Appendix III. Street time
This is a day we run as part of our training programs—normally we obviously try to dress it up a bit with all sorts of important words such as “structured,” “energizing,” and “experiential.” Clients like that sort of guff for some reason. Between you and me: This exercise is about going shopping. It’s good fun when done with a group, and it always uncovers loads of ideas and gets people thinking creatively. It can be quite shocking—I’ve had a number of top retailers give the feedback that they hadn’t really seen shops as customers see them in years.
What do we do?
Ideally run it with six people and do it near a main street or a shopping center. Give each of the delegates twenty dollars and a list of five stores they must visit and allow them to choose one other as a “wild card.”
Take them through the stuff in Smart Retail on:
• Reading stores
• Big Idea
• Mission and values
• Discovery
Then send them off, in teams of two, for two hours with the explicit brief that they must observe, talk to customers, and talk to staff. How they get those conversations going is up to them. They can play-act a bit if they want, whatever. But they must get those conversations going. They can spend their twenty dollars however they want to—a bit in each store, all at once, whatever.
The hard part
As well as making some specific observations (listed next), they will need to be taking note of everything with the idea to later apply this stuff to the creation of a sector-raiding Big Idea of their own.
Run one of these sessions with your team and you will be stunned by what shakes out. Or get in touch with me and we can set one up and run it for you.