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

24 STRATEGIES FOR 2024 AI KEYNOTES AI MEGATRENDS THE "BIG" FUTURE
DAILY
MOTIVATIONAL
INSIGHT
FROM
JIM
JIM’s
HIGHLIGHTS
FOLLOW ME

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

GET IN TOUCH

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he
covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.

VIEW OTHER BOOKS