Outlooking: Steal with pride for a post-COVID-19 world
One of the greatest advantages that a challenger brand can have over an incumbent is its inexperience and naivety. It will be these qualities that make all the difference once the dust settles on the post-COVID-19 world.
For many of us, we are told that expertise and experience are the keys to success - we follow the paths trodden by those who know the market better than any others, and we hope that their wisdom and knowledge will lead us to growth and opportunity.
But one man’s experience is another man’s baggage. A weight of knowledge and experience equips you with a clear sense of what has happened before, but can sometimes blind you to what will happen in the future if it doesn’t fit your pattern. That experience and knowledge of what has happened before can also be replicated across the industry - the same researchers and consultants showing us all the same decks (Millennials jumping off rocks anyone?).
At eatbigfish, one of the first things we do with our clients is to help them to leave that expertise at the door, and embrace a sense of “intelligent naivety”... put simply, an ability to look at the category with fresh eyes, unencumbered by “how it is supposed to be” and ready to ask themselves “what if?”.
To do this, we use a process called ‘Outlooking’. Instead of obsessing over what is the received wisdom inside the category, we ask them to look outside of their usual frame of reference. To look at other categories, other consumers, different competition, and other brands and to begin applying what they see to their own brand.
More than anything, it allows teams to take things that work in other categories or territories and apply them to their own. “If it works there, what would it look like here?”. Kerri Martin, the CMO at Mini when it launched in North America, told us that the key to their successful launch was stealing ideas from the hospitality industry and the arts and applying them to a category that had been devoid of new ideas for years.
This also should be an opportunity to consider our categories not just for the short term, but for the long term. In late 2001, I’m sure many of us imagined the new rules for sectors like travel would be temporary, but they became permanent. As challengers, we should be always preparing for the category that is to come, and how we can create it, instead of blindly focussing on the one that exists today.
So let’s look at two categories in particular, Dining and Retail. How might some of their category behaviours and practices look applied to your own situation in a post-COVID-19 world?
Stealing from Dining
God, I miss restaurants.
But the chances of them coming back in their typical, social format is unlikely until COVID-19 has been entirely eliminated. If the constraint is no dine-in customers, or even (as has been discussed) limited occupancy or even one customer per table, how could we make the most of this?
Several countries, like Japan, have a legacy of being far more attuned to the spread of diseases. Wearing face masks when you are sick as a courtesy to others has been a part of Japanese culture for many years.
When it comes to dining, Japan already has some behaviours that we can learn from. A culture of smaller dining areas, partitioned from each other has existed for many years. If space allowed, could modern-day restaurants work to temporarily partition their spaces into smaller rooms and booths where intimate dining experience could be replicated, if not the larger social ones? Just as this restaurant in Amsterdam has done with mini greenhouses.
Also in Japan, the Ichiran chain of noodle restaurants has for years focussed on the practice of solo dining - with diners sat at “flavour enhancement booths” with as little human interaction as possible. While the reasoning there is to allow diners to concentrate on their food, could the concept of an individual dining experience be something a challenger brand helps us to embrace in the West? What if you were to create bars and restaurant experiences built for Zoom? Individual booths and a top-notch Wi-Fi connection could help us replicate the social element of dining while being on our own.
Could this also perhaps be combined with the recent culture of “Quarantinis”? How odd would it have been to crack open a beer with a few friends over a conference call just a few short months ago? Now, it’s the closest thing to a pub many of us have. Which alcohol brand is going to be the first to own the lockdown conference call, in the way that Aperol has owned sunny terraces?
Of course, the closure of public dining spaces has already forced many restaurants into re-thinking how they do take-out. Even high-end restaurants, who at one point or other might have held their noses are now flipping their thinking to be “take out” centric. In LA, we’re seeing a rise of luxury bento boxes and DIY Sushi Kits available for delivery. They are a surprisingly high-end experience - creatively and beautifully boxed - no cheap plastic cartons here. Food trucks, like the kind owned by Coolhaus Ice Creams, are branching out to offer pre-made cocktails, produce and dry goods. Restaurants are supporting local organic suppliers through the creation of high-quality community supported agriculture boxes - it’s still farm to table, but it’s just your table this time.
We’ll eat again. Don’t know where, don’t know when. Hopefully a challenger can help us out.
Stealing from retail
Retail has always had a “magpie” culture about it. Lush, the cosmetics and beauty store, borrowed heavily from the world of the farmer’s market, while The Laundress in New York gave their laundry store the Jo Malone treatment.
The coronavirus lockdowns immediately shut many stores that were considered non-essential, but as the restrictions ease, what sorts of new models might we be able to adopt?
The bare minimum seems to be a new approach to physical spacing and user flow. Supermarkets around the world are beginning to adopt the one-way system that IKEA has used for years. The IKEA system was originally inspired by a trip to the Guggenheim museum in New York, with guests shuffling past every single gallery before exiting through the gift shop. Will this new model have the added effect of boosting sales by pushing customers past things they didn’t think they needed?
Curbside pick up and “click and collect” are part of the first wave of openings in states like California, but with no sign that a second wave will follow soon after, will more and more businesses convert their bricks and mortar locations into the final part of a customer journey, eliminating “browsing” entirely? Argos, a retailer in the UK, has for decades had a model where customers choose their products from a catalogue, with around 80% of store space dedicated to a closed-off stockroom. This meant more SKUs could be stored in one location. Strangely, this business became the ideal model for the internet age, with browsing all done online, customers could turn up at their local store to pick up the item that they had already done all the work looking for online, that item could be available almost instantly, beating out the supposed convenience of next day delivery for those who want it now.
While the internet has already revolutionised much of the retail category, could social distancing be the Great Accelerator (as one of our clients calls it) that ends the hold out from certain categories? Indeed, US auto dealers are rapidly trying to embrace a “home delivery test drive” for customers who will not be able to come to the big box dealerships that they once relied on. Carvana has paved the way in used cars, and surely this will be the only direction the category can move in.
Smaller retailers are getting inventive too. Colibri Boutique in Islington has created a booking system, much like a hairdresser or doctor’s appointment, where customers can book a slot to come and browse the items. If they don’t want to come in, they can contact the store owner via Video Call and she can guide them through their options.
As we become more used to ideas like video shopping, click and collect and the need for social distancing, what does that mean for “Big Box” retailers? While lockdown continues and hotel occupancy rates crater, could larger stores partner with urban hotels to create multiple “mini-stores”? Imagine a hotel floor turned into individual shopping experiences, tailored by the customer’s needs/interests, with all styles available in one size for the consumer to go and try on and buy in private.
Steal with pride
The future is uncertain, today more than it has ever been. But we don’t have to figure it out alone. Look to the territories and categories that seem to be getting it right. Ask yourself what that would mean in your category, and get to work making it happen.
“All the great ideas I’ll ever need are already out there”, Eric Ryan, founder of method, once said. “I just need to find them and apply them to my brand.”