Faster is the new fast: innovating for the new. high velocity customer

In the fast paced world of instant obsolsolescence and rapid innovation, time-to-market is becoming a key factor for success.

This is a video clip from a recent keynote that I gave for hundreds of executives from the grocery and consumer products industries, titled Faster is the New Fast: Innovating for the New. High Velocity Customer . I take a look at what innovative retail, packaging and consumer goods companies do differently.

This is the third retail presentation that I've done for a major retail conference this year; earlier, I spoke to several hundred convenience store owners and their franchisees; as well as to a group of executives involved in health care retail.

There are a few key themes that I wove through this keynote that retailers, consumer goods and packaging companies need to be thinking about, as well as their advertising agencies:

• velocity: i.e. collapsing product lifecycles
  
• instantaneity: faster trends; I have a wonderful story about dive-in movies, that I use to describe how the new global idea sharing machine results in faster product to market!
  
• spontaneity: social networking, rapid emergence of new "hits"; there's a new suddenness with consumer choice!
  
• intensity: business operational excellence is critical; I have a story of a video game distributor -- 45% to 60% of profit of a new video game occurs in the first FOUR TO FIVE days. I explained similar short, sharp shocks of revenue are coming to consumer goods
  
• unpredictability: sudden, rapid shift of consumer choice, with nicheing, impact of new packaging, etc.
  
• simplicity: the new consumer wants nice, simple solutions that fit into their life; there's a great story here from the work I did with the American Nursery Landscape Assn, that spins directly into consumer products, beverages etc, in that simplicity is the new branding.
  
• volatility: great unknowns; water on planes, melamine/pet food; we have to be prepared for unforeseen risks!
  
• attractability: there's another video that I'll post soon that involves a story of the plasma people and the cardboard people. suffice it to say, the new consumer will be more highly interactive, sooner than we think
  
• unfocusability: short attention spans, consumers scan 50 feet of shelf space per second; we're seeing collapsing newspaper/magazine spend, rapid growth of online spend, etc.
  
• virtuality: Screen Digest, a media consultancy firm, predicts that 80% of active Internet users will become involved in a virtual world by 2012.
  

Related postings:

• Next big home entertainment trend? Dive-in movies!
  
• Can you run your business at video game intensity?
  
• High velocity retail innovation
  
• Creativity, trends and innovation in retail, packaging & consumer goods