Infectious Ideas

I had the opportunity to attend Contagious Now/Next/Why NY yesterday with some fun clients of ours. Haven’t had a chance to get to as many of these events in recent years, so it was a refreshing mental escape from the daily hustle. In no particular order, here are a few of the ideas and bits of inspiration that have stuck with me 24 hours following a diverse day of talent & topics:

1. Context is King. Except when it’s creepy. With improved contextual integration comes heightened risk for frightening off customers. Marketers must avoid the Uncanny Valley when striving for contextual relevance.
2. Earn don’t extract. Extract, grab, capture, scrape. Big Data’s aggressive vernacular is representative of its dubious current state. Today’s consumer landscape requires respect and reciprocity across the end-to-end experience; privacy should be no exception. Brands need to ask what sort of ROPI they are offering (Return on Personal Information) as Arwa put it.
3. Reconcile the retail paradox. Today’s retailers must solve to settle consumers’ desires for efficiency with their need to feed discovery. Old brick-and-mortar floor plans deliberately confused to promote trial. Now what?
4. ‘Every product is a service waiting to happen’. Just a beautiful line from Hyo Yeon.
5. Convenience lies in the eye of the beholder. Once synonymous with speed, the convenience arms race is shifting to a mix of personalized scheduling, efficiency and lifestyle fit.  [See ASDA’s Tube delivery]
6. The CEO differentiation delusion. There’s a 72% gap between the percentage of CEOs who think their products are differentiated vs. consumers asked the same question. Didn’t catch the source, but a staggering stat.
7. Capture & export culture. Every brand needs an archivist. Ironic that one of the few areas organizations neglect to record is as crucial as culture. Especially in this age of ‘conscious (consumer) uncoupling’ of price and value…

Credit for the above ideas and inspiration primarily from the presentations of Arif Haq, Hyo Yeon, Arwa Mahdawi, Katrina Dodd, Nadia Shouraboura and Nick Parish.