Welcome to the Sound in Marketing podcast. The Sound and Marketing podcast explores and defines sound on purpose in marketing and advertising. I’m your host Jeanna Isham, owner and founder of Dreamr Productions and Sound in Marketing Learning. I create, consult and educate individuals and brands on the power of sound in marketing. My goal is to inspire you with unique and interesting ways to use sound effectively in your business.
If you would like to explore this further, my company, Dreamr Productions would love to help. Our contact info can be found in the show notes. Now on to the show. I was invited to attend Shoptalk 2024 in Las Vegas and of course I was thrilled. I was hopeful to hear talks on sensory marketing and immersive experiences. Although I didn't get exactly what I hoped for, what I heard was still very encouraging and excited me about the future of the retail industry. What are retail brands looking for?
What are they struggling with? How can they be more efficient? But most importantly, how can they remain relevant with their consumers in this fast moving and evolving marketing space? For those of you who have never heard of Shoptalk, I'll let my guest today fill you in. I'm Joe Laszlo.
I am Head of Content for the US for Shoptalk, a conference focused on innovation in the retail industry Shoptalk was founded to be a place where everybody across that retail ecosystem, from the earliest stage startup to the Walmarts and Macy's of the world. Hopefully it's an opportunity for people to both make new connections, learn about interesting technologies on our show floor, and hear from some of the best and brightest retail innovators on our stages.
Originally, I went to report on how brands were using sensory marketing in immersive experiences, although no one was really shouting from the rooftop about sensory marketing. I did pick up on indicators that it would be a talking point sometime in the near future. As for immersive experiences, brands were talking about it, but using different words like seamless transitions from the physical to the digital spaces and how to utilize generative AI and AI learning.
We're moving to a new chapter in the way that people live their lives, where you're back in the day, you're kind of either online or you're offline. You went to a store or you went to an e-commerce site to shop. Nowadays, you can be in a physical store and shopping somewhere completely different. That blurry line between the physical world and the digital world, and how smart companies are taking advantage of that.
Almost every presenter used words like inspire, community, relevance, collaboration, authenticity, innovation, vulnerability, conversational and brand and customer facing engagement. All of these words link to brand personality. Brand personality is most effectively transmitted through the senses, aka through sensory marketing. A sensorial experience is how you bring humanity and ultimately relatability and trust between brand and consumer.
Brands may not be using my specific wording yet, but I do believe they will get there eventually. My favorite conversation at the conference was from PacSun, and how they are building their brand as a co collaboration with their biggest demographic in the youth market. PacSon was how I first heard about Shoptalk, so I of course started there. Brieane Olson delivered a great speech about what PacSun is up to. Her talk centered a lot around inspiring a community of co-creators.
She mentioned the idea of a collective more than once. They see the consumer as just as much a part of the brand as the people who work there. This made a lot of sense to me. Listen to your audience so that you're actually making something they're going to be interested in buying. Kind of a duh. But there were a lot of brands there that I would say, don't get that. I won't name names, but I will say I see a very clear time's a tickn’ sign on one
and won't be surprised if and when they go the way of Sears. Too soon? So what does this collaboration concept actually mean? Back in the day, a brand was like, I am a brand and this is my story and I'm going to broadcast it via mass media and you'll see the commercial and absorb it in your lean-back kind of way. Nowadays, it's important for brands to realize that their customers, their fans, are as much a part of creating the brand and telling a story as the brand itself.
The idea that a brand isn't just something that we create and then broadcast to the world, but something that we create in tandem with our customers who love us. I think the ways that brands like PacSun are unlocking the power of collaborations, not just to make a limited run thing that sells really well, but to really kind of think about who is going to be a good complement to the brand. One direction PacSun is pursuing is the gamification of modern day commerce in the metaverse.
Their main demographic is Gen Z and Gen Z digs digital. In 2022, they started a Roblox game called PacWorld. According to Hype Beast, this game has a futuristic airport, an upside down universe, and an icy winter themed wonderland. There are also dedicated gift shops where the user can go and buy PacSun clothes for their avatar. In 2023, they introduced PacSun, Los Angeles tycoon. This game allows the user to create their own Southern California real estate.
Who wouldn't want to have property in Santa Monica and Hollywood right? I don't pretend to fully understand Roblox, so I won't go too far in for fear of embarrassing myself. But I do think it's important to note that PacSun, which is probably filled with people my age, is attempting this learn and from what I can tell, succeeding.
It's really interesting to think of an apparel brand that deliberately doesn't think of itself as a apparel brand, but thinks of itself as being about the intersection of fashion and sport and music and art and that’s sort of who they end up working with around collaborations, playing across all of these cultural touchpoints that we all have in our lives. Taking that idea and almost beating the DTC startups at their own game with it.
Another highlight of the conference was hearing Heidi Cooley, CEO of Crocs, talk about her company and its brand positioning. She openly spoke on how Crocs could be summarized in a meme. For many years, they were a joke. While Crocs was all the rage in the early 2000, the hype fizzled and function over fashion sort of failed them.
I think there's so much said these days about authenticity, right, that a brand needs to be authentic, and it's almost to the point where that word is starting to lose some of its meaning. Crocs and their CMO, Heidi Cooley, are really great exemplars of a brand that truly is authentic. They know what they are. They know what their product is that some people love, and some people love to kind of look down on a little, and they kind of embrace that.
Crocs started to listen, really listen to their tried and true consumers. And once they did, things started turning around. The brand focused on its mission statement. Everyone should be comfortable in their shoes, and now they are having fun with it. Some brands are thinking years in advance. Crocs acts weeks in advance. They hear their customers requests, usually on social, and bring them to market at an almost impossible speed.
I guess you could say that they have the fail fast mentality, but not all of these risky trials fail. Post Malone loves Crocs, and so that was their first partnership in 2018. It was so successful it sold out in two hours. They're now on their fourth collaboration with him. They also partnered with Balenciaga. Knowing nothing about fashion, I had to Google them and seeing how not Crocs they were. The idea of a partnership made me snicker a bit, but it worked, so I'm no laughing too hard.
Along with their high end and celebrity spurred partnerships, they also created a limited edition lightning McQueen Crocs. According to Heidi, this was so popular that they had to keep bringing it back. It kept selling out and then people begged for more. The list of collaborations continue, such as Mattel for Barbie, Justin Bieber, Drew Barrymore and the list just goes on.
They are another example of a brand that really loves to experiment, loves to try new things, loves to partner up with other brands. Some that you might expect because they're in the apparel space, some that you might not expect. The Crocs Balenciaga collaboration is really, really interesting. Crocs is a perfect example of a brand that tries new things, does new things, and yet is always Crocs at the end of the day.
Somehow, like always has that that North Star that they know who they are and what they stand for and what their customers love, and that always informs what they end up doing, regardless of whether they're collaborating with high fashion, couture house or Taco Bell. Crocs went from bordering bankruptcy to reporting nearly $4 billion in revenue quarter four of 2023. They are masters at engaging in social posts and finding brand partnerships with people who, ahem, actually wear Crocs.
In fact, that's one of the first questions Heidi says that they ask their partners are you a customer? Makes sense. Partner with those that you believe in, but also believe in you. I was excited to hear from Mattel, although I hadn't watched Barbie yet. FYI, I did on the plane flight home. Awesome.
I was curious how this once floundering doll franchise bounced back as insanely as it did Robbie Brenner, president of Mattel Films, an indie film sweetheart that produced such films as Hurt Locker and Dallas Buyers Club, was the woman behind the doll. Well, other than Greta Gerwig, she and her team were behind the reimagining of Barbie. How did she do it? One thing she said that she did that I think truly was why it worked, was that she wanted to tell great stories, not sell toys.
Steve Totski, CEO of Mattel, trusted her a lot and pretty much handed the mic to her. He saw that evolution was critical in this demand creation frontier. Robbie was an expert in the film space. Steve knew toys. By staying in their lanes, both could focus on their strengths to make a great product that was more than a cash cow. Although it was. It was something people cared about. It was something people wanted. And when people care, people share. Thus entered the summer of Barbie.
Generative AI and AI learning were talked about a lot. I mean a lot. But rather than just being a buzzy word, the talk on the floor seemed more focused on real life applications of AI for the day to day business workflow. Artificial intelligence was a very big theme of the show this year. I thought that it was interesting how practical and pragmatic folks at Shoptalk were about AI. I think with AI and generative AI, it's very easy to get wrapped up in the hype of what it might be able to do.
Or it's what are people actually really doing with AI right now? How is it making a difference to retail businesses? In the immediate near term, and how are they putting guardrails in place to make sure that they're leveraging AI in ways that are going to be safe for their brand, say, for their products, safe for their customers? AI won’t fix. AI assists. Anyone that is looking for an end to end in AI solves is basically wanting to shutter immediately.
You can't take the human out of the equation, you just can't. As soon as the brand loses all sense of humanity, the humans stop caring and that brand loses money and relevance. Fast. AI is not the devil. In fact, I heard some excellent reasons for utilizing more of it. But again, those excellent reasons were to be an aid to the humans to speed up workflow and create efficiencies. We are far, far away from AI being so good that they start replacing us.
So let's just not start talking about that yet. All of these, wants these brands have, can be solved with an emotional take. Caring. So Jeanna, what does this have to do with sound as this is the Sound in marketing podcast? That's a fair question. What it means is that sound is, in fact, a relevant conversation to be had.
If Humanity is what people want out of their brands, which I feel there is exhaustive proof of this, then using any or all of the five senses is relevant and seeing as right now we only have the capability to utilize sight and sound online, then let's start creating more sound on purpose rather than just a slap on at the end.
Nobody has quite figured out how to bring audio into that mix in a way that feels organic and natural and enjoyable, but there's huge opportunities to experiment and learn and try more of that. Who knows, maybe we'll all be able to get smells through our smartphones in 5 or 7 years. I'm sure some smart people somewhere are working on that. There's a whole world of other things that that could potentially encompass as well. Sound may not be the all ends all. In fact, I don't think that it is.
But sound should most definitely be brought into the conversation. What does your brand sound like? What does it feel like? Tastes like, smell like. And of course, what does your brand look like? These are questions we should start asking now before anyone else beats us to it. And success in my mind, is not translated by immediate dollars. That was also the consensus from a lot of the presenters. They saw the value of seeing things through and growing roots.
Success is longevity, brand loyalty and for a special few leads to becoming a legacy brand. A legacy brand will always have a human behind it because that is what makes it unique. Shop talk. Thank you so much for inviting me to the conversation. I'm excited to see how much closer we get to marketing through the senses in the years to come. Thank you to Joe Laszlo and the whole team at Shoptalk for allowing me to attend the conference in March.
Thank you also to all of the companies that have inspired me to think that this world of marketing is most definitely becoming more human centric. And also a special thanks to Artlist, who provided my background music throughout this episode. If you're interested in using Artlist for any of your projects, please click the link in the show notes. Did this episode get you inspired to start exploring your brand sound? Dreamr productions would love to help.
We produce branded podcasts, sonic logos, and strategize branded sound plans. Contact information can be found in the show notes. Let's make this world of sound more intriguing, more unique, and more and more on brand.