Last and Final from the Forrester Consumer Forum 2008

As mentioned in the last episode, this post will skip the Forrester speakers and customer presentations and cover one of the “outsiders.” Forrester always places a strong speaker at the end of the second day in an attempt to help keep their attendees on site. It usually thins out anyway, but for those who stay they are richly rewarded. The forum theme was Keeping Ahead of Tomorrow’s Customer. You can catch up on my first two installments here and here.

The forum keynotes closed with the animated Paco Underhill, an environmental psychologist and founder of Envirosell, a firm that specializes in studying how people interact with retail and service environments. He is also the author of Why we Buy and Call of the Mall. He had very few slides, instead he told his story using actual footage captured while in the field. His talk, Shopping as the Dipstick of Social Change, was more like being in a meeting with him vs. listening to a presentation. Of all the sessions I attended, I took more notes in this one than any other by a factor of at least 3. Here are some of my favorite sound bites.

• The world is designed by men but experienced by women. The men should ask the question, what makes my product or service female friendly?
• Do you feel more time poor or money poor? Most answer time poor.
• Online is about saving time.
• As you design something think about how someone will use it the 12th time just as much as you think about how they will use it the first time.
• Run your company like a global firm, but relate on a local level.
• Convergence is the collision of online, mobile and bricks & mortar.
• Shopping will transform more in the next 10 years than it has in the previous 50.
• The best technology is the least technology.
• Tech needs must be better engaged with culture needs
• Stop thinking sitting down (meetings, excel, word, PPT)
• The word for the 20th century was strategy, in the 21st century it will be tactics. Get a tactical grasp on your strategy.
• Amenability is linked to profitability.
• Health care is the only growth industry we have today.

He showed clip after clip of how humans shop and voice tracked how that behavior was a barometer for a social change taking place across the globe. He didn’t neatly tie up the loose ends in a nice tidy Forrester-style theme, but he accomplished something just as important. He got me to think and think deeply about many of the things I have been working on.

A few weeks ago one of my agency partners came to town for a typical meeting. She was not on the iPhone train yet, and watched me use mine. I let her make a call and as she put it to her ear the first thing she said was, “How do I look?” What an insight I had. Cell phone stores should put up mirrors right by the phone displays. Their sales would go up. It underscored what Mr. Underhill had been saying. A man asks himself a very different question when he tries out a technology device. And sure enough Paco mentioned that phone retailers should have mirrors by their displays. Once again, great minds think alike ;).

He also put forth his hypothesis of why Social Media has grown so quickly. It is in large part do to the number of consumers who reside in the suburbs and live a much more lonely existence vs. their urban counterparts.

In summary the big ideas I took away from the forum were:

• Tune into your online customer
• Create value by making change
• Nail down a multi-customer point of view
• Empower your customers by embracing Social Media
• Challenge your current organizational structure to prepare for the customer of tomorrow

There were some very helpful take aways for for all of us as we work to weather the current economic climate, Thanks Forrester for another helpful forum.