisor and former President of Digital with the OWN Network and SVP Digital with Sony Pictures; Bill Sutman, Finance Executive and FilmBreak Advisor and former CFO at Universal Pictures; and writer, director, and producer Eric Watson.

In a Q&A, we asked what their thoughts were on the future of the film industry, and where early stage companies and startups fit in with Hollywood now:
What role has social media played in film distribution?
Marble: Social media has created new opportunities for movie consumption in places most people would never have guessed a few years back. Last year, for example, Warner Bros. started digitally renting movies on Facebook for the first time. This experiment (and others) makes clear just how vital digital distribution is becoming for major Hollywood studios, who are now viewing platforms such as Facebook as real destinations for video consumption. Wherever you have a large audience congregating, Hollywood will try to get a movie in front of those people. It's just smart business.

Tercek: After a few years of intense debate, the results are now in, and the skeptics have been proven wrong. Social media exerts a decisive impact on the success of Big Media launches, from music to games to motion pictures and T.V. shows. In every step of the motion picture business, from the earliest creative exploration and initial research, through casting and set design, through principle photography and after the theatrical release, savvy filmmakers have learned to take advantage of this powerful channel of communication to build a direct link to their audience. Word of mouth has always been the most important way to market a new movie: Social media is word of mouth on steroids. Nothing can top it. Not a full-bleed newspaper ad, or a blitz T.V. campaign, or barrage of giant billboards: If your friends tell you that they like the film, that's it, you're going.
What about mobile (iPad, iPhone, smartphones)? Any trends in how consumers are seeing new content?
Tercek: The biggest shift of the decade is the move away from desktop computers to mobile devices. Filmed entertainment is one of the most popular categories of content on mobile devices, and with good reason: The newest iPad sports a higher-resolution screen than a High Definition television. Breathtaking visuals, combined with a huge selection of content and a seamless purchasing process, have turned the handheld device into the fastest-growing category of entertainment displays.

Next time you fly, take a stroll down the aisle and count the number of people watching movies on iPads. Who cares about the crappy in-flight entertainment system with lousy sound and a dim screen? I've got my high definition tablet in my carry-on, and a smartphone with a retina display, too. I'm all set. This is the newest consumer media habit: Taking it with you when you're leaving it all behind. Increasingly we are seeing families with tablets in cars, on vacation, while visiting Grandma, at the beach, in the airport lounge. It is the biggest expansion of the motion picture audience since the introduction of home video.
Technology has become less expensive as time has gone by. Has film production become less expensive? What role has technology played thus far and how is production changing?
Ferrante: The independent film world is constantly dealing with low budgets so we appreciate just how much affordable technology advances have democratized the landscape. There are pros and cons to this shift, however. More underwhelming content is flooding the market via mobile and web distribution points alongside some pretty incredible work. The affordability and accessibility of technology has absolutely benefited both indie and big-budget studios. However, marketing budgets have to be increased to deal with the saturation and to really stand apart.

At the end of the day, it has been--and will always be--about the story. Niche storytelling is key for indie filmmakers.
How can startups play a role?
McPartland: Startups and studios can definitely forge mutually beneficial relationships. While studios have the track record and the funds to stay the course, startups are smaller and more able to quickly pivot to the immediate needs of the consumer. This agility is key in our rapidly changing digital age.

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As Los Angeles continues to develop its technology economy, Hollywood remains the area's strongest marketplace. Though making movies seems like fun (and often is), the strategic elements can be challenging -- namely financing, promotion, and distribution. Crowdfunding and online marketplaces have gained traction, and new opportunities are opening up for new filmmakers (and established ones).

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The year is 1967. A robust television set sits in the middle of a living room in an English town house. Gathered around it is a large family, craning their necks to see the BBC's first ever colour broadcast on the 20-inch screen. Wimbledon is on, and Great Britain's Roger Taylor is playing South Africa's Cliff Drysdale. The telly cost them a few hundred bob, and it weighs 90 pounds, but it was worth it.

(Bonus points if you can actually see the ball in this clip.)

What would this family have said if they knew that in less than 50 years' time, not only would you actually be able to see the ball, but that your television would pick up every blade of grass, every bead of sweat? That you could watch the match in 360-degree virtual reality, or that the TV that once took up most of the room would now be thinner than a picture frame?

TV technology has come a long way in the past half century, but that's nothing compared to where it's going. What can we expect from the next 10 years in front of the box?

Is watching TV together over?

It's said that with the rise of virtual reality, on demand streaming and TV at the swipe of a mobile screen, the days of family and friends piling on to the sofa to watch television together are over. Why have arguments over the remote when you can choose what to watch and when?

However, Nick Roos, Home Entertainment Specialist at Sony, says we shouldn't be so quick to move the big telly out of the living room.

"There will always be a place for the television," he says. "If you imagine an entire family watching the same programme, all with their VR headsets on, then the social aspect of watching TV together is completely gone."

Live events, from the Rio Olympics to The X Factor, live and breathe only when you're watching TV together. Where's the joy in screaming at the telly to encourage Jason Kenny to the finish line, unless you can grin at the person next to you on the sofa when he wins after a nail-biting two false starts? You can't do that when you're wearing a virtual reality headset.

Shows like Gogglebox, too, have shown the importance of the social commentary that television inspires.
The Malone family pile onto the couch in the Gogglebox Brexit Special
That is not to say that VR isn't an exciting concept for the future of TV. According to research by CCS Insight, the VR industry is set to grow by 168% this year, and there are more than one million active users of Samsung's Gear VR headset in the United States.

What's more, earlier this year the virtual reality series Defrost premiered at the Sundance Festival, a show that would never have been made if it wasn't for 360-degree cameras and VR hardware bringing it to life. Randal Kleiser - best known for directing Grease - had written the script for Defrost decades ago, but it was only with the arrival of virtual reality that he felt the story could really be told.

The series is filmed from the perspective of Joan Garrison, a woman who has just woken up from a 30-year "frozen state" in 2045. Her reunion with her family is bittersweet, as the passage of time has caused them to become strangers to her.

Andy Anderson, deputy chief technology officer at Airbus, has said that virtual reality content from streaming sites like Netflix will be the future of in-flight entertainment, replacing screens on the back of chairs.

Netflix have launched a virtual reality app, although CEO Reed Hastings isn't as convinced that it's the technology for them. "You're exhausted after 20 minutes," he told PC World. "We are more focused on a lean-back, relaxing experience."

However, Samsung Vice President Conor Pierce believes that we're only just scratching the surface of what virtual reality is capable of: "It [VR] can also have a role to play in filming and broadcasting live events... We've just shot a series of 360 interviews with the Team GB athletes where viewers can experience what it's like to be in the Olympic village in Rio - seeing it in a VR headset really feels like you are there with them."
Click and drag your cursor on the video to see a 360-degree view of the British House in Rio
Until recently, VR has been something typically associated with the world of gaming. Samsung Gear, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift are the usual suspects, but Sony has also just developed VR hardware for PlayStation 4.

Roos says that VR could be as successful for TV and film, because it takes up very little room and makes no sound: "Some people don't have the physical space for a really big screen size or a wall big enough for a projector. So they don't have space for the cinema experience that modern TVs can bring. Also, if the kids are in bed and you want to watch a movie by yourself, then it's a great solution to use a VR headset, put on a good pair of headphones and get your full cinematic experience without disturbing the neighbours and without the need for a massive living room."

How much better can TV resolution get?

For now, though, Sony is focusing on actual televisions for its home entertainment developments. HD, Ultra HD, 4K... these have all essentially tried to create more detail using what we have already.

But Nick Roos argues that the future won't be about any of these things. The next big thing he claims is HDR - High Dynamic Range.

HDR content is produced using more advanced camera technology to capture footage, resulting in an image with more light contrast and therefore more detail. For example, whereas on a standard display of a camp fire, everything in the flame's shadow might be the same shade of black, an HDR display's range allows you to really see the different shades and outlines of objects that are barely lit in the gloomy surroundings.

"The difference versus regular television is like night and day," says Nick Roos. "HDR has so much more detail, more colour, more brightness. It's a huge step forward. If you see the same clips shot side by side, one in regular 4K and one in HDR on exactly the same TV, you can hardly believe they are the same TV."

If HDR is going to be adopted, it will need TV and filmmakers on board. The process requires people to shoot specifically for HDR - Netflix series such as Marvel's Daredevil and Marco Polo already are available in HDR, while the BBC is also playing with the technology.

The hope is that better picture quality will mean more ambitious content. More intimate shots, more drama, more carnage. Roos explains: "We will see movies that are more immersive. Given that TVs are getting bigger and bigger, you might see movies with bigger explosions or faster car chases, where you're a bit closer to the action instead of having a zoomed-out view. It gives you the 'being there in the moment' kind of experience."

Reimagining the remote

Android TVs are another innovation that is growing in popularity, and they are really where we begin to see mobile viewing and traditional television viewing overlap. Gone are the days of endlessly scrolling through the TV guide to find the 234th channel which might be screening your favourite show - now you can just bark a command at the telly (a bit like iPhones and Siri), and your choice will come up.
The blue circle in the top left corner indicates the voice control function
Another aspect of these TVs is that your mobile phone doubles up as a remote control. An actual remote control is also included with the television meaning that in theory, a dozen people could be in the same living room having a "remote-off" with various smart phones and remotes all controlling the same TV. It sounds like absolute hell.

Making TV invisible

So, the TVs of the future may have impressive functionality, but what will they look like? Wave goodbye to a tangle of wires so knotted it hurts your feelings. And bid adieu to television sets that mean sacrificing your Christmas tree this year. TVs of the future are invisible. Sort of.

Televisions are already being disguised as art work hanging on the wall, and Sony is making projectors as small as a packet of crisps. This reflects the growing desire among consumers for tech in the home to look much more subtle, and fit into people's living spaces without being obtrusive.

The Sony ZD9
Sony's Ultra Short Throw Projector prioritises discretion. It has a 4K resolution and, unlike in the good old days, it is not mounted on the ceiling projecting light across the room, with people walking in front of it at the most tense moment of the film. Instead, it is the size of a side plate and sits at bottom of the wall, projecting content upwards with lasers rather than lightbulbs.

This trend of understated tech extends to the exterior of people's homes too. Before, whole houses seemed to be covered in TV aerials, but in 10 years there may be no need for them whatsoever. If people continue to opt for on demand and online streaming at the rate they're going - a recent survey from Deloitte found that millennials aged 14-25 value streaming services more than live TV - then aerials might soon be unnecessary. Even now, live BBC TV can easily be streamed over the internet, with connected boxes allowing you to watch live via BBC iPlayer.

It's beginning to look a lot like aerial TV might not have a place at all in this clearer, brighter future that awaits.

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The year is 1967. A robust television set sits in the middle of a living room in an English town house. Gathered around it is a large family, craning their necks to see the BBC's first ever colour broadcast on the 20-inch screen. Wimbledon is on, and Great Britain's Roger Taylor is playing South Africa's Cliff Drysdale.

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In 2011, 18-24-year-old Americans were watching about 24 hours a week of traditional television-meaning broadcast or cable TV, whether live or time-shifted with a DVR. By 2016, that number had dropped to about 15 hours a week, according to a report from MarketingCharts.com. In fact, a Deloitte survey found that younger people are now spending more time watching streaming video than TV. The drop is less precipitous for older Americans. But with streaming services now in more than 50% of households, the trajectory for television is clear.

The target audience for the cable network Freeform-formerly known as ABC Family-is viewers aged 14 to 34, so the network is even more susceptible than most to a youth exodus from TV. But that audience also presents additional opportunities. According to a Freeform press release, the network's programming was the topic of more than 300 million social media posts this past summer, more than any other TV network. In July, during the latest season of the network's hit show Pretty Little Liars, the Freeform app streamed the most video of any TV network app.

Yale Insights talked to Tom Ascheim '90, the president of Freeform, and Karey Burke, the network's executive vice president for programming and development, about what it means to be a TV network in an age of digital disruption.
Q: This is widely regarded as a golden age of television for viewers, with lots of amazing shows to choose from. Is it a good time to be working in television?
Tom Ascheim: It's a great time to be working in television because there are so many places to get our content in ways there never have been before. It's also a challenging time to work in television, because the business of finding ways to monetize that content is harder. But it's not boring, and that makes our day jobs a whole lot more interesting.

Karey Burke: We have to look at the change as exciting. Challenging, yes, but exciting. If you don't find it exciting, you're in the wrong business, because it will change again and again, and that's the nature of modern communication.
Q: How would you summarize the change that we're going through?
Ascheim: I will summarize it with a really boring statistic. There's a statistic in television called PUT, which means people using television. It is a remarkably stable statistic-for 30 or 40 years, it never moved. Occasionally, it grew a teeny bit as we added more television channels.

Starting about 2011, it slid, especially for people who were younger, but for everybody. And about half the audience that used to be in the regular measured television universe was gone by 2015. But they're watching somewhere else. You know, they're watching Netflix and YouTube. They're watching in their own way.

People like choice and control. And I think the biggest shift for all of us is that we used to be in control, and now the consumer is in control. And the judo of our lives is finding a way to still give them the stuff that they want to watch, but do it in the way that they want to consume it. It's a new muscle, but it's an important one. As Karey said, it's exciting to try to figure out new challenges, but it's definitely stimulating.
Q: ABC Family became Freeform earlier this year. What does the name change reflect? What's the importance of an identity for a cable network?
Ascheim: ABC Family was around for a long time as a cable channel. It started as something actually aimed at families, which is why the name made a lot of sense, and it was the Family Channel, and Fox Family, and ABC Family. And about a dozen years ago, the people who ran ABC Family discovered there was a gap in the market for young adults, people from high school to 30 or so. And there was a show called Secret Life of the American Teenager that was really popular, and slowly, over time, ABC Family became enormously popular with young people. It became the number one network with young people. It was a great thing.

In television brands, you want harmony between the name of your channel, the content you make, and the audience you serve. And we had two out of three. We had a really happy audience that really loved our shows, but when you're, as we colloquially say, between your first kiss and your first kid on the journey from childhood to adulthood, it's a time in your life you're least involved with family. We had a moniker that yelled "safe," and it's the time in your life when you're interested in pushing boundaries and finding things that are interesting and new and perhaps not so safe.

So we wanted a name that opened up our enterprise to people who might have been a little bit turned off by what "family" might promise. We want more consistency with what we make and what we do. It lets Karey have more freedom to make shows that serve the audience in the way they want to be served. And hopefully, we get that harmony. We'll see what happens.

Burke: It also speaks to literally freedom of form in terms of how we deliver shows. We just launched yesterday our first original short form series on our app. Because the content can't be separated into discrete boxes for YouTube and SnapChat Discover channels and the other places that our audience is receiving content. So it allows us to experiment with how we deliver, and not just what we're delivering.
Q: Early in the history of cable, there were a lot of niche channels, but over time a lot of those channels moved toward more similar programming, particularly reality programming. Is it economically viable to be niche?
Ascheim: I think that when cable was very new it was important to really signal loudly why the vertical channels that were launched were different. And so MTV, Music Television, was actually about music. And Discovery was all documentaries. It was very clear, and I think consumers really understood what was different. It was a radical notion a long time ago that we would have 24 hours of news or 24 hours of children's programming or 24 hours of anything. It felt truly odd.

That had to be proven by doing, and I think people said, oh, this actually works out pretty well. I can find news whenever I want it, or children's programming, or whatever it is. And then time went by, and the economics of trying to find the most successful shows and the most popular shows started to mush some of the definitions, particularly non-scripted television, of what success was. And I think everyone started chasing some similar stuff. Brand identities got fuzzy, and I think ratings stalled for a bunch of people.

What's interesting right now is when you talk to people who work at a lot of the cable channels that got mushy, they're going back to their roots. History is talking all about putting the history back into the History Channel. And A&E is trying to find the part of their soul that is related to the arts. And Discovery has really recommitted to groundbreaking documentaries.

So I think there was a natural formation and over-explosion as people segmented it back to something that feels differentiated again, because without differentiation in a very, very crowded marketplace, it's hard to make your business go. So it feels like a life cycle issue.

Burke: A lot of niche channels are thriving and surviving. Adult Swim. HGTV is still doing extremely well. And I think, yes, the trend towards generalization hurt companies, and we saw some channels fall away, and now they're either claiming or reclaiming stronger points of view in order to break out in this era of peak TV, as we call it. So I think we'll continue to see that movement back towards differentiation.
Q: Do you have a process, Karey, where you are balancing whether a program fits into your niche and its raw ability to attract people?
Burke: Yes, we have filters that we innately look for in the programs that we buy. We spend a lot of time asking ourselves what makes a show Freeform. What differentiates us? And then we really look for shows to develop that fit within the parameters of that.

That said, there's a wide range within that definition of the kinds of things we believe we can do. A multi-camera comedy and a scripted genre drama we find have can have similar themes about the challenges young people face, and becoming an adult, and finding kinship and friendship and relationships in the modern age for young adults. All those themes seem to be present in all the shows we gravitate towards.

And then we occasionally find one that is deeply tempting, that feels like it is outside, but a big swing for us, and we'll occasionally reach for that, and have been sometimes successful. But mostly we're more successful when we know what we're looking for, and we find it and we nurture it and stay with it, and stay within our lane.

Ascheim: You know, people like to find themselves on TV. That's why it is great to see a more diverse set of faces all over television. As the population changes, people are looking for themselves. Our audience is high school to 30, so we almost always have protagonists who are from that age group. But then you can tell almost any kind of story. You can use any kind of format. And we have lots of other people around that protagonist, but the center of the show is always someone who's in our age cohort.
Q: There's a limited number of channels that a cable system can carry. What are the effects of that limited space on the economics of TV? Is there an effect on the programming because you have this limited number of lanes?
Ascheim: If you're a lucky person who has one of the lanes, it's been a good place to live for a long time, because there's a barrier to entry for people who want to bring content to the audience. And so for a long time, cable channels, and broadcast channels, have been able to be a gateway between people who make programming and the audience.

I think as places like Netflix and YouTube develop, some of those lanes are getting a little mushier, and it's easier for people to find audiences different ways. And I think that's part of the competitive dynamic that's really shifted.

If you were a person who wanted to launch a cable channel, that was very hard. That was an economically unpalatable option for a lot of people, and took tremendous resources, because there's a certain amount of bandwidth that's available, and at some point marginally adding another channel becomes expensive for the operator, and not necessarily attracting any more consumers. So they make it difficult.

If you're an entrenched cable channel, that was a good place to be. It's a little less of a barrier to entry than it used to be, and I think that's part of what we're playing with as we think about developing non-linear places for people to watch our shows, too.
Q: TV can be delivered in a lot of different ways. Is there a tipping point where the cable system is no longer the default, and then things change even more?
Burke: I think we're at that tipping point.

Ascheim: I'm not sure we quite know what the real tipping point is. It's very clear that people are having more options than they used to have, and how they bundle their content. There's an interesting statistic about Netflix: about 85% of the programming that people watch on Netflix at the moment is not Netflix shows. It's other people's shows-our shows and all of our competitors' shows. People like a good bundle. It's one of the efficient ways to get lots of content that you love.

I think what's in debate for consumers at the moment is not I hate cable or I must have SVOD services-that is, subscription video on demand like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon-because somehow they're just the best thing ever. It's that they're very effective and they're very cheap, relatively speaking.

And I think over time, the cable universe is going to look a little more like Netflix. SVOD services are starting to get launched from places like Comcast, and so they're merging a little bit more than they were a year ago. I think as we look out at our future, we imagine some of the features that are in SVOD services are going to be in our expanded sense of what a network means.

We are launching a show this January where we're making all the episodes available the day we launch it, so it's binge-able, so that the control goes back to the consumer, not just to us [launched on January 2 on Freeform]. Assuming that works, we'll be doing a lot more of that, because we want to meet people where they are.

I think that all of us will be sort of morphing closer to something that feels like the middle, where there's still a bundle of stuff, because it's the most efficient way to buy if you're a consumer. It might be a little smaller, and it's going to have some more features. But I think it will still contain an awful lot of the content they already love.

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In 2011, 18-24-year-old Americans were watching about 24 hours a week of traditional television-meaning broadcast or cable TV, whether live or time-shifted with a DVR. By 2016, that number had dropped to about 15 hours a week, according to a report from MarketingCharts.com.

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"Everyone's instinct was that if you could find out [people's] age and gender data, that's fantastic. But what we learned is: it's almost useless. [What matters is] not who they are in a superficial sense - like gender, age, or geography. It's not even what they tell you. It's what they do." Todd Yellin, VP Product Innovation, Netflix.

We hear a great deal about the looming 'demographic crisis' that is about to put Western societies under extreme pressure as the proportion of older people grows. In general, we are living longer and developing ever more complex medical needs. But while there are obvious challenges ahead, there are also opportunities in this shift: opportunities to rethink not just our attitudes to ageing but to work, family and how we think about our lives.

Social enterprise The Age of No Retirement is at the forefront of this debate. Through research, an online innovation hub, events and the development of a new set of universal design principles, TAONR aims to build the 'business case' of an age-neutral society. Regular CR readers will be familiar with its work, which has championed a new approach not just towards creating products and services for older people but around the whole issue of ageing itself.

In the past 12 months TAONR has been further developing its mission to "shatter ageism and make ageing an opportunity rather than a burden". Working with the research consultancy Flamingo, it has set out its argument that societal and cultural changes have rendered many of the assumptions we make about how age determines attitudes and wants irrelevant.

One of the temptations in developing products and services specifically for older people, and the marketing that talks about them, is to imagine the over-50s as a homogeneous group. Segmentation by age has been a tried and trusted method for both product development and marketing, but is it an approach that still makes sense? TAONR argues that an age-neutral, intergenerational approach is the key to creating the successful products, services and therefore brands of the future.

It cites the impact of the so-called Xtra 10 - the notion that due to longer life expectancy and better healthcare, many of us will benefit from an extra ten years of healthy, active life. Although the opportunities created by this Xtra 10 vary according to our relative wealth and health, the suggestion is that "living a healthy, full, free, fearless life for longer, a new marker of social status, and a high aspiration at any age". This TAONR contends, partly explains the growing trend for brands such as Céline and L'Oréal to feature older women in their marketing.

Furthermore, TAONR place age in the context of a more socially liberal age, putting it alongside sexuality and gender as areas where previously held mores are breaking down. "People are constructing their identities, running their life, and choosing interests more freely than ever," TAONR contends. "As a result, people, at any age, are put offby age-specific entry points. They engage with organisations that can address their particular needs and aspirations, regardless of their age."

And as working lives are being extended, our traditional notions of life stages are breaking down. People are having families later, many are living in households of three generations (or more) due to the housing crisis, career breaks are becoming more common - we don't fit into those neat progressive stages anymore.

The impact of technology, TAONR argues, is further accelerating a blurring of age boundaries. "The web has given us equal opportunity to access information or connect with people on the basis of same interests and lifestyles rather than same age. Any mainstream, universal innovation will be adopted faster by all demographics and reshape their expectations collectively."

We are, supposedly, moving to a world of 'post-demographic consumerism' - or at least that is what a 2014 Trendwatch report claimed, cited by TAONR in its research. "Society is now too fluid, ideas now too available, the market now too efficient, the risk and cost of trying new things now too low for this (postdemographic consumerism) not to be the case," Trendwatch claims.

Thus, generations, TAONR argues "are an increasingly misleading, limiting and stigmatising construct. Differences between generations may actually boil down to a difference in life stage and to some delays in technology adoption and social platform usage." Young and old increasingly share cultural ideals - in music for example - meaning that attitudes and values are determined less by age than by other societal and cultural factors such as wealth, class and education.

In the light of these changes, TAONR argues that marketing predicated on age-based representations and segmentation is increasingly irrelevant. "Today's consumers reject generational classification and don't want to be treated like another member of the herd," it says. "In order for marketing to succeed today, it has to be personalised, people centric or tribe centric. It means having to find innovative ways to identify, communicate and connect with customers and prospects on the basis of attitudes, values, interests, needs, motivations and life situation vs age."

Today's consumers reject generational classification and don't want to be treated like another member of the herd

Of course, ageing itself is not irrelevant. We will all, hopefully, get older and with age will come physiological changes. Cognitive sharpness, flexibility, physical strength and our senses will all deteriorate to some extent. But such issues are not confined to specific age groups. Those suffering from certain health conditions or those in deprived areas may experience them too. It's misleading to think of them just in terms of older people.

After working with the Royal College of Art's Helen Hamlyn Research Centre, TAONR has tested its theories in a major piece of consumer research conducted with Tapestry Research. The results back up many of the theories put forward by TAONR. In particular, the youngest and oldest groups of the 2,000 people surveyed displayed surprisingly similar attitudes. For example, 89% of 18 to 24 year-olds agreed strongly with the phrase "The internet is part of my life. I'd miss it terribly if it wasn't there". No shock there. But 84% of 65 to 99 year-olds also felt the same way. Attitudes toward the pace of modern life, new technology and healthy living all showed similar harmony between the very youngest and oldest of those surveyed.

Armed with this research, TAONR is now seeking to develop an intergenerational approach to design and communications. It has looked back to the principles of Universal Design and in particular to the work of Pattie Moore.

For three years in the late 70s and early 80s, the American industrial designer and gerontologist (one who studies the effects of ageing) famously travelled throughout the US disguised as various women in their 80s - from the wealthiest to the poorest in society. Her experiment revealed some of the challenges faced by older people which Moore believed could be met by design. In fact, she has argued, design actually contributes to the restricted abilities of older people experiencing physiological change. "When these familiar and predictable physical changes combine with everyday challenges, our quality of life, our autonomy hang in the balance. We are actually made unable, by design," she has said.

Following Moore's work and a body of research and thinking around 'design for all' dating back to the 60s, in 1997, a working group of architects, product designers, engineers and environmental design researchers at North Carolina State University formalised Seven Principles of Universal Design. The Principles called for design that enabled the equitable use of products and services by all, flexibility in their use, that products and services should be simple and intuitive, provide perceptible information, have a tolerance for error in use, require low physical effort and that designs shouldbe at a size and allow for such space that would allow their use regardless of a user's body size, posture, or mobility.

Universal Design has had some notable successes - in particular the Ford Focus which was famously designed with the needs of older people in mind. For the 2000 model, Ford's designers and engineers developed a Third Age Suit to mimic some of the effects of ageing, based on research initially organised by Age Concern. Strength and flexibility were reduced by up to 24% when wearing the suit, which also made it much more difficult to get in and out of the car. The Focus has consistently been the bestselling car in the world. Much of its success has been attributed to the fact that it was designed for all.

Despite exemplary case studies such as the Ford Focus and products like the OXO hand grips, TAONR argue that the application of Universal Design remains an exception. Possibly this because of a perceived image problem - that universal design is about box-ticking or somehow too 'worthy'. However, they argue that it offers the solution to the challenges posed by the socio-cultural changes of today: "The principles of age-inclusive design match the driving forces of customer satisfaction and business success nowadays," they claim. In its research, TAONR asked respondents to measure current sectors' performance against the principles of Universal Design: many failed badly.

At Age Does Not Matter, an event in London at the end of September, TAONR hope to revisit the seven principles devised in 1997 and create an updated list of ten principles that will acknowledge the impact of new technology in the intervening years. The organisation will then seek to work with organisations to help them apply those principles in the service of creating truly age-neutral products and services.

"The breakdown of age boundaries in society is happening faster than the way most organisations see and address it," TAONR say. "It's not that age segments no longer exist, but that they exist in much more fluid terms than they ever did before. Also it is about how people want to perceive themselves and reject stereotypes. Universal or age-inclusive design is the future of design. It is people-centric and not product-centric, has a lifetime value, and benefits everyone, at any age."
Age Does Not Matter, The Age of No Retirement's four day conference, will be at The Bargehouse, London SE1 , from September 28 until October 1. See ageofnoretirement.org

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"Everyone's instinct was that if you could find out [people's] age and gender data, that's fantastic. But what we learned is: it's almost useless. [What matters is] not who they are in a superficial sense - like gender, age, or geography. It's not even what they tell you. It's what they do."

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We might not all be huddling around a box in the corner of the living room at the same time every week these days, thanks to and iTunes, but TV in a general sense isn't going anywhere - and in fact there's lots more to come for the setup you've got at home.

TVs are now smarter than ever, and still getting smarter all the time, while new technology from the big manufacturers and content providers means those pictures have never looked so eye-poppingly good. Here's what else you can look forward to in the near future.

Unstoppable trend

All of the latest and greatest TVs from the likes of Panasonic, Samsung, LG and Sony now boast an Ultra HD (aka 4K) resolution. The drift from Full HD TVs to Ultra HD televisions is an unstoppable trend that will, eventually, come to every living room and home cinema.

Ultra HD puts eight million pixels on a screen - four times that of a Full HD TV's two million - which in camera parlance is 8 megapixels to a paltry 2 megapixels. Why wouldn't you upgrade and, eventually, go even further?

Until now, a good reason has been the lack of available content, but with Netflix and Amazon now offering 4K streaming, and BT, Sky and Virgin all ramping up the 4K sports and movies you can get on their platforms, that excuse is rapidly slipping.

Next resolution and colour

Wowed by Ultra HD? We don't blame you, but it's a mere stepping stone to an even bigger resolution. 8K is a long way from the mainstream, but we're already seeing the first bits of hardware appear, taking the resolution up to a staggering 32 megapixels.

The problem is that there comes a point when the human eye can't tell the difference between certain resolutions - not unless you have an 100-inch set in your home and are sat close enough to it. If resolutions are getting close to topping out, there are plenty of other areas where TV companies can innovate, including colour and brightness.

Netflix, Amazon and others now offer a selection of content produced in High Dynamic Range (HDR). HDR - something smartphone cameras have offered for years - is about expanding and exaggerating the range of colours on TVs, deepening black levels and improving contrast, and making objects on the screen more pronounced.

The effect is stunning - so much so that HDR is at least as important a selling point for new TVs as Ultra HD resolution, and could become even more crucial in the years ahead. There are also rival systems, like Dolby Vision, designed to eke out yet more visual brilliance from the pictures you see on the screen.

Quantum mechanics

You've heard it all before, but OLED TVs are, in our estimation, a gazillion times better than LED TVs. LG's OLED TVs use an entirely different tech to LED, using an organic semiconductor layer that lights up when electricity is passed through.

Inky black, rich in colour and with not a judder or blur to be seen, OLED's only problem is its high production costs, which are now fortunately starting to come down.

There are variations on the theme, including quantum dot LED (QLED) TVs - these are LED panels with a thin film of nanocrystals (quantum dots) in between the backlight and the display, increasing colour depth.

What could be more desirable than a TV that sounds like it has something to do with quantum physics? Much of Samsung's latest line-up of sets uses QLED technology, promising richer and deeper colours than ever before.

Shape-shifting

If there's one thing about TVs that won't change, it's their rectangular shape, right? Well, while you shouldn't expect sci-fi hologram, circular or olfactory (smell-o-vision) screens just yet, the multitude of curved products now on offer suggest that TVs are changing shape.

These sets certainly improve the sense of immersion - it's almost like being right there with Daniel Craig in a Bond movie - and you get a wider field of view as well. On the downside, reflections and viewing angles can be a problem, any many viewers just prefer something that's plain and flat.

One of the more interesting moves we've seen at recent tech trade shows is towards transparent sets - wafer-thin screens that seem to vanish completely when you're not watching them.

Attempts to get the super-wide TV to catch on - as seen in occasional Philips and Samsung sets - have so far fallen flat, but never say never. We may one day see the 21:9 aspect ratio become standard as a stepping stone to full 8K displays.

CES 2017

As usual, we were treated to a host of top TV sets at CES earlier this year, and these models point the way for the televisions of the future - even if you can't go out and buy all of them just yet.

LG's 4K flagship OLED W7 model is incredibly thin at just 2.57 millimetres thick, and combined with what LG says is the best-quality picture ever, it's certainly worth looking out for when it finally hits stores - just make sure you're saving up in the meantime.

Meanwhile Samsung has been busy working on the Q7, Q8 and Q9 sets, complete with quantum dot technology, ready for 2017. Brightness, detail and colour are better than ever before according to Samsung.

With the other major manufacturers all producing sets that are lighter and thinner than ever before - with pictures that are increasingly vibrant and sharp - it's a great time to be in the market for a new set.

How to watch Ultra HD

Up until now it has been something of a challenge to find 4K content to watch, and there's still precious little of it on terrestrial channels, or on Virgin (though its latest V6 box is at least 4K capable).

is leading the way, with a good variety of 4K movies and sports shows on offer, and BT now screens some of its sports events in Ultra HD as well.

If you need a 4K fix then a number of Netflix shows - including House Of Cards, Breaking Bad, Orange Is The New Black and Marco Polo - are all available in Ultra HD quality, and there are now plenty of 4K movies on the platform too, though you do have to pay a little extra for the privilege of streaming them.

Amazon has followed suit with its Prime instant Video service, where Ultra HD streams are available at no extra cost on selected shows and movies, including original shows such as Transparent and Mozart In The Jungle.

4K content is starting to show up on YouTube too, or you can opt for Ultra HD Blu-ray discs - they're aren't too many around right now (and precious few players to view them on) but that's slowly starting to change as the higher-resolution format takes off.

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The future of TV: Ultra HD, HDR, Sky Q, quantum dot and more

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We might not all be huddling around a box in the corner of the living room at the same time every week these days, thanks to and iTunes, but TV in a general sense isn't going anywhere - and in fact there's lots more to come for the setup you've got at home.

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Jeff Stier and Chris Gianutsos, Ernst & Young

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Six Trends Directing the Future of Television

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Today’s television experience bears little resemblance to the television our parents or grandparents watched. Just as tomorrow’s television experience will look very little like today’s. We have gone from an era where the television networks dictated what, when and how we watched, to a time where co…

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Whenever a new technology arrives we typically misuse it. Rather than rethinking what's possible and transforming industries, we consistently use it to embellish what we've done before.

We've seen this many times with new media. The first radio shows re-read newspaper headlines, the first TV shows were teleplays with cameras pointed at the readers, even websites today mostly replicate past forms with digital paper. Right now a tectonic shift from broadcast to streamed TV is upon us, and sometimes it feels like everyone is missing the point.

While everyone has talked about cord-cutting, surprisingly few have done it - largely because the packages on offer were substandard; the pricing didn't work out; and content was limited. From Playstation Vue and Slingbox to the announcement of DirectTVNow (and shortly Hulu's new TV service) we're seeing a new tranche of offerings that should change how we view TV forever.

Yet a spin on these new services quickly reveals a gap in knowledge and how, so far, many companies have failed to understand how people's behaviors and expectations have changed. This means a huge missed opportunity. The move from broadcast to streaming is of no interest, people don't care how things get to them. They don't care about the screen it's on, they just care how they experience them.

More often than not we don't go to content, it comes to us - suggested by friends or algorithms, in feeds or auto-playing next. In this context, two foundational elements of TV choice architecture are wildly irrelevant for the future but are still used as organizational principles for billion dollar decisions.

Beyond Channels to Search

Contemporary behavior is not to consume news directly from a publisher - virtually nobody goes to Buzzfeed.com and newspapers' homepage traffic continues its precipitous decline (even most people reading this came to it from it somewhere else). How many of us found ourselves reading Teen Vogue somehow this week? Our relationship is no longer with a publisher, it's with the article and aggregator. Similarly, in music we don't browse what we love by their record label, we love bands or songs. We use apps that pull up all music and we navigate by genre, band or what's suggested to us by an algorithm.

In every case, the old notion of a publisher curator has died. We think we don't need physical newspaper editors whose role it is to gather a mixture of news and orchestrate a paper of varied content. We don't need A&R people to decide what we like, bundle it into albums or event pay for it, content creation is now vastly more accessible, what succeeds is vastly more democratic, the barriers to entry somewhat lower, hence the abundance of stuff we have.

The same is true for TV, with a few notable exceptions we don't watch channels we watch shows. We don't rely on AMC to get us through the night, we watch Breaking Bad, wherever it may be. The role of TV channels is entirely irrelevant for curation, only relevant for the funding of shows we love. To take the entirely anachronistic device of the TV channel, and replicate it as an app, is stupid in the extreme. It was a solution to problems of a more primitive age.

Who wants to watch TV by selecting Apple TV, being paralyzed by 50 TV channel apps, then opening the CBS app, before selecting the show. It would be as silly as listening to Bastille by selecting the Virgin record label app from a screen of 50 other music apps.
Time for navigation is an anachronistic device.
The entire point of broadcast television was that a nation was beamed the same shows at the same time. All TV was live. People genuinely had water cooler conversations as a national culture was shaped by synchronous moments. Entire schedules were programmed this way. A station controller would assume night for nature documentaries, night for raucous comedy.

For most of our memory "time shifting" TV meant a tape recording, or watching a DVD, It was the edge use case, our primary consumption was live. Netflix and "Video on demand" heralded a whole new era where content was freed from a moment in time. We've never quite understood how big this is and now this "time shifting" for connected households is the predominant form of TV

Yet the centerpoint of TV remains the electronic programming guide and it's never changed. It shows irrelevant channels vertically and on a now irrelevant timescale.

Outside of news, sports or one-off events like the Oscars, it seems beyond imagination to a contemporary, savvy viewer today that time has anything to do with what they will watch. The idea that someone they've never met in a TV company would dare even suggest content for them is laughable.

Crunchbase

Description Apple TV is a network device for both Macintosh and PC computers that allows users to download, stream, and view High Definition television.

Full profile for Apple TV

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The new world of TV is unbundled from time, removed from pipe and device agnostic. Our viewing habits have become more extreme, vacillating between the ultra-short, 20-second clip of a bee pulling nails from a wall, or the snatched 15 seconds of mannequin challenge, smashed uncomfortably against the 12-hour binge of Narcos or Black Mirror.

We're in the mid-digital age, but we live with the legacy of analog systems, technology and thinking that's only embellished by the technologies of our new era. I've 5 remote controls to watch my TV, I now need to consider the input device before the show. My Chromescast is seemingly only controlled by my phone. We've global rights issues with most content, we've 4K codecs that don't work on Vizio TV's, we've apps missing from app stores. It's agonizingly complex.

As TV slowly recognizes the internet we should adopt new thinking and architecture. I want my primary screen to be a search bar. A search bar that pulls in content from every provider that I subscribe to (or that is free). I want it to prioritize ad-free content over ad funded. 4K content over SD.

I want a Live TV button In this sub-menu, I want shows my friends like to appear easily. I want shows that are trending Live or that my Facebook friends are viewing at that time to be shown.

I want "Spotify Radio" for TV, I want to select a show and get suggested ones like that appear next. I want all content to be linked, I want to select a TV star and see all they've appeared it. I want to click on a writer and find out more about them. I want my remote to be my phone and control center for all content. I want shows I can interact with meaningfully on it.

TV is about to go under the most radical transformation imaginable. Lines are going to blur. What is stored locally and what in the cloud? When does TV become Video? What should usage rights be for nations and devices? Do we need a set top box anymore?

When the current chaos ends a wonderful new landscape can emerge. A more simple way to watch the stuff we like; fewer, better, more-targeted, shorter TV ads served to individuals. Greater access to the things we love from around the world. The future is amazing, but we need to smash things up to get there and stop the lazy thinking of the past.

Featured Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC

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Whenever a new technology arrives we typically misuse it. Rather than rethinking what's possible and transforming industries, we consistently use it to embellish what we've done before. We've seen this many times with new media. The first radio shows re-read newspaper headlines, the first TV shows were teleplays with cameras pointed at the readers, even websites today mostly replicate past forms with digital paper.

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Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings announced that his company was bringing its Internet TV network to more than 130 new countries around the world, up from 60 countries. YouTube announced its partnership with GoPro and that the video platform will soon support HDR video. Sling TV came out with a sleeker, more personalized user interface to lure cord cutters. And like last year, every major television manufacturers tried to one-up its competitors with sharper, larger and smarter TVs.

Given the rise of over-the-top television and unbundled cable, it's obvious that major changes are afoot, but these changes are often overstated. Advertising on television, for example, isn't going away anytime soon, even with the popularity of Netflix's ad-free model. What's really changing in terms of how we're consuming media, and where are we headed? Read on to find out.
1. We're in a time of rapid innovation from a few key players, but don't forget that it's part of a larger paradigm shift.
In wake of all the CES announcements, platforms like HBO Now, Sling TV, Netflix and Hulu are credited with inspiring industry-wide change, in terms of how and when consumers want to consume content.

The old model of cable television has been broken for years. Cable companies have grappled with how to stay relevant, unbundling packages and offering streaming options. The pay-TV industry lost subscribers for the first time ever back in 2013, and a record 600,000 cut the cord last year, according to Nielsen.

Since then, there have been many growing pains for legacy media companies. Back in April, Verizon and Disney had issues when Verizon wanted to offer its customers a selection of slim cable bundles with its FIOS service. Disney said it violated their contract, specifically because the selection would split ESPN and ESPN 2 into a separate sports package. Contracts and old industry standards, coupled with questions over whether to offer channels a la carte or in packages (for sports lovers, for example), have been major obstacles to giving consumers exactly what they want.

And then there's YouTube, which has benefitted immensely from increased digital video. Analysts predict that 90 percent of all Internet traffic will be from video by 2019. Capitalizing on the trend, YouTube unveiled its paid subscription service, YouTube Red, back in October.

YouTube's chief business officer Robert Kyncl made a bold bet during his Jan. 7 during a CES keynote in reference to his prediction four years ago that 90 percent of Internet traffic will be video by 2020 and that 75 percent of all video would be digital by then as well.

"This being Vegas, I'm doubling down and standing by my prediction," he said. "I think digital video will be the single biggest way people spend their day after sleep and work."

It remains to be seen whether Kyncl is correct or what will happen to cable companies. Eventually, legacy media will figure out how to adapt to this changing world, but it's unclear exactly how unbundled and a la carte television will pan out because traditional cable television is on a slow and steady demise. It's not in rapid decline.

What is clear: we can expect to pay for Hulu, Netflix and unbundled packages separately for a while. When I joked with Todd Yellin, VP of Product Innovation at Netflix, and Sean Carry, Vice President of Content Acquisition at Netflix, that maybe one day Netflix would be licensing its original programming to traditional cable companies like Fox and CBS, they laughed. That's because Netflix and its pioneering streaming comrades have opened Pandora's box. They're too strong to work with other companies, so the legacy media conglomerates will have to innovate on their own. Even though I'm sure CBS (and its viewers!) would die to have "House of Cards" on during primetime, they'll have to get creative.
2. It's more important than ever before for television networks to think like brands and operate cross-platform.
Part of the reason why HBO and Vice Media are so successful is both companies think like brands. Vice Media has a strong Snapchat presence with a channel that resonates with its followers. HBO has engaged "Game of Thrones" fans through a number of social campaigns. In both cases, these companies are authentic and unafraid to experiment. But they're taking a holistic approach, exploring established and emerging social platforms rather than focusing on one single platform. And they're being strategic, only developing content on platforms that their fans use.

"You need to be on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat -- every channel -- and you need to do it really well to win," BET Network's chief digital officer Kay Madati said during a CES panel. "That means committing resources -- writers and producers -- to be everywhere our consumer is."

Television is no longer the central place where content is distributed. Today, networks like AMC are engaging "Walking Dead" fans even when the season has ended, through Snapchat filters when that turn you into a Zombie and interactive quizzes and trivia contests online. A strategy like this keeps viewers tuning in season after season.
3. Advertising is here to stay for a while, in one form or another.
Even though Netflix is "allergic to ads," in the words of Yellin, not every streaming service has the same ethos. Hulu has an ad-free subscription option and an ad-supported option. Hulu's strength is its ads are very targeted to each user, which makes them less insufferable than regular ads on television, which have no idea whether you're in the market for a new Audi or whether you use Tide to do your laundry. And if you're a Hulu fan who's allergic to ads too, you have the choice to pay slightly more ($12/month) to watch your shows uninterrupted.

The point is, we're getting more choice when it comes to advertisements. There's still so much money in the ad-supported model, and conglomerate companies like Clorox and Ford still see value in them, so platforms will keep them around for a while. But digital platforms are keen to this idea that users hate repetitive, in-your-face ads, and users are less tolerant of them now that platforms like Hulu and Netflix have eliminated them completely.

What's getting fazed out is ads that are meaningless to viewers. With the rise of digital content, it will be easier for companies to create targeted advertisements. Advertisements will become a more seamless part of the viewing experience. There might be fewer but slightly lengthier ads to make for a less disruptive experience, or perhaps we'll have the choice for when we'll watch ads (maybe before we start the program, we'll get a prompt asking whether the ad should come at the start or in the middle, for example). Or maybe brands will sponsor programming. Either way, advertising isn't going to be as obtrusive as it once was, as brands strive to serve the right message to the right viewer at the right time. Digital platforms will be able to do this as they learn more about who's viewing their content, which will happen as they aggregate and analyze more data.
4.The floodgates are open for global content. But there are still barriers to delivering content in some countries.
Television series on ABC, NBC, Fox and other networks run at different times of the year in different countries. But in an Internet world, there's a greater consumer desire for shows to be available at the same time, everywhere. Netflix is making all of its shows available in 190 countries simultaneously so that consumers can choose when and over what device they want to view their favorite shows. Expect to see more of this as cable companies adopt digital models. This will prevent piracy (and, probably, spoilers on social media).

But digital content is tricky in certain countries, like China, which has unique laws. Netflix isn't available in China, North Korea, Crimea or Syria due to government restrictions on American countries. Yellin said his company is working within the constraints of these laws but is hopeful that things change down the line.
5. We'll have better content than ever before. We're approaching the golden, golden age of television and streaming content.
Given: all the ways content can be distributed now, the fact that content has been democratized thanks to the Internet, and that consumers have come to expect premium programming, we're in a renaissance of sorts. Netflix and Amazon Instant Video have had dozens of Emmy nominations and wins. YouTube has its own video and music awards shows to honor its best video stars. And Funny or Die, LouisCK.net and EW.com have been lauded for their online content. Heck, "Sleepy Hollow" on Oculus Rift has won an Emmy. With a range of platforms, creators and storytellers of all kinds have been inspired to tell their stories in new and engaging ways. We're just getting started. Prepare for the golden, golden age of television.

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CES 2016: Predictions for the Future of Television

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Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings announced that his company was bringing its Internet TV network to more than 130 new countries around the world, up from 60 countries. YouTube announced its partnership with GoPro and that the video platform will soon support HDR video.

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Brief:

U.S. mobile peer-to-peer payments will grow 55% this year to more than $120 billion, a figure that will double in the next four years, according to researcher eMarketer. In addition, 63.5 million U.S. adults this year will use a P2P payment application at least once a month, or about one-third of smartphone users.

Zelle, a network of credit unions and more than 30 major banks such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, will roll out in the next 12 months and underpin the growth of P2P payments. Zelle's support from major financial institutions has earned it the nickname as the "Venmo killer," referring to PayPal's P2P payment service, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Mobile payment apps like Apple Pay and Google Wallet aren't gaining much traction in the U.S., where people are comfortable using credit and debit cards, eMarketer said. By the end of this year, 48.1 million Americans ages 14 and older, or 23% of smartphone owners, will have used a mobile payment app at the point of sale at least once in the prior six months. That percentage will reach 31% by 2021.

Insight:

EMarketer provides an interesting forecast on how P2P payments will be more accepted by smartphone users than contactless payments with merchants in the next four years. That's not to say mobile payments will be completely stunted. The researcher forecasts that mobile payments will grow 78% to $49.3 billion this year while average spending per user will grow to $1,026.

The forecasted growth in P2P payments points to how a solution like Zelle, that spans many of the major players to offer consumers added convenience with single, coordinated solution, can drive consumer adoption. Unfortunately, when it comes to using mobile to pay at the point of purchase or even online, the number of options available to consumers is confusing and is likely one reason for the slow adoption rate of payments. The U.S. has been slower than other countries to adopt mobile payments, including China, India and parts of Europe. Sweden is the most cashless society on the planet, with banknotes and coins accounting for just 1.7 percent of its GDP, according to Bloomberg News.

Zelle, if successful, could provide a foundation for a more coordinated mobile payments platform backed by major banks as P2P payments are a good way to introduce consumers to the convenience and benefits of mobile payments.

The growth in mobile payments will provide marketers with a greater opportunity to offer seamless transactions to customers, not only for online shopping but also in physical stores. Grab-and-go sales and in-aisle scanning of products to cut down on wait times at checkout are just two of the innovations that mobile payments will bring to retailers.

Companies that accept mobile payments grow faster and are more profitable than companies that don't, according to a study this year sponsored by NTT Data Inc. The study found that among businesses with yearly sales growth of 11% or more, 43% have an app that supports purchases and payments, compared with 32% of slower-growth businesses.

Some economists see many benefits from becoming a cashless society: lower transaction costs, improved tools to manage the money supply and an end to tax evasion and money laundering. Critics worry that going cashless means an end to privacy, greater powers for governments and higher costs that would hit poor people the hardest. India's policy to ban cash this year as a way to root out corruption had the worst effects on impoverished groups that spend small amounts. A cashless financial system also makes it easier for banks to implement negative interest rates - the policy of charging customers for holding onto cash instead of spending it to boost the economy, as the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan have done.

Top image credit: Depositphotos

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Study: Mobile P2P payments to grow 55% this year

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U.S. mobile peer-to-peer payments will grow 55% this year to more than $120 billion, a figure that will double in the next four years, according to researcher eMarketer. In addition, 63.5 million U.S. adults this year will use a P2P payment application at least once a month, or about one-third of smartphone users.

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Making Work Good (The gig economy)

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The Taylor report was commissioned nine months ago. Theresa May was in her prime, apparently in a job for life, or at least until 2020, and she was keen to add substance to her early rhetoric on the "just about managing" by commissioning Matthew Taylor, a respected Blair-era policy guru, to examine ways of improving work. No one foresaw the irony in these altered times of Mrs May trying to boost her chances of survival by presenting a report on precarious work.

Mr Taylor, a man who has always preferred a nudge to a shove, was never likely to mount a revolutionary challenge to the established order. But expectations were high, and now many people are disappointed. Yet it is a very substantial report. Mr Taylor rightly defends its essential recognition of the value not just of work but of good work. And it is important to remember that despite record levels of employment, many people want to work more hours than they do and others, classed as economically inactive, want a job. Britain's labour market too often offers low pay, low productivity and long hours. These are deeply ingrained problems.

The gig economy has attracted much more attention than these. It has transformed the nature of work for some people, but it still accounts for only a tiny share of the job market. Yet it is also open to abuse. The essential question for this new category of workers is their employment status. Businesses such as Uber and Deliveroo insist they are self-employed contractors. Employment tribunals have found that where there is a significant element of control and supervision they are workers, entitled to benefits like sick and holiday pay, and most importantly to the minimum wage. Uber is fighting this decision, and the Taylor report appears to back away from endorsing it. Instead, it proposes that government rebadge a "worker" as a "dependent contractor"; dependent contractors would get the benefits workers receive but no automatic entitlement to the minimum wage. This may not be such a cop-out as Mr Taylor's critics believe: he argues that it could be a viable finesse between the flexibility that some Uber and Deliveroo drivers value with the protection that others seek. It would also allow HMRC to collect employer's national insurance contributions.

The Taylor approach to agency workers may also be less of a disappointment to trade unions when they study the small print. Mr Taylor wants to end the so-called Swedish derogation, a longstanding, much-exploited arrangement that in certain circumstances permits an employer to bring in agency workers to do the same job as employees for lower pay. He also hopes that demanding greater transparency about an employer's use of agency workers would be a driver for change. He makes the same argument about transparency when he suggests employers be obliged to report how many workers on zero-hours contracts have exercised the new right to request fixed hours that he thinks they should have after a year. Unions scoff at an idea that seems to do nothing to restore the balance of power between worker and boss, and are angry that he is too pragmatic to demand a complete end to employment tribunal fees that have reduced the number of cases by 70%.

Mr Taylor rightly draws attention to much wider problems in the labour market, like the amount of overtime demanded of low-paid workers, and recommends following US legislation in imposing a higher-rate minimum wage in such circumstances. There's lots of gritty detail along with the ambition to deliver good work. Critics rightly point to the gap between the problems he identifies and the remedies he proposes. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, laments a missed opportunity. Yet something is almost always better than nothing. Labour should keep fighting for bigger and more sweeping reforms, but at the same time it can and should demand that at the very least the Tories do what the report they commissioned advocates.

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The Guardian view on making work good: will slowly do it? | Editorial

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The Taylor report was commissioned nine months ago. Theresa May was in her prime, apparently in a job for life, or at least until 2020, and she was keen to add substance to her early rhetoric on the "just about managing" by commissioning Matthew Taylor, a respected Blair-era policy guru, to examine ways of improving work.

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POCKET LIVING has been building and selling small flats in London since 2005. The flats have many of the things that young, single people want, such as bicycle storage, and lack the things they do not, such as large kitchens and lots of bookshelves. At first, Pocket expected that most buyers would be in their late 20s, says Marc Vlessing, the firm's boss. Instead the average age is 32, and rising. It is not that many buyers are yet to have children, speculates Mr Vlessing; rather, they probably will never have them.

A growing number of city-dwelling Europeans are in the same situation. Just 9% of English and Welsh women born in 1946 had no children. For the cohort born in 1970-who, barring a few late surprises, can be assumed to be done with babies-the proportion is 17%. In Germany 22% of women reach their early 40s without children; in Hamburg 32% do.

All of which might seem to suggest that Europe is bent on self-erasure. Childlessness is "a symptom of a feeble and terminally ill culture" that has lost touch with its heritage, according to Iben Thranholm, a conservative Danish journalist. The suggestion is misleading, however. Mass childlessness is not a sign of demographic collapse, nor is it remotely novel. It would be more accurate to say that rich countries are updating a long tradition.

In some European countries, such as Germany and Italy, the overall birth rate is low and childlessness is common. But other countries, such as Britain and Ireland, combine a high birth rate (by European standards) with a high rate of childlessness. And in still other countries, especially formerly communist ones in eastern Europe, childlessness is rare but birth rates are low, because many women have one child. Overall, there is surprisingly little correlation between childlessness and fertility (see chart 1).

Many countries that have lots of childless women today had even higher rates in the early 20th century. Indeed, the baby-filled late 20th century looks like a blip (see chart 2). That reflects deep-rooted social norms. In pre-industrial western Europe, men and women did not marry while they were maids or apprentices, but only when they could set up households of their own. To stay unmarried and childless was a sign of economic failure. But it was not shameful in itself. "It is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible," explained the heroine of Jane Austen's novel, "Emma".

The attitude lingers. In western Germany, people without children tend to feel only mild social stigma. "It's something that requires an explanation, but not a lengthy one," says Tanja Kinkel, a successful novelist who did not have children because she did not find a suitable partner. And western Germany combines a forgiving attitude to childlessness with a harsh view of working mothers. Until recently, nurseries were rare; a woman who put her child in one might be abused as a "Rabenmutter" (raven mother). Many happily working women simply opt out.

Childlessness is becoming more common in countries like Italy and Spain, which also squeeze working mothers. But perhaps the best example is Japan. Even if Japanese mothers were not pressed to stop working (which they are) they would be pushed into it by a brutal office culture. In a Japanese firm everybody is responsible for everything, complains one woman, an architect who lives in Tokyo. As a result, nobody dares to leave work early, which makes parenthood almost impossible. She delayed having children and is undergoing fertility treatment at the age of 41. Japan's childless rate has shot up from 11% for women born in 1953 to 27% for women born in 1970.

The reasons why people do not have children are varied, complex and often overlapping. A few (but, pollsters find, not many) never wanted them. Others do not meet the right person. Some fall in love with people who already have children, and feel satisfied. Others suffer from medical problems. A great many fall into a group that Ann Berrington, a demographer at the University of Southampton, calls "perpetual postponers". Waiting to start a family until they are finished with education, until they have a stable job and a house, they find it is too late.

Almost everywhere, the most educated women are least likely to have children. And the highest rates of childlessness are found among women who pursue degrees in non-vocational subjects. Researchers at Stockholm University have found that 33% of Swedish women born in the late 1950s who studied the social sciences did not have children, compared with 10% of primary-school teachers and just 6% of midwives. It may be that teaching and midwifery attract women who strongly desire children, or that these jobs offer more parent-friendly hours and conditions. But the difference is probably also down to job security. A trained teacher can expect to find a stable job at a younger age than a trained anthropologist can.

The charitable childless

Although childlessness makes some people utterly miserable, that is not the case for most. One multi-country study by two demographers, Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskyla, suggests that childless people aged 40 and over in formerly communist eastern Europe are a little unhappier than people with children, once you control for things like wealth and marital status. That might reflect the stigma against childlessness in those countries. In liberal Anglo-Saxon countries, though, middle-aged childless people appear to be slightly happier than parents. The same demographers find that young parents are gloomier than childless youngsters.

Amazing as it may seem to parents who spend their evenings and weekends traipsing to football training and piano lessons, childless people find plenty of things to do with their time. Among these are good works. One German study found that 42% of charitable foundations were created by childless people. Ms Kinkel started a charity called Bread and Books, which operates mostly in Africa. She describes it as her way of nurturing the next generation.

People without children are far more likely to bequeath money to charity, points out Russell James, an expert on philanthropy at Texas Tech University. In 2014 fully 48% of married childless people aged at least 55 who had written wills or will-like documents committed to giving something to charity. That was true of only 12% of parents and a mere 8% of grandparents. Knowing this, American universities have become acutely interested in whether their alumni have offspring, says Mr James.

That question is easier to answer for women than for men. Men's fertility declines with age, but less predictably than women's fertility. So, whereas demographers and fundraisers can reasonably assume that a 45-year-old woman will have no more children, they cannot assume the same for a man. Worse, men sometimes forget their children when filling in census forms-and may have fathered children they do not know about. Still, two things are clear. Childless men are numerous, and quite different from childless women.

Men are erratic. Some are reproductive prodigies, having many children with more than one partner. Others-more than is the case for women-have none at all. Ms Berrington finds that 22% of British men born in 1958 were childless at the age of 46, compared with 16% of women. And in many countries childless men are disproportionately working class. French men who have never worked are about twice as likely to have no children as men who hold good white-collar jobs. Michaela Kreyenfeld, a demographer at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, finds that 36% of west German men without university degrees born in the early 1970s were childless in their early 40s. Among men with degrees, the rate was 28%.

That suggests men and women end up childless for quite different reasons. Women often have no children because they have prioritised education or work in their 20s and 30s. Men are more likely to remain childless because women do not view them as good boyfriend material-let alone good husband or father material. "They have a problem finding partners," suggests Ms Kreyenfeld.

The distinction might be disappearing, however. In western Germany, childlessness is rising among less educated women, who are converging with their highly educated peers. In Finland, a switch has already occurred: women with only a basic education are the most likely to remain childless. It may be that, as two-earner households become more common, men have taken to judging women as women have long judged men. Those who fail to land dependable jobs might not be given a good opportunity to have children.

Nobody knows whether childlessness will rise further. It has been going up in most European countries, but not all: the rate has fallen in Switzerland, for example. One possibility is that childlessness will veer up and down, mirroring the economic cycle. As the average age of marriage rises and couples push childbearing into their mid- or even late 30s, they become increasingly vulnerable to shocks. A bad recession or a mortgage-lending squeeze will encourage couples to pause-and, because many now give themselves only a narrow window before their fertility drops, some will be knocked out of childbearing altogether.

That seems to be happening in America, points out Tomas Sobotka, of the Vienna Institute of Demography. The proportion of 45-year-old American women without children has fallen steadily since the turn of the century. Following the financial crisis of 2007, though, childlessness among 30- and 35-year-old women shot up (see chart 3). No matter what their intentions, many of these women are likely to remain childless.

That will not be such a terrible fate. Childlessness is often undesired, but in rich Western countries it is hardly calamitous. As the peculiarly procreative generation born around the middle of the 20th century passes away, it will come to seem ever more normal.

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POCKET LIVING has been building and selling small flats in London since 2005. The flats have many of the things that young, single people want, such as bicycle storage, and lack the things they do not, such as large kitchens and lots of bookshelves.

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Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa can do many things, from ordering products to controlling a smart home and playing music. Now for the first time it can read the latest fashion updates as part of a partnership with Fashion Fix Daily.

Fashion Fix Daily is an independent online magazine written by influencers, and the first fashion magazine to be read aloud on Amazon Echo, the smart speaker.

The magazine will write daily content specifically for voice-first tech devices, focused on fashion news, trends and updates.

Amanda Davies, editor-in-chief, explained: "Audio is the next step in publishing and at Fashion Fix Daily, we are constantly looking for new ways to communicate with our readers, so Alexa was a perfect progression for us and we are thrilled to be at the forefront of such an exciting new platform."

Fashion Fix Daily is the first fashion publication on the platform and joins the likes of Sky, BBC and Guardian.

Pizza brand Domino's yesterday (31 July) announced it has enabled voice-activated Amazon Echo ordering in the UK, allowing customers to have a pizza delivered without lifting a finger.

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Fashion Fix Daily becomes first fashion magazine to launch on Amazon Echo

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Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa can do many things, from ordering products to controlling a smart home and playing music. Now for the first time it can read the latest fashion updates as part of a partnership with Fashion Fix Daily.

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Amazon has announced Alexa features for Fire TV that allow users to control their viewing experience with their voices.

In other words, US consumers will be able to pair any Fire TV with any Echo device and tap into voice control, asking Alexa to start a show, help find a good movie and control playback like play, pause and fast forward.

For consumers with only one Fire TV, the Echo device will pair as soon as they ask Alexa a question that includes "Fire TV," like, "Alexa, watch The Grand Tour on Fire TV," or, "Alexa, show me comedies on Fire TV."

Customers with more than one Fire TV will have to use the Alexa app to pair their devices.

Users can also pair their Echo devices with their Fire TV Edition smart TVs and control TV settings like volume and input switching. According to Amazon, when connected to an HD antenna, users can also change the channel, pause and resume over-the-air live TV playback and launch the on-screen channel guide with voice commands, including:

"Alexa, turn on Fire TV"

"Alexa, tune to Fox"

"Alexa, tune to NBC"

"Alexa, switch to HDMI one"

"Alexa, mute the volume on Fire TV"

Far-field control of Fire TV is available today (August 1) for customers in the US on all generations of Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. Amazon said US customers with the new Fire TV Edition smart TVs will have far-field control within the coming week. Smart home camera support is "coming soon" on all Fire TVs and second generation Fire TV Sticks in the US.

"Alexa is built in the cloud and always getting smarter and these new Fire TV features are the latest way that Alexa is making it simple for you to enjoy and control your living room entertainment," said Marc Whitten, vice president of Amazon Fire TV, in a statement. "Simply ask Alexa to play your favorite show or keep an eye on your kids' playroom during movie night, right from the comfort of your couch. This is just the beginning and we'll continue to create new ways to simplify the way you interact with your TV - we can't wait to see what customers think."

In addition, Amazon said consumers will soon be able to view live video feeds from supported smart home cameras from their Fire TVs.

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Now Alexa can change the channel for you, too

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Amazon has announced Alexa features for Fire TV that allow users to control their viewing experience with their voices. In other words, US consumers will be able to pair any Fire TV with any Echo device and tap into voice control, asking Alexa to start a show, help find a good movie and control playback like play, pause and fast forward.

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Every brand has been created for a reason. That reason can generally be found in the value they provide that people are prepared to pay money for.

Your local coffee shop, for instance, is there so that people in a very particular vicinity can get coffee. They are providing a piece of value, and getting commensurate value back in return. That, in essence, is business.

It's also the purpose of the word "purpose". If a brand figures out what it's for, and strives to deliver it to the best of its ability, then it can maximise the value it gives to the world, and thus maximise the value it receives. In this situation everyone wins - the brand is focused on value creation and innovation, which is good for the customer, and the customer rewards them handsomely, which is good for the brand.

Whilst this may sound like common sense, most brands are very bad at it. If you ask them the point of their business, the majority will either give you a muddled response, or will outline a purpose that is already served by a host of competitors ("we make comfy shoes", "we make tasty drinks"). This is why the growth of "purpose-driven business" is so important - it defines market roles and creates focused, remarkable brands.

And it's why the distortion of purpose is such a tragedy.

As I wrote in these pages a few weeks ago, a new generation of marketers has narrowed purpose to mean the "social good" that a brand provides. Purpose is now about either sustainability or inclusion, and has thus created the reverse effect it's meant to have, delegitimising the vast majority of non-worthy brand purposes, and encouraging everyone to cluster around a handful of crowded territories. Rather than seeing these things as worthwhile hygiene factors that sit beneath your core purpose, they are now seen as the ends in themselves, resulting in some remarkable logical contortions as brands like KFC struggle to define themselves as champions of animal welfare.

It's time to reclaim purpose and return it to its dictionary-definition meaning, for the sake of better brands, better marketing - and yes, a "better world" too - because the world would be best served by brands providing clear value in a responsible way; not value-less responsibility.

With this in mind, here are some thoughts on what makes a real purpose.

The first (and most obvious) characteristic of a good business purpose is that it be ownable and unique.

Think about it: if someone else is already offering what you offer, then you are by definition "purpose-less", like a third sleeve on a shirt. Sure, you might argue that you are providing competition by throwing your hat into a crowded ring - and if expending huge effort in a race to the bottom is your thing then go right ahead.

However, most brands will not want to build their strategy around this. A truly unique and ownable purpose can create monopoly effects even within a crowded category. Apple play in some of the most competitive spaces going, but do you think their consumers see it that way? Do you think there are really people weighing up the pros and cons of a Macbook versus a Dell? Competition is the price of a poorly written and executed purpose; not an inevitability of market.

Next, and where most brands really trip up, a good purpose must be objective. That means it mustn't make any value judgement over whether what the business does is good or bad; it should simply state the facts, and let the public be the judge.

This is because value judgements are ways of wriggling out of having anything specific to say.

Take American Express. They say "we work hard every day to make American Express the world's most respected service brand". Does this really tell us anything? In essence it says: "we try to be good". They haven't carved out a role for themselves there, nor have they given themselves a platform for innovation and differentiation. That's because they've leaned on value judgements rather than teasing out what it really is that makes them a great business.

Connected to this point, we can also see that a good purpose must be falsifiable. It must hold the business to account. It should be possible to fail.

Look at Patagonia, a brand that's great at both the "worthy" and true forms of purpose. Part of theirs is "cause no unnecessary harm". That is superb because they can screw it up. You could catch them causing unnecessary harm and they'd have to change to avoid being dishonest.

Now that is a purpose. Could you say the same about American Express? No, because they will always be able to claim they're "working hard". Their purpose can never be disproven and thus it can never really be proven either.

What you can see here is that a great purpose is not line a tagline; it's not a snappy piece of copy to make your business sound good. It's an existential statement that provides a blueprint for how your whole business works. If you have a good blueprint, then everything from culture to innovation to marketing becomes easy. You stand alone.

But without it, you're just another brand cutting costs, cutting prices and scrapping in the dirt for slivers of market share. And it's going to take more than an inflated CSR policy to climb out of that.
Alex Smith is founder of Basic Arts

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Every brand has been created for a reason. That reason can generally be found in the value they provide that people are prepared to pay money for. Your local coffee shop, for instance, is there so that people in a very particular vicinity can get coffee.

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Brands such as L'Oréal and Acura are investing in augmented reality to propel their brand experiences forward

Snapchat and Apple are opening up possibilities for experiential branding with augmented reality. Brands such as Acura and L'Oréal are investing in this new technology hoping to propel their brand experience, incorporating AR into their marketing, stores and e-commerce sites.

Recently, Acura set up a race track in El Toro, California and asked four drivers to perform time trials around the course. The drivers all wore augmented reality helmets that overlaid graphics onto the real world to make it look as though they were driving through different environments-including a jungle and a snowstorm-on each lap. Footage from the race was livestreamed on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

500,000 people tuned in to watch the hour-long broadcast, with a total reach of 3.58 million people after the stream ended. This was Acura's first campaign with AR technology and will most likely serve to inform broader social and digital campaigns moving forward.

Ahead of the iPhone 8 release later this year, Apple launched its ARkit platform to allow developers and brands to create AR apps. Snapchat has been working closely with brand marketers to design lenses that mimic some of the app's most used features, such as face-swapping and animal masks.

Facebook and Instagram are also investing in different types of augmented reality. Cosmetics brand Estée Lauder is using a Facebook Messenger bot to power its Lip Artist, which recommends lipstick colors by asking customers to upload a photo of themselves to 'try on' the perfect shade in AR. The brand is also looking into doing something similar with foundation makeup.

L'Oréal has a number of AR-powered apps, such as Makeup Genius and Style My Hair, that let customers apply makeup and hair styles to selfies to try out products virtually. The apps have helped the brand understand what their consumers like, making it a great source of data for future planning.

It is predicted that in the next 12 to 18 months there will be more advancements made in hardware beyond individual phones that will power AR into retail experiences with digital signage and experiences.

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How Some Brands Are Starting To Bet Big On Augmented Reality

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Brands such as L'Oréal and Acura are investing in augmented reality to propel their brand experiences forward Snapchat and Apple are opening up possibilities for experiential branding with augmented reality. Brands such as Acura and L'Oréal are investing in this new technology hoping to propel their brand experience, incorporating AR into their marketing, stores and e-commerce sites.

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Brands are so often in the public eye that it can feel quite overwhelming. Open any website and you're almost guaranteed to find a mention of Amazon's latest innovation in retail (whatever that may be), Samsung's newest tech gear or Adidas' most recent sportswear product.

You only need to look at the pre-season build-up in the Premier League for a wealth of branding; there is no escaping it, but this is part of the game that we all play in the advertising and media industry.

But what the three aforementioned businesses all have in common is that they were ranked top ten in YouGov's latest BrandIndex.

The ranking categorises brands by quality, value, impression, reputation and many other traits. In parallel to the global ranking, the UK brand health ranking was also launched with Josh Lewis, Marks & Spencer and Sony all featuring.

But what does it mean to have a healthy brand? Simply put, creating a strong bond and building an infallible relationship with the audience is the only way to build a fit brand. There is no special trick or equation to it, just a customer-first model that all brands should take on board.
Balancing heritage and tech driven innovation to create a customer-first model
Building a relationship with your audience is undoubtedly important but achieving just that is no longer enough in a tech-driven world, where consumers' demand immediacy with everything; just last week Warc's UK ad spend figures found that mobile spend was up 36.2%.

It's no surprise to find that tech brands dominated the global list because they can be accessed around the world by anyone with an online connection. The BBC was the only brand in the UK to own three spots in the top 10: second, third and ninth. Its BBC iPlayer, One and Two channels all scored highly but notice how iPlayer was well above the other two.

Despite its recent gender pay controversy, the BBC has done an outstanding job in building its brand and updating its offering with the times. iPlayer is now a ubiquitous, personalised platform for streaming content on mobile, tablet and desktop - that's why audiences love it so much.

The BBC is not the only brand to update its core offering along with the impact of digital and online services. Bricks and mortar retailer John Lewis actually topped the UK list and what they, BBC and Sony all have in common is that they combine strong heritage with innovation and customer-focused brand strategy.

All have moved with the times - from John Lewis developing online shopping and customer services to match the increasingly digitally-led public, to Sony which has continually created forums for its customers such as the Sony Entertainment Network and the PSN. This demonstrates that brands are in tune with how their customers' needs and behaviours are changing and it is clearly paying off based on the BrandIndex data.
Mass adoption of purpose
The majority of these brands succeed because have a clear purpose and stick to it. Sony understands its gaming community better than anyone else, while the BBC's Reithian principles of inform, educate and entertain haven't wavered at all.

Putting 'purpose' at the very heart of the business is what enables them to be so strongly connected to each audience. Our research found that we, as a society, are heading towards mass adoption of 'purpose'. Across all sectors, there is an increasing consumer awareness of and focus on what a brand stands for - to the point where 1-in-2 consumers will pay more for a brand that supports a cause which is important to them, while 40% have abandoned or rejected a brand because of its behaviour or values.

Often businesses think of purpose and automatically go to CSR. The truth is this is no longer enough.

There is an increasing awareness of brand purpose and societal impact, or lack thereof, among consumers. Nearly half of the UK audience actually agreed that they would pay more for a brand that supports a cause that is important to them.

Google is defamed every day for its tax practices, while Amazon is always questioned on its retail dominance being bad for competition. Top brands aren't in the headlines by mistake - and it's something that consumers have a big interest in.

Society as a whole is evolving and doesn't only care about a brand's beliefs but is investing in brands that make a tangible impact.
Is your brand really in good health?
Brands must look and learn from the companies at the top of the list. But even doing just that is too easy; brands must take it upon themselves to develop their own message, build a strong heritage and create a purpose-led strategy.

Purpose cannot be an afterthought; it must sit at the very core of an organisation. And consumers are wising up to brands' purpose. Use this to your advantage and develop beliefs that offer clarity in a world clouded with doubt.

It's no coincidence that many of the brands in YouGov's top 10 were also identified by participants in our research as being purposeful brands. Brands must innovate but also build formidable social values in order to thrive in the long-term.
Josh Krichefski is the chief executive officer of MediaCom
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How to keep your brand in rude health; a look at the YouGov BrandIndex

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Brands are so often in the public eye that it can feel quite overwhelming. Open any website and you're almost guaranteed to find a mention of Amazon's latest innovation in retail (whatever that may be), Samsung's newest tech gear or Adidas' most recent sportswear product.

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Coca-Cola has launched a multi-million pound campaign to encourage consumers to recycle its plastic bottles, marking the first time it has run a major sustainability campaign in Great Britain.

The 'Love Story' campaign, created by Ogilvy and Mather Berlin, tells the story of two bottles - one Fanta and the other Coke Zero Sugar - who fall in love as they meet over and over again because they keep getting recycled into new bottles. The film ends with a voiceover encouraging people to recycle bottles from Coca-Cola brands including Sprite, Fanta and Coke after use.

Aedamar Howlett, marketing director for Coca-Cola Great Britain, says: "The beauty of Love Story is that it reminds people our packaging is valuable, as it can be recycled into more packaging over and over again. All of our packaging is 100% recyclable and has been for some time now.

"The multi-million pound campaign shows how serious we are about encouraging more people to recycle, so we that we reach our aim of getting all of our bottles back."

The ad aims to raise awareness of the fact Coca-Cola's plastic bottles can be reused as well as encouraging people to recycle. It puts recycling at the heart of the ad's message with the entire set and its props made out of recyclable material. The film uses stop-motion animation and was created by Berlin-based artist Lucy Barry using more than 1,500 plastic bottles.

The campaign is Coca-Cola's biggest ever consumer communications campaign on recycling and is part of the company's new sustainable packaging strategy. Launched earlier this month, the aim is for Coca-Cola to recover all its packaging, as well as increase the use of recycled plastic in bottles from 25% currently to 50% by 2020.

The ad premieres on TV this weekend and will run throughout the summer with activity planned in cinemas and on digital and social media. Coca-Cola is also planning experiential activations at music festivals and events across the summer.

Coca-Cola isn't the only brand to place waste at the heart of an above-the-line campaign recently, with the likes of Tesco also talking up recycling with ongoing campaigns.

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Coca-Cola launches first sustainability campaign to promote plastic recycling

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Coca-Cola has launched a multi-million pound campaign to encourage consumers to recycle its plastic bottles, marking the first time it has run a major sustainability campaign in Great Britain.

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Saga is relaunching its brand, unveiling a new look and feel for the brand as well as its first ever strapline 'Keep doing' as it looks to evolve the business to ensure it remains relevant for today's over 50s, rather than being seen as a brand for "old people".

The changes, which come into effect from today (24 July), include a new logo, font, colours and imagery. It starts with a new look for Saga Holidays, including new types of holiday aimed at people who want the reassurance of going on holiday with Saga but are keen to do their own thing as well.

There will be no "big ta-da" but most of its experiences and services will have changed over by the end of the year. Saga Magazine will follow Holidays, before the new brand is rolled out across the rest of the business, including its insurance. That will all be brought together for the first time under the new strapline and membership scheme called 'Possibilities'.

"We won't be turning a switch on, it is an evolving programme of getting better in line with the new positioning," group CMO Matt Atkinson tells Marketing Week.

"There will be some press, PR and content and we will use group assets to explain the changes. But we are not advertising our way into the change, we are behaving our way into it.

We are not a brand for old people, we're a brand for people who are getting on with life after 50.

Matt Atkinson, Saga

"Gone are the days of a 'ta-da' 60-second ad about a new brand. That's a bit banging your chest and that isn't for us. This is about evolving the business and adapting and making sure this is a brand that customers want in their lives and is relevant to their lives."

The relaunch is the culmination of almost two years' worth of work that started when Atkinson, the former Tesco marketing boss, joined. While Saga's business is in good health, with pre-tax profits up 9.7% year on year to £193.3m, Atkinson says he knew it could do more to appeal to an age group that are healthier and more adventurous than ever before.

"People in their 50s and 60s see themselves as much younger and they are physically much younger and more able and they want to be active and contributing to society," he explains. "Saga has been serving that generation for 65 years but we need to adapt to a world of retirement and the wide-ranging commitments of the older generation."
READ MORE: Former Tesco CMO Matt Atkinson on his new role reinventing Saga for today's over-50s
One of the big changes is the introduction of Saga's first strapline, 'Keep Doing'. Atkinson has some experience of the important role a tagline can play having seen how pivotal 'Every little helps' was (and still is) at Tesco. Saga's will now appear alongside its logo as an "explicit" expression of the brand's purpose.

The strapline also has a role internally, with Atkinson describing it as a "manifesto" for the brand to ensure it build products and services that enable its customers to "keep doing life". In insurance, for example, that means making the service easy, simple and effortless while in its new holiday products it means moving away from the traditional package holiday to also offer smaller group travel and more flexibility.

"It is about how we protect customers through our insurance services and home and emergency cover, but also how we are enabling and enriching life," says Atkinson. "Our hope for our customers is that life is full and rich and it's about how we make that happen and celebrate that. That's where Keep Doing came from. How do we as a business sit alongside our customers and celebrate what they are doing."

Turning customers into members

Its new membership scheme was born out of the same idea. Called 'Possibilities' it aims to say "thank you" to customers for buying its products. But Atkinson, despite his experience on Clubcard, was keen to ensure it wasn't a points-based system that simply offered discounts or deals.

"[Saying thank you] is not an unusual thing but actually it is something that hasn't happened in our business in the way it should have been. It is in some senses a feature of the world of insurance and money that often customers don't get a thank you but a bill or a statement. We wanted to offer a statement of enjoyment or a thank you," explains Atkinson.

There are three parts to the scheme. The first is an event and experience programme that will give customers the opportunity to attend exclusive events based on their interests - whether that is music, theatre, gardening or motoring. While the exact details are still being work out it could, for example, offer tickets for a private concert at St Paul's or a VIP experience at Countryfile Live.

The second strand is joint activities with partner brands. So for example members will get money off Apple products but also access to the company's Genius bars for tailored advice, or deals at Prezzo.

The final part is a community platform that Saga aims to use to crowdsource and co-develop events and partner activity. That will include a content strategy based around health, technology, money, home and travel that can inspire customers but also offer tips and advice and allow members to share knowledge.

Anyone that holds a product with Saga, has an active travel booking or has booked in the last two years is eligible for membership. The intention, says Atkinson, is to "turn customers into members". That should also help to boost loyalty and give more opportunities to cross-sell across Saga's offering.

Our customers don't want another Nectar card or Clubcard, they want to engage with a membership scheme and be part of something.

Matt Atkinson, Saga

"We want to talk to more people more often. We have adapted the magazine for the digital world and gone from having a website that was visited 200,000 times a month to a content platform with 1 million monthly visitors," says Atkinson.

"We want to bring the membership, magazine and content together to really add value to the audience and brands working with it. What we've tried to do very specifically is to create a mutually beneficial platform for engagement and growth. We were very keen not to end up with a points or discount scheme because there are so many of them. Our customers don't want another Nectar card or Clubcard, they want to engage with a membership scheme and be part of something."

Changing the image of 'old people'

Saga is synonymous with the older generation and Atkinson has previously admitted that Saga had positioned itself too closely with some of the older members of that generation. Now, however, it wants everyone over 50 to feel like Saga has something to offer them.

Part of that comes from his own personal experience. Atkinson is now 50 but says he "doesn't feel old" and is still competing in Ironmen competitions and running 60 miles a week. However, he believes society and brands too often stereotype those aged over 50 and in some cases write them off.

He sees that as a huge opportunity for Saga because society is still catching up to what it means to be in your 50s, 60s and 70s.
READ MORE: Over-50s marketing should stop focusing on age
"There is something not quite right about how society views older people. One of the bits of work we did was a linguistic study of public discourse around ageing and retirement and it does not make a happy read. What it says is we, as society, are shouting at, talking down to, stereotyping and undermining people's confidence or telling them not to be a burden on society. Excuse me, but how dare we," he says.

He readily admits Saga still has an image of a brand for 'old people' but says this work is the start of its shaking off that image of "being a brand for very old people who society has a stereotypical view of".

"That is at the heart of why we are doing this. We are not a brand for old people we're a brand for people who are getting on with life after 50. We want to make sure we're seen as a brand fit for that purpose."

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Saga relaunches brand as it looks to shake off 'old people' image

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Saga is relaunching its brand, unveiling a new look and feel for the brand as well as its first ever strapline 'Keep doing' as it looks to evolve the business to ensure it remains relevant for today's over 50s, rather than being seen as a brand for "old people".

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Mars' vice-president of marketing Michele Oliver has urged brands to think differently about diversity by not seeing it as an afterthought, given its Maltesers brand grew 8% as a result of diversity-focused campaigns.

Over the past year the chocolate brand has released multiple ads with diversity at their core. It won Channel 4's 'Superhumans Wanted' competition in April, which saw it launch three ads featuring disabled people around the Paralympics. And in January the brand released a braille bus poster for International Braille Day.

According to the company, the business results have been "outstanding". Double what it expected them to be.

"We set ourselves a target to grow the Maltesers brand by 4%. We grew the brand by 8%, which is ahead of the market," Oliver tells Marketing Week.

Maltesers also set a target to grow brand affinity by 10%, but ended up growing it by 20%. From a pure business perspective, Oliver says it has been the single most successful campaign for a Mars brand in "at least a decade".

Over half of consumers (57%) also said Maltesers is changing the way people perceive disability, which is "when things start to get exciting", according to Oliver.
READ MORE: 'Marketers need to work harder' insists Thinkbox CEO as brands drop diversity ads
"It's not just my passion and the business belief, it's the data showing that you can grow a brand and do something good for society," she says.

Oliver insists the British public is eager for brands such as Mars to focus on diversity and feature a more diverse demographic in their ads.

"It's incredibly powerful when you hear that some people have never seen themselves represented on screen - they are more likely to see a singing baby in an ad than a person with disabilities."

Despite this, one of the Maltesers clips, which featured a lady in a wheelchair talking about her new boyfriend, made the ASA's list of the top 10 most complained about ads in 2016 for "being offensive to disabled people".

Oliver says the brand worked closely with disability charity Scope to produce the ads, and anticipated there would be some people who would be uncomfortable with the ad content. Nevertheless, she is happy the ads prompted a debate.

She explains: "What reassured me was the overwhelmingly positive reaction. And yes, we're creating a debate - great. Let's get those opinions out in the open."

Putting diversity at the top of the business agenda

There has been a lot of support within Mars to push the diversity agenda. Unfortunately, most of the brands shortlisted for the Channel 4 competition have since decided to drop their plans.

People need to see [diversity] as the cake rather than the icing - that it has a longevity and that it's what consumers want to see from our brands

Michele Oliver, Mars

In response to this, Oliver says "it's a real shame", but adds that diversity is often not at the top of a brand's agenda. She insists, however, that it needs to be seen as the solution to some of the challenges it faces in business, rather than an "isolated" point to tick off on a checklist.

"It's a financially difficult year this year, with some brands budgeting day-to-day. People need to see [diversity] as the cake rather than the icing. As not something you do just for the Paralympics, but that it has a longevity and that it's what consumers want to see from our brands," she explains.

"A lot of people say their number one priority is to grow the business, number two to get great talent, and [wait to] point five or six to get diversity in there. We need to flip that on its head. Through diversity you will get great creative and better talent, which in turn will grow your business."

Expanding diversity beyond advertising

Going forward, Oliver admits not every Mars brand will have diversity at its core, as she wants it to be authentic and fit in with a brand's individual values. But Mars' Snickers brand will be running a digital partnership with Gay Star News in April, which looks to support people who are coming out.

"Snickers is a brand of inclusivity and substance, and likes talking about being who you are, so that's the message we'll be taking with the partnership," she explains.

For its recent Comic Relief campaign, which showed different hands building a cake made out of Maltesers, it made a point to feature people of different ages and ethnicities.

"It might seem small but we wouldn't have done it 18 months ago; they would have been perfectly manicured 19-year-old hands. It's part of the intention that you start to normalise diversity in how you show the mirror up to the consumer," she explains.

The business is also putting stronger mandatories in with its agency partners, in a bid to create more diverse shortlists when it comes to casting and directors.

For diversity to have longevity, Oliver says it has to be "more than just your communications", and include how a business recruits talent. In September, Mars is launching a marketing apprenticeship to attract people from lower economic backgrounds.

She concludes: "It can't just be communications, there has to be depth and meaning. If you have a bunch of diverse people in a meeting room, the idea will instantly become inclusive and happen naturally. The people in the business, at agencies and behind and in front of the camera need to be representative of the population."
Michele Oliver will be speaking at the Diversity in Marketing & Advertising Summit, taking place on 4 and 5 April. It aims to encourage greater diversity and inclusion within leadership roles and campaigns. For more information and to purchase tickets visit https://dimalync.com/

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Mars on why diversity needs to be 'flipped on its head'

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Mars' vice-president of marketing Michele Oliver has urged brands to think differently about diversity by not seeing it as an afterthought, given its Maltesers brand grew 8% as a result of diversity-focused campaigns. Over the past year the chocolate brand has released multiple ads with diversity at their core.

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Vodafone has been on an almost 10-year journey to make the company more inclusive and diverse.

The telecoms giant began to prioritise diversity in 2008, when Vittorio Colao took the helm as global CEO. He first decided to focus on improving working conditions for female employees, as he wanted to make the company a more attractive place to work for women.

That work has included rolling out a global maternity policy across all its markets, including a minimum of 16 weeks fully-paid maternity leave. New mothers returning to work are offered a 30-hour week on full pay for the first six months.

Vodafone has also launched what it claims is the world's biggest programme to recruit women who have taken a career break, with plans to hire 1,000 people worldwide over three years - half in frontline roles such as call centres and shops and the other half in managerial positions. The aim is to tap into a deep pool of skilled workers who are trying to return to work after up to a decade out of the workplace.

"We don't take diversity lightly. We don't just talk about it, we look at policies. We also look at employee education, senior sponsorship, as well as our customers and the role it can play in our advertising," Sharon Doherty, global organisation and people development director at Vodafone, tells Marketing Week.

Furthering its global inclusion agenda

Having initially focused on the experience of women in the workforce, Vodafone is now looking to further global inclusion agenda by supporting the LGBT+ community. It has decided that rather than it being a local issue, this is something it wants to have a point of view on globally and is rethinking its advertising with this in mind.

Working with its LGBT+ consumers, it has created inclusive advertising campaigns in various European markets. In Italy, one ad featured a same-sex kiss as part of the #powertokisses campaign, while a German campaign made a young trans person central to its storyline (see picture above).

Doherty says it now plans to do the same in other markets, as long as it fits in "with our local market strategies".

One challenge has been to move Vodafone's LGBT+ agenda forward but stay within local laws. After all, some of the markets Vodafone operates in have laws banning homosexuality.

"By working with Stonewall and OUTstanding, we're trying to look at how we might help in different markets where the laws are different, and to slowly and carefully create conversations to help move the agenda forward," she explains.

Driving diversity internally

Vodafone has also made some internal changes to ensure its own employees are involved in the efforts. It has rallied 25 directors from more than 20 countries to stand up for the cause and be involved in creating policies for their individual markets, which Doherty said "created traction in a way that it hadn't previously".

It also works with local LGBT+ groups to deliver relevant programmes to employees, such as unconscious bias training in India. In terms of its hiring policies, it also does a lot of work to ensure it is being diverse, using blind CVs and tech to ensure its job ads are gender neutral, for example.

Vodafone's efforts have been recognised externally. LGBT+ charity Stonewall recently gave it a "global community engagement" award, which Doherty calls an "incredible honour" and a sign that it is heading in the right direction.

But internal recognition is also important. Vodafone conducts an annual survey among its employees to measure the internal impact of its efforts, with the latest showing that 89% of its workforce feels "respected and included".

There isn't one thing you can do that suddenly means that you're a diverse and inclusive organisation. You need to have a long-term ambition for this.

Sharon Doherty, Vodafone

Doherty is keen to share the learnings, hoping Vodafone can help other companies up their focus on diversity.

"We've been on that journey for quite a while and we now want to put out a rallying cry for others to do the right thing. It has been so natural for us to look at how we can broaden conversations around the organisation so that everybody feels welcome. And by broadening our diversity agenda to focus on different issues, the energy to support diversity has grown," she says.

However, she warns that there is no "silver bullet" solution to diversity and that companies need to be committed to the cause, instead of seeing it as an "add-on".

She concludes: "There isn't one thing you can do that suddenly means that you're a diverse and inclusive organisation. You need to have a long-term ambition for this, and you need to be prepared to have a plan, keep updating it and experimenting, and stay committed. If you take your eye off the ball, you can go backwards."

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Vodafone on its journey to place diversity at the heart of the brand

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Vodafone has been on an almost 10-year journey to make the company more inclusive and diverse. The telecoms giant began to prioritise diversity in 2008, when Vittorio Colao took the helm as global CEO. He first decided to focus on improving working conditions for female employees, as he wanted to make the company a more attractive place to work for women.

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People are aligning themselves with brands that share their values and aspire to a greater purpose beyond their product. Neilson found that 66 per cent of consumers will pay more for products and services from companies that have committed to making a positive social and environmental impact.

But how does a brand remain authentic in its pursuit of purpose? How does a brand establish where it has a right to play? By portraying solid values and standing for something more than their products, according to industry experts at a panel event, chaired by The Drum's editor, Stephen Lepitak, in association with Microsoft.

In a fast-paced world where innovation happens quickly, brands cannot rely on product differentiation to connect consumers with their brand. As Kathleen Hall, Microsoft's corporate vice president of brand, advertising and research notes: "The differentiation becomes more dependent on how these brands differ from each other. What's become more important is the "value system" portrayed by brands to consumers."

Gary Reisman, founder & CEO at Leap Media Investments, agrees with Hall. "A lot of products have matured. You have to do more than that and stand for something. The consumer must feel they can align with your brand."

This point is conveyed by Peter Carter, harley procter marketing director of brand building integrated communications at The Proctor and Gamble Company, as he compares Pantene's "Not Sorry" campaign with its Super bowl 'Strong is Beautiful' campaign. The former was about female empowerment but had nothing to do with hair. The latter was all about hair but still retained its female empowerment message.

He explains the lessons learnt: "It's not just about doing good stuff, it's about doing good stuff and getting [consumers] to buy products."

Suzanne Powers, global chief strategy officer at McCann, says brands can "create a system of authenticity" by establishing their purpose in a consumer's life. "Once you know your role, it creates a platform for everything. It might be stories or behaviours, things that you are doing that actually deliver on that role."

Jill Cress, CMO EVP at National Geographic, reveals how the prevalence of social media makes it easy to connect people in an authentic way.

"At National Geographic with things that are important to us like climate or wild places, we are able to connect people with those passions. They have a place to gather and make the things that matter to them a part of the conversation," she says.
When it goes wrong
Earlier this year in April, Pepsi's commercial featuring model Kendall Jenner faced a huge backlash for mocking the Black Lives Matter movement. In the advert, Jenner offers a can of soda to a police officer as a peace offering but it was criticised by civil rights activists for co-opting the visual language of resistance movements. So how did Pepsi get it so wrong?

Hall says Pepsi made several rookie errors which could have been avoided had Pepsi used external agencies and partners to help them see what was wrong with the advert.

"There has to be an authentic product truth somewhere, so that was missing. And it used every possible stereotype you could think of. You can't just look inward. The benefits of using external agencies and partners is; they will call 'BS' on you," she says.

Carter agrees that the use of external partners could have helped Pepsi avoid the debacle that followed. "We use external partners because they bring us new ideas that we wouldn't think of on our own. They know how we operate, they know what works - and they really add value," he says.

On Hall's authentic truth point, Carter also shares an example of Tide which washed clothes for victims of Hurricane Katrina. The first year the 'Loads of Hope' program washed clothes for the hurricane victims and it was very successful. But when Tide built houses the following year, it was a big flop.

"Tide doesn't build houses and therefore there was no connection to the product and it was not authentic for us to do that. Even though it was a nice charitable thing to do and the people who got their houses were very happy - it just was not connected to the product enough," he explains.
Final lessons?
Overall, the panellists agree that brands need to establish their purpose in a consumer's life and create stories based on this knowledge. But they should also make use of external partners wherever possible to keep their creativity in check. This becomes especially important when separating your emotions from the creative. As Carter says: "You get so enamoured with your brand, that you can't see what's going on."

Cress recalls how she wishes she had made more use of partners to "help keep her honest" about her creative work. "Some of the creatives that I've done over the years flopped because we fell in love with our own story. I've done ads that I am not proud of but you get too close to them. It's really hard to say we are not going to use this."

Hall agrees that having a "fresh and unburdened perspective" is important. At the same time, she does not want to see brands overthink and in turn, become too cautious. "Spreading the word about what your brand stands for through authentic communications gives people something to buy into."

On what brands can do better, she says: "Brands can tell better stories just by knowing themselves. When you take it down to the core and essence of who you are and what you believe in, it makes for the best brand storytelling."
Watch the full panel discussion below.
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Consumers expect the real deal - how can brands be authentic in championing a cause and where do they have permission to play?

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People are aligning themselves with brands that share their values and aspire to a greater purpose beyond their product. Neilson found that 66 per cent of consumers will pay more for products and services from companies that have committed to making a positive social and environmental impact.

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My Black is Beautiful: The Talk by BBDO New York

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Explore the latest, and greatest, creative work from around the globe.

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Netflix's enormous spending on original content has led the streaming video platform to accrue $20.54 billion in short and long term debt, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

The company is expected to spend $6 billion on original content this year, with an undetermined budget spent on licensing fees for programs from TV studios. Its net cash outflow will increase this year to $2.5 billion, up from $1.7 billion, and the company expects "to be free-cash-flow negative for many years."

Investors seem content with Netflix's financial game plan, and are hopeful that debt financing will "create growth" in the short term. The company has continued to build its base of subscribers paying for the service (up 25% from 2016) and gather critical acclaim for original shows - its programming won 91 Emmy nominations last year spread over 50 shows.

However, some industry experts are warning of a "Netflix bubble" if the platform's original content fails to keep attracting users. "I think they're going to need some luck in not drowning in debt in the ultimate slowdown of growth," said media consultant Mike Vorhaus, while analyst Michael Pachter warned of "a looming write-down."

Netflix has increasingly relied on debt for funds. Its long-term debt is $4.84 billion, double what it was last year. And its short term debt, approximately $15.7 billion, reportedly isn't reflected in the company's balance sheets. From the Times: "In its most recent quarterly filing, the company said it has $8.2 billion in off-balance-sheet debt. The practice is a common accounting technique but it is also a way for companies to paint a rosier financial picture than may be the case."

The spending on original content is likely to increase as TV networks rise the costs of licensing fees for shows to stream on Netflix. The company hopes to eventually build a library that's 50% Netflix originals, but experts warn that this would require a lot of time - possibly decades - as well as money.

Netflix declined to comment when reached by the Times. The FADER has reached out for comment.

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Netflix's enormous spending on original content has led the streaming video platform to accrue $20.54 billion in short and long term debt, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. The company is expected to spend $6 billion on original content this year, with an undetermined budget spent on licensing fees for programs from TV studios.

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Dooley Tombras, the firm's executive vice president, said it sent products to influential Amazon reviewers in hopes of soliciting positive feedback and conducted "guerrilla sampling," like holding events "where we're handing out a product and we've got teams there with iPads and we're encouraging people to write reviews of a product on the spot."

There are more than 14,000 reviews of the powder. The page also has more than a dozen images of the powder taken from "multiple angles" against a light background to look clean and professional, Mr. Tombras said, along with short videos extolling the powder.

Brands can pay Amazon to customize the middle of pages with large advertorial images and information - which in the protein powder's case included photos of men working out; a recipe for "birthday cake pancakes" made with the chocolate-flavored whey; and a chart featuring six of its other products, like Micronized Creatine Powder, explaining when and how they should be consumed.

Mr. Tombras's firm is even working on a feature for Echo devices that will provide recipes from Optimum Nutrition. "If you find a recipe you like and happen to not have that flavor or item, you can go ahead and make that purchase," he said, "which is pretty cool."

Amazon has long been an online shopping behemoth, but marketers now know it is playing an increasingly important role in how people discover and learn about their goods.

"E-commerce is nothing new, it's been going on for decades, and Amazon is nothing new, it's been successful for decades - but now they are becoming much more of a dominant force in brand discovery," said Sarah Hofstetter, the chief executive of the digital agency 360i.

Its quick success in categories like apparel and the popularity of voice search emphasized that, Ms. Hofstetter said. "Amazon is the new shelf space," she added, "and if you're not on it, you may be rendered invisible."

Mindshare and Possible, two agencies under the ad giant WPP, recently announced a service to help companies spend their advertising dollars across "the Amazon ecosystem." (Possible caught the industry's attention this year when it acquired Marketplace Ignition, an Amazon-focused consulting firm.)

The agencies said in the release that more than half of United States consumers now started online product searches on Amazon, compared with 28 percent on search engines and 16 percent on retailer websites.

Martin Sorrell, WPP's chief executive, said on an earnings call this year that "Amazon's penetration in most areas is frightening to some." He added that the company was his response when people asked him, "What worries you when you get up at night and when you wake up in the morning?"

In an interview in Cannes, France, last month, Mr. Sorrell said his firm wanted to do more with clients and Amazon, but noted there were major questions around how brands might gain access its customer data and compete on voice search.

"What happens if I say to Alexa, 'I like Cheerios,' and Alexa says, 'I've got Kellogg's Corn Flakes, which are 10 percent off'?" he said.

Amazon Media Group, the company's growing advertising division, has been looking to assuage such concerns while touting new ways marketers can reach people on Amazon. Seth Dallaire, its head of global ad sales and marketing, has been urging agencies to view product pages and images as "brand marketing vehicles," noting that if they are not well maintained it could undermine all the work companies did to get people there in the first place.

"We can see the entire customer-decision journey, and that's what's unique," Mr. Dallaire said. "We can help a brand if they're selling their products on Amazon understand when a customer is exposed to an ad and, when they clicked on an ad, if they bought something, and then we can help them tailor their marketing messages and their creative to each different step."

That's no small pitch given the guesswork that goes into advertising. Amazon has long sold lucrative sponsored product listings and other ads tied to search terms on its site, like Google. It also offers automatically placed ads on external sites using its own technology and data, and marketing on Amazon packages and devices like Kindles.

It can harness its users, too - while Amazon does not sell cars, it worked with Hyundai last year to offer test drives to Prime Now customers in California.

Amazon does not disclose the size of its ad business, though estimates show it is well below Google and Facebook, which each bring in more than $25 billion from ads annually. While eMarketer estimated that Amazon will attract more than $1 billion in ad revenue this year, BMO Capital Markets forecasts $3.5 billion for 2017 and $5.7 billion next year.

"In the grand scheme of things, the advertising revenue they're generating is small compared to Google - you can barely compare them," said Norm Johnston, global chief strategy and digital officer for Mindshare. "But for Amazon, it's not the advertising revenue in itself. They know if brands invest in the platform, the more sales they're going to generate, and a lot of those sales lead to subscription models."

In the past, many brands handled their Amazon business through store sales teams that determined shelf positioning and end-of-aisle displays at brick-and-mortar chains. That is no longer workable as Amazon extends its ad network, offering branding opportunities through its Prime program and streaming N.F.L. games.

"In the old world, you'd run magazines, TV spots and outdoor ads, then you'd go into the shop, and they'd control what happened in the shop," Mr. Johnston said. "You can't distinguish like that anymore."

To that end, marketers are also learning to pay new attention to issues like how much of an item is in stock before promoting it, or risk being penalized by Amazon's algorithms if they aren't able to handle demand, Mr. Denny of Bai said.

Mr. Dallaire said Amazon planned to keep investing in its ad sales and agency development teams.

Ultimately, he said, the interest is generated by behavioral shifts.

"It could be people shopping on their phones, the expectation you or I might have of getting immediate customer-review information and pricing information within seconds of pulling a device out of our pockets, it could be the expectation of hearing a song you ask Alexa to play," he said. "Advertisers want to make sure they are not missing out on these customer trends."

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As Amazon's Influence Grows, Marketers Scramble to Tailor Strategies

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Dooley Tombras, the firm's executive vice president, said it sent products to influential Amazon reviewers in hopes of soliciting positive feedback and conducted "guerrilla sampling," like holding events "where we're handing out a product and we've got teams there with iPads and we're encouraging people to write reviews of a product on the spot."

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One of the most common myths surrounding millennials and younger people, in general, is that they are binge drinkers and that their alcohol consumption is much higher than other generations'. Well, this couldn't be less true.

In fact, 1 in 5 millennials don't drink alcohol, making them the biggest generation of teetotalism (source: Morning Advertiser) and they are the less likely of all age groups to be heavy drinkers (source: Mintel). This is probably explained by their health consciousness and them growing up with a lot of communications warning Brits of the danger of excessive alcohol consumption.

What makes millennials such a unique generation is also their duality; the most likely to exercise yet the most likely to like to indulge themselves with food, the most likely to be career driven yet the most likely to want a healthy work/life balance or the savviest shoppers yet the most likely to be ready to pay for goods that are worth it (source: TGI).

And their drinking habits are no exception to this. They may be the least likely to be drinkers, the least frequent drinkers (only 46% of 16-24s drunk in the last week vs 64% of 45-64s, source: Mintel), have a smaller volume of alcohol consumption but when they drink and indulge they go much bigger than older generations. They are the most likely to claim they 'binge' on their heaviest drinking day (37% said so vs 10% of 65+ said so, source: Mintel) showing that their alcohol consumption is much more an occasion indulgent moment and not a frequent habit.

Another fact that makes their relationship to alcohol different to other generations is the context and surroundings of its consumption; it seems that for them, drinking is not at the heart of their activity but rather a companion to it. They do enjoy consuming alcohol whilst watching a gig, socialising with friends or watching sports, showing the context and social occasion is key to them. They are also the biggest pub goers of all generations showing that drinking is more a social occasion than a moment they spend by themselves (source: Mintel).

Another difference we can see is the importance of taste in drinking. Not only do they enjoy the taste of alcoholic drinks more than their parents do (source: Soho House interview) but they also prefer to go to pubs to eat out rather than just drink (source: Mintel) showing again their foodie reputation.

Peroni understood this well with their 'The Taste' campaign where their mixologist explains the flavours behind the product and their food pairing section on their website.

Another great millennial-focussed campaign is Carlsberg's chocolate bar that focuses on the insight that millennials are social drinkers and like to experience with drinking. The same can be said for Bacardi when they launched their 'Night brats' campaign to go on the night experiences and crowd territory.

So this shows that it is key to go beyond myths when targeting an audience and the importance of looking at the depth and complexity of millennials' behaviour rather than just looking at volume of frequency or consumption measures.

Millennials have a strong duality and frequently balance seriousness and consciousness with indulgence and pleasure, therefore brands that act the same way and understand this aspect of them will manage to land in this age group's social and drinking occasions.

Brands that also manage to understand how to tap into the taste and foodie opportunities will manage to connect in a better and cleverer way with this taste-focussed audience.

Check out our Future of Generations research for more insights.

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One of the most common myths surrounding millennials and younger people, in general, is that they are binge drinkers and that their alcohol consumption is much higher than other generations'. Well, this couldn't be less true.

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Domino's has enabled voice-activated Amazon Echo ordering in the UK, meaning customers can now have a pizza delivered without lifting a finger.

Users can ask Alexa via the Echo or Dot devices to 'launch Domino's', which will then put then in contact with the pizza brand's AI personality Dom who will respond to their queries in a fun way - reflecting the brand's own tone of voice.

Customers using the Amazon Echo or Dot to place orders must have enabled an Easy Order profile within the brand's app, which saves customers' favourite orders so they can request them on-demand.

Domino's ordering via Alexa has been enabled in the US since February last year. In the UK, the delivery giant is the first of its kind to launch voice ordering through the software.

Domino's worked with its innovation agency We Are Social on the UK launch, with the move following on from the unveiling of a 'Pizza Bot' last year; which affords hungry people the chance to order pizzas directly within Facebook Messenger.

The brand is no stranger to PR stunts focused on innovation, but its latest pivot towards Alexa could prove useful for customers with millennial consumers in particular having shown a strong acceptance of voice-enabled assistants.

"Domino's has a passion for innovation and is always looking to try something new," said Tom Ollerton, innovation director at We Are Social. "We've enjoyed working with Domino's technology team to make this happen with the Echo ordering - it's a perfect example of how Domino's uses technology to make life easier for its customers."

Towards the end of last year Domino's shook up its marketing department in the UK, enlisting former BHS marketer Tony Holdway as chief marketing officer.

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Domino's turns to Amazon Echo to let customers order pizza using only their voice

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Domino's has enabled voice-activated Amazon Echo ordering in the UK, meaning customers can now have a pizza delivered without lifting a finger. Users can ask Alexa via the Echo or Dot devices to 'launch Domino's', which will then put then in contact with the pizza brand's AI personality Dom who will respond to their queries in a fun way - reflecting the brand's own tone of voice.

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JR Little

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Strategist, Entrepreneur, and Author of Listening Brands: How Data is Rewriting the Rules of Branding.

This past weekend, The Washington Post put out a blog article entitled, 'We're starting to shop online as often as we take the trash out'. This title is perfect for a piece about online shopping. No one likes to take out the trash and, as they depend more and more on online shopping, consumers are growing bored with the task of shopping. From ordering to delivering, they will want to avoid the logistics. This monotony and fatigue is exactly what Amazon is counting on to kill your brand.

A great brand story is not enough to save your product if Amazon lays siege to your entire product category. All consumer brands should be worried about Amazon's recent acquisition of Whole Foods - not because Amazon will compete for the 42 billion dollar grocery delivery market, but because Amazon couldn't care less about groceries --- or electronics, beauty products or content, subscriptions for that matter. Amazon's ambitions are much bigger --- and scarier for brands.

Amazon's end game isn't about any particular category. Its end game is nothing less than to be the facilitator, the conduit and the supplier of consumers' lives. They are creating a new kind of service product (the trusted home supplier) on the backs of entire marketplaces (e.g. groceries, electronics, toiletries, subscriptions, news, and entertainment).
How did we get here?
As 'the trusted home supplier' (my words, not theirs), Amazon is positioned to dominate entire new consumer categories (like groceries) as easily as it has rendered existing models obsolete (bookstores). The implications are profound because they have the power to erase a consumer product's branding altogether; think of the ubiquitous cardboard Amazon box.

Amazon was one of the first companies to truly understand the importance of designing and optimizing the ideal shopping experience. That's how they have been able to dominate category after category. Amazon's leaders have consistently spotted opportunities to provide unique utility, and use technology to differentiate their offerings, leaving less innovative competitors in the dust.

Their biggest stroke of genius was to comprehend early a key consumer insight: people value their time.

Shopping takes time. In the real world or online. Amazon dot com is designed as an efficient, highly tuned shopping race car. One destination is all a consumer needs to manage all of their home supply needs - from automatically reordering goods and checking for the best prices to delivering subscriptions to their door. In Amazon's world, the act of shopping is little more than an afterthought; saving consumers precious time they value.

Fifteen years ago, when I was first starting my career, I worked for a corporate and product branding agency. At that time, every consumer brand in the US was afraid of Walmart. Walmart dominated the retail marketplace and was (surprise!) expanding into groceries and selling private label brands that knocked off consumer brands that spent billions on branding.

Existing brands were livid but they were forced to suck it up, lest they lose access to Walmart's billion dollar channel. On one hand, brands needed the distribution and shelf space, but on the other hand, they resented Walmart for their private label strategy that cut into their sales. Yet somehow, the consumer brands survived Walmart. They won't be so lucky with Amazon. If Walmart started the decline of consumer brands, Amazon is already gleefully finishing that process.

Over the last twenty years, as internet speeds and digital experiences improved, Amazon positioned itself to dominate with smart choices that anticipated the needs of today's consumer. They allowed other sellers on their platform so that any given shopper was guaranteed to find the item they wanted at the best price. As they improved the shopping experience - both online and delivery, the frequency of orders and items in basket increased steadily. Today, almost a third of Americans buy online each week. Amazon benefits from this shift more than any other company for a reason.

But like Walmart, Amazon's coup de grace was its decision to offer private label solutions, AmazonBasics and AmazonFresh. A commoditization journey which Wholefoods complements and expands in profound ways.
The fallout
Today, Electronics are cheaper, streamed content is cheaper, subscriptions are cheaper and in time the reorder and delivery will all be automated based on algorithms or peoples' Internet of Things environments (e.g. Dash, Wand, Echo, etc.). Even shopping for clothing may become systematic with PrimeWardrobe. Amazon is well on its way to controlling and dominating the entire e-commerce marketplace and it will leverage that position to commoditize the many brands it used to get there. It's just a matter of time.

Not surprisingly, Amazon's win is also American retail's loss. 46% of department store jobs have vanished since 2000, coinciding with Amazon's ascendance. According to Fung Global Retail & Technology, 5,300 stores have announced closures this year (three times as many as 2016). Between 2013 to 2017, America's clothing retail stores suffered 64,000 job losses, and from January to June, general merchandisers saw 31,000 jobs go away. Brick and mortar stores have suffered and will continue to suffer as the Amazon's of the world take market share and disrupt entire shopping models. But the real casualty here will be consumer brands that overly depend on 'choice' and placement at the shelf.
Has branding run its course?
If the buying and selling of goods becomes determined by algorithms like Amazon, the work of swaying consumer opinion will radically change. Marketers will need to convince consumers to care enough about baked beans, soda, laundry detergent or toilet paper that they will actively choose to alter their predetermined shopping settings. Asking a person to change their preferences between two extremely similar items is a very tall order. It's a brave new world, with Amazon at the helm.
How brands should pivot
Yes. Today's consumers are extremely brand savvy. In the words of Shane Smith, the founder of Vice, today's young shoppers have a "built-in bullshit detector, so don't bullshit." Young people are keenly aware of how to build a brand which is why so many of them are running their own media empires via YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram. In a world where young people know how to build a brand, how does a consumer brand stand out?
Experience mapping
The promise of branding has always been that a well-crafted story can add intangible value to an otherwise commoditized product. This worked well in the past, but examples like Brandless (new household goods startup with $50m before launch) and Dollar Shave Club are calling bullshit. We are entering into a new era where consumers are able to separate the brand from the commodity. As social brand consciousness rises, people will start to prioritize other means of differentiation, like a better utility. This is where Amazon wins. Amazon makes life easier for millions of people. Thus, brands today need to understand the utility they should already deliver and the differentiating utility they could deliver.

In recent years, many agencies have started to move away from the assertion that the brand story is everything. There is a tacit admission in the industry that the story is irrelevant if the experience or product is subpar. The role of experience design, media and data is more important than ever. Crafting a unique experience for a brand that feels tangibly different from the competitive set is key. To do this, all marketers need to embrace experience design - the act of mapping and deeply understanding the consumer journey process in order to meet and anticipate people's needs and wants. Only then will brands be able to spot opportunities to create extra utilitarian value that sets their brand apart. There is no silver bullet to the threat of Amazon, but there are solutions. Pivot to subscription-based models, new means of distribution, showrooming, events that foster culture, new customer services, and unexpected partnerships and collaborations. Brand will increasingly need to stand for more by delivering something new, not simply claiming something new.

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Strategist, Entrepreneur, and Author of Listening Brands: How Data is Rewriting the Rules of Branding.

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Amazon is going to kill your brand. And your job.

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This past weekend, The Washington Post put out a blog article entitled, 'We're starting to shop online as often as we take the trash out'. This title

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"Alexa, order a dress that Pernille Teisbaek wore on June 19 that I saw on her Instagram."

Voice interface does for 21st-century shopping what the department store did for the 20th and family shops did for the 19th: It summarizes the consumer desire in tangible form. It shows us where decision-making lies and honors the organizing mode of retail.

In the 19th century, it was the neighborhood store. In the 20th, it was the shopping mall. Now it is the consumer.

How consumers shop changes what they shop for. More ways to buy something doesn't mean just more retail opportunities, as the idea of "omnichannel" would like us to believe. More ways to buy something means buying different things.

Say, for example, a person is buying a Gucci dress in Milan. The dress may have caught the shopper's eye because it was on a mannequin or because someone else was trying it on or because a sales assistant complimented how it looked. If this same person goes to farfetch.com, the shopper may be influenced by F90 delivery service that brings selected Gucci products from store to door in 90 minutes. Or maybe the site's editorial content and curation will draw the visitor to a completely different product made by a different brand.

Digital isn't influencing purchases. It's transforming them

Products that are highly Instagrammable, like statement earrings or bold colors, are more popular and get made more. Product shareability has become a legitimate design decision, as most items are going to be viewed exclusively online. Online viewing and sharing is also increasingly all it takes when it comes to consumption: Why do we even need to buy something if we can just Instagram it? The sense of individual expression and social validation are just the same.

Ecommerce took away the need to go to a store to browse, try on and buy clothes. Social media removed the need to own them. Voice interfaces diminished the role of brands in connecting products and consumers.

This is the ultimate retail conundrum. Our purchases today are not digitally influenced; they are thoroughly transformed by each individual retail touch point. To make things more confounding, each touch point has a new user experience, a new value proposition and a new cost structure (the cost of customer service, algorithms or human curation differs for a voice interface, a website or a physical store).

A truly modern retailer centralizes rather than fragmenting

One way to solve this conundrum is to create a strong brand narrative and an integrated operational back end with a single cost center, merchandising, analytics and customer database. Net-a-Porter is a good example. It centrally manages all its customer touch points and connects them into a recognizable experience.

Legacy retailers operate through a fragmented value chain. They lack both the umbrella narrative or an integrated operational back end. They manage their different touch points (physical retail, online retail, mobile, social) as separate operations. When one of them fails, like a physical store, the others can't compensate for it.

This conundrum has happened before, with newspapers. When we changed where and how we read, we changed what we read, with vast consequences for the industry. Today, nearly 80 percent of all online referral traffic and online ad income comes from Google and Facebook. But these two companies do not do costly investigative reporting. They are aggregators who make today's market for news. The market they make, because neither of them has fixed costs of creating news, leads to commoditization of news supply.

In retail, newly created networks and aggregators (Farfetch, Zalando, Alibaba, Amazon) create a similarly commoditized market. On the upside, this market allows small companies to compete as effectively as large ones. In their fight against commoditization, the small companies lead the way.

"We don't want big numbers. We want engaged, quality readers, listeners, viewers," noted Tyler Brûlé, founder of the Monocle brand. What they lack in scale, this next generation of direct-to-consumer companies make up in customer intimacy.

Building successful retail means building relationships

To differentiate in a market created by retail networks and aggregators is to have a strong, personal and deep-rooted bond around your audience's passion points. It is about managing an ongoing relationship with a very specific set of customers that enables their specific lifestyles.

The internet created a landscape that is much less about brands and much more about people talking about themselves. Smart newcomers, like Goop or Glossier or Away, capitalized on this. They capture consumer imagination not by crowbarring themselves into conversation, but by being the subject of it. They invested in offline activities, communities, content and collaborations as their audience-building strategies.

In the process, the new retail models built businesses that are meaningful and that people love to talk about. For them, the internet is not just another place to put old-school messages, taking up space in between people discussing more interesting things. Instead, Goop, Net-a-Porter, Away or Lululemon are those interesting things.

Retail newcomers show an understanding of connected culture that goes much deeper than the legacy retail brands throwing millions of dollars at the latest tech, hoping something will stick. They succeed because they look for the future of retail in its past: in the intimate, local, one-on-one human connections responsible for creating loyalty in the first place. Today's mass is a collection of niches and local influences. Thanks to 21st-century technology, the corner store of the 19th century is making its resolute comeback.

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New Tech Touch Points Aren't Killing Retail. They're Bringing It Back to Its Personal Roots

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"Alexa, order a dress that Pernille Teisbaek wore on June 19 that I saw on her Instagram." Voice interface does for 21st-century shopping what the department store did for the 20th and family shops did for the 19th: It summarizes the consumer desire in tangible form.

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REUTERS/Charles Platiau

Food delivery startup Deliveroo claims it has reduced its delivery times by 20% with a new algorithm called "Frank".

The London-headquartered company, which is now competing with Amazon Restaurants and UberEats, announced on Wednesday that Frank has enabled it to reduce its average delivery time to 29 minutes in the UK.

A spokesperson for UberEats claimed the average time for one of its deliveries in the UK is 28 minutes but Deliveroo would likely question whether its couriers are indeed faster on average.

Deliveroo said Frank uses machine learning - a technology that allows software to become more accurate in predicting outcomes without being explicitly programmed - to evaluate the most efficient way of distributing orders based on the location of restaurants, riders, and customers.

The algorithm can also tell Deliveroo's 10,000 UK restaurants how long it will take them to prepare a meal based on the time of the day and the type of order, Deliveroo said. Deliveroo claims that its 15,000 UK riders are benefiting from Frank because it allows them to complete more deliveries per hour and earn more money.

Mike Hudack, CTO at Deliveroo said in a statement: "Deliveroo's British-built technology is the most exciting thing being developed in Europe right now and we want our new London HQ to be where global innovations happen.

"We're building an algorithm which can cope with millions of simultaneous orders, while continuously refining itself, improving the experience for our riders, restaurants and customers. Our investment in the engineering team is testament to that ambition, and we are working on new, trailblazing technology that will make that ambition a reality."

Deliveroo announced in January that it was planning hire 300 additional engineers in 2017.

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Deliveroo is using an algorithm called 'Frank' to cut food delivery times by 20%

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Food delivery startup Deliveroo claims it has reduced its delivery times by 20% with a new algorithm called "Frank". The London-headquartered company, which is now competing with Amazon Restaurants and UberEats, announced on Wednesday that Frank has enabled it to reduce its average delivery time to 29 minutes in the UK.

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Tricky stuff, eh?

That difference was very much top of mind last week thanks to two very different marketing stories, one enormously encouraging and the other deadly dumb.

On the positive side was the work of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on gender stereotyping. Its report on the subject confirmed that while multiple factors contribute to gender misrepresentation and inequality, a significant amount of the problem can be traced back to portrayals of women in advertising.

It has been a long-running problem for advertisers. When I was working on my PhD in marketing many moons ago I spent (literally) 14 months in the library at Lancaster University on my literature review. God knows how many monographs and books I ploughed my way through back in 1992 and 1993 in that sunless room, but there is only one book that still sticks in my memory a quarter-century later.

The impact of ad stereotypes

Decoding Advertisements by Judith Williamson was one of the first proper semiotic attempts to show that ads not only promote brands, but also have other far-reaching effects on society. The killer part of Williamson's book is how she shows the manner in which ads contribute to the prevailing ideology by reaching consumers through the 'back door' of their consciousness.

When a consumer sees a TV ad with a mother and daughter using Fairy liquid to do the dishes, she instantly puts up her perceptual defenses to avoid falling for the commercial message that funds the advertising message. But, as Williamson notes, with her defenses fully engaged in rejecting the claim that Fairy is a superior cleaner, she accepts entirely the representation of women at the kitchen sink doing the washing up and the complete absence of any men helping out.

Advertising's overt commercial message belies its more pernicious gender representations which, thanks to multiple repeated viewings and unquestioned portrayals of everyday life, serve to confirm and reinforce the order of things. It's not just that advertising is guilty of the misrepresentation of gender roles and body image and all the other shit that continues to dog women in the 21st century - it may well be the prime suspect.

I'm hardly the world's biggest champion for women's issues or political correctness. I write columns about my penis and use the word 'fuck' far too frequently. But what the ASA has uncovered is fundamentally important, as are the subsequent new standards for gender portrayals in advertising that they will introduce to the UK. Any decent marketer must support the initiative, surely.

We took one big step forward last week thanks to the ASA, and just as big a step backwards with Joon and its ridiculous age-based stereotypes.

But in the same week that advertising, for once, was giving me the warm fuzzies it was also smashing me repeatedly in the balls with the 'millennial' hammer once again. Over in Paris, Air France and KLM were busy announcing that they were launching a new airline called Joon specifically aimed at the millennial consumer. Look away, those of you of an intemperate disposition; the paragraph below from Caroline Fontaine, vice-president of global brand at Air France, explains the strategy.
READ MORE: Behaviour versus demographics: Why the term 'millennial' is useless
"We started with our target customer segment, the millennials, to create this new brand that means something to them. Our brief was simple: to find a name to illustrate a positive state of mind. This generation has inspired us a lot: epicurean and connected, they are opportunistic in a positive sense of the word as they know how to enjoy every moment and are in search of quality experiences that they want to share with others. Joon is a brand that carries these values."

You can see where this is all going. The airline is going to be very 'digital' and staffed by young, hip and very casually dressed young people who occasionally remember to bring you your beverage while worrying about global warming and posting pictures of their pets on Instagram.

My problem with this whole stupid idea is, of course, that the whole myth of the millennial segment makes a mockery of just about every principle of basic segmentation. Clearly millennials as a generational cohort do exist - they are the two billion people on the planet born between 1981 and 2000. But the idea that this giant army all want similar stuff or think in similar ways is clearly horseshit. Similarly, the idea that they also differ from other older cohorts in significant ways is superficially persuasive but turns out to be equally nonsensical.

Millennials are not a segment

Time after time researchers have set out to show the differences between millennials and other consumers. And in every instance those researchers return with data that says that, aside from the general effects of being younger, hornier and poorer than the old fuckers ahead of them on the demographic motorway of life, they are actually remarkably similar to everyone else.

Martin Schiere is a very good Dutch researcher who recently completed a massive quantitative study of 15,000 millennials in more than 20 different countries. His main finding, summarised in the bar chart below, is all you need to know about the millennial market segment. Schiere compared a very sound attitudinal segmentation across the millennial, generation X and post-war cohorts. As you can see below, the green millennials are spread relatively consistently across the five different attitudinal groups. Some are conservatives, some are challengers. Some are creatives while others are achievers.

Being a millennial, irrespective of what some ropey YouTube video with Simon Sinek might have led you to believe, is not a ticket to a completely different kind of mindset. In fact, there is a significant chance that if you lined up five millennials and asked them an attitudinal question they would each disagree entirely with the others. That's what that spread of green bars tells you.

And what makes the millennials claptrap all the more confounding is the fact that those little green bars, shown above, are very often about the same size as the blue gen X-ers' and the orange post-war baby boomers' bars. In other words, the supposedly different older cohorts are just as likely to agree with a millennial as disagree. Rather than being some kind of drastically different group who share a completely alternative mindset, your average millennial is just as likely to agree with her post-war grandfather as her fellow millennial sister.

If your segment is populated by different people who want different things, it is not a segment. It's a joke and so are your skills as a marketer.

All of this makes Air France's new airline Joon a total non-starter from the beginning because if the segment you are designing your offer for does not exist, all subsequent marketing bets are off. As any well-trained marketer (hopefully you) knows, marketing is multiplicative. If the segmentation is wrong, your targeting will always be wrong. That ruins your positioning and all the tactical decisions that follow it in execution. Air France and KLM would be as well served to go after Librans because, unless you believe in astrology, they are just about as uniform and meaningful in their desires as the so-called millennial group.

My point is not just that focusing on millennials is a stupid, stupid approach to segmentation, but also that it is a totally unacceptable and offensive stereotype in an era when such things are meant to be behind us. How is it possible to celebrate the actions of the ASA in challenging the common, sexist assumptions made about women in so much marketing while allowing a significant number of big companies to continue to lump consumers together into a millennial segment based solely on a stupid, inaccurate age-based assumption?

I might just as well decide to launch an airline targeting Scottish people called Jock in which all the crew wear tartan, serve only whisky and deep-fried mars bars and keep the prices down because, as we all know, the Scots like a bargain.

And why stop there? Let's also create Rasta Airlines for Afro-Caribbean travellers. We will play Bob Marley throughout the flight, paint the planes Rasta colours and make sure there is a reliable source of top quality ganja to get you through the long flight ahead. Don't worry about jet lag, by the time you get to your destination with Rasta Airlines you won't even know which century you're in.

Yes, I know these are offensive ill-founded stereotypes. But they are no more stupid than bundling billions of people together because of their birth year and assuming they all like digital stuff, connections, enjoying quality moments and launching a new brand to offer the aforementioned nonsense in airline form.

We took one big step forward last week thanks to the ASA, and just as big a step backwards with Joon and its ridiculous, offensively simplistic age-based stereotypes. For strategic reasons as much as politically correct ones, if you cannot empirically show any meaningful differences between your target segment and the other segments - or if it is populated by completely different people who want entirely different things - your segment is not a segment. It's a joke and so are your skills as a marketer.

Now, if you'll excuse me I will leave it there. I'm booked on Rasta Airlines flight 423 to Jamaica and I like to get on board nice and early so I can get as high as possible - long before take-off commences. Respect!

Professor Mark Ritson will be teaching the next class on the Marketing Week Mini MBA in Marketing from September 2017. To find out how it could make you a more confident, more effective and more inspired marketer, and to book your place, click here.

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Mark Ritson: Only crap marketers mistake stereotypes for segments

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Tricky stuff, eh? That difference was very much top of mind last week thanks to two very different marketing stories, one enormously encouraging and the other deadly dumb. On the positive side was the work of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) on gender stereotyping.

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Dr David Davies sees more than his fair share of sixtysomethings. His clinic is situated in the west Somerset medieval village of Dunster, which has one of the densest populations of older people anywhere in Britain.

But these days, sexagenarians don't shuffle in looking sorry for themselves. Instead, he says, they are more likely to appear clad in lycra having cycled to their appointment across Exmoor national park.

Retirement timeline

"They come to see me for unspecified aches and pains which, because they are so fit and think of themselves as young, they think must be caused by something really serious," he says. "It generally takes at least three appointments before they can begin to even consider that their bodies might just be ageing - and then their reaction is one of absolute horror.

"People up to their late 60s nowadays really struggle with the fact that the ageing process is starting to affect them. It's partly that people live so long and partly that we've picked up the idea that we can defeat the ageing process more or less entirely, thanks to a combination of medical advances and individual, personal care."

Like some of its rich-world peers, Britain has entered the age of the aged. And, over the next two months, the Guardian will be exploring what that means in a series of weekly articles. The visit to Dr Davies' surgery is the beginning of what is intended to be a collaborative reporting project in which we tackle the issues prompted by the sweeping away of a traditional approach to old age by a generation of vigorous retirees.

By 2040, nearly one in seven Britons will be over 75, according to a report by the Resolution foundation thinktank published today, which also reveals that almost a third of people born today can expect to live to 100. In 2014, the average age in the UK exceeded 40 for the first time.

As the baby boomer generation enter retirement, we also reach a dramatic demographic turning point: 2017 will see the ratio of non-workers to workers start to rise for the first time since the early 1980s.

Our vastly improved life expectancy, which is growing by five hours a day, was one of the great triumphs of the last century. It is now, however, the source of the greatest challenges - and opportunities - of this era.

Ahead of launching this project, the Guardian asked readers to share their experiences of ageing, and tell us about their concerns and hopes. It became clear reading the responses that trying to deal with all the facets of this issue in one series was not going to work: so instead this project is being split in two. Later in the year it will return to discussions about old age - but the focus for this first, nine-part series will be retirement.

Dr David Davies has his surgery in Dunster

With your help, we will be considering what retirement looks like for this generation and future generations, and how we might all afford it. What do those in their 60s to mid-70s, who have pensions and properties and perhaps three decades of life still ahead of them think? But also those in their 50s and 60s, whose pensions have been eroded and benefits whittled away, and who might not be on the housing ladder? What if you're in your 30s and barely able to pay your rent, let alone save for a retirement that may not ever arrive?

Help us understand and analyse the lives, challenges and delights of a period of life that was once referred to as the golden years but is now a more complex picture. Your ideas and comments will help structure and develop this project, and unpack what retirement means for this new generation. If you would like to contribute, you can do so by leaving a comment below or by emailing with your tips, leads and experiences.

In advance of this series Debora Price, the president of the British Society of Gerontology and professor of gerontology at the University of Manchester, where she directs Micra, the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing, highlighted a tendency by the media to lump all older people together.

"We have a tendency to depict people aged 50 to 74 in the press and in public life as rich and successful, even powerful, and it's really important to know that this is only one of a number of different experiences of old age," she said.

"But the inequalities are greater in this age group than in any other: living in poverty, with difficulties maintaining and heating houses, suffering from malnutrition, needing help and care and being unable to find it - these are all also common experiences of this age group."

With that in mind, the Guardian wants to reflect a wide range of experiences of retirement, as well as considering many different responses to it.

In west Somerset, where Dr Davies has his surgery, the average age in the are a is 52 (pdf) - compared with 40 for the UK as a whole. More than one in three of the population are of retirement age and there are fewer people in the 25- to 44-year-old age group than anywhere else in the country.

According to the 2011 census, West Somerset council is also the local authority with the highest percentage - 7.4% - of people working aged over 65.

Many of these older workers, however, have goals more radical and far-reaching than their own career path. Four years ago, 71-year-old David Salter and 69-year-old Roger Hall set up the charity Porlock Futures to try to combat the impact of the area's high concentration of people aged over 65: almost 34% of people in Porlock are over 65 compared with 16.4% in England and Wales.

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Roger Hall from Porlock Futures CIC with the oyster trestles in Porlock Bay. Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian

Roger Hall from Porlock Futures CIC with the oyster trestles in Porlock Bay.

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Tess Nixon at Porlock Bay Oysters. Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian

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David Salter at Porlock Bay Oysters. Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian

Tess Nixon, who works at Porloack Bay Oysters. Right: David Salter set up Porlock Futures with Roger Hall.

"David and I are two of the youngest ones here - it's become an OAP village. We have to encourage young people to move here if we're going to survive," said Hall.

A not inconsiderable benefit of a workforce aged over 65 is the wealth of experience: Porlock Futures' executive committee of six has a

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The new retirement: how an ageing population is transforming Britain

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Dr David Davies sees more than his fair share of sixtysomethings. His clinic is situated in the west Somerset medieval village of Dunster, which has one of the densest populations of older people anywhere in Britain. But these days, sexagenarians don't shuffle in looking sorry for themselves.

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What's the challenge?

Britain's population is ageing. Adapting to this trend poses economic, social and political challenges and increases the dependency of older citizens on those of working age. What challenges and opportunities does this create for society? What should our response be?

Many countries including Britain, are experiencing a rapid ageing of their populations. There are two megatrends causing these demographic changes:

1 Low / declining fertility rate
Women in Britain are having fewer children than previous generations.

2 Rising longevity
People in Britain are living longer through improvements in health, diet and preventative care.

UK facts

Around a third of children born in the UK in 2012 are expected to survive to celebrate their one hundredth birthday.

Only 1% of those born in 1908 lived to 100

In the UK in 1901 life expectancy at birth was around 45 for men and 49 for women

Between 1901 and 2010, the number of people aged 40 and older trebled from 9.7m to 30.8m

In 2012 the number of over 65's and older in the UK surpassed 10 million for the first time

In 2007 the number of people in Britain aged over 65 outnumbered the number of people under 16 for the first time.

Baby Boomers: born during a period of rapid population growth and social change between 1946-64, with 17m births recorded in Britain alone during this period

Dependency ratio: The number of people of working age in relation to retirees

Sources: UK Government, ONS

Challenges of an ageing population:

Gaps in the job market, with businesses and public services lacking workforce and skills

Pressure on healthcare and social services

Funding public services and social housing: particularly in time of recession

How to harness the experience, expertise and creativity of a large number of older people.

Suggested responses:
1 Raise the age of retirement
2 Sustain or increase levels of migration to help fill labour /skills gaps
3 Encourage the working, taxpaying population to save more through pension schemes
4. Encourage people to remain active, engage in regular exercise and refrain from behaviours that could have a detrimental effect on their health
UK Labour force: Source Office of National Statistics (ONS), January 2009

Full-time employment 13.84m men 7.89m women

Part-time employment 1.87m men 5.68m women

Read more about how the UK can deal with an ageing population
Panel discussion

21st Century Challenges held a panel discussion on 16 June 2009 to discuss the issue.

Samira Ahmed, Channel 4 newsreader and correspondent
Samira Ahmed, Presenter and Correspondent for Channel 4 News. Samira joined Channel 4 News after several years as a correspondent and presenter at the BBC. She was the BBC's Los Angeles correspondent, before working as an anchor and political correspondent in Berlin for Deutsche Welle TV.

Samira has covered a range of issues since joining Channel 4 News as a reporter and presenter. She travelled across the world for a Channel 4 documentary series, Islam Unveiled, examining the status of Muslim women. She has lectured on terrorism, feminism and crime reporting at the London School of Economics and has chaired discussions for the Royal Shakespeare Company on English identity.

Angela Eagle MP, Former minister for Pensions and the Ageing society
Angela previously served as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury from July 2007. Prior to this she has been Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office (2001-02); the Department of Social Security (1998-01); the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Minister for Green Issues and Regeneration) (1997-98); and was an Opposition Whip (1996-97).

She has been on a number of Commons Select Committees, including the Members Interests Employment Select Committee, the Public Accounts Committee (twice); and Treasury Select Committee, and the Treasury Sub-Committee 2002-2007. Angela has been Vice-chair of the All-Party Equalities Group and in 2005 was elected Vice Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party. She is also a member of Labour's Ruling National Executive Committee (NEC).

She was elected as the first ever Labour MP for Wallasey in 1992, after holding a number of posts within the Labour Party. Angela was educated at Formby High School, and then gained a BA (Hons) in Politics, Philosophy and Economics and St John's College Oxford. She worked for CoHSE (now UNISON) as a Researcher, the Press Officer, and then Parliamentary Liaison Officer, before being elected to Parliament.
Angela's political interests include Economic Policy, the NHS, and the politics of sport.

George Magnus, Author and Senior Economic Adviser at UBS Investment Bank
George Magnus is the Senior Economic Adviser at UBS Investment Bank. Previously he had served as the Chief Economist with effect from the merger of UBS and Swiss Bank Corporation (SBC). Having chaired the Investment Committee of the Trustee Board of UBS' UK pension and life assurance fund for several years, he continues to serve on the Committee.

Mr. Magnus' previous positions included that of Chief International Economist at UBS before the merger with SBC, Head of Fixed Income Research and then Chief Economist at S.G. Warburg (1987-95), Chief International Economist at Chase Securities (1985-87, previously Laurie Milbank), Senior Financial Economist and then Head of Economics (EMEA region) at Bank of America (1977-85), European Economist at Lloyds bank International (1974-77) and Economics Writer at the Central Office of Information (1972-74).

Mr. Magnus received an MSc Econ from the School of Oriental and African Studies and taught economics at both the University of Westminster and the University of Illinois, where he was engaged in research on employment creation issues in less developed countries at the Institute of Labour and Industrial Relations.

Mr. Magnus' role is to investigate and analyse global economic topics and engage with clients and the media. He has been working on several thematic issues, including demographic change, the economic causes and consequences of globalization, the creation and deployment of petrodollars and sovereign wealth funds, the implications of a the re-emergence of a new Silk Road in Asia and the credit cycle in the global economy.

In 2007, Mr. Magnus predicted in March that the US sub prime mortgage finance crisis would become a Minsky Moment - or a full-blown credit crunch, named after the US economist Hyman Minsky - and he has written a series of illuminating research papers as to the nature and implications of this event. In October 2008, Mr. Magnus' book - The Age of Aging - a study of how demographics are changing the world and what the economic and social implications might be, as well as those for globalization, religion in the world, immigration and global security - was published by John Wiley in Asia, Europe and North America.
Discover other challenges
Further reading Infographic: 60 second guide to Ageing Populations Let us know what you think

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What's the challenge? Britain's population is ageing. Adapting to this trend poses economic, social and political challenges and increases the dependency of older citizens on those of working age. What challenges and opportunities does this create for society? What should our response be? Many countries including Britain, are experiencing a rapid ageing of their populations....

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The population of the UK will be the largest in Europe by 2050, overtaking France and Germany, mainly due to an ageing population and immigration.

The UK has seen more births than deaths in every year since 1976, helping drive the population to 65m, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics.

This figure will soar to 76m in 2045.

A quarter of the population will be over 65 in three decades

Increasing life expectancy is one of the main reasons for the population increase - with people living longer due to improved healthcare and lifestyles. Girls born in 2015 can expect to live 82.8 years from birth, while boys will live to 79.1 years.

This has meant that the proportion of people aged over 65 has increased from 14.1 per cent in 1975 to 17.8 per cent in 2015 - and is projected to expand further to almost a quarter of the population by 2045.

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UK population to be the largest in Europe by 2050, driven by immigration and an ageing population

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The population of the UK will be the largest in Europe by 2050, overtaking France and Germany, mainly due to an ageing population and immigration. The UK has seen more births than deaths in every year since 1976, helping drive the population to 65m, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics.