In this interview at the NRF17 Retail's Big Show I spoke with Bharat Rupani, president of Interactions Marketing a leading retail event marketing company about how technology is affecting his business.
Event marketing also known as in-store events, or product demonstrations is not a new business but just as with other aspects of the retail business it is being impacted by technology. And this means the companies involved in event marketing need to heavily invest and re-create their services using the technological tools and deliver even more benefit and profits to the retailers.
Interactions Marketing, a part of Daymon Worldwide has over 40,000 team members and has been working with and for retailers since the 90's. I spoke with Bharat about various topics, from the fundamentals of their business to the future of retail, some of the highlights were:
- The conversation on the Human Connection factor in physical retail,
- How hospitality and travel industries are ahead of general retail in terms of personalization,
- The significance of product differentiation and experience in conversion,
- The almost 3X revenue performance for products on demo in the store,
- What technologies they are working on and how they will impact their business, and
- The role and future of human in retail, specially retail sales.
The store experience plays directly into the conversion formula and expert, helpful human sales associates can outperform machines (at lease in the foreseeable future) and can be a key advantage physical retail stores have over online stores.
As most technology innovations are focusing on automating the store experience what they miss is the value and performance well trained and properly equipped sales associates can bring to the store.
And sometimes more established organizations are slow to innovate and lose their edge to newer upstarts, this does not seem to be the case for Interactions.
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