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It’s Time To Stop Talking Retail Innovation, And Start Doing It

By
Tim McMullen, redpepper

image

“Nike
Pushing Retail Innovation”

“Sephora’s
innovation ‘gathering speed’ at LVMH”

“Will
These Trends Shape Retail for the Next 25 Years?”

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These
are three recent articles on retail innovation. If you took everything that’s
been published about the topic this year, you’d be looking at the figurative
tippy-top of the iceberg. It’s been like this for over a decade.

But
there are still retailers out there that haven’t started an innovation program
for themselves.

They
think it’s something other companies do, worry it won’t work for them, or that
their organization isn’t set up for it. The truth is that retailers of all
types are experimenting in one way or another, from DTC startups to legacy
brick-and-mortars. What these companies share (other than being retailers) is
having found a way to generate and test new ideas, and implement the good ones.
For those that haven’t begun this process for themselves, the prospect can seem
daunting, a pipe dream with no hope of becoming reality.  

Most
retailers don’t realize that they’re perfectly set up to test new ideas. As
part of their standard operating procedures, they’re constantly testing new
products, tactics, vendors, etc. They work fast. They are used to producing
lots of content and bringing it to life in different ways. And they get the
concept of prototyping, from pop-up stores to A/B testing shelf height. This is
the essential framework needed to test new ideas. The only thing that’s missing
then are new ideas to feed into the system, and a new way to measure ROI.

Since
most of us don’t think of ourselves as creatives, we tend to limit ourselves
from creative thinking. But we’ve found that the people best suited to
creatively solve a business’ problems are the ones who work there. This is a
reality most retailers need help facing, and often it helps to have a guide to
get started. Once this barrier is removed, the real ideation work can begin,
and things flow naturally from there.

An
important side effect of the ideation part of the process is that it allows you
to see things from a new perspective, and helps put you in a mindset for
finding new solutions to old problems. Having someone to help you through that
makes sense. It’s almost therapeutic, for the people who experience it and the
brand itself.

And
like therapy, it’s hard to understand the value until you’ve experienced it.
It’s not a light switch, but there can be short-term wins that will build
confidence. When it becomes part of your business strategy, an element in the
marketing/operations flow that is exercised, a muscle develops that can be
relied on to lift more than its own weight. Not only will it help you innovate,
but it will sharpen your problem solving skills overall.  

In
retail, the entire job is problem solving, namely figuring out what people are
going to want. Retailers spend so much time trying to figure out what’s going
to be important to the consumer next. But if you actually co-invented what was
next with the consumer (by putting your experiments out into the world in the form
of, for example, a store-of-the-future), and had a practice inside your
organization focused on that, it would fuel your business.

Bringing
customers into an innovation story, to give them a sense the brand is listening
and acting on their behalf, isn’t that difficult when you already know who your
early adopters/brand champions are — something most brands are already aware
of. Every retailer has a small, highly engaged representative audience willing
to tell them what the rest of the market would want. Testing with these
individuals just makes sense, and builds confidence that new ideas can be
validated ahead of time.

And
though time is of the essence, it’s not too late, nor will it take as long as
you might think to start innovating. You don’t need more research. You don’t
need new technology. You need new perspective, and there are plenty of people
out there who can help you get it.


Tim McMullen is the founder, CEO, and Innovation
Practice leader at
redpepper, a creative agency and innovation lab with offices in
Nashville and Atlanta. The agency has helped solve innovation and marketing
challenges for companies like Deloitte, Slack, MARS Petcare, Verizon, Cracker
Barrel, Campaign Monitor and many others for over 17 years. redpepper has been
ranked on Inc. Magazine’s list of fastest-growing private companies for six years
and has been recognized within the advertising industry with several local,
regional, and national ADDY Awards. McMullen speaks nationally on two topics he
knows best: company culture and integrated marketing. He has been featured on
60 Minutes, NPR, CNN, Headline News, CNBC, FOX News, and numerous national
publications. He was also named the 2010 Agency Marketer of the Year by the
American Marketing Association Nashville chapter and is a past president of the
American Advertising Federation Nashville.

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