Strategy

We are living in extraordinary times as we come out of a once-in-a-lifetime collective reset. And as we heal, recalibrate, and seek joy, we are prioritizing experiences that move us. Great retail can do this through breakthrough products that speak to our multi-hyphenated needs and superior brands that build on functional excellence and imbue it with emotional and creative meaning by tapping into the big-picture power of culture. Brands that connect the dots and deliver on all these fronts are hard to displace. Culture, the sum of …

The Culture Power Brand. Designing Brands That Move People.Read More

When a number of reputable business news outlets recently reported that none other than LVMH, L’Oréal and Shiseido were allegedly embroiled in a $2 billion bidding war for the Australian beauty brand Aesop, I’ll cop to being a bit surprised. Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, this quietly lovely line, founded in 1987 and steeped in natural ingredients, had morphed into a covetable, highly profitable powerhouse. In fact, when São Paulo-based Natura & Co bought a 65 percent stake in Aesop directly from its founder Dennis Paphitis in 2012, a …

Quality Counts: Why the $2 Billion Bidding War for Aesop Makes Perfect SenseRead More

How do you curate great content for 10,000 digital innovation leaders who have high expectations for learning something new that will help them navigate the fast-changing retail environment? We caught up with Krystina Gustafson, Shoptalk’s senior vice president of content and chair of its advisory board, to hear about her approach for creating industry-leading content. With a solid background in business journalism (CNBC), Gustafson understands and appreciates how critical it is to provide content that touches on the industry’s biggest …

Behind the Scenes with Krystina GustafsonRead More

I’m not going to do an “I told you so” (but I just did). Actually, I’m sharing a leaked recording that a very alert Insider Magazine scooped up, catching Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy delivering a brutally honest and provocative challenge for employees to redefine the company. What’s in a Name? According to Insider, Jassy urged employees to band together as the company tries to get through an unusually challenging time. He said there's a lot of work to do to make progress across Amazon's existing businesses, new businesses, teams, and the …

Jassy to Employees: Redefine AmazonRead More

Amazon just announced it was shutting down its charitable-donation platform AmazonSmile, effective February 20. Launched in 2013, AmazonSmile allowed customers to donate 0.5 percent of their purchase price to the charity or nonprofit of their choice. Shortfall With some $500 million donated to date, the company, in its infinite wisdom, has determined that AmazonSmile proved ineffective despite its good intentions. To soften the blow, Amazon stated, “ To help charities that have been a part of the AmazonSmile program with this transition, …

By Canceling AmazonSmile, the Company Challenges Its Consumer Centricity ClaimRead More

The concept of the Unique Sales Proposition (USP) has been enshrined in marketing and sales circles for decades. Advanced by advertising executive Rosser Reeves in the late 1940s and 50s and then introduced into the lexicon in his 1961 book Reality in Advertising, he called on brands to extend their product advertising from product features to the specific unique benefits their product delivers to consumers. The value of a brand’s USP was to move the “mass millions” to buy the product. One of the most famous taglines he is credited with was …

How to Differentiate a BrandRead More

I recently returned from NRF’s 2023 “Big Show” in New York, along with nearly 40,000 of my new best friends. There were plenty of shiny new objects such as holograms, smart mirrors, the metaverse, and the like. These innovations certainly create great press, and buzz. True the hundreds of keynotes, panels, and featured sessions by some of the retail industry’s most noteworthy leaders and observers and the thousands of vendors touting their tech on five massive Expo levels are both mind and foot numbing. Also true, although this year’s …

Driving Meaningful and Enduring Retail ChangeRead More

Amazon has wasted the past several years and billions of dollars fiddling around with testing physical stores of all types and failing (a couple of Amazon Style stores are still breathing). It also over-predicted growth following the pandemic and retreated by shedding thousands of jobs and cancelling the planning and construction of unnecessary DCs. And Walmart marches on. But First, a Word About Visionaries Here's a lesson that keeps on giving: Visionary and genius entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos can “parachute in” from some imaginary …

Walmart Checks Another Box that Amazon Can’tRead More