Stuff I learned at Innovate 2011
- by David Dorf
After returning from the NRF Innovate 2011 conference, I picked up few nuggets I thought I'd share here. These thoughts are a bit random, but I hope they're useful nonetheless.Kevin Kelly opened the conference with six verbs that represent the future. They were Screening, Interacting, Sharing, Accessing, Flowing, and Generating. It struck me that these are all ways in which we merge the digital and physical worlds. The internet of things continues to gain momentum.Some buzzwords: deal economy, subscription commerce, discovery (instead of search), curationThat last one, curation, came up over and over. Retailers, especially those in fashion, are finding value in helping their customers organize and present their own collections. Social media has made sharing such collections easy, and mobile lets them take those ideas into the stores. Mannequins are becoming less relevant.I heard from both HauteLook and Gilt Groupe (flash sale retailers) that a large percentage of their visits come from mobile devices, and most of those are iOS devices. I find it interesting that even though Android has passed iPhone in units shipped (and will eventually pass iOS as a whole), its still the Apple crowd that leads the way.RadioShack mentioned their Holiday Heroes campaigned was very successful. They asked their Foursquare users to check-in at a gym, coffee shop, and transportation hub as part of being a hero. For this feat, customers were awarded a special badge that was worth 20% off at their next store visit. They claim a 3.5x increase in ticket size vs. regular check-in customers, and a 5x increase vs those that don't check-in at all.I also learned of RadioShack's #28 campaign, which is apparently one of the largest Twitter trends ever. Their partnership with LIVESTRONG has gotten them followers, impressions, and credit for supporting the fight against cancer.The guys at Invodo showed the importance of video to e-commerce. They gave compelling examples of how video can show customers the value of products better than just words.The highlight of the show was Guy Kawasaki's talk on innovation, which was not only informative but also peppered with humor and personality. Back in the early days of the internet boom, Guy turned down the CEO position at Yahoo! because the commute was too long. By his calculation, that was a $2B mistake.There are other good accounts of the conference at the NRF Blog.
