You’ve gotta love a conference to get the blood pumping, and the ideas whizzing around (yes I’m fun at parties); and my latest conference foray was no exception. The AIMIA Connected Consumer half-dayer in Sydney was a great half-day out, with some excellent speakers and some excellent content. The conference put forward the following question:

 “as omni-channel services provide consumers with a seamless experience … how can retailers remain relevant to the consumer? And how can retailers use design thinking to put the consumer at the heart of everything they do?”

There was lots of great storytelling, some good ideas and a great presentation by our very own BrandHook founder, Pip Stocks.

In a nutshell, Pip pointed out that if you want to give consumers what they want, you need to explore what their needs are. And immersion in your consumers’ world is the best way to get an in-depth understanding of those needs. This type of work helps avoid the kind of assumption arrogance that is beautifully illustrated in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heSudg-tfIk

Consumers are evolving much faster than businesses are, so businesses need to decide if they’re leading edge, bleeding edge or laggard. Businesses should try out new ideas, co-create with consumers and make sure those new ideas are tested so a positive and adaptive evolution can be hardwired into the process. Despite all of this, 74% of CEOs still say their knowledge of consumers is incomplete.

So what can we do about this terrifying consumer/business gap? Well, a true (and perhaps challenging) insight into dealing with the digital age comes from the highly successful Andy Street of John Lewis, when he famously said “There is no book, you have to work it out for yourselves”. Although there is definitely no book, there is definitely help, and we would suggest asking someone at BrandHook to work it out with you.