Suzy Bashford invited Anders Lyckman, Global Creative Director, Forever 21 and ODD client to comment on Marketing’s feature piece, ‘As the delineation between consumers’ real and online lives becomes less clear, marketers must strive to keep pace.’
We live in a world where we can summon a cab within minutes via an app. We can book into a stranger’s spare room, instead of an expensive hotel, courtesy of Airbnb. Our virtual personal assistant, who lives in our smartphone, can warn us to leave 15 minutes early for our meeting because traffic is unusually heavy. Users of the Canary app in Seattle can even summon cannabis to their door within the hour.
Such technology, which slips seamlessly between the virtual and physical worlds, has led some tech experts to argue that marketers should ditch the word ‘digital’ altogether.
As the physical and virtual worlds collide, customer expectations are soaring. “Customers now see our brand as always-on, expecting identical levels of service and experience, regardless of channel,” says Anders Lyckman, global creative director at US fashion retailer Forever 21. “If they get a response in-store immediately, they expect one online immediately. So we have a commitment to both provide inspiring and engaging brand content and meet customer-service expectations 24/7.”
However, he stresses that while the onand offline experiences should be integrated, they should not “be carbon copies of each other”; rather, they should play to their strengths. In light of this, Forever 21 is working with integrated agency ODD to create more “theatre” in retail stores because “there is something about being present and able to experience, touch, feel, smell a brand that is, and always has been, so very powerful”.
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