Google: CPG Marketers Must Focus on ‘Shopper of the Future’

By Dan Alaimo   

Technology continues to advance at warp speed, but the exponential growth of data has only scratched the surface of how shoppers interact with brands. Google sees high expectations in the future.

  

There are 4.5 billion Facebook likes, 4 billion YouTube views and 3.5 Google searches every day, but the amount of change technology is making in personal and business lives is still very small, says Kevin Hartman, head of analytics at Google.

“We haven’t even begun to experience what technology is going to do,” Hartman said in a presentation at the Western Michigan University 2017 Food Marketing Conference in Grand Rapids, Mich. recently. “That can be frightening, but it can also be motivating. What all this technology has done is set up a new set of expectations for what we will call the Shopper of the Future,” he says.

This shopper has three primary expectations of brands and retailers, he adds:

• “They want things to be quick.”

• “They want things to be surprising.”

• “And they want convenience.”

“Awesome is the new starting point,” says Hartman. “The shopper’s sun rises and sets on technology, especially on their mobile phone. Consumers want brands that offer quick transactions, use technology to push the bounds of what is possible, and deliver great convenience in all interactions.”

Hartman then described the attributes of the “store of the future.” While this may be owned by a retailer, “much of this is also influenced by marketers or brands that are moving through these retail spaces. We know that the store of the future is connected. The data is at the center of that store of the future. It is collecting data all the time, pulling it into data sets and using it for analysis. Its employees are empowered. They using devices, they are using wearables to make decisions to make things easier for consumers,” he says.

That store of the future offers augmented shopping experiences to consumers, which “most importantly, are not exclusively owned by a retailer. That is something brands are bringing into the retail space, as well,” he notes.

Four technologies provide these kinds of experiences to that shopper of the future: smart signs, engagement tracking, video intelligence and immersive experiences.

Rather than the static cardboard cut-out sign, “smart signs are interactive designs that can engage with consumers, and give them the right information at the right time, and allow you as a marketer to perform really insightful A/B testing into what is working and what isn’t working dynamically in real time,” Hartman says.

Engagement tracking is a technology that will detect when consumers are nearby, and when they are interacting with a certain part of the display, or product that is on the display. “It can even send a signal off to a smart sign to provide more information, or trigger a customer service rep to come and engage with that consumer,” he adds.

“Video intelligence based on facial recognition technology can literally detect what emotions or reactions shoppers are having to a product that is out on display, to the advertising that you are showing in retail, or to anything you are showing to consumers. This can give brands or retailers a good sense of what is working, what is not working, and how consumers are reacting to that display,” he says.

There are two different “technology flavors” of immersive experiences, both addressed by Google products. “One is based on a product that we will call Daydream, which is a very lightweight and flexible device that can still provide really robust experiences. The other is something we call Tango, which will provide deeper more integrated experiences to consumers,” Hartman notes. Daydream is a virtual reality platform, while Tango is a depth-sensing augmented reality technology. Both work with mobile devices, and are based on existing technology platforms like Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services.

“What this provides for anybody utilizing these systems is a connected system that is perfectly secure and smart. This enables marketers to learn from the things that are going on in their retail setting with their brand, with their consumers, and optimize as they learn going forward,” Hartman notes.

Simplicity is a big theme in technology and marketing today, but “you as a marketer live in a very complex world, particularly if you are dealing in digital platforms. Technology is making that simple primarily through four different advances for marketers: formats, attribution, targeting and smart bidding,” he says.

These are enabled by deep learning, which follows from machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence that includes statistical techniques enabling machines to improve with experience; that is, predictive analytics. Deep learning is “training computers and machines to think much like we do,” he says.

Formats is the concept of serving up what works to a consumer at the right time, Hartman notes. Attribution is the practice of assigning value to different interactions with consumers. Targeting is an idea of segmenting in a traditional sense, but doing it in a way that utilizes countless consumers and vast amounts of information.

“Smart bidding, or automation, is the idea of getting the right kind of bid, the right sort of value on a consumer, because you know how valuable they are to you. Smart bidding automatically assigns all that value to that consumer and allows you to take a very simple approach to bidding. Rather than managing different bids across different platforms, across different media, smart bidding can automatically do that and optimize over time for you,” he says. “All of those things together will make advertising to and reaching this shopper in the future much easier for you as a marketer.”

Hartman concluded by advising marketers to think about the future, not to follow anyone, to build partnerships, and to “trust your instincts as a brand marketer.

“Trust what you know about your consumers. They have not changed fundamentally. What has changed is the things that are available to them and the experiences that they have. Thinking of the future, not waiting for anyone to follow, building those partnerships that enable you and give you that kind of capability, and most importantly, trusting that you understand your shopper is how you can be that marketer of the future.”