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[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
[Ad]: Today's checkout features Martin Phils, CEO of Pure Profile and Anastasia Lloyd Wallace, Chief Operating Officer and Head of Insights at Retail Doctor Group. They are both experts in research and retail. They've joined us to share the collected data from 1,000 people across all demographics to generate a great loyalty report called how to Grow Consumer Loyalty. We unpack that on Add to car. Anastasia and Martin, welcome to the Checkout. We are here to ask you five questions. We had a great chat earlier around your research around loyalty in Australia for retailers titled how to Grow Loyalty available for download. We've got in the show notes there but we're here to learn a little bit more about both of you. So I've got five quick questions as experts in retail. This is going to be fascinating. First question is what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online? Anastasia, I'll start with you.
[Voiceover]: Okay, well this is probably giving away a little bit too much, but I'm a big Disney nerd. So recently I've been to all of the theme parks apart from Shanghai and I've been searching for a Disney handbag and I went to Florida and I was I'm gonna buy myself one for my birthday. Couldn't find it. Went to Paris recently. Disneyland. Still couldn't find the handbag. So I've got this very, very niche Mickey Mouse Disney handbag that's exclusive to you. Can only buy it inside a Disney theme park. But I managed to find the one I wanted with Disney Mickey Mouse. The you know, the castle, the fireworks on ebay And I had it shipped from America that someone had, you know, been to Disneyland. It was only available in Disney World in Florida. They managed to go there, purchase it and they've shipped it over from America. So it's not weird, but it's very niche and nerdy.
[Ad]: I'm going to Japan, Disneyland in a fortnight. So I'll keep an eye out for handbags. It'll look weird me browsing the handbag section at Disneyland, but I'll do that for you. Martin, what about you?
Martin Filz: It's a foolish, ignorant usage, but it was when the world was getting rid of packaging. And so a few years ago now, before COVID So I thought metal straws, what we're going to do. So with one of my younger children, we were going to start a little business for her offering sort of metal straw straws in a way of raising money for charity. And I thought I was buying a thousand and I bought 10,000. The garage still has about 9,900. It didn't work, by the way. So the garage still has about 9,990 metal straws and we give them out. So people come to the house or Christmases or whatever and they get metal straws to take home all different shapes. So I'll send you some.
[Ad]: Thank you. Maybe there's a partnership with Anastasia's client, Tri Tea that maybe they can take some off your hands that are really good rate. All right, number two. Martin, I'll stay with you. Which retailer has inspired you most recently?
Martin Filz: I'm still blown away by what JB hi Fi did and JB hi Fi regarding same day delivery. And so what they started to do was their store employees got paid to drop off products at the end of their day, at the end of their shift. And so it literally meant at 3 o', clock, 4 o', clock, 5 o', clock, whatever it was. You could order something from JB hi Fi and it would be dropped off at your house sort of when the shift finished. And I just thought that was so innovative. And it helps employees who aren't necessarily on a huge salary might be part time work, et cetera. It gave money to them. It meant I got same day delivery. That's one that still sits with me. And they've been doing that now for a couple of years.
[Ad]: It's a great example, isn't it? Because it's one of those ideas that if brought up in a lot of businesses, there'd be so many barriers that are just put up in front of it straight away. And like, no, can't do it because of X, Y, Z, but they've got like. No, we'll find a way. I love it. Anastasia, any retailers inspiring you recently?
[Voiceover]: Yes, I've actually just come back from a retail trip to London and saw some phenomenal retail over there. And the one that I've been telling everybody about since I got back was actually gymshark. So I went into the gymshark flagship store on Regent street and I'm a big gym goer. In my spare time I teach aerobics, so I love all things active and fitness and I walk in and find that it's two stories, which is phenomenal to begin with. It's got three different gym studios within the store. So you can go and do a HIIT class for free, you can do Reformer Pilates class for free, or you can go and learn sort of weightlifting techniques in the middle of the shop. So you've got to obviously quite cleverly walk through all of the tights and the shorts and the T shirts to get into your class. And so we were in there and there was a hit class going on and I just thought that was just what a way to get customers to come to the store. And you don't need to purchase anything. You walk through the class is free, but obviously you see the newest gymshark range and you can't help but think, oh, I really need that new pair of tights. And then they've also built in like a fitness cafe as you exit. So you exit and you get your smoothie, your shake, whatever else, a place to sit that, you know, again, happens to be in the middle of the store so you can look at all of the items while you sit and drink your smoothie. And I thought it was just a great way of sort of taking a brand and what that brand means, but also just engaging in that in store. And I was like, I wish I lived in London, I'd be coming to these HIIT classes all the time. That was great.
[Ad]: Yeah, I'm sure you wouldn't be walking in Nike gear. Right?
[Voiceover]: Well, exactly.
Martin Filz: That's it. Lovely.
[Ad]: That's a great example. All right, number three, name a piece of tech that you or your E commerce business or your agency couldn't live without. Anastasia.
[Voiceover]: This one was a really tough one for me because I'm actually quite classical. I've got, you know, degree in maths and I do everything in spreadsheets. So I'm actually quite one of the laggards with regards to tech. But the moment all I hear about is AI. And the one thing that actually I'm finding I'm starting to use and starting to get our business to use is AI image generation. And this is the one thing it's, you know, we're not an E comm business so we don't use tech on a daily basis, but AI image generation we found has been saving us so much time, so much effort and it's almost starting to become that ingrained part of life. So for me it was quite a shift because like I said, I'm quite old school, quite, you know, traditional in the way that I do things, but this was quite an eye opener.
[Ad]: Brilliant. Martin, any tech for you?
Martin Filz: Yeah, so I think on a, on personal level it's it ChatGPT, same as Anastasia, ChatGPT 4 and now 4.0. It's amazing. But ChatGPT 4, I have to keep my voice down a little bit. But you know, birthday cards, it's fantastic for kids, school projects, it's something that really using day to day life. But we just did front end up with pure profile. We just did a recent study on this and we asked, what can't you live without? Was it just technology? Number one, 68% of people was mobile phones. Number two was music. So really looking at streaming and how people have music on the go. So number three was TV streaming and then being old school, chocolate was number four.
[Ad]: That's fantastic. I mean that's what ChatGPT was invented for, to help men like us write birthday cards that actually have some emotion and feeling in them. Have you ever put any of your research data into ChatGPT to see what kind of insights it generates as opposed to the humans behind it?
Martin Filz: The answer is yes, because actually we have our own enterprise version. So it's a walled garden, so it's not publicly made available data, but it's really all about patterns. And sometimes you do come into research with prior biases and your own belief system. And ChatGPT or any of the tools, any of the AI tools are really powerful in being able to just see patterns off the top. So all clients and I was away on the trip recently and I was talking to an organization that rented out shipping containers and they said, we don't see how AI will work for us. And I said, well actually just put all of your data into a wall garden of AI and look at patterns, look at when they're being ordered, for how long, who's ordering your shipping containers, what the cost is, what time of year it is and you'll see patterns that you wouldn't have seen without it. So phenomenally, we haven't even. This podcast wasn't about that. We haven't even scratched the surface. We don't even know whether it's going to end up with AI.
[Ad]: Amazing. Yes, absolutely. And we'll come back to you for your prompts on our birthday cards as well. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? Martin, I'll start with you.
Martin Filz: Well, obviously your podcast,
[Ad]: very kind.
Martin Filz: One that I often turn to is Diary of a CEO. And it's about having that wide range of guests. He's got a great way of questioning guests or having conversations with guests, but it's understanding, picking out little pieces. And for me, I'm phenomenally interested in business and he often has business people on that key basis of it. But also he talks a lot about health and diet and mental health and exercise, just as Anastasia touched on. And so Diary of CEO covers many different topics, genres, really high profile, interesting speakers, and I think you can get little snippets out of all of them.
[Ad]: Absolutely. That's a great recommendation. You've got the book behind me there. I love his process. If you listen to him speak from a podcasting and a content producer's perspective, some of the, you know, none of this comes easy. Like, he seems natural and he is natural conversationalist, but actually the effort is in the hundreds of thumbnails that he generates, the hundreds of titles that he tests. Like there is so much, so much art behind what he does to get the message out there rather and to make it seem natural. Anastasia book or a podcast that you recommend?
[Voiceover]: Well, I have to say, obviously the Retail Doctor Group, Future of Retail and Future of Consumer podcast, because I think I'll get told off if I didn't say that first. But the other one that I've actually used a lot and not necessarily a particular book or podcast, but I've got into Blinkists. I don't know if you've heard of Blinkist. Yeah, it's just taking full length books and shortening them into sort of 10, 15 minutes because I'm a little bit impatient and I generally do it when I'm on the train, which is generally only 10 or 15 minutes. It's fantastic. Like I listen to the Richard Branson's book in 10 or 15 minutes and it gives you all the key aspects that you need and then if it grabs your attention, you can go and read the full book. And that Blinkist app I found was, was really kind of a great one for me. That is a bit impatient. Just want to kind of get to the point. So, yeah, I love it.
[Ad]: Great example. All right, last question I have for you, Anastasia, what is your biggest challenge today?
[Voiceover]: I think this one is really interesting. It's what I touched on before and it's that Gen Z and that Gen Alpha customer. I think customer behavior is changing much quicker than it ever has. We're seeing rapid changes in sort of three months, six months. It's largely driven due to that attention economy, which is driven due to that younger consumer. And people keep saying to me, you know, gen Alpha, Gen Z, they're less likely to be kind of engaging. They're in their own little worlds. And as a specialist in consumer behavior, understanding the nuances of how they behave I think is really the biggest challenge at the moment because by 2030 there will be one of the biggest spending demographics. So we need to understand them. So that is definitely where a lot of attention is going. And how do we get them to engage with us, how do we get them to talk to us? And more importantly, how do we then translate that into to action? You know, we can't all live in the metaverse and all of the classic Gen Alpha aspects that everyone says is going to happen, it's not realistic. So that's the biggest one that we've got on our plate.
[Ad]: I love it. Can you just let us know when you solve it?
[Voiceover]: Yeah, yeah. Next week.
[Ad]: Martin, what's your biggest challenge today?
Martin Filz: It's the impact and influence of AI across our own business. So looking at where we can take advantage of that and looking at efficiencies, quality, speed for clients, it's then the second area is insights. It is insights at your fingertip. Phenomenally powerful, but needs an expert to be able to interpret that and to understand what it's actually saying. So in combination with great people like Retail doctor Group with AI sitting underneath, that is really powerful. And then it's advising clients, it's the third area. And helping clients understand whether that's an end brand about how they can use AI or how they can use AI insights and again, challenges they might see. We're hearing there's a lot of hot air, there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of pressure to change the way you work to incorporate AI. And it's really understanding what are the true benefits that I can see in the business. So that's number one for us.
[Ad]: Brilliant. Two great challenges and I'm sure they were shared by many of our listeners. Anastasia, Martin, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
[Voiceover]: Thanks, Nathan.
Martin Filz: Thank you, Nathan.
[Ad]: To hear more from Martin and Anastasia, jump back into episode 419 where Martin and Anastasia share what customers want, what they truly want from a loyalty program. They also discuss the attention economy and the Gen Z customer. And we dive into the critical issues of safety and privacy and how they impact customer loyalty. Plus, we also get insights into the surprising thing that happens to loyalty as consumers get older. Get a bit loose and floozy as we get older. There you go. Bit of a giveaway. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
