Most Exciting Time For Retail, Just Don’t Get Caught In The Middle

B&T’s latest iteration of its Breakfast Club took place in Sydney yesterday this time in Snap Inc’s stunning Sydney offices and focusing on the pointy end of marketing: retail.

Featuring a line-up of four speakers, attendees were treated to insights about what’s changed in retail marketing, what’s remained the same and what’s never been along side fresh fruit, bacon and egg sliders as well as bircher muesli and muffins.

“Now is the most exciting time to be a retailer,” Snap’s head of e-commerce, Ted Shelton, told the enthralled audience.

“Whether you’re a four-year-old HiSmile teeth whitening business based on the Gold Coast or a 164-year-old Louis Vuitton, now is a time like no other.”

Shelton ran guests through a series of examples showing how the rules haves changed when it comes to engaging with the younger generations.

HiSmile, for example, was able to scale its budgets with confidence after seeing ROI from its Snapchat campaigns. Ultimately, they were able to drive new qualified customers to their website, which led to a 15 per cent increase in revenue.

In order to drive consideration at scale, HiSmile leveraged Snap lifestyle categories like music, sports fans and gamers, and used its own customer lists to develop lookalike audiences.

This strategy allowed the company to scale its reach, while focusing its spend on high-potential Snapchatters who shared characteristics with its existing purchasers.

HiSmile complemented this reach tactic with a re-engagement campaign, using the Snap Pixel to develop audiences of past site visitors who exhibited high intent to purchase.

HiSmile also kept its creative fresh, constantly testing different lengths, talent, and styles to learn what worked best with the Snapchat audience. They ultimately found the most success with an endemic, direct to camera style featuring a singular focus on the product and logo to drive qualified swipe ups.

“Swipe up to go straight to the advertiser’s website, that’s really important for engagement,” Shelton confided in attendees.

Next up was Louis Vuitton Australia’s non-executive director Philip Corne, who’s also the non-executive chairman of Cure Cancer Australia.

Since joining Louis Vuitton Australia in 1988 as head of finance, Corne has held a number of senior leadership positions within the LVMH Group, leading all aspects of business, including strategic planning, property, marketing and client engagement, supply chain and logistics, information technology and people.

Corne has a strong focus in developing contemporary and high performing retail businesses has been on building business practices that are efficient, leading edge, consumer-centric and strategically aligned.

A softly spoken immaculately dressed gentlemen (as you would expect from a Louis Vuitton lifer), Corne warned now was not a good time to find yourself stuck in the middle of retail.

“While luxury brands such as his employer’s have thrived since the global financial crisis in 2008, consumers now want “something special, or something super discounted… you don’t want to be in the middle of retail anymore”, he said.

Corne also suggested fundamentals of marketing had not changed and that “what was once true is always true”.

Rebecca Bezzina, VP managing director, R/GA Sydney and Melbourne, ironically toting a Louis Vuitton handbag was next on stage.

Bezzina was one of the early team members of R/GA Sydney, where she joined as client services director in 2013 and was instrumental in its rapid growth.

After a stint as managing director of successful local independent Cummins & Partners, she returned to R/GA Sydney to take the helm in 2016 where she’s now spearheading new business and relationships, and driving digital transformation for clients.

She spoke to three key messages – experience matters, social has a huge impact on how people are purchasing and loyalty is real.

“People are no longer shopping by price, but are shopping based on what your brand’s experience is . . . Everybody in your business has to be worried about what your brand’s experience is,” Bezzina said.

The final contributor for the day was Australia’s largest online fashion retailer, The Iconic’s, customer marketing director Melle Staelenberg in the form of a panelist.

Customer data sits at the heart of how The Iconic operates, from product and sizing recommendations all the way to customer satisfaction surveys.

Before joining The Iconic, Staelenberg was working on the agency side at Salmat Digital as their Business Manager for Lifecycle Marketing.

Staelenberg has been working for and with retailers for the past 10 years, bridging the gap between offline and online marketing.

Other than sharing the news that The Iconic yesterday celebrated its seventh birthday, Staelenberg also told the audience customers now almost never go offline.