I just came from giving a keynote for the annual conference of a major customer loyalty organization, with the talk focused on some of key trends impacting the world of retail today.
There’s certainly a lot going on and a lot to think about. Extremely rapid business model change, the emergence of new competitors, ongoing consumer confidence volatility, rapid product turnover and faster product life-cycles.
So what are they really, really worried about? Let’s put in context the people I had in the room — senior VP’s and managers in major retailers representing several billions in revenue in a wide variety of markets, including pharmaceutical, grocery, consumer goods and electronics. Not to mention quite a few bankers, responsible for credit card portfolio’s, loyalty programs and other customer oriented programs and infrastructure.
Given all that, the top of mind issue is — new methods of customer interaction.
Look at the poll results below. The issue stands out far and away as the most important concern of the day!
Hence, my keynote was bang-on. I didn’t touch too much on the social networking phenomena, as this type of crowd has been drowning in social-networking Powerpoints.
My focus was on interactivity, location, and intelligence,, and the extremely rapid emergence of new forms of in-store interaction and product sales uplift. Things like digital signage, in-store electronic promotional displays, iPod based coups. A flood of new stuff and new ideas that promote new ways of
Listen folks, I know I’ve said it here before, but I’ll say it again.
2010 is the year of location, combined with mobility, and it’s happening faster than you think.
I’m pumped about this topic and the reaction, so I’ve rolled this into a new keynote description:
Location is the New Intelligence: Customer Interaction in the Era of Pervasive Mobile
We’re at the leading edge of the merger of three perfect trends: the rapid and massive emergence of a massive mobile infrastructure with increasingly intelligent devices. Pervasive location awareness as a results of GPS and location intelligence/mapping trends in those very same tools. And a consumer mindset that is increasingly open to new forms of interaction. The result is massive business model disruption, absolutely transformative market change, and complete obliteration of old assumptions as to the nature of the customer relationship. Smart, innovative super-heroes know that this is an unprecedented time to jump on the emergence of location as the new intelligence, in order to provide for new ways of product uplift in the retail space, changing the very nature of customer loyalty through new forms of interaction, and enhancing existing one-to-0ne conversations through a more direct, distinct and fascinating new form of location based relationships. Futurist, Trends & Innovation Expert Jim Carroll is setting the retail, marketing and advertising world on fire with his fast paced insight into one of the most important trends to shape the customer-business relationship in the last few decades. Move over social networking — location is the new intelligence!




At many of my keynotes, I focus on some of the most successful creativity and innovation attributes that I see within organizations. Here’s a list of guidance from a recent keynote for a group of executives in the consumer goods sector:
I was interviewed some time last month by FoodProcessing.com – this was related to their discovery of the keynote I did for the Readers Digest / EveryDay with Rachel Ray team food industry summit in New York last fall.

Back in November, I had the honor of providing the opening keynote address for the Picture Archive Council of America, at the 13th Annual PACA conference, in New York City.
I was thrilled to be the opening keynote speaker for Yum! Brands 2009 Global Leadership Meeting. It’s the world’s largest restaurant company.
A few weeks ago, I keynoted an event for the Readers Digest Food & Entertainment group (who publish Everyday with Rachel Ray, and own and manage the popular online social network recipe site, AllRecipes.com) in New York City. The audience consisted of executives and creative types from Madison Ave advertising agencies, food and packaging companies and other organizations.
When the Readers Digest Food & Entertainment Division, based in New York, went looking for a keynote speaker on marketing and advertising trends within the consumer goods sector, they went with Jim Carroll.


The media is all abuzz with the concept of “user oriented innovation,” and that is certainly an important innovation trend. But it’s not the only trend. Innovators would do well to recognize that there are many, many other concepts that can help to focus and refocus their innovation efforts.