In a famous speech he gave not long after returning triumphantly to Apple after being pushed out over a decade earlier, Steve Jobs explained to his new team that, to him, marketing is about values. It’s the way companies explain to their customers, stakeholders, employees, and anyone else who is paying attention to what they stand for and why they are relevant.

Brands are symbols of the values an organization stands for. They give a few short words or a basic image the power to transmit giant and far reaching messages of competence, integrity, speed, ambition, and innumerable other desirable and differentiating characteristics.

Build Value with Your Values

Too often, however, companies direct all their branding resources externally, and in doing so fail to recognize that the capacity of brands to motivate people, further their goals, and create strong and beneficial associations is just as useful when applied internally.

A highly-engaged workforce is associated with a 21 percent increase in profitability.

Branded environments, whether in a retail space, a corporate office, or any other physical touchpoint, take the core values of a company and extend them into the real world. They make their mission and vision real, touchable, and impossible to ignore.

Through interior design, lighting, graphics, and navigational aids, a branded space becomes a functional and beautiful embodiment of their personality and culture.

A Shared Mission

The modern workspace is undergoing a change. Employees aren’t siloed in closed offices, but are increasingly working in shared spaces conducive to collaboration.

This development presents new challenges, such as finding ways to make large, open office plans communal but with opportunities for privacy as well. But it also creates a wonderful chance to build bright, airy, and bustling hubs of activity where the feeling of a shared mission energizes all that enter the space.

More than just a lofty goal, an attractive, efficient, and clean work environment that aligns with and extends an organization’s values makes a major impact on the engagement levels of employees.

Branded Environments: The New Must-Have Investment in Employee Productivity

A study by market researchers Ipsos for coworking company WeWork found that even more than better hours, higher pay, and more vacation, employees reported a well designed workspace would most improve their job satisfaction.

Satisfied employees are productive employees, and Gallup’s 2018 State of the Global Workforce report backs that claim up, finding that a highly-engaged workforce is associated with a 21 percent increase in profitability.

Inform, Engage, and Inspire

Branded environments are a potent means of fulfilling several important objectives. They perform basic wayfinding tasks that get people efficiently where they need to go, energize and synchronize internal teams, and instill trust and confidence in visitors.

Every brand has unique and compelling values to share. Make those intangible qualities real and you magnify their power.

Talk to us today about how your brand story can be integrated into your physical spaces.

Don’t get left behind. If your current marketing plan doesn’t include Augmented Reality (AR) in one execution or many you just may find yourself wondering why your competitors are generating more interest in the coming months. Both Apple and Google have updated their mobile operating systems to fully integrate Augmented Reality tools for creators and users. 2018 will be awash with innovative consumer experiences built around this growing platform.

See your products and signage animate right before your eyes, creating memorable experiences, extolling their own virtues, and delivering valuable promotions right at the point of purchase — or just about anywhere you can imagine!

AR allows for consumers to engage with brands like never before

  1. Products will come alive right on the shelf to explain their benefits and make the case for purchase
  2. Retail chains will gain access to a powerful new way to connect with their customers, significantly increasing
    the chance of a sale
  3. Potential customers will linger longer at the point of purchase and experience an increase in moments and
    types of interaction, improving the likelihood of a sale

Every successful project starts with a little detective work. Our team reviews the space, the trigger (or product placement), and the desired interaction before we dive into creation. Augmented Reality works best when it’s staged properly, so we study the best way to achieve your goals and the need to build data collection into the system from the start. We encourage all clients to strongly consider a coupon and/or click-through option for their AR experiences, both to provide an incentive to the user and to collect consumer insights that help refine your strategy.

AR isn’t just a game or novelty. It’s providing forms of meaningful interaction that traditional advertising deliverables can’t. It is quickly becoming the hottest technology in marketing for creating memorable, data-rich experiences that reliably convert sales.

What can’t be had at the touch of a button today? Need a ride? Request an Uber. Hungry? Fire up the Grubhub app. You need look no further for evidence of our digitally connected age than the cardboard boxes emblazoned with the Amazon smile piling up on front stoops everywhere.

We were just getting used to the idea of the internet instantly serving up all the world’s media, but now even physical goods and services can be painlessly summoned right from our smartphones. Brick and mortar retailers are no longer just competing with their rivals across town, they now have to contend with the increasingly sophisticated world of ecommerce.

To do that, they’ll have to adapt some of online shopping’s advantages to their own model. First and foremost, physical retailers are moving away from a merely transactional relationship to something more akin to forming a community with their customers.

Luring Shoppers Back With Experiences They Can’t Get Online

Brick and mortar locations no longer want shoppers to just come, buy, and leave, they want them to stay, socialize, and feel at home. Experiential retailers are turning their showrooms into hangouts and their stores into “town squares,” places to eat, drink, take a class, have a spa treatment, or simply connect with others face to face instead of just on FaceTime.

When Urban Outfitters announced it was purchasing Pizzeria Vetri in 2015, many wondered if there was a genuine synergy opportunity between a clothing store and a restaurant. But, as Marc Vetri, founder of the pizza chain, told Bloomberg:

“Now you can order a sofa on the internet, if you want to eat at the hot new restaurant, you have to leave your living room and you have to venture out. The newest styles are available 24/7 on Urban’s website, but if you want a trendy dining experience to go with those new kicks, only the real world will do.”

Other stores are also investing in new incentives to make the trek to physical outlets. Luxury brand Coach undoubtedly upset some of its retail partners when it pulled its handbags and accessories out of a quarter of American department stores.

But, that move is drawing more attention to its own stores where visitors have access to exclusive features like monogramming stations and its Made to Order Rogue line of customizable handbags.

Physical Retail Gets Wise to the Power of Data

Enhancing the customer experience is just the beginning, though. Creating spaces that entice people to leave their connected homes will help physical retail weather the current transition in consumer behavior. But, if they want to not just survive, but truly compete with online services, brick and mortar stores will need the same analytics-hungry mindset that drives ecommerce.

Technologies like bluetooth beacons and wifi geofencing are physically tracking visitors in the same way an online shopper is traced from landing page to shopping cart. They answer questions like how many people are coming through the doors, how long are they staying, and where do they congregate?

Constant access to analytics was built into ecommerce from the start. Physical retail is now figuring out it needs that edge as well:

“Having that data and understanding how consumers are interacting with that store versus the internet, for that particular brand, that allows the retailers to change the shape of the store and invest in the store to cater to what that customer wants,” said Melina Cordero, CBRE Head of Retail Research in the Americas.

In addition to passive tracking systems, physical stores are taking advantage of the deeper and more reciprocal relationship they are forging with their customers to directly ask them for more qualitative information. Knowing how many people come through your doors is good, but knowing why is even better. They are interacting with customers during promos and events, sign ups for free services like Wifi and apps, and across social media channels. At every touchpoint, they are collecting user information and asking for feedback and suggestions. Each interaction is an opportunity to gleam precious insights about their customers’ motivations.

Final Word

In the experiential retail era, stores aren’t just where we spend our money, they’re where we spend our time. Smart brands are giving shoppers compelling reasons to leave the safe and convenient confines of their homes and smartphones. The smartest of all are using this new space as a vehicle for collection of the analytics that will help them continually improve the experience.