What Is Your Brand Saying?

Jonathan Adler NYC

These days, digital elements and social media touch points in brick & mortar retail environments are as essential as the interior finishes, and should be just as fully integrated. There’s no such thing as offline anymore, and shopping has become a bit of information overload, but it raises another issue for retailers—many seem to be a step behind on the actual digital content and messages they deliver. With digital’s constantly moving imagery providing a platform for multiple messages to be broadcast over a single spot, it becomes a rather tall order to maintain the content and keep it fresh. This is often more than some brands can afford in their operations budgets, especially after they’ve just spent large sums for the hardware and software in the first place.

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Solving the Content Conundrum

Cadillac House. Image © Gensler.

As the retail landscape continues to evolve, brick-and-mortar stores seek to provide new experiences that will lure consumers away from their smart phones, and inevitably towards the cashwrap. Our clients are always in search of that “wow” moment and, in turn, so are we. This often results in a heightened sense of retail theater, with technology and digital media taking the front seat.

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Digital Space: No Goggles Required

Keiichi Matsuda. Image courtesy of Meet the Media Guru, via Flickr.

A lot of people (like me) used to think that digital space would be like the brain-frying virtual reality described in William Gibson’s Neuromancer. That novel birthed the pop-culture idea of plugging your consciousness into a digital world and watching the physical realm evaporate. Gibson calls it a “consensual hallucination.” And even thought his vision is 30-years old, it’s as awesome now as it was then.

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Deep Engagement: Seamless, Immersive and Interactive Experiences

Image @ Flickr user Thomas Wensing

If a day goes by when I don’t talk to a client about how to make interactions with their brand seamless, immersive or interactive, it’s been a pretty weird day. No one wants to just talk about themselves anymore. We want to find ways to really connect with people deeply over time and to have living brand moments every day. These ideas are at the heart of forming lasting brand-people relationships, but I find that as much as the words are used, they’re also pretty abused. Why?

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