the orange sheep

All posts tagged the orange sheep

UNdead thinking: Walgreens closes the app gap!

Posted by theorangesheep on April 1, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . 2 comments

I am sure they did not have time to pull it together just because of my last post about poor apps in grocery retailing, but in a serendipitous piece of timing, Walgreens launched a great answer to that blog this past week with a truly helpful app.

Built on top of the usual retail app ‘standards’ (mobile coupons and digital circular) are some TRULY helpful features for shoppers, including some really useful features for managing prescriptions – like the scan & refill feature – plus a pill reminder, to make sure you remember to take those pills long after you leave the store. As a shopper marketer, I think this is a great step forward… but more importantly, as a shopper I see this really making a difference in my preference for where to fill prescriptions.

The pill reminder is a great example of adding a feature that is helpful to the shopper, even if the benefit to Walgreens is at best indirect (ie. if I remember to take them, perhaps I will refill more often).  Adding this feature says “we really do care that you feel better”, not just “we really do care that you buy your pills at Walgreens”.

Even better, Walgreens took a big step that few others have done: putting high-production-quality TV time behind ads for the app, letting shoppers know what it can do for them.  And why not… when you have a great app, you want it on as many phones as possible.

So congrats, Walgreens, for setting a new bar… and overcoming the dead thinking in so many other retail apps.

— the orange sheep 

The ‘app gap’: dead thinking in branded apps

Posted by theorangesheep on March 18, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a Comment

An interesting insight struck me when I was recently asked to comment on ‘the most useful apps for the connected shopper’: very few of the best shopping apps come from a grocery retailer or CPG manufacturer.

My list of great apps (that I use!) included Key Ring, Card Star, Fast Mall, Coupon Sherpa, Shopkick (etc…) with with nary a grocery retailer or CPG brand in sight.

To be fair to other retail channels, there’s quite a few useful apps in the general merch/ specialty retail space. But even on this list there’s a severe lack of grocery retailers (okay, Target made the list but their app isn’t really for grocery shopping).

There is NO shortage of retailer or CPG apps out there, and some are quite useful (like Meijer meal box, or Stella Artois’s bar guide) but the real ‘killer apps’ for grocery shopping tend to come from third party developers.  My best inference is that this phenomenon is another example of what I call a ’solution-looking-for-a-problem’.

Third party developers’ process probably starts with a comment like: “you know what would be helpful when I’m shopping? An app that <insert shopper need here>”. And then they apply their technology and design skills to building an app to meet that need.

However, I fear that too often the starting comment in grocery retailers or CPG companies is something more like: “We need an app! Everyone has one! We HAVE to have one, ASAP!”  We’ve all heard it said – or perhaps been the one that said it!   Then likely follows an inward-looking process focused on “what we want our app to do or say” and soon the inclusion of ‘brand building imagery’ and ‘on-brand messaging’ overtake the idea that this thing should do anything for shoppers.

I’d love to hear that I’m wrong, but that’s the distinct impression I’m left with after using many brand or retailer shopping apps.  They were made more for the aggrandizement of of the makers ego, than for the benefit of shoppers.

So, where Key Ring delivers against a valuable shopper need (two in fact!: gives me my all my loyalty barcodes on my phone plus aggregates all the coupons for those stores in real time) many grocery retailer apps still focus on minimally useful ‘benefits’ like telling me store locations and hours or directing me to their online stores. I have an app for that… my web browser.

The third party apps actually can be a useful flag for shopper need gaps to retail marketers, though – both for their own apps, and overall experience.  For example, there is a popular app now out to help New Yorkers calculate how much to add to their subway cards to make sure it rounds to a certain number of trips (without 35 cents left unspent) and shows them how to do that on the ticket machine.  For the subway authority , the fact that their passengers are using this app should flag a need for their buying experience (ticket machines) to be made easier in the first place (ie. offer cards by number of trips, instead of just by dollar value).

Thankfully for shoppers, where big business is falling short, independent appsters are filling the gap(p).

- the orange sheep

the sheep now bleats in tweets

Posted by theorangesheep on November 11, 2011
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , . 2 comments

I’ve just created a new twitter account for all those little instances of “new thinking” or “dead thinking” that pop up between bleats on my blog.

Follow me @the_orangesheep, and when you see your own instances of dead thinking (or new thinking!) remember to tag me or use #dead-thinking so the whole flock can follow.

happy tweeting bleating
the orange sheep

What might Steve Jobs have done in grocery retail?

Posted by theorangesheep on October 9, 2011
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

This week we lost an amazing innovative thinker, whose company showed us how dramatically retail experience could be changed. Steve Jobs, all I can say is thank you for decades of progressive thinking. I will miss your inspiration.

I have frequently wondered what Steve Jobs would have done in CPG retail if he had sold apples instead of Apples?  The Cupertino company’s retail approach really epitomises the type of revolution – not evolution – that grocery retailing needs if it is going to survive as a profitable industry for all players.

Apple (whether Jobs was directly involved or not) broke the mould in technology retailing when it created the Apple retail experience.  They didn’t just make a sexier looking store – as Jobs himself once opined: design is not just about the veneer.  Apple changed the way you browse, the way you buy, the way you experience an Apple product at the retail store.  They ditched the rows of dormant laptops with stock photo screen savers and added open, active, internet-connected models that you could play with for 3 hours (if that’s what it took for you to get to know Mac).  Apple asked, hey, why do you need to go line up to check-out? Couldn’t we check you out anywhere in the store with a mobile device?  And what if instead of a handful of unknowledgeable staff that have too much to do, we provide enthusiastic Apple ‘geniuses’ floating around with plenty of time to chat with you about your uncertainty about switching from a PC, or helping you with editing tips for your iMovie project?

Apple re-engineered the retail experience to make it fit the way that shoppers wanted to shop – even if shoppers could not articulate it exactly that way.

Buying an iPod or a MacBook at Apple – or just browsing there – became an experience that made PC buying at your average electronics store seem like a life sentence in Siberia.  So what would Apple do with the desolate and uninspiring canvas that is the American grocery store?

We could speculate on Jobs’ specific ideas, but probably fall embarrassingly short of where he might have taken us. Instead, I’ll turn to Jobs’ own words to issue a challenge to CPG innovators to change the way we think:

“Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.”

How often do we look to “shoot holes” in the current experience of grocery retail? Big ideas in grocery retail are few and far between… lately we just seem to try to augment the current (broken?) experience with ‘innovative’ trimmings.  Jobs once told a programmer, “You’ve baked a really lovely cake, but then you’ve used dog shit for frosting”… in grocery retail, I wonder if we’re trying to frost a stale cake to start with?

So here’s the challenge: SHOOT A HOLE!  What is the glaring short-fall you see in grocery retail today?  Post your thoughts below.

Innovation or gimmick: is Sainsbury’s off their trolley?

Posted by theorangesheep on September 5, 2011
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 comment

If you read any of the industry rags this past week, you no doubt read about Sainsbury’s in-market test of a shopping cart with an integrated iPad dock.  Heck, this story is so “nouveau-geek-sexy” it even made the mainstream media (like the LA Times for example).

The big question is whether this is a true “sticky” idea* or another flash-in-the-pan fad… and for me that means asking a key question about the concept’s origin:

“Is this idea grounded in a key shopper need – something shoppers will see as a ‘positive interruption’ to their usual shopping experience?”  If the answer is yes, then I’d bet on success.

Otherwise, this is probably another idea led simply by the availability of the technology: what I like to call a “solution looking for a problem”… and in that case, destined for the annals of retail failures (‘retailures’ perhaps?).

Too often, ‘innovation’ in the shopping experience is driven by the inventors of the technology, fixturing or packaging ideas saying “hey, look what we can make!”.  To be fair (whether by luck or good management?!) those solutions sometimes hit the mark and solve a shopper issue.  Experience tells me though that often the ‘creators’ behind those ideas have no more idea why that idea worked than they know why the 19 ideas before it didn’t.

So what of this ‘iTrolley’ idea at Sainsbury’s?  The orange sheep expects that this idea’s success may be measured differently at the end of the day, depending on who you ask.  I am not sure the positive outcomes are the ones that  Sainsbury’s or their tech partner, SkyGo, might be shooting for.  The UK retailer has teamed up with the online news and sport media purveyor to place the docks on trolleys – presumably so that shoppers can access SkyGo while they pick up their chips and stir-in curry mix. Could be a stretch.

However, if I know shoppers in the UK, something tells me that Sainsbury’s might find a silver lining – this idea probably hits a few shopper chords and might fulfill a few needs.  I predict that we’ll see shoppers using it to enable handsfree use of their iPad as a shopping list tool, or to zap an email to the kids to ask them if they need anything while I’m in-store.  And in fact, if Sainsbury’s (or another retailer) tie up the hardware with a shopping list app – and perhaps with RFID technology to help find items on a list in the store – we really might be getting to something that makes a difference to shoppers.

So innovation or gimmick: if Sainsbury puts it to work for shoppers needs – and not just those of SkyGo – I think this one might stick.

the orange sheep

*If you haven’t yet read the Heath brothers’ book “Made to Stick”, go to their site now and buy it.