While there appears to be little overlap between the smaller brands paying for placement in physical marketplaces and the larger consumer products companies appearing via ad tech on even larger retailers’ sites, the objectives are similar: Retailers need to leverage their real estate and traffic, brands need new opportunities for placement and consumers are on a quest to discover what’s new, or at least what’s new to them.

Earlier this evening, I posted an Instagram story showing which stores had lines to enter and which were seeing less traffic yesterday.

I also shared a photo of my pickup order from Gramercy Tavern At Home which, unsurprisingly, was the best takeout customer experience I’ve had. Daily Provisions, also from Union Square Hospitality Group, was a close second.

The multi-platform, multi-venue, multi-product program I’ve now seen over several weeks appears to be the result of the proven creativity of The Infatuation team and the risk-taking for which Nike has become admired.

Based on what I saw at MWC (fka Mobile World Congress), the themes, especially as they relate to commerce, can be summed up most succinctly as SPEED.

The technology I like best in retail can be summed up by thinking about the 3 Es:

What enables, expedites, and/or elevates the store experience for tasks a customer doesn’t  need a human to perform?

Last month at Verizon, we built an in-store AR use case and rolled it out to thousands of our stores. The activation was tied into Verizon’s holiday campaign and encouraged deeper engagement in the store by prompting customers to search for and “unwrap” exclusive promotional offers as they browsed.

Observations and analysis about Amazon‘s London pop-up from retail consultant Rebecca Smith and me.

On the way to visit the new Amazon 4-star store in Soho, I stumbled upon a Cartier pop-up at 120 Wooster (open until 11/4/18). Unexpectedly, I found both to be about discovery.

To recap, trends hit:

• Instagrammable

• New CPG sales channel

• Small format

• Self-checkout

• Shift in ad dollars from digital to stores

And those missed:

• Experience

• Service

• Product education

• Brand immersion

• The “chat” in chat commerce

If more stores can capture people’s attention in similarly-immersive ways, then reserved and tour-guided retail could be part of the definition that I think today’s “retail as entertainment” hypotheses sorely need.

Hitting so many DNVB stores in quick succession reinforced for me a story. The story is that these brands - unlike retailers before them - are not opening stores for pure distribution strategy reasons.

While I’m all for the product-free pop-up, I’m looking for more of a tie between brand and experience than this one.

Earlier this month, I visited Amazon Go and Starbucks Roastery. They’re at opposite ends of the technology/human spectrum.

“The living room is the new dressing room.” - Miki Berardelli, Kidbox CEO

I heard this shortly after telling someone that home is a shopping channel. If a fashion retailer doesn’t have a home strategy, it may be multichannel but I don't think I can say it’s omnichannel.

This is the first part in a series I’ll use to explore retail (likely offline, but could be online) that emphasizes product discovery over - or in ways equal to - immediate sales.

On Friday, I visited the Dyson Demo store. I had read about it and, while I'm not in the market for a vacuum cleaner, what's the point of a retail store anymore if it's not a helpful experience with some form of product trial?*