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Jake talks with Michael Stich, General Partner and CEO of the Services business at Court Avenue.
There are periods in time when multiple forces converge in such a way that monumental change is bound to occur. This is one of those moments.
Of course, we’ve seen huge changes over the last couple of years from the COVID pandemic – shifts in human behavior, commerce, employment, consumerism, on and on. And, at the same time, a number of new technologies and capabilities have emerged from being promising futures to becoming viable mainstream opportunities – things like 5G, AI and Augmented Reality. That’s a powerful combo, especially when we think about the secondwave of change, the innovation that’s springing from the first.
Michael Stich is an expert in marketing big ideas and bringing big ideas to marketing. There are lots of areas Jake and Michael could explore, but Jake zeroes in on FIVE:
Jake’s FIVE List:
- Starting with people… The culture of innovation
- What innovation is… and isn’t
- Innovation, beyond products
- The impact of COVID
- And the lifecycle of innovation
“At its base, innovation is around creating something that doesn’t exist yet, and that the world hasn’t seen yet.”
Host Jake Moskowitz and guest Michael Stich set the stage for the new season with a big picture discussion about innovation for marketers. The conversation covers lots of ground, from value creation to advertising’s new creative renaissance. Along the way, Michael makes tons of interesting observations, including some gems about the booming restaurants in the suburbs, the rise of QR codes and keeping camping cool with Kia electric cars. Michael also touches on the new need for entertainment and human connection, the importance of human centered design at the point of purchase, and innovation that’s occurring across the marketing funnel.
Additionally, Michael brings his own FIVE list to the conversation – a compelling framework for understanding the lifecycle of innovative solutions: “At its base, our five phases of innovation are coalescence, catalyzation, expansion, normalization and entropy.”
Additional Episode Resources:
Learn more about Ericsson Emodo and the Emodo Institute: https://emodoinc.com
Court Avenue: https://courtavenue.com
Michael references the innovative Dell Universe Campaign: https://youtu.be/5plQHruWB3Y
Michael references Taco Bell’s innovative mid-funnel marketing: https://tiktok.com/@tacobell
Transcript of S3 E1: Winning Both Today and Tomorrow
Michael:
You have to win today and win tomorrow at the same time, and being able to plan for the season ahead, while also creating a great long term, multi generational organization. I don’t care if it’s football or if it’s corporate management, you got to do that.
Jake:
Let’s talk innovation. Welcome to FIVE, the podcast that goes deep into marketing innovation, the big ideas in marketing and the marketing of big ideas. We start our third series right here, with Episode One, Winning Both Today and Tomorrow, I’m Jake Moskowitz.
There are periods in time when multiple forces converge in such a way that change, monumental change is bound to occur. This is one of those moments. Of course, we’ve seen huge changes over the last couple of years from the COVID pandemic, shifts in human behavior, commerce, employment, consumerism, on and on. And at the same time, a number of new technologies and capabilities have emerged from being promising futures to becoming viable mainstream opportunities, things like 5G, AI, and augmented reality. That’s a powerful combo. Especially when we think about the second wave of change, the innovation that’s springing from the first.
My name is Jake Moskowitz. I’ve studied and lead advancements and marketing for nearly 20 years. Today, I run the Emodo Institute, an organization with an Ericsson Emodo that helps marketers achieve better outcomes by thinking differently, adopting new methods and applying new technologies. FIVE is a podcast for marketers and innovation as part of our continuing story arc for marketers. We began with our series on 5G and how we would shape the future of marketing. We’re seeing much of that playing out now.
Season two picked up from there with a deep dive into artificial intelligence, and how AI is starting to change the tools, capabilities and outcomes for marketers, and how we can all be smarter about AI. Those were the seeds. Now, Season Three explores the rows of incredible marketing innovation that are sprouting, growing and blooming at the intersection of humanity and technology. We’ll look at problems in need of solutions, the process of developing fresh ideas into transformative solutions, the hurdles that stand in the way and the learnings that come from trying something new. But mostly the new season of FIVE is about people, people making a difference with big ideas, new ideas that distinguish brands, influence consumers and spark imagination.
So let’s talk about what we’re talking about. Usually, we think of innovation in terms of products and technologies. Often product innovation has some really clear benefits for brand marketing. For example, if you’re known as an innovator in automobile safety, that’s a message you can build a brand on. If you’re a renowned innovator of next gen automotive technology, that brand halo can extend pretty far. Tesla is widely regarded as a first mover in all kinds of technologies, even some they didn’t pioneer. For other companies, innovative practices in marketing or selling can be the distinguishing difference maker itself. Redbull, for example, has a content marketing strategy that suits and distinguishes the brand perfectly, the definer of the energy drink category back in the day, but today, the genius of Red Bull is in their marketing. They’re selling an experience not merely a line of beverages. These days, they’re kind of a media company that happens to sell billions of canned drinks a year.
Some companies are started and built on a foundational innovative idea. Some build a culture in which innovation is encouraged and creative thinking is celebrated. On the other hand, some businesses flat out stifle innovation, some companies plateau or even die because they can’t or don’t innovate. In fact, lots of companies call themselves innovators, but have little to show for it in terms of true innovation. That sort of begs the question, what is innovation? True innovation? What isn’t innovation?
For this first episode, I want to begin with a stage setting discussion about marketing innovation. And just to be clear, there’s marketing innovation, and then there’s marketing, innovation, innovation in the field of marketing versus commercialization of an innovative product. We’re going to cover both. It’s no coincidence that my guest happens to be an expert in both. Michael Stich is a general partner and CEO of the services business at Court Avenue. Court Avenue is a new marketing holding company that’s coming on like gangbusters. We first met Michael in one of our very first 5G episodes a couple of years back. Michael’s all about innovation in the business of marketing. And that focus has led him down an interesting path. Michael, it’s great to have you back on the pod. Can you tell us a little bit about your company and what you’re working on these days?
Michael:
Sure. Thank you, Jake. Great to be here. So I’ve joined a company called Court Avenue, which is an operating network, founded by Kenny Tomlin and Dan Khabie, a couple of entrepreneurs to create a sort of a new next generation operating network for marketing services. Our inspiration is Court Avenue, out of Bellefontaine, Ohio, which in 1893, was constructed as the first paved road in America. And our aspiration is that at the time, concrete, and today, new technologies like 5G, AI and other technologies are a great conduit to shorten the distance between two points. And we think that we’re at a very special moment in time in which we can take advantage of the next wave of technologies to shorten that distance between point A and point B for our clients and their customers. It’s been a heck of a year, I’ve joined about a year ago. And we’re very thankful for both the clients we’ve been able to pick up as well as the talent that have raised their hands, to be able to come in here and, and build this company up with us. So we’re having a blast.
Jake:
Sounds exciting, Michael, you’re always thinking forward. I’d love to use that as a segue to get into a few aspects of innovation, specifically these five. What innovation is and isn’t. Innovation beyond the products, the impact of COVID, the life cycle of innovation. But speaking of talent, and building companies, I’d like to start with people, the culture of innovation. At Court Avenue, you guys are using innovation to transform companies. Do you have some sort of framework that you work within to get your clients to be more innovative and to leverage innovation?
Michael:
We have an approach that we follow to help clients like Kia or Epson or Taylor Guitars or a variety of others think through, how do we create great experiences for their customers? Let’s just start with how is value created? Value is created amongst end users by understanding their needs, seeing their existing journeys today, finding their bottlenecks and understanding where there are opportunities to relieve pain points. I could be talking about hairstylists. I can talk about car buyers, I could be talking about vets, and pet owners, you pick the category. There are end users and customers that have their own needs. And as a result of that, they have their own set of challenges and pain points, just start there, then go into okay, well, what are the existing solutions that they use today? And how are those working? You can call it a competitive analysis. You can call it a comparative analysis.
But understanding how others are attempting to solve the problem of the user is a great way to understand not only how that’s going but how to differentiate in terms of your own solution. Then you go into the innovations. And you start saying okay, well, what are all the new tools in the toolkit that we might go use to help attack those problems? Because if they don’t attack the problems, then it doesn’t matter, customers aren’t gonna buy it, they’re not gonna thank you with their wallet. But if they are targeted and focused towards them, then you can start to say, aha, this is a new way that we might go about solving that issue that doesn’t exist today. And it’s about having a good internal compass, as to which innovations solve which end user problems. Okay, so that’s sort of a summary of opportunities.
But because for any given client, there’s limited capabilities, and resources and budget and timing, it then becomes a prioritization exercise to say, of all the things that we might go do, which ones make the most sense for us, when, where, why and how. And that’s when you start getting into the planning process to say, okay, then we think these are the most important initiatives that we can go put in place that also fit our constraints and our capabilities. And that’s when you build the roadmap. But that process of understanding user needs, understanding competitive solutions, understanding which innovations are most right for those needs, and then prioritize them based upon a company’s capabilities. That’s our generalist approach to any given one of our clients and what we’re building to them.
Jake:
So I would say the first three you mentioned are things that Court Avenue as an external vendor can do on behalf of a client. But then once you get to the point of prioritization, then you’ve got to go for it, implement it, test it, evolve it, put it into the culture of the company. This gets into teaching them how to fish, not just giving them a fish, right? Can you walk me through that?
Michael:
Some clients have planning processes that are either very fast, or they’re very slow, and their natural cycles of internal planning mean that we’re going to be able to put these experiences in place at this time with these following budgets, right? And that’s determined by the natural rhythms of their internal planning cycles that they use. We do have to rely on the company’s internal goals, and existing rhythms and capabilities, just to prioritize which ones we want to put in place and why.
Jake:
So basically, you can’t expect a company to change overnight, you have to work innovation into the existing culture and processes of the business. So figure out what the existing culture and processes are, and then work the innovation into them one step at a time.
Michael:
We think we’ve seen enough best practices around any given marketing challenge, especially, you know, here’s a framework for best practices, here’s some choices that you might want to take on which ones make the most sense for you, and why. And if you got a way of thinking about anything that helps people simplify a complex phenomena in their mind, then that alone is value and the ability to help them then think through okay, which of those aspects of that framework are most relevant for me? That helps them with their own problem solving around that topic.
Jake:
Could you maybe walk us through an example or two of how you’ve worked with a client to determine what was the problem that the company was trying to solve? And what were those processes and best practices that convinced them that they could do this?
Michael:
What I think is very fun, intellectual challenge is as it relates to something like website development. How do you unify a bunch of different audiences that are very different from each other into one common framework of content strategy, and information architecture, that allows for all these different audiences to get what they want? We have one client that sells products and services across the high tech space, they sell to consumers who buy the technology, they sell to IT decision makers in very large enterprises. They sell to small businesses, they sell to government. They have a variety of different audiences within those audience sets that don’t agree with each other and see things differently too. Some are very tech enabled, or engineers, and just want to get in and get the specs, get out and move on. Others have a much more non textured background and need to be educated and be helped along the education and then the purchase process to understand what they need.
One of the fun things that we really enjoy doing with them is thinking through what are the most important audiences that we need to serve back to our prior conversation. What are the needs that they have, as they go through their entire purchase journey, and then ultimately, into their ownership journey? How do we then think about content that we can send up including applied innovation towards new content, like mixed reality, to help them with their decision making in every single step along the way? And then once we have those different individual audiences defined well, how do we collapse them on top of each other into an information architecture that again, serves each one of them uniquely, but that we don’t have redundancy or an enormous amount of cost to try to serve each one of them well?
And so that’s been a wonderful planning exercise, including the inclusion of end users of those audiences through the planning process. The great thing about all of us working from home these days, is that users are readily available. They’re sitting in their offices and in their living rooms, they’re ready to share with you what they think you can turn around a very fast and relatively inexpensive research effort with those end users through the entire planning process in which they are ideating with you, they are prioritizing what the most important insights that you might find from them. And then they’re validating whatever solutions you want to create for them all through the process. And so one of our high tech clients, we have been working with users through that process of creating those journeys, and creating the next generation site architecture for the website.
Jake:
Let’s go up a level and talk about innovation in general, how is innovation different from product development?
Michael:
Product development is the act of creating a solution for a known audience that has no needs. At its base, innovation is around creating something that doesn’t exist yet. And that the world hasn’t seen yet, which is a little different than sort of applying innovations into new products or solutions that people will actually want to go by. That’s how I think about it.
Jake:
So if the customer doesn’t even recognize that there’s a problem, you just know that it can be better. Maybe that’s more innovation, whereas if a customer is saying I need this thing changed, that’s more product development.
Michael:
I agree. I think product development is best done whatever it is focused within the lens of an end user need. If there’s a pain point or a bottleneck, product development efforts are best suited to serve that. Innovation is, in my mind, it can overlap because you can have an innovative product that you create.
Jake:
So I’m curious, based on what you’ve learned, what makes a company good at innovation or bad at innovation? And could you perhaps give a couple of examples.
Michael:
Companies that are good at innovation are ones that have a sustained commitment to creating something new, they have the resources behind it, they have the processes established for their planning, to be able to look into future needs, and do anticipatory research to force creativity upon existing solution sets. This is in addition to what they need to do in terms of today’s product development, developing solutions for the next product cycle, if you will, but they actually have a more of a longer range view around the future, in which they move into more of a category creation mindset. And let’s create things that don’t exist today, in ways that perhaps a more narrow and shorter term focus company wouldn’t do. One good example of that is Procter and Gamble. They do a wonderful job of looking at categories that don’t exist today, and find ways to create new categories by nature of emerging technologies. They were one of the first to put in fabricare solutions into a pen for college kids to quickly remove stains from their clothing.
Jake:
Essentially, there are a few things I heard there. Number one is short term view versus long term view. And I think that’s pretty obvious. But then there’s whether you have an open mind that there might be a new category in the future that doesn’t exist today. But then I heard a third thing that I think is maybe a little more hidden, what’s built into your process? Whatever your processes or your planning cycle, whatever your roadmap vantage point, or how far out your roadmap looks, it’s important to have something built in, that requires you to constantly be thinking of what’s next or what can we do that’s different.
Michael:
I think, to answer your prior question around what makes a company innovative, they have architected into their process, the obligation to do so. And by doing that, they inspect and create resources and support the creation of something that doesn’t exist yet. One of my favorite coaches inside of football is Bill Parcells, and one of his famous quotes is you have to win today and win tomorrow, at the same time, and being able to plan for the season ahead, while also creating a great long term, multi generational organization. I don’t care if it’s football or if it’s corporate management, you got to do that. And that is not only knowing what business you’re in today, but what businesses might you grow into tomorrow, and to be in a constant state of doing both of those at the same time.
Jake:
And there’s a balance of opportunity and fear. That is kind of the way I think about it, maybe you constantly have to live in a little bit of fear, like what could happen that could totally change our space or our position in the market. But then there’s an element we can’t leave out, the opportunity part, like for instance, that fabric care stick, where there might be a new category in the future. So maybe nobody’s necessarily going to leave us because we don’t have it. But we could create some new category before everyone else does, to find new dollars.
Michael:
And within that fear and opportunity set is comfort with risk. There will be failures, we will learn, we will fix them, we will have some at knock out of the park, it’s this sort of the venture capital mindset, we’re going to go for more home runs rather than, you know, singles and doubles. You know, one of my good friends Dave Knox wrote a great book called Predicting The Turn, the challenge a lot of brand marketers to try to act more like venture capitalists, and to start to be comfortable with more failures off of bigger bets. And I think that’s also a sort of a mindset shift for many large organizations that struggle with risk. And it’s easier said than done. But if you do allocate a certain portion of your resources, to play with some of these more emerging and innovative areas, and to really be planful for and committed to productizing them early, then I think you’ve got a sort of a different mindset and a different process set to be successful.
Jake:
A lot of times people associate innovation with products, but innovation can mean a lot of other things too. Like a way of working or pricing model or partnership. Could you speak for a moment about where else innovation can occur and where we might see it?
Michael:
There’s architectural innovations that fundamentally change the makeup of a company. There are process innovations that also have the ability to streamline and or accelerate various tasks to get done. And then there’s business model innovations that help companies think through the monetization of their products and services, and how they are able to improve the economics of the business that they’re in. By turning on different ways to monetize.
Jake:
Like the business model. The example I think about is Spotify. And the freemium pricing model. There was a precursor to Spotify it was called Rhapsody, that was also a subscription music service, very similar, but it didn’t take off, it was almost exactly the same product, same price point and everything. And to me, the big difference was that freemium concept. There was a business model innovation, it was strictly the pricing model that was innovative. And that created an inflection point in the whole music industry. And Spotify ended up having way more paid subscribers than Rhapsody ever had.
Michael:
Oh, I agree. And I think part of the fun of trying to think through clients, especially these days, with so many new technologies coming on is what are the new business models that come alongside that? That can be attached to those new products and services you might create based upon new technologies, and being able to combine a really great product or service with a really great new business model, or might just be applied from a different industry, that makes sense for both the customer and the brand. I really think that that’s a fun way to think about it. It all should be based upon the value to the customer and their willingness to pay. And if it provides new sources of convenience to them, or some additional value to them, then I think, you know, game on, try to innovate within that business model as well.
Jake:
So you can’t talk about innovation without talking about COVID. It’s been a major part of our lives, the last couple of years, it’s created a lot of change in the business world. Could you speak for a moment about what areas of business you think have been most impacted, or have innovated the most directly because of COVID?
Michael:
Yeah, obviously, by everyone, no longer working in offices and working from home, there’s been an enormous amount of commerce innovation. And that’s not only because we have to buy and have things delivered to our house, but we now have heightened expectations as to what that means. So we can talk about different kinds of innovations, the innovation of faster delivery, and the supply chain overhauls that have to happen, or something to be able to arrive by tomorrow. Or, more importantly, by 30 minutes or less. It just totally overhauls companies, business models, and their logistics, internal and that’s all accelerated by COVID.
Hand in hand with that, we are increasingly comfortable with an expected of experiences that through our purchase process and products and services themselves that are both broader than the product, but also more virtual. So we’ve all gotten used to virtual meetings, we’ve all gotten used to enjoying more of the video time and the streaming services because I’m sitting at home, gaming is up. And the ability to deliver services and products through those media are particularly accelerated and experiential, to be able to interface and interact with experiences through those media is also accelerating as well.
And what I get excited about is as commerce innovation increases, and for that matter of commerce in general increases, the rise of SAS models and subscription models and replenishment models increase, which really unlock ownership experiences. If you look at very high subscription rates, and high SAS model rates inside of various industries, gaming, computing, etc. Moving to as a service, and then innovating within as a service model. There’s so much great innovation that’s coming into that space that’s going to permeate across many many industries for the next 5-10 years.
Jake:
A couple of things I was thinking about there. Firstly, your example of things being delivered more quickly, it strikes me that innovation doesn’t always have to be directly consumer facing. There was a back end, what you called Supply Chain Innovation, that led to consumers getting something more quickly. But the innovation itself wasn’t something the consumers saw necessarily. The other point I wanted to make is, a lot of what we’ve referred to as innovations really weren’t innovations in the era of COVID. They’ve been around a long time. Things like gaming, zoom, streaming services, telemedicine, the world simply changed to the point where these things were suddenly winning models, where they weren’t necessarily new innovations, but they just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Michael:
I think that’s well put Jake, you know, if you take a look at where people are spending their time now, restaurants in the suburbs are booming, the downtown restaurants are still struggling a little bit, the entertainment experiences out in the suburbs, and people’s local neighborhood areas are going up, you know. I play a rock band. It’s not that we’re any good. It’s just that we happen to play inside of suburban bars. We’ve never seen such demand for gigs for us to be able to play live for them in a way that people need, you know, sort of experiences, and not far from their homes these days. So you know being able to create entertainment experiences, is one example of that as well where people live. And so there’s long term implications on real estate. There’s a lot of implications around the virtualization of downtown’s into our homes and into multiple areas is a huge shift.
Another good example of this is you know, just as much as we’d like the convenience of E-commerce and the ability to get things more quickly. There’s also a backlash towards increasingly human experiences. So one great example that I heard from my friend, Doug Straighten over Hershey is, it’s not enough just for me to get a birthday cake for a birthday in 30 minutes or less. I actually want someone to come to my house and throw a birthday party for my family member in 30 minutes or less. So yeah, the cake should have that person’s name, but put up the streamers, get out the kazoos, and then tear it all down and be gone within a couple hours.
Jake:
That reminds me of my wife’s birthday, which was last week. One of the gifts I got her was a Cameo. I don’t know if you know what that is. But it’s a website or a marketplace where you can pay a public person to record a video for you to your specs. So I hired an actress from the TV show Bridgerton to record a message for my wife. And it reminds me of what you’re describing there, a human connection innovation.
Michael:
And it’s personalized for them. I did the same thing with an actress from Grey’s Anatomy for my daughter, Natalie, she loved it. It’s great.
Jake:
We talked earlier about looking at innovation from a lot of different vantage points. One of the vantage points I think is important is the innovation itself. What’s the life cycle of an innovation? There’s so many things we take for granted today that at some point were truly innovative, but we don’t think of them as innovative now they’re just a way of life. So I wanted to see if you could speak for a moment about the lifecycle of an innovative product.
Michael:
We have five stages to any given innovation. At its base, the five phases are coalescence, catalyzation, expansion, normalization and entropy. At coalescence stage one, this is all around the early development of core innovations and capabilities, researchers, academics, scientists are trying to make sense of how to develop a scalable, secure, stable innovation, and how well it performs relative to a certain task. Once it’s reliable, once it’s repeatable, we go to stage two, catalyzation, where we get into rapid prototyping and establishing a solution around that capability. It’s understanding who early adopters are, understanding their needs, it’s creating a disruptive product market fit, which VCs like to push for, that serves those early adopters, to the point where they’re delighted and share word of mouth around that.
Then you get into stage three, which is expansion. And this is about very fast market expansion, and establishment of the key providers of the solutions based on an innovation. It’s about customer acquisition. It’s about laws of growth. It’s about awareness generation, market growth, scaling up operations to meet the needs, demand of the early majority, and really specialization along the value chain for various groups. So if you look at 5G today, or augmented reality, cryptocurrencies, electric vehicles, these are innovations that are in the expansion stage, which they’re becoming mainstream, and people are becoming familiar with them in their lives.
Stage four then goes to normalization. And this is where it’s a known good capability. It’s where you have the laggards, various innovation adopting it late market, if you take a look at voice assistants, or smartwatches. That’s a good example of an innovation that is normalized in its face. And then finally, you get to stage five, which is entropy. And this is an end of market stasis that’s ripe for product mass maximization and product reinvention. The phase often overlays with phase one as a fertile ground for future innovations, which is why we call it entropy. It’s about creating something new on top of an existing known good platform, but we look at personal computers and email and other sort of known prior innovations being ripe for reinvention within that phase as well.
Those are the five phases that we think through coalescence, catalyzation, expansion, normalization and entropy. And again, as I mentioned, the automotive sector has a very different set of innovations along those five phases, then the healthcare sector or the consumer goods sector, like which ones are most relevant to that particular industry, is entirely specific to that industry.
Jake:
I love that. You spoke about it from the context of B2C and you used a lot of examples that are B2C products. But I think this is just as relevant for B2B. And you can even throw marketing terms into this as well. So when you talk about normalization, I think of that as the martech stack. A lot of the elements of the martech stack are at that point. When you think about catalyzation, I think about native ad units. When you talk about the expansion phase, I think about CTV, so even though you described it as a B2C concept, I think it’s just as relevant for B2B.
One of the things we haven’t mentioned yet is innovative marketing campaigns, because a marketing idea can be innovative too. You come from the agency world, can you speak to some favorite innovative marketing campaign that you’ve seen recently?
Michael:
So I’m going to answer that with three phases of best practices along the funnel. There are innovations at the top of funnel that are very effective, because it is a one size fits all message that lives across media, to as broad an audience as possible. It’s the ability to humanize the client or the brand in a way that is not about the product or service they make, but about their purpose and their values, and what they stand for, and how that is a very relevant value that exists in today’s culture. And expressing it in the ways of today’s culture is very important as well. I really do like the universe campaign from Dell, which is their B2C campaign. That is all about, you know, their products and services. That comes next. But what they stand for, is you know, this creative self expression.
AD:
I believe in myself, my passion, my voice.
Michael:
And if you see how it’s executed, there’s a lot of really great consumer environments and experiences that are just rich towards creative self expression. The second one that I think is really interesting is as you get to the mid funnel, it becomes more important to be more targeted towards specific audiences and segments. I will say, I really like what I’m seeing Taco Bell do within Tik Tok
AD:
Rewards member, that’s all you have to do? Who are you people, yes, and then you get a free cheesy gordita crunch, it can’t be that easy it is.
Michael:
And I think those that are embracing short form video, and finding ways to play within that, it’s a really special sort of execution. I will also have our group modify work with super coffee. And for that matter with poo pourri, and some of the work that they’re doing to really drive virality around their executions, within short form video, like Tik Tok. It’s just top notch and fun to see.
The third area I think of innovation that’s really interesting is at the point of purchase. What I really get excited about is the importance of human centered design at the point of purchase, and how much that’s changing as we have heightened expectations for what it means to be very easy to buy. A couple of examples that I’m super excited about are kia.com and taylorguitars.com. Both of them have overhauled their interfaces and the private communications with us here over the last 12 months to make products, their cars and their guitars respectively, really easy to shop for and really easy to buy.
And there is some new technologies that we’ve implied in terms of content modularity. But there’s also just a new application of human centered design, with close involvement of the user through the planning and development process that is resulting in really great results that have come out of these efforts as well. So those would be three focus areas, you know, sort of a universal brand promise, segmented and channel specific media, and then human centered design excellence at the point of purchase that might be useful to think about.
Jake:
So let’s do the Fast Five, five quick questions before we wrap. If you would depend on a single concern, what’s the number one issue on the minds of brand marketers today?
Michael:
There’s a lot of talk about personalization at scale. And the challenge is, what to personalize and where to get started. And the good news is, the way you start is start anywhere. The challenge is to know that it is a journey, not a destination, to be in the business of personalized experiences and communications is always on and a enduring level of personalization and sophistication, that theoretically, goes on for a very long time. It’s not like you can set and forget it. Personalization at scale has its own additive and iterative set of steps to it.
Jake:
I’d argue that process is becoming harder, because there’s less and less data to use for personalization with the evolution of privacy. And I mean, that’s a whole other conversation, but strikes me as a particularly hard area to innovate these days.
Michael:
Jake, I love that you said that because I completely disagree. I think we’re in front of a wave of massive new sources of information, most notably because of advances within semiconductor technologies. And yet, we’re also in a world of constraints of data access, because of your point around how to manage and regulate the use of data. So both are true.
Jake:
You know, that is a whole other conversation, but it’s one we should have for sure. What’s the single most significant behavioral shift you’ve seen among consumers since the COVID pandemic began?
Michael:
People are actually using QR codes now.
Jake:
That’s true. It’s funny, I remember being in the cellular industry 10-15 years ago, thinking these kinds of things would be huge, and they didn’t really catch on at the time. But you’re right. Nowadays, QR codes are becoming a real standard. In your personal life, what’s the most innovative product or service you use these days?
Michael:
I’m registered to buy the new Kia EV6 electric vehicle. And what I’m most excited about is the fact that it has a fast charge, a very fast charge, that you can use the battery as well to charge appliances or other electric devices, if you’re in the wild or out in other locations. So I think it’d be really interesting to use it in a variety of different ways, whether it be camping, or going out to the day and eating it as a place to run a fan at a park or something like that. And so I’m excited about that vehicle just because of it’s going to change my life moving from gas to electric, and turn that on with this vehicle I think looks just great.
Jake:
Yeah, I’d never even thought of that before. But somebody just pointed that out to me. That’s really cool. My Tesla doesn’t work that way. And it drives me crazy ever since I learned that other electric vehicles do. So what type of physical retail store do you visit with regularity?
Michael:
Grocery stores, because I’m the guy that likes to pick out my own fresh produce. And because depending on the day, especially these days with supply chain, substitutions are pretty rampant, and as are out of stock. So being able to go in and ensure that you can round out your own basket is a nice option for an in person visit.
Jake:
Okay, last one. Is there a creative renaissance in advertising?
Michael:
Absolutely. And that’s true for multiple reasons, there’s been a backlash against the big TV ad. And a lot of the best creatives have gone into the digital world. If you take a look at what’s happening within the digital world right now, we’re finding that those that are most successful, are coming up with the big creative idea within these digital channels. And so those that are most creative within Tik Tok, YouTube, Snap, and these other spaces are really cutting through and differentiating their brands.
And then the last one I’ll throw in is just the rise of the metaverse, the ability to think about both augmented and virtual reality sets. And being able to design within those environments is wide open to creativity. So I think we’re in a space where anyone that is great at art and design and concepting and copywriting, it’s a wonderful time to come in and try to break some of these moulds and find ways to be creative within them.
Jake:
Michael, thank you so much for joining us again. This has been really great. Thank you.
Michael:
Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
Jake:
Wow. A couple things I love about conversations with Michael, he always leans into the positive, he really knows his stuff, and he definitely loves his work. I’m so glad to be back with season three, and so happy we could kick it off with Michael Stich of Court Avenue. Michael said that he likes going to the grocery store because he likes to pick out his own produce and other items. A lot of people feel that way. But on the next episode of FIVE, we’re going to fill our card with new innovative grocery commerce solutions that may well change Michael’s perspective completely.
Hey, and in the meantime, if you like the show, please write us a comment and give us a rating on your favorite podcast listening platform. We’d be super grateful, it helps more people discover the podcast. For now, I’m gonna go tweet at Elon Musk and ask him why I can’t use my car as an external battery. Thanks for joining us.
The FIVE podcast is presented by Ericsson Emodo and the Emodo Institute and features original music by Dayaphonic and the Small Town Symphonette. Original episode art is by Chris Kosek. Social media and other promotional stuff was composed and conducted by David Roloson. This episode was edited by Justin Newton, recorded at Earth Wire Studios and produced by Robert Haskitt, Liz Wynnemer and me. I’m Jake Moskowitz.