Nowadays, most advertising agencies have turned into what we call 360° / global design agencies that handle brands’ both digital and print communication strategies. Nonetheless, we still just think of digital and print as two different channels and mediums that are not really linked together. But as the digital world and the internet are becoming more and more integrated in our daily lives, we need to think of new ways to connect those two worlds to offer a better global experience to the customer.

At first, the online experience was very secondary to the whole retail experience and to the relationship people had with brands. But now, digital experiences offer a richer and wider vision of the brand and its universe, so that retail stores have become less significant in the eyes of the customers, and ad agencies started to pay less attention to retail. Well, that is because of three reasons: communication budgets are tighter than they used to be, and they focused on the most efficient channel to promote their products. Then there was the “novelty effect” of online strategies that created the buzz and offered great exposure. And finally, because digital tools give us control, knowledge and thus power, to engage in a better way with the audience than it has ever been possible before.

What we learned from making websites

With the development of what was called the internet 3.0 and with it the ability for everyone to create content, share and shop online, we discovered that websites are great for brands because they can get so much data on their customers. Those data allow us to adapt the whole design of a website (graphics, process, ergonomics…) to make it both more efficient and more pleasant to use. Then there are all the sharing possibilities it offers, allowing people to passively (or actively) promote products by treasuring pictures, recommend articles to friends and so on. And we use these tools to learn about what the customers want, to offer them a better experience that participates to their elaboration of a positive mental representation of the brand, and in the meantime, spread a good image, (virtually) for free.

So how to use this knowledge to forge new physical experiences?

Because people still like to go shopping, see, touch and feel the products and somehow be more in touch with the brand’s identity, we need to think of new ways to embed the digital world into the physical one.

Since online sharing is one of the most powerful tool available for brands to leverage traction from their customers, maybe it would be a good idea to start focusing on that. It is like free advertising: people share pictures, words, videos, geolocation instantly with hundreds, sometimes thousands of other people instantly all over the world. Why don’t we use that power in retail? We need to create frictionless, transversal experiences, that will use the power of digital tools in the physical world to make it even more easier for customers to interact with a brand and its products.

Here are a few ideas on how to do so:

• Display QR codes that redirects to a web page offering social media sharing possibilities with pre-filled text to share

• Use Beacons with an app to offer information on products, sharing possibilities and insights regarding friends’ relation to a particular product

• Use POS advertising supports with NFC technology to engage with the audience and make it easy and rewarding for them to share your product