Post-event: Magic Kingdom & Wal-Mart Neighborhood Stores
I have a theory that there aren’t many “new” ideas. Most ideas claimed as “new” are really evolutions of older ideas, ideas that have been combined to a new purpose, or an existing idea which had a technological innovation to allow for a new use. History is dotted with breakthrough ideas of this sort. Since the early part of the 20th century, humans had been communicating with radio, and even earlier by land line phones. Two-way walkie-talkies were extensively used in World War II. Engineers in the 1970’s unlocked a way to combine these ideas, with a few innovations, to allow for cellular technology. Mobile phones operate in a similar fashion to radios, at a higher bandwidth, and with the ability to hop from tower to tower, but conceptually...
CPG Summit: Day 2
The majority of the sessions and activity seems centered around day 1, and for whatever reason I always have a firedrill to deal with on day 2. I was dealing with a recall last year, and this year I was dealing with an extract we were manually creating. Not sure who the winner is, but I know I’m always on the losing side. Note to presenters, choose shorter names for presentations. Here’s three select presentations: Putting Innovative Customer-Centric Strategies to Work in Meeting Customers Healthcare Demands Translating Granular Shopper Understanding into Optimal Store Experiences Across Multiple Retail Banners Customer Marketing: Driving Enhanced Retailer and Manufacturer Partnerships Where’s the element of surprise? Best...
CPG Summit: The Hotel
We’re staying at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Kissimmee, Florida. The exterior of the hotel is built in classic, grand Florida style and reminiscent of the Breakers. The interior of the hotel consists of a very large atrium and two smaller atriums. The main atrium is large enough to house a ballpark, while the two smaller atriums are still large enough to host a lake and a jungle. The quality of the hotel is very nice. It’s not the same level as the Wynn, but very few hotels are. I was a bit surprised to learn there are 4-5 foot alligators in the atrium. I’m not fond of reptiles. The conference facility is adjacent to the hotel, and connected by a walkway. The conference facility is immense. The main speaking hall was divided into...
CPG Summit: Day 1 Afternoon & Evening
During Summit, the mornings are the general sessions and the afternoons are the breakouts. Most of the breakouts are sales pitches, but you do learn about the methodology people are using to get their results. If you understand the methodology and the output, you can reverse engineer the tool and determine the critical deficiencies. Attended the session on “Generating Actionable Consumer and Brand Insights from Blogs, Boards, and Internet Newsgroups.” This is an IBM partner solution, where they use an enhanced search to identify, group, and report on mentions in viral communities like blogs and boards. I’ve seen this technology before and it looks like they’ve improved the text grouping capabilities. They still haven’t...
CPG Summit: Day 1 Morning
I’ve been looking forward to this summit for a while. My primary objective in attending the summit this year is to learn more about how we can potentially move to a more integrated use of IRI data. There are many technical and business processes that need to be identified and resolved prior to any advanced usage of information.I’ll be looking at the predictive analytics, consumer tracking and targeting, and pricing breakouts. These are the issues that are facing the CPG industry right now. Morning Session Tuesday morning saw the obligatory introductory speeches and advertisements by IRI bigwigs. IRI may be in contention with InfoUSA in their ad quality. Made it through the new president of IRI’s presentation disappointed. For a...