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Don’t Visit the Zoo, Go to the Jungle

Posted on 14. May, 2013 by Jon Bird.

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Tweet “If you want to understand how a lion hunts, don’t go to the zoo. Go to the jungle.” Sandy Thompson, the global planning chief of ad agency Y&R often uses that saying, and it’s just as relevant to the world of retail as it is the sphere of communications. At the heart of the [...]

Trillion Dollar Shift

Posted on 07. May, 2013 by Jon Bird.

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Tweet How big is the global shift to online sales? Picture the entire annual sales for retail in Australia in 2012. Then quadruple that figure. For this year, you can quintuple it. Citi’s Global E-Commerce Retail Outlook has just come across my desk, and the figures are fascinating. Citi quotes a recent report by eMarketer, [...]

Where Bricks Beat Clicks

Posted on 23. Apr, 2013 by Jon Bird.

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Tweet Suddenly physical is fashionable. Where not so long ago, pundits were predicting the death of bricks and mortar retail (and some still are), now it’s de rigueur to have a physical retail presence. Many online retailers are talking about setting up shop. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, said in a C-Net interview late last [...]

Where Ron Went Wrong and Russo Got It Right

Posted on 16. Apr, 2013 by Jon Bird.

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Tweet In retail, as in business generally, execution is everything. The most brilliant plan or sensational strategy is just a mirage, unless it can be brought to life in the right way, in the right order, with military-precision. That’s always been one of Woolworths’ strengths, and their ex-CEO Roger Corbett’s insistence on “exquisite execution” has [...]

A Mall with Balls

Posted on 09. Apr, 2013 by Jon Bird.

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Tweet Eleven thousand kilometres is an awfully long way to go shopping. That’s how far I travelled recently on a trip to Santiago Chile, to see what I could find that was new and exciting in world retail. Granted, I was there to take part in the WPP* The Store Global Retail Forum. But I [...]

Marketing to Androids

Posted on 26. Mar, 2013 by Jon Bird.

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Tweet Samsung recently launched its Galaxy S4 phone, which amongst other features, allows you to automatically scroll the screen with a roll of your eyes. At the same time, the blogosphere is abuzz with news that Apple might soon release an iWatch, the next step in wearable computing. Mobile devices are becoming more and more [...]

Buying Into Brands

Posted on 18. Mar, 2013 by Jon Bird.

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Tweet Great retail today is as much about selling ideas as it is selling merchandise (we all have too much stuff anyway). It’s about creating “movements” that customers can buy into, rather than just flogging them products that they may not even need. Over the last decade, Apple has been a master at this strategy [...]

Zombie Malls: When Retail Loses Relevance

Posted on 12. Mar, 2013 by Jon Bird.

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Tweet Nothing is quite so desolate as a dead or dying shopping mall. Once a buzzing hive of commerce and community, it can feel eerily and uncomfortably empty…as if you’re not supposed to be there. When vacancy rates get too high, a once living, breathing shopping centre can quickly turn into a “zombie mall”; the [...]

The Next Wave of International Retailers?

Posted on 05. Mar, 2013 by Jon Bird.

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Tweet Six months ago or so, I made a case in “Inside Retail” to end “Island Thinking”. Our shores are under attack from global retailers, I wrote, who are arriving like gleeful pirates, both digitally and physically. And we can either ignore the invasion, or fight fire with fire and join the new, internationalised world [...]

Great Expectations: the Customer Service Conundrum

Posted on 26. Feb, 2013 by Jon Bird.

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Tweet Cosmetics king Napoleon Perdis voiced the frustration of many shoppers last week when he warned Australian department stores to increase their staffing levels and training “so that customers feel there is a reason to go into them”. Quoted in the Fairfax press, Perdis urged DJ’s and Myer to “bite the bullet” or pay the [...]

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