Friday, November 29, 2013

CRMC 2013 - Retail Marketing and CRM Conference, Chicago

The CRMC is probably one of the most relevant  conferences if you are a retail or consumer CRM focused company, or a vendor providing other services in the space. Being a conference with a very niche subject area (unlike broader conferences on Retail/Consumer Marketing or Digital Marketing in general), the audience is very relevant and "targeted!" ;)

CRMC 2013 was held at The Hilton, Chicago and kudos to Devon Wylie and team for having created a perfectly programmed event with true, good content. With content coming in from virtually the who's who of Retail CRM, Loyalty and Analytics, there was much to learn and take home.

I particularly liked something Brian Solis (@briansolis), of the Altimeter Group, said in his talk around Digital Anthropology. He said Gen-C or "Generation Connected" is so used to devices that they find it hard to imagine how life would be without it. His daughter for instance, thinks a regular print magazine is an "iPad that does not work!"

Among other sessions there were some very interesting sessions from dunnhumby, a leader in analytics-driven customer engagement, and Epsilon, who had some interesting nuggets of information they shared from their work for Orvis and Chicos. I attended a couple of working sessions on TIBCO Loyalty/Loyalty Lab that I found quite informative. And of course, my favourite among the Retailer Presentations was the "IKEA Family" Loyalty Program. It brought forth how the Brand and the Loyalty Program aer virtually inseparable in today's digital environment.

Overall, great show, fantastic content, interesting conversations and an audience that most retail-focused companies will like! :)

I am sure the next version of the show in 2014 is going to be bigger and better. And of course, I will remain all-ears on some good content from them!


For more information on CRMC 2014, check out:
CRMC Website: www.thecrmc.com
Twitter: @CRMCRetail

Monday, November 25, 2013

RetailTech and more at Decoded Fashion, NYC


I was incidentally at New York during the last Decoded Fashion Meetup Event, so I decided to drop-in and check it out. And was mighty impressed. Good work Liz and team!

Decoded Fashion, in their own words, "..creates events and curated discussions that accelerate innovation at the intersection of fashion and retail."

True to its name, the event had a compact, and power-packed agenda of short, quick talks by people, sharing their experiences and innovations. It was hosted at the Midtown Manhattan headquarters of the GILT Group and was attended by 100 people, which is normally the capacity for such meetups.
The roster of speakers for the evening included founders of tech-startups, creating disruptions in the Fashion-Tech area.

Here is a file picture of the event, from the DecodedFashion Meetup Archives:


One of the interesting concepts I found was that of Stylitics, which aggregates user-created data to generate insights for retailers. Basically, consumers download an app and share/tag their purchases on the platform. They are creating a digital wardrobe for themselves, but in essence what they are also doing, is proving a huge bunch of data for cross-retailer understanding on products and categories that complement each other (and coexist in) inside each of our unique wardrobes.

The other thing I distinctly remember is Optimizely was pretty much mentioned in almost every other presentation as being the "go-to" people for a whole range of things. I even remember tweeting about this from the event, and was promptly RT-ed by the folks at Optimizely!

All in all, the event was fun, engagement and informative. Pretty much what I would want from an evening like that. Will definitely attend another DecodedFashion event if I can and if the agenda looks interesting!