Big challenges; Big prizes

Opportunity, technology, consumer needs/expectations and infrastructure were probably the key words and phrases at our Retail and Media breakfast event held in association with O2 Media earlier this week, which was attended by an invited audience representing leading agencies, media owners and some of the country’s biggest retailers.

The debate left the world of mobile ads and search well behind for a change, with a firm emphasis on commerce. Much of the session was focused around the exciting opportunities offered by m-commerce in its many guises – location-based or targeted offers, QR codes and “coupons” and the upcoming mobile wallets.

An exciting set of opportunities, and whilst it was clear that these are here now or arriving very soon, it was also very apparent that retailers will adopt these at very different paces. The infrastructure – be that payment processing or delivery or just intra business communications – would dictate the pace.

“It’s a logistical nightmare for retailers, they must get it right for the customer,” commented Mindshare’s Claire Valoti – speaking with particular regard to the mobile wallet, although in fact her comment could have been applied across the whole m-commerce piece.

Claire spoke much of collaboration too when discussing retailers’ consumer advertising planning. When this involves media agency (and possibly specialist agency) plus network operator, maybe the shopping mall and certainly the marketing and operations departments of the advertiser it looks like there is an awful lot of potential for e-commerce to be a business “set up to go wrong” as one of our retailers pointed out bluntly.

But when the audience heard Harriet Williams of Debenhams tell of mobile shopping peaks at 10pm and the majority of business being incremental, it does drive home that on a currently battered high street the prize for getting this right could be very big indeed.