It’s honest to say that – within the UK no less than – Christmas and John Lewis go hand-in-hand. Yearly, the discharge of the annual John Lewis Christmas advert is a big occasion, with many individuals contemplating it to mark the official begin of Christmas; the advert is the topic of all types of chatter on social media, and publications obsessively break down each element. Twitter UK even riffed on the normal John Lewis advert one yr for its personal Christmas advert, starring Mr. John Lewis, holder of the @JohnLewis Twitter account.
As Claire Pointon, Buyer Director at John Lewis, acknowledged in her presentation throughout Day 2 of ShopTalk Europe, the hype surrounding John Lewis at Christmas is a “enormous stress”. For John Lewis, she stated, “Christmas begins in February” – with near a yr’s value of planning getting in to every yr’s iteration.
For Christmas 2021, John Lewis discovered itself confronted with a further problem: find out how to encourage prospects to return to purchasing in-store after greater than 18 months of a world pandemic and intermittent lockdowns. Pointon admitted that the retailer misplaced “a portion of its prospects” through the pandemic who cherished purchasing in-store.
Although John Lewis has invested a terrific deal in its on-line presence – onboarding a brand new ecommerce platform in November 2020, opening new distribution centres in 2021, and pledging to make investments no less than £150 million in its digital channels – its shops are nonetheless a key a part of its retail proposition.
With that stated, Pointon stated that John Lewis needed to “guarantee that we [didn’t] lose the digital connection” with prospects whereas encouraging them again into shops.
Right here’s how the retailer got down to create memorable Christmas purchasing experiences that prospects might have interaction with each on-line and offline, and what it realized from the method.
What are the keys to good experiential retail?
The problem for John Lewis final Christmas was, as Pointon put it, “How do you create an expertise that folks wish to come and go to?” Whereas this might need been a straightforward query to reply previous to the pandemic, prospects in 2021 had been nonetheless cautious of returning to bodily shops, or maybe may not have seen the necessity now that they’d reoriented a few of their habits round on-line and ecommerce. Those that did come into shops additionally had expectations of a extra linked expertise: “The fact is, prospects expertise your model and so they simply anticipate it to be linked,” Pointon stated.
John Lewis achieved this connection through QR codes, which Pointon famous had been “very low-cost to place in.” Due to the QR codes on product shows, which might take buyers to the identical merchandise on the John Lewis web site, prospects got a alternative as as to whether to buy then and there in-store and take the merchandise residence, or purchase them on-line for later assortment or supply.
John Lewis additionally took digicam footage of the Christmas Emporium (a time period used to seek advice from a choose variety of festive purchasing shows that integrated workshops and occasions) at its flagship retailer in Oxford Road and recreated it on-line for buyers to tour just about. This was one thing that the retailer first trialled in 2020 whereas shops had been closed because of the lockdown, as a approach of bringing the magic of that carefully-curated Christmas show to life on-line and letting web shoppers uncover its Christmas vary as they might in a retailer.
Bringing the digital tour again once more in 2021 meant that buyers might nonetheless take pleasure in that experiential factor of the Christmas store from the consolation of their properties – however it additionally would possibly encourage them to exit and expertise the vary in particular person now that outlets had been reopened.
Pointon outlined three “pillars” that she believes are key to good experiential retail:
- “Know-how has to encourage folks to take motion”. Shopping the bodily Christmas show at John Lewis, prospects might scan the QR codes to carry up merchandise on-line and buy them. Within the digital model of the Christmas show, little interplay factors allowed prospects to study extra a couple of product or vary and think about it on the net retailer.
- “Ease must be on the coronary heart of it.” It goes with out saying that an expertise shouldn’t make searching or purchasing tough or introduce extra friction, so all the pieces concerning the expertise must work seamlessly.
- “It must be shoppable.” To Pointon, it isn’t sufficient to easily give prospects extra details about a product or a special solution to expertise it; they want to have the ability to purchase in the event that they really feel impressed to.
Pointon gave two different examples of Christmas experiences that pushed the boundaries of what the retailer had beforehand completed with expertise. The primary noticed John Lewis construct on the introduction of a characteristic known as Digital Couch to its iOS app in early 2020, which enabled shoppers to make use of augmented actuality to visualise the location of a brand new couch of their home, serving to them to gauge the dimensions and elegance match with the area. As Christmas 2020 approached, the workforce alighted on the thought of introducing the identical characteristic for Christmas timber.
“Folks typically don’t measure whether or not a Christmas tree fits their front room or not,” stated Pointon – making the introduction of Digital Christmas Tree to John Lewis’ iOS app in November 2020 a pure match (no pun supposed). Pointon famous that John Lewis noticed a 100% enhance in conversion for Christmas timber after introducing the brand new characteristic – and notably, noticed higher conversion charges via the app than via the web site. “Folks wish to have interaction with these experiences when you make them shoppable,” she stated.
In 2021, John Lewis ventured into the budding realm of reside purchasing, broadcasting its first shoppable livestream – starring movie star stylist Gok Wan – in late September. Over the Christmas interval, it then hosted a number of festive reside purchasing periods, targeted on Christmas gifting, making ready for events, ‘Christmas internet hosting and feasting’, and vacation magnificence. Pointon stated that John Lewis’ Christmas reside purchasing occasions pulled in additional than 300,000 views collectively, and that the retailer additionally made positive there was synergy with its well-known Christmas advert by bringing all the merchandise that had been featured within the advert into the livestreams.
Three classes for bringing collectively the digital and bodily
Following its push to get shoppers again in retailer over the Christmas interval, John Lewis discovered that the Christmas Emporiums boosted buyer satisfaction by 10% – and {that a} excessive proportion of those that had been conscious of the emporiums visited them. Nevertheless, Pointon acknowledged that “consciousness was a problem” – one thing that might lead John Lewis to double down on driving consciousness of its Emporiums and Christmas shows in 2022.
1. “Be very clear in your buyer imaginative and prescient…”
Pointon additionally provided some recommendation to retailers seeking to carry digital and bodily retail collectively to create new purchasing experiences. First, she stated, “Be very clear in your buyer imaginative and prescient and who your buyer is. What do they want? What do they need and anticipate?”
2. “Be clear about your model”
Pointon suggested retailers – “be clear about your model” and the way that can translate into the expertise. John Lewis needed to be “the house for Christmas”, and so all of its retail experiences had been constructed round that core thought.
3. “Be ruthless on what you measure”
Her third piece of recommendation to retailers was to “be ruthless on what you measure”. “Know-how folks like to construct stuff,” she remarked – however it’s essential to not solely construct issues, but in addition to judge what works, what doesn’t work, and how one can scale. She cautioned retailers to not get too hung up on testing totally different concepts with out ever scaling them and placing them into apply extra totally. Whereas she acknowledged that “you’ve acquired to have that experimentation”, she additionally inspired retailers to consider “how rapidly are you able to scale, and throughout which classes?”
Lastly, Pointon famous that “Folks don’t care about legacy programs – they only anticipate issues to work and join once they go in-store.” This echoed her earlier factors concerning the significance of “ease” and prospects’ expectation for manufacturers to “be linked”: no matter expertise retailers introduce, and no matter experiences they create, want to simply work with out friction or compromises. Pointon added that John Lewis has been “fortunate sufficient” to work with some nice expertise companions in creating its retail experiences, who additionally gave recommendation on what to experiment with.
For John Lewis, stated Pointon, Christmas is “not simply concerning the advert”, as vital because it is perhaps. “We wish to be there for patrons whereas they’re interacting with the model.”
