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Co-Working is the Next Hottest Retail Concept, All Thanks to WeWork

A transformative change has taken place in recent years. The concept of co-working evolving from an alternative to a traditional office lease for start-ups and freelancers is becoming an integral component of corporate real estate portfolios. Since flexibility tops the list of popular benefits of coworking amongst freelancers, small businesses, and large enterprises, the retail industry is rapidly changing to incorporate this business idea into business practice in 2018.

Co-working companies provide short-term leases at various square footages, allowing tenants to determine the most appropriate workplace strategy for their business without a long-term obligation, driving cost efficiency with newcomers and experienced retailers in today’s market.

It’s No Longer a Thing of the Past

Back in October of 2017, the still relatively new co-working company WeWork made a deal to buy Hudson’s Bay Fifth Avenue property Lord & Taylor flagship store for $850 million. This not only raised red flags as to what the future of both retail and office facilities held, but also it gave rise to if such as WeWork, Co-Optim, and NeueHouse pop up are changing nature of work is giving rise to a new kind of retail experience.

“Co-working spaces generate heightened connectivity amongst different businesses, presenting an opportunity for innovation to occur at the intersection of different disciplines and mirroring the balance between intellectual harmony and tension made famous at AT&T’s Bell Labs in the late 19^th century.” – Cushman & Wakefield reports.

However, buying up store space has not been the only retail push. Partnerships are another angle that WeWork has been exploring, with WeWork and LinkedIn announcing a partnership with J. Crew that would include panel events, a new work-focus collection and campaign from J. Crew featuring WeWork members, and J. Crew pop-ups exclusively for WeWork members in February 2018, opening new possibilities for both office spaces and retailers in collaboration efforts.

With New Opportunities, There are Always Challenges

With any new idea or innovation, as great as it may be, there are always pitfalls and challenges businesses have to consider. Adding retail to co-working spaces brings certain problems, which Christopher Walton, Former VP of Target Store of the Future describes in the quote below.

“There are a couple big challenges I see. One, it is hard to coordinate retail partnerships at scale in such a way that the retail experiences will stay fresh and well executed across the country. Two, it will also be difficult for retailers to generate the return on the investment required from the partnerships or the product placement. It is similar, in my mind, to the phenomenon of retail at airports. Some money can be made at airport stores, but those stores don’t really blow the doors off for any retailer” – Christopher Walton reports.

Furthermore, most analysts are unsure whether the retail element is a practical measure economically, not just for WeWork, who owes $18 billion dollars in rent despite its success, but for the co-working industry as a whole, which could be in a big bubble that is about to burst for most businesses.

Moving Forward

Moving forward, there may be opportunities for digital retail brands to beat co-working spaces at their own game by opening up co-working spaces of their own. With room for companies such as Apple and Amazon to try co-working in the future, co-working for those companies and other well-known could prove to be a huge advantage for them, igniting an entirely different perspective of the retail space as we progress into the future of retail experience. How exciting!

Rethinking Business, Branding & Life with Jim Stengel, Digital Retail & Digital Marketing Transformation Assembly Keynote

You are widely known for leading innovation and being committed to building leading-edge marketing capabilities for all types of businesses. How did stepping down from your position at Procter & Gamble in 2008 prepare you for this role of helping others in today’s unpredictable environment?

P&G was a hothouse learning environment. The company deeply believed in human development and training, with a variety of on-the-job training opportunities, immersion experiences, and formal development programs. But the most powerful part of the P&G experience was the huge range of career experiences for high-potential leaders, as the company had on-the-ground operations in nearly 100 countries and marketed brands in 40 categories. Over the course of my 25 years at P&G, we grew from a $10 billion revenue company to $80 billion plus. I worked on dozens of brands, lived in four different countries, worked with leading clients, learned from an assortment of acquisitions, and eventually had the C-Suite experience as P&G’s Global Marketing Officer. That combination of experiences, plus a healthy curiosity, helped prepare me for what I do today.

You have a mission to “rethink business, branding, and life.” To some, that is easier said than done. How are able to simply follow this philosophy when working with clients from across all industries?

Can you name a category in our world that is not somehow being disrupted? If you are not rethinking your business, brand, and life constantly, you will stumble. I am not advocating a constantly shifting set of priorities (that will drive your team crazy), but I am suggesting you need a strategy to ensure your brand stays relevant as customers shift how they live, shop and consume. And I use those three words deliberately – brand, business, and life are remarkably interconnected. You cannot be fresh, innovative, and engaged with your brand and business if you are not also living a full and happy life.

Have you always followed a specific path, or in other words, have had similar end-goals for businesses when approaching new marketing and branding tactics?

With every new assignment in my career, and with every new client, I certainly have a path or process to follow. It is always rooted in fully understanding the total situation and taking the time to listen to a variety of people and points of view. No one cares more about a brand or business than the people who are working on it. They are too often not tapped into enough.

You recently released your new book, “Unleashing the Innovators: How Mature Companies Find New Life With Startups” to great success. The theme of the book describes how today’s established companies must find new ways to reignite their entrepreneurial DNA and jump-start revenues or risk losing their way. From your experience, how does the partnership between a legacy company and a startup help the older companies renew themselves?

The key is to have a process to share the best and most relevant learning from how startups operate back into the larger enterprise. There need to be people in the larger company who are accountable for that. Companies like Unilever, GE, Motorola Solutions and Toyota are benefiting from that.

Is there a secret to success looking to learn how to better innovate in today’s evolving marketing landscape?

Take a page out of the Amazon playbook: be relentlessly focused on making customers happier in large and small ways and truly empower your entire organization to do that. Mistakes are fine if the goal was to make a customer’s life better. No individual will have all the innovative ideas in marketing or anything else – but when a large organization is rewarded for trying new ways to help customers, watch out!

With many changes undergoing in marketing, all thanks to new technologies disrupting how marketing is viewed and done, what do you think is the biggest challenge for companies looking to tackle these new technologies in the age of digital disruption?

Inertia. So many companies are getting by – doing okay – but they are not building the necessary capabilities to win in the future. They are still too focused on their current business model, with too little resources in testing scenarios and ideas that will help them better understand and prepare for the future.

What are the biggest changes you have seen in building a brand today vs. 10 years ago?

The massive change in how people get information, shop, and what they value. The purpose was critical 10 years ago and that has only gotten more intense.

We are very excited that you are attending and keynoting at our Digital Marketing & Retail Transformation Assembly in Dallas this week. What did you look forward to most at our event?

Meeting new people! And learning – we are all on a constant learning journey.

What do you think are the benefits of attending a small, intimate C-Level event like ours?

The opportunity to step out of your own fast-paced world to slow down – and think.

ABOUT JIM STENGEL

Jim Stengel is President/CEO of The Jim Stengel Company. A prolific writer, speaker and advisor, Jim is the author of Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies, and Unleashing the Innovators: How Mature Companies Find New Life with Startups. Jim is widely known for leading innovation and for his commitment to building leading-edge marketing capabilities. In 2011, he was named to the first-ever Fortune® Executive Dream Team, has been named multiple times by Advertising Age as the number one “Power Player” in marketing, and is a 2017 American Marketing Association Hall of Fame inductee. Jim has served as Dean of the Young Marketers Academy at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity since 2011, and in 2013 pioneered the CMO Accelerator program at the Cannes Lions Festival. Jim is the former Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble, and a former member of the Board of Directors for AOL and Motorola.

Digital Transformation Is Redesigning The Leadership Role In Marketing

As we are already aware, digital transformation has comfortably found its way into all industries, impacting everything about the ways businesses operate. From their business models and strategies to their internal processes and team management, digital transformation is at the core of every decision this year.

Digital transformation is also driving an evolution in the C-suite, especially the role of the chief creative officer.

“Classic design, which rose out of the industrial era, brought the idea that there is a single, perfect way of designing something,” said Steve Gustavson, executive creative director at Adobe. “Once digital took over, the landscape now changes so fast that classic approaches simply don’t scale. Channels are exploding faster than we can keep up, and the request for content to personalize every communication means that we’ve had to rethink everything.” CMO reports.

Like their C-suite counterparts, chief executives including CCOs also must contend with understanding ever-evolving technologies. For example, familiarization with customer data platforms, digital asset management platforms, and personalization engines is crucial. Therefore, keeping up with the technology trends is vital to inspire companywide transformation on all levels.

It’s A Team Effort

Cross-departmental collaboration along with the recognition that it must go hand-in-hand with business judgment and keep the user experience top-of-mind is another must for today’s C-suite and CCOs. Also, it is one they must stress to their teams. Everyone on a team should be prepped to be on the same page around a new approach, and that they are thinking about content the same way.

“For creative teams to have any ability to speak about specific industries or sectors, you need someone from that sector group to pair up with a design professional and ensure mutual understanding… Today you have opportunities for design and creativity to be applied more broadly, in new and sometimes unexpected ways—like when applying design thinking in the supply chain.” Juan-Carlos Morales, PwC’s global CCO adds.

With more teams, the C-suite has more room to discuss ideas and solutions on one common ground and to bring in different perspectives from individuals from all walks of the industry. Due to this, it is more likely that you will be able to see the development of plans much more quickly with those plans being more validated when they reach the client.

Change Is Constant

With all this transformation in the world of CCOs, certain aspects of their work remain constant in the constantly changing marketing environment. For example, the value of good and smart ideas have not changed. Taking a traditional step first can enable a team to move quickly later, once everyone is on board.

Most importantly, taking the time to understand what your brand needs to communicate, what your audience wants to hear, and how you can communicate with them creatively is still just as significant as it was before the digital storm began. That being said, the digital landscape has given the C-suite more ways to deliver those messages and find potential audiences, but it is a tool that is at the leadership level’s disposal and should be taken advantage of in order to stay ahead and relevant across all industries.

ABOUT TRANSFORMATIONAL CMO

This October, the 8th Transformational CMO Assembly in Denver is a unique event that challenges our attendees to learn how to anticipate what’s next for the highly complex marketing environment that has emerged throughout the year through a series of executive education roundtables, keynote presentations, collaborative think tanks, educational workshops, and networking sessions with our industry experts and advisory board over the course of 2 days.

Download your copy of the sponsorship prospectus here for more information>>

Spaces are reserved for the best in the business. If you’re a CMO looking to stay one step ahead of the digital world, reserve your seat today >

What Has The Impact Of Cloud Computing Been Thus Far?

With the rise of digital transformation, enterprises have incorporated a variety of tools into business functions in order to keep up to date with technology. The concept of “disrupt or fall behind” has made a strong impact on enterprises, and as a result, business professionals have made a strong effort to become familiar with the different tools that can impact businesses.

Cloud computing is part of that equation.

“Running your business in the cloud is no longer just a consideration during a typical use-case exercise. Business executives are now faced with making decisions on solutions that go beyond previous limitations with cloud computing. Selecting the latest tools to address a business process gap is now less about features and more about functionality.” Digitalist Mag reports.

Cloud Services Were Created…

Cloud computing is used more than you may think, especially if you are using technology. It basically just refers to any IT resources being used over the internet. It offers a wide range of services, like creating apps, storing and recovering data, hosting websites or streaming audio and video. It centralizes all IT activities done over the internet into one place.

There are benefits of using cloud computing, and according to Microsoft Azure, it has “transformed the way businesses think about IT services.” Understanding the benefits of cloud computing is important while diving into the outcomes of using this service. We turned to Microsoft Azure once more, to get an expert perspective on the benefits of this service:

1. Cost

Cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software and setting up and running on-site datacenters—the racks of servers, the round-the-clock electricity for power and cooling, the IT experts for managing the infrastructure. It adds up fast.

2. Speed

Most cloud computing services are provided self-service and on-demand, so even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few mouse clicks, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity planning.

3. Global scale

The benefits of cloud computing services include the ability to scale elastically. In cloud speak, that means delivering the right amount of IT resources—for example, more or less computing power, storage, bandwidth—right when it’s needed, and from the right geographic location.

4. Productivity

On-site datacenters typically require a lot of “racking and stacking”—hardware set up, software patching, and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing removes the need for many of these tasks, so IT teams can spend time on achieving more important business goals.

5. Performance

The biggest cloud computing services run on a worldwide network of secure data centers, which are regularly upgraded to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware. This offers several benefits over a single corporate datacenter, including reduced network latency for applications and greater economies of scale.

6. Reliability

Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity easier and less expensive because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider’s network.

Taken directly from Microsoft Azure.

The Impact Of Cloud Computing So Far…

Many leading industries have been disrupted by the cloud. Whether you are a marketing professional, retail professional, healthcare professional or security professional, cloud computing has probably made its way into your business.

RETAIL

Cloud computing has made it really easy for the retail industry to carry out e-commerce functions. Retailers who have not adapted to the cloud are met with outdated resources that do not meet the needs of interacting with multiple channels, which, as a retailer, is very important.

Meeting customers on an omnichannel level makes a huge difference when retailers are trying to stay up to date with the competition. Cloud computing has made this easier, more effective and agiler because it has centralized all data into one place. Cloud computing also provides retail professionals with customer insights, that can be used further into business functions.

“With the cloud, retailers can have supply chain systems capable of adequately handling their business without stock-outs, expedited deliveries, or high inventories.” New Gen Apps reports.

HEALTHCARE

Experts have deemed cloud computing as a tool that has “revolutionized” healthcare. As the healthcare sector moves toward digital, cloud computing has played a major role in this shift. Just as the retail industry uses the cloud, the healthcare industry uses it in a similar way, except the data that is being stored through the cloud belongs to patients, which makes it classified and more sensitive.

“Healthcare sector has been moved to digital platform today where it collects plenty of data. The most popular IT Companies do offer cloud computing services that mainly focused on healthcare data to transform it into meaningful information. Further, it makes data sharing easy and more accessible for the users.” Huffington Post reports.

Cloud computing makes it easy for healthcare professionals to reach patients in an efficient way, not to mention, an agiler way. It is no surprise that the healthcare industry needs a powerful system in order to effectively manage such secure data and cloud computing is just that. Using the cloud helps healthcare professionals store, search and obtain important information that ultimately makes for better overall decisions.

SECURITY

Cloud computing is no stranger to the security industry. In fact, cloud computing is only growing. Forbes released a report about this last year, revealing a study done by Intel Security that surveyed over 2,000 professionals getting a first-hand insight into their opinions on cloud computing and what the future holds.

All in all, cloud computing in the security and IT sector will expand over time, and professionals must learn to adapt to the platform. You can view all the key insights here.

What’s Next

All in all, industries are benefiting from cloud computing in a major way, by relying on it as a secure database to carry out a variety of business functions.

“Gartner’s latest worldwide public cloud services revenue forecast published earlier this month predicts Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), currently growing at a 23.31% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR), will outpace the overall market growth of 13.38% through 2020.” Forbes reports.

The Role Of The Financial Leader Continues To Expand

In today’s financial sector, financial leaders continue on breaking the mold and expanding their influence throughout their organizations. Over the past couple of years, many businesses have seen growth in their departments, namely in the diversity of the previous experiences of their employees and C-suite.

Interestingly, finance executives have most frequently reported their roles have grown over the past three years to include more information technology, human resources, and operations efforts to name a few. As the role of the financial leader continues to expand, leaders across all industries are finding that they have more opportunity to find individuals suited for the leadership role than ever before.

The Ever-Changing Position

Financial executives’ positions involve playing many roles that incorporate positions much like a strategic advisor, a data scientist, a collaborator in addition to their traditional responsibilities in the financial sector. They collaborate with human resources in areas as diverse as hiring and compensation, compliance, and organizational culture. Furthermore, they also pair up with their IT counterparts on initiatives ranging from technology investments and systems implementations to cybersecurity.

Many financial leaders find they must collaborate with chief information officers on IT-related decision-making as technology becomes only more critical for everyday business operations, highlighting the need for a financial officer to be aware of the trends impacting the industry.

The Skills A Modern Financial Leader Needs

According to Markets Insider, the influence a financial leader stems from their vast skill set. They define the top skills as:

Leadership: Developing and retaining a talented team are top priorities for accounting and finance managers. Executives must excel in guiding their staff, including managing and motivating a multigenerational workforce.
Collaboration: As their roles expand into nontraditional areas, financial executives can succeed only if they work well with colleagues in other departments.
Communication: Financial leaders must be comfortable sharing information with diverse audiences, from entry-level staff to the CEO and board of directors.
Technological aptitude: Financial executives don’t need to know all the tricks of new tools, but they should have an innate curiosity about them and a short learning curve.
Change management: Change can be scary, particularly when it comes to the workplace. Leaders must be able to share company news, good and bad, and what it means for their teams.

With a deeper understanding of technology and HR, this broad skill set has enabled financial leaders to address all challenges by adopting a robust approach to the financial sector, allowing them to move beyond the numbers and expand their influential role across all walks of the industry.

ABOUT THE FSI TRANSFORMATION ASSEMBLY

C-level IT leaders in the financial services and insurance sectors are dealing with many challenges as digital transformation becomes an imperative. Understanding not only the convergence of Mobile, Social, and Cloud but also the possible implications of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Blockchain is vital to stay ahead of the competition.

Join us at FSI Transformation Assembly in Charlotte, NC this November for updates on the latest digital technologies and strategies.

Download your copy of the sponsorship prospectus here for more information>>

Telehealth Is Improving The Hospital Revenue Cycle

Nearly 50 million Americans live in rural areas and depend on their community hospitals for care. These hospitals, however, face significant financial challenges. If unaddressed, these challenges could jeopardize the availability of services at these vital healthcare organizations. To remain financially practicable, rural hospitals must build a culture of revenue cycle excellence.

Many virtues of telehealth are widely understood at this point but a perhaps lesser known emerging use for the platforms is to streamline the revenue cycle by enhancing billing and payment collections.

Keeping The Patient In Mind

Survival is the biggest challenge for hospitals today. Nowadays, collecting revenue from the patient is much different. It is especially different from collecting from the payer. Much of the patient portion is captured post-care, and what revenue cycle departments across the country are now dealing with is how best to collect that remaining balance. However, it is not an easy endeavor as some may think; Sometimes patients have no idea what they owe. Bills are often needlessly complex, and even if a patient understands their financial responsibility, they not be able to pay immediately, and so they put it off

Commenting on the potential of Telehealth, Dan Berger, national director at health financial technology company AxiaMed, says “What telehealth and other new delivery models have done is stumble upon potential fixes to these problems almost as if by accident.”

What Is Gaining Momentum?

The concierge medicine model, in which patients pay a monthly fee for premium health services, has not taken off to the extent that telehealth has. However, one billing concept that has contributed to the discussion of improving the hospital revenue cycle is the idea of recurring payments.

“Convenience has become so important that patient portals are not that successful, because someone has to log in to the portal to make a payment. Just to log in is a deterrent. What is successful is pay-by-text. You get a text message that says, ‘You owe this balance, would you like to pay now? His 1 to say yes, 2 to say no.’ Again, that requires the card to be on file somewhere.” Dan Berger.

These types of payment models are becoming more common, and in order for that billing scheme to work effectively, providers need to keep a credit card for the patient on file, along with a system that can send out the monthly bill with a reminder. It is also easier to accept payment plans when a card is on file, and plays into the convenience factor, saving consumers the step of having to actively log onto a patient portal to fulfill their financial commitments.

As generational attitudes start to shift in favor of technology and convenience, it behooves providers to provide convenience, clarity, and simplicity. With today’s reality being technology-centric, telehealth is providing hospitals with just that.

ABOUT PATIENT EXPERIENCE TRANSFORMATION ASSEMBLY

The Millennium Alliance is thrilled to announce the second Patient Experience Transformation Assembly this year!

Working with our Members and Advisory Board, we are putting a program to enable you to test out new technology and hear from experts about the latest strategies changing the patient experience. We understand that for C-Level executives time is precious, so we are bringing the best content and technology together this October in Denver to jump-start your transformation this fall.

Interested in becoming a sponsor? Download your copy of the sponsorship prospectus>>

Our agendas and attendee lists are for Millennium Members only. Apply today for access! Already a Millennium Member? Simply click the link and enter your password when requested.

Embracing The Shift to Experiential Marketing in the Digital World

Staying relevant and in front of the consumer is so obvious to a brand strategy that is it easily done, right? Well, if you play your cards right, it can be. However, in today’s digital and connected world, sometimes it takes more than a simple strategy to keep a brand’s success on-going. And this is where experiential marketing steps in.

An innovative concept that forges closer ties between brands and consumers, experiential marketing is a highly effective way of capturing and retaining consumer interest which makes way for better customer experiences too, giving brands and marketing leaders ample reasons to embrace the shift to adopting experiential marketing tactics.

It’s All About Better Experiences

The goal of experiential marketing is to create lasting impressions on consumers that they want to share with others that ultimately lead to brand loyalty. It is not purely advertising a product, you are letting consumers see and feel what their lives would be like with it. In other words, you are creating an association between your brand and those positive vibes.

“Whether you are looking to entice immediate sales, increase your awareness, improve customer favorability or perception, rank higher on satisfaction scores or generate new leads, experiential marketing can address a specific challenge or drive overall marketing goals.”

Unlike advertising, experiential cannot be broken down into formatted executions like print or radio. Unfortunately, experiential is a little more complex than that. For a lack of a better definition, experiential marketing is like an art of expressing a brand’s purpose and proposition through a form of real-world consumer interaction.

Building Lasting Connections With Consumers

Many of the largest brands from American Express to the NFL have already begun building lasting connections with their consumers through experiential marketing, and the best strategies are those that extend beyond shopping.

For example, American Express’s AI tennis game at the 2017 U.S. Open was a huge success. This game allowed eventgoers to enhance their experience while associating American Express with something besides tickets and souvenir purchases. When brands are looking for innovative ways to build a deeper connection with their clients, it is vitally important for all brands to build an emotional connection in order to maintain a long-term relationship with consumers – whether it be through an interactive game at the US Open or photos at an event with social-sharing opportunities.

“Experiential marketing has the ability to transform and elevate the connections that brands build with their consumers, and that’s becoming increasingly important as consumers demand more personalization. With the benefits mentioned above and the many more that experiential marketing offers, it won’t be long before every industry catches up.” Forbes writes.

We live with information overload every day; there is so much noise and channel proliferation in the advertising space. Creating experiences is a way to break through that clutter and really stand out. When done right, experiential marketing creates a lasting memory, not just an impression, that will be recalled, and more importantly felt, for years whenever a participant sees your brand name, all the more reason for you to embrace experiential in your strategic initiatives.

ABOUT CMO DAY WEST COAST

Marketing has never been more complicated. Staying ahead of the latest trends and technology is a constant challenge for CMOs.

Increasingly, CMOs are seeking opportunities to gather together to debate the latest marketing trends. By working with our Members and Advisory Board, we are launching a series of 1-day events in major cities across the United States. We understand that for C-Level executives time is precious, so we are bringing the best content and solution providers to you.

That’s why earlier this year we launched our 1-day event series in New York. Now we’re taking these events to the West Coast with Transformational CMO presents CMO Day San Francisco.

Spaces are reserved for the best in the business. Apply to attend here!

Looking for more information? Download our exclusive event brochure here.

ABOUT TRANSFORMATIONAL CMO

Download your copy of the sponsorship prospectus here for more information>>

Spaces are reserved for the best in the business. If you’re a CMO looking to stay one step ahead of the digital world, reserve your seat today >