Blog
Part 2 – Where is Retail Going? How Will ALL Businesses Be Affected? Who is Leading that Change?
Part 2
In addition to sales contact, mentioned in Part 1, Gen Z’s have influenced the very nature of branding according to Robin Lewis https://www.therobinreport.com/author/rlewis/ at his recent presentation at the Retail Marketing Society https://www.retailmarketingsociety.org/ . The 7C’s have a direct connection to the upcoming influence of Gen Z.
The 7 C’s are:
- Community
- Customization
- Convenience
- Connectivity
- Content
- Curation
- Choice
Lewis calls the result of this trend “revenge of the mom-and-pop’s”. Good news for small businesses who can execute easily on the 7C’s and thus have a waiting audience of Gen Z’ers.
I believe that the 7 C’s are emerging as the result of the slow demise of the sales funnel which is due to the rise of social media. The internet and social media have forever changed how retail and all communications are being done. The company no longer has the power to tell customers anything about their product. Customers now circumvent the company and ask each other – the customer journey, or peer-to-peer selling, for information/recommendations about a product or service. For this reason, a smart company will incorporate the customer into its branding and marketing from the start.
Lewis also discussed two big trends for retailers: entertainment and active involvement.
Like the 7 C’s, I believe these two items extend significantly beyond retail into marketing and sales in general. Experiential marketing, or entertainment, by its very nature, involves people to some degree. This helps them to break through to audiences in general but to Gen Z’ers in particular. Additionally, empathy, which is important to this generation is integrally integrated to experiential marketing. Another way empathy is delivered is through storytelling. Combine these and you can hopefully ride the trend.