Erich Joachimsthaler and Julie Roehm discussed business transformations.

Here are some of the key principles that Julie shared about her recent journey with Party City: 

1. While making it easy is not the only driver to keep customers coming back, it certainly does play a huge role in customer retention. Navigating through the pandemic is already complicated by itself, so companies are now concentrating more on making the highly digitalized transactions and customer interactions more seamless while fulfilling safety measures.

“I’m much more interested in learning: ‘Was it easy for those things to happen?’ When you peel that onion, that’s where you see the opportunities.” – Julie Roehm, Party City CMO

Party City’s main focus is currently on Customer Effort Scores because it informs the company how easy it was for customers to transition into highly digitalized transactions and finding relevant information. Party City believes in investing in seamless experiences because it increases customer engagement.

2. “Curbside pick-up is not an innovative experience but rather an expected norm.” Julie indicated that pick up without leaving the car’s safety has been part of Party City’s roadmap; however, the roll-out was expedited once the pandemic took place. In order to adapt quickly, it’s best to err on the side of action. 

“We chose to have an imperfect experience and just got the experience going to be able to service the customer.” – Julie Roehm, Party City CMO

Innovative outlets can come in the most unexpected and sometimes low-cost ways. To help parents adjust to their new work from home schedule, Party City provided free event itineraries that users can download with items from their inventory that go along with it. With this free asset, Party City discovered that providing free experiences has a direct impact and value on sales. 

“How do we celebrate Halloween while social distancing?“ 

3. We will probably not celebrate Halloween the same way we always have this year, but that does not mean that it can’t be fun anymore. Julie shared Party City’s “thrive rather than survive” approach by planning to continue making memorable experiences during this upcoming holiday with recent customer research outcomes. 

“People want to celebrate. They want to create joy regardless of the situation and the creativity that is there. They will figure out a way to do it. We just want to lean in.” – Julie Roehm, Party City CMO

Party City’s research shows an increasing demand for Halloween décor because it is a way to celebrate while social distancing. Through influencers in their team, they were also able to develop ways of doing Trick-or-Treating without contact by promoting “Trunk-or-Treating” where treats could be accessed from the back of vehicles. Finding creative ways to keep experiences as normal as possible is a fun process by itself and should be approached as an exciting challenge.

Retailers also need to consider creating a scalable experience and selling opportunity past the pandemic including:

• Identifying Creative Social Distancing Trends: By shifting from pandemic distress to an opportunity mindset, companies will find new customer segments with real-time quantitative customer journey data and influencer trends. The pandemic certainly has a daunting effect on both companies and customers, but using customer research findings as the guiding light during these dark times may bring exciting new opportunities and services to the company.
• Safety Impacts Customer Loyalty:  If companies continue to build trust between their customers by actively and consistently demonstrating safety measurements during the pandemic, then the company will be able to usher the customers towards their eventual reopening as they maintain their customer following.
• Retailers as “Experience Consultants”: Because the majority is unfamiliar with the changes in how we consume during the pandemic, retailers can suggest new ways for their customers to experience their products and services. Party City redefined celebrating moments by designing virtual experiences while waiting online, building party planning teams, and opening a new digital marketplace for additional services to complete the new party experience. Forming strategic partnerships that enhance these new experiences also creates new opportunities to innovate.

“If you create a brand purpose and you throw it out or revise it six months later, you probably haven’t arrived in a good brand purpose.” – Erich Joachimsthaler, Vivaldi_ CEO

A massive transformation is happening in almost every business because of the pandemic. Some elements should change, but the one piece that should not change is the brand’s foundation. By positioning your brand with a resilient future-proof purpose, it becomes easier to navigate through the transformation process and to plan the next steps to take.

Watch the full event here:

• 6:40 – Party City transforms from being a goods provider to an experience provider
• 8:35 – Party City aims to provide equal parts of party supplies and equal parts experience
• 12:55 – Listening to the customers and leaning into their demands
• 13:08 – Julie’s “thrive rather than survive” approach to challenges
• 19:30 – On making the customer experience easier
• 23:00 – Julie recommends retailers to provide consulting for their products and services
• 23:23 – Julie shares Party City’s findings of consumer demand shifts and how to work with the information
• 23:58 – A glimpse into what Halloween with social distancing could look like this year according to Party City
• 27:50 – How Julie’s previous experience car experience prepared her for her role in Party City
• 31:25 – The importance of bringing in a customer experience expert to leverage the customer journey
• 36:56 – On accelerating Party City’s roadmap because of the pandemic
• 37:36 – To err on the side of action
• 44: 08 – The role of partnerships in transformations

This segment was part of The Interaction Field Series of our LinkedIn Live Events. Please connect with us on our LinkedIn page to stay updated with our upcoming conversations.

The post “Thriving, Not Surviving”: Retail Transformation in Challenging Times with Party City’s Julie Roehm appeared first on Vivaldi.

Click here to watch the full LinkedIn Live event and below find key highlights of the discussions: 

Why Esports matter from the following three perspectives: 

• Personal Perspective: 50% of kids today are playing competitive video games. As Tom Ajello discussed from his perspective as a parent, kids rely on these games to connect and chat with their friends. Video games provide a platform for kids to participate and learn social behavior.  
• Demographic Perspective: Esports as a demographic is an incremental consumer. Many of its users are people that don’t activate or monetize in other types of channels because more of these games are looking more like social networks and platforms. 
• Brand Perspective: Esports companies are purely digital brands building for the next generation of digital consumers. They are highly innovative and build clever and nuanced approaches for customer acquisition and retention that any business can learn and benefit from.  

Common Misconceptions of Esports 

It’s a larger business than people think. Esports is a $27 billion-dollar industry that continues to scale, attract and retain new participants.  

Competitive gaming looks more like professional sports than it does kids sitting in a basement. They require casting, analysts, coaching, and production and for players at high levels, demand an extraordinary amount of skill. There are also massive tournaments that draw in hundreds of millions of users – some of the top Esports events will get more viewers than the Superbowl.  

Esports Effectively Engage with Fringe Consumers 

There exists many strategies to manage consumers who already have high affinity and loyalty to the brand. The challenge that Esports has solved is with engaging the people at the fringes, those who are not yet directly involved in Esports. The key is – while conventional brands are built through communications and messaging, modern brands are built through interactions. From becoming a social platform to hosting live concerts and events, the Esports industry has mastered the creation of value through interactions.  

GoPro’s Adoption of Esports Brand Strategy 

GoPro applied Esports principles to connect and engage with its audience as its entire business model is about discovering content and sharing it with others. The value of GoPro is not in the camera itself but in the community, GoPro has built around its product. Just as Esports companies make it easy and effective to share gaming moments with others, GoPro makes it easy and convenient to share action and adventure videos made by its users.    

Implications for the future of advertising within Esports 

The traditional sense of control that marketers have elsewhere is lost in the world of Esports. This is because so much of Esports is about long unfiltered messaging that occurs on livestreams for 4 or 5 hours, as opposed to the conventional 30 second ad spot. The combination of everything being interactive, the prevalence of social media, and content as unfiltered viewer messaging makes loss of marketing control inevitable.  

As William Collis said, “You really lose control of the message as soon as it leaves your mouth. And so, you need a different set of tools and activations for a more modern approach to brand building.” 

 The Esports industry is too big of an opportunity to ignore – click here to watch the full event. 

The post Event Recap: What Brands Can Learn from Esports appeared first on Vivaldi.