technology

DYSTOPIA 2041

It was over Sunday lunch back in the winter of 2022 that we had the heated family argument over all this. Dad was on one of his ‘hell in a handcart rants’ and was convinced the government wanted complete control over every aspect of our lives and we should resist at every turn. What he failed to see was any of the positive side: the health benefits, the increased security and even our own longevity for that matter. No, he certainly wasn’t right about everything.

Take the ApMan system, for example. Yes, it tracks everywhere I go but it also nudges me to take more exercise or even drink more water. It lets me know when the air is safe and even recommends the safest route for a daytime breather. After ‘consumer traffic’ was banned in cities in 2030, carbon monoxide levels have thankfully plummeted, but levels of ozone and PM (particulate matter) can still be dangerously high, so it’s best to stay indoors, even for an amber warning. No need to take unnecessary risks.

Traffic levels are historically low but there are still plenty of autonomous trucks and cabs running around so the PSS (Pedestrian Signal System) keeps us safe. I seriously cannot imagine how treacherous the roads were back in the day when Dad used to drive around in his own car…and without any guidance control! Terrifying.

When occasionally we do venture out on foot it’s so much safer these days, even if you do get fifty quid knocked off your UBI for cutting the corner at a zebra crossing. You soon learn to stick to the allocated routes and zones.

ApMan is indispensable, frankly. Obviously you need it to get into a bar, store or a gallery, but now that it’s linked to my personal genome it advises me on what’s best to eat, how much, and at what time of day. Following his advice also gives me a serious discount off my health insurance, so it really is a win win. Over indulge on anything and it will vibrate annoyingly for hours so there’s very little drunkenness anymore, at least not for the tracked and healthy. Pubs are more highly regulated than anywhere, so you’d be crazy to flout ApMan’s advice if you want to stay off the trouble maker list.

Restaurants are pretty strict too as they have to follow so much of the latest legislation, so it’s easier just to order from one of the dark kitchens. There’s so much more choice than in the restaurants anyway, and it’s a hell of a lot safer than mixing with everyone, that’s for sure. Every day there’s news of yet another outbreak in a bar or a brasserie that’s then forced to shut down for disinfection. And it often takes months for full Green Clearance.

I remember the local food markets we had around here until they were eventually banned for being the proven source of countless infections and viruses. No one wants to risk their health like that anymore. I think it was the long, hot summer of 2025 that the Hygiene Squad swooped in to close ours down. Quite an exciting day that was!

London is so much cleaner and impressive looking than it was in Dad’s day. All the architecture is tastefully illuminated at night and the roads are so much quieter too, with PSS embedded into the pavements everywhere and distress buttons every few hundred metres or so. The heated underpasses do fill up with the homeless in the evenings, but above ground the city looks better than it’s ever looked, I imagine.

I haven’t used the Tube in years but apparently it’s almost exactly as it was fifty years ago, complete with some of the (now protected) posters and ads for fast food and alcoholic drinks. Some E-friends of mine made a Youtube documentary about it not long ago. London’s Underground really is a piece of subterranean living history, shuttling cleaners and sanitary workers beneath the city right around the clock.

Back at home my children are pretty well balanced, all things considered. Their bi-monthly Social Wellness tests put them in the top 20%, even though they both spend most of the day in the Metaverse. They go to concerts there as well as educational classes and lectures in order to boost their home studies, so it isn’t all e-sports and shoot-em-ups. Sam’s actually got a paid job in there, managing some digital entrepreneur’s identity or something on an Ethereum retainer. It’s all a bit beyond me, to be honest.

So you see, what my father couldn’t understand was that giving up a bit of our independence would in return help make us so much safer, healthier and more financially secure than ever before. Dad might not agree but I believe that’s a price well worth paying.

I promise my next blog will be a tad more upbeat. Meanwhile please follow me on Twitter @retailfuturist for daily insights and wry retail based musings.

Howard Saunders Nov 15, 2021 advertising, city, discount, face recognition, Future, smartphone, technology, Uncategorized Comments Off Read More

THE REBOOT

Looking back it was obvious really. Ridiculous rents and rates marching onwards and upwards meant eventually something had to give. For years our high streets were kept teetering on the edge, terrified of change and too poor to try anything new. Switching off the global economy in 2020 resolved all that overnight. Yes folks, the retail reboot is here.

When it comes to predicting what’s next for our town and city centres the general consensus seems to be that everything will shift online apart from the edge of town space-age supermarket, manned by robot shelf stackers and illuminated by Minority Report style hologram-ads. But rest assured, this is the vision of the techno-nerd, and techno-nerds are experts in misunderstanding humanity. Their vision of the future won’t happen for one simple reason: we don’t want it.

But we have changed. Lockdown, has taught us a lot. We probably bake a bit more, or read more than we did previously. We’ve learnt how easy it is to buy online and have it delivered the next morning. Posing with our feet next to a parcel for a doorstep snap has become part of our daily routine. But lockdown has also taught us what we secretly knew all along: that shopping was never just about buying stuff, it was about getting out and having fun.

What’s more, now that we’re armed with that magical little black slab of glass, (that smart device that carries the sum of all human knowledge with us wherever we go) our expectations are primed for take off faster and higher than Elon Musk’s Space X. We have access to everything now, we compare notes too, and cannot be suckered by your seductive advertising like we were a mere decade ago. Today we’re connected, we live at the centre of the universe with our eyes wide open, and we’re crying out “whatever you’ve got for us, it better be good!”

The world has changed too. There’s no doubt that 2021 is the year retail sheds its skin. It’s also the year we draw a line under the ever-rising rents and rates that thwart fresh blood from flowing through the arteries of our towns and cities. Call it the Great Reset if you like.

But while we’ve been stuck at home watching Netflix, the cleverest brands have been plotting and planning new and exciting ways to tell us their story, entertain us, inspire us and put us at the centre of their universe. They know that the online world alone can never do that. And they know that they cannot simply reopen their stores the way they were in 2019. They’ve learnt a lot too and very soon they will gather up all their online knowledge and data and drag it into the real world to create truly immersive brand experiences that know exactly who we are.

So, in our cities the rich multinationals, (the brands that sell us the stuff we want but don’t need) will build spaces, places and pop-ups that make a mockery of that little word retail to encompass events, exhibitions, social spaces, work places, leisure hybrids and workshops to provide us with an ever changing array of branded entertainment. The old model (product in the window, stock on shelves and out the back) will make way for engaging spaces that immerse us in a brand’s story. Their job will be to get into our brains and our bloodstreams, not to sell in the conventional sense as they won’t care where or how you finally get hold of their precious wares.

We’ve already witnessed this from global behemoths Apple, Samsung and Nike who have created ‘stores’ that are part town square (Apple, Chicago & San Francisco) stores that are more of an events venue (Samsung, New York & London) or stores that are ever-changing exhibitions (Nike House of Innovation, New York & Paris).

These are the places where technology can really enjoy itself. Stores will be aware of your arrival, know how many milliseconds you paused over their new product on social media, know your tastes in fashion, music and how often you exercise in order to direct you to things that can be tailored especially for you: limited edition, numbered, tracked and even insured… all you have to do is swipe your thumb. Here, the online and offline worlds will meld seamlessly, with you at the epicentre.

More flexible leasing will finally allow brands to show off and have a bit of fun without signing up for ten years at a time. So our shopping centres will become venues for product launches, branded experiences and pop-up exhibitions like the Samsung Experience in London and the Adidas Originals exhibition in Seoul, shown here. The empty boxes left by our dearly departed stores will open up a thousand opportunities. Some will be converted to digital interactive leisure concepts such as Toca Social’s football based games (opening at the O2 this summer) or e-racing concepts from brands such as Zwift (zwift.com). These brands will kickstart a retail revolution tentatively entitled ‘competitive socialising’. Other big box spaces will become health and beauty hubs offering fitness and yoga sessions, lunchtime botox, teeth whitening and de-stress injections.

By contrast, much of the future will also be about reinventing the best of the past. Back in our towns and suburbs you may have already noticed that the age of the independent is returning. Your local butcher, baker (and candlestick maker) have been given an electrifying lease of life, heralding a decade of young innovators and entrepreneurs desperate to revitalise our communities now that rents are set to be somewhat more sensible. They’ll open funky new bars, delis, health food stores and restaurants on more flexible terms, which in turn will make for a more dynamic local retail scene. Our luckiest towns might even see their moribund concrete shopping centre replaced by a glazed market hall, brimful of fresh produce and eateries, not unlike the Victorian ones we demolished in the sixties.

So don’t listen to the techno-nerds. The stage has been cleared and new players are waiting eagerly in the wings. The audience has greater expectations than ever before and, oh boy, we’re determined to get out and enjoy ourselves. We want to experience things we’ve never even thought of. We want to see pop-ups and wacky brand collaborations. We want to hang out in big, breathtaking dining halls and cosy, artisan coffee shops and delis. We want our fast fashion chains to host start-ups and our favourite national brands to promote young talent in their branded incubators. We want to go to concerts, exhibitions, product launches and festivals of music, food and culture, and we want to join local clubs and go to workshops in the evening.

Above all, we want to live again. It’s obvious really.

This article was commissioned by my good friends (and loyal client) Aptos.

Howard Saunders May 06, 2021 Apple, Food, Future, Retail, San Francisco, shopping, smartphone, technology, Uncategorized Comments Off Read More

DEVO

For the best part of three decades the high street has been in a quandary. It didn’t know quite what it was, what it was for, nor what it wanted. Local stores dressed up like branded chains, while branded chain-stores disguised themselves as locals. Little mom and pop newsagents brandished oversized fascias emblazoned with multi national brands so huge they could be read at ease from low flying aircraft, while national chains lovingly placed the town’s name on their fascias, just in case you forgot where you live. Big brands tried to look small and local, while genuinely local stores employed slick designers to dress them up like prototypes poised for global domination.

Some multi-national brands tried to import the flavour of their flagships into the regions by shoehorning the best bits into tiny provincial shoeboxes that were once perfectly respectable local stores with proper shelves and a bell on the door. Our high streets were having an almighty identity crisis…when boom! Covid19 swept in and changed everything.

Literally overnight, everyone could be heard singing the praises of their local heroes: the little stores that kept the lifeblood of the town pumping through its narrow streets. A silent revolution so welcome in some quarters that they declare they saw it coming, that is was inevitable, that something had to change.

The crisis has resurrected the idea of proper service too. Our local heroes stood behind their big, wooden counters and fetched us the things we needed like we were in a Two Ronnies sketch. What’s more, we were happy to wait politely as a sign of our newfound respect for their role in the community. It was as if thousands of high streets, up and down the country, slipped back in time a century or so. Boxes of the things in greatest demand were piled high near the entrance for tap and goers in a hurry and there was no need for a planogram from head office. Staff thanked customers more loudly and with earnest eye contact. Some even grew long beards and wore aprons as if to get into character for their part in this crazy sci-fi movie we call 2020.

Would you believe it? We’re actually enjoying the rebirth of community spirit and relish the new civility the crisis ushered in. Smiles are often broader and more genuine behind the masks than they were without them. Reconnecting with our hometowns has created its own momentum. We hunt down local produce and get excited placing special orders for things at the baker and butcher as if it’s Christmas! We even brag about our love of seasonal produce and joke about our abstinence from imported, blister-packed avocados.

So, do you remember what it was like pre lockdown? Rich, clever brands were developing ways to encourage us to buy things we didn’t need by feeding us little tasters on social media and measuring how many microseconds we’d dwell on their shiny bait. This information was then fed into a giant computer so that they could helicopter in the most ‘liked’ products to the places that most ‘liked’ them. Supermarket chains were developing software to transport us virtually to the birthplace of every product on their shelves. Interspersed with ads, of course. In the tidal wave of consumerism up to the end of last year, this sounded rather exciting. Post Covid it feels irritating and insignificant.

We now know that the tipping point came in March 2020. The shockwaves from switching off the global economy have yet to be fully felt but it’s pretty clear we’ve now embarked on DEVO: A process of de-evolution of our high streets, of brands, the way we trade, and the way we think about retail. The intense heat of business has been burned off: the ridiculous rents, rising rates and the relentless rush for sales to pay them have slammed us hard into a brick wall. The over managed, over designed, over excited retail model that ultimately grew to bore us to death has run its course. How many three storey, back illuminated shoe walls can you see before you crave the simplicity of a pair in a simple cardboard box? How many interactive video screen towers do we install before they become invisible and meaningless? Even the glitziest flagships will switch to Devo mode. I dare say a few video walls are already being dismantled to make way for more reassuring communication like quality of manufacture, or simply creating the breathing space for proper one-to-one service. Simplification is back big time. Even the bizarre and baroque supply chains that over-evolved to bring us the stuff we didn’t need anyway, have strangled themselves lifeless.

Spectacle in retail will not die, of course. Gyrating Gen Alpha Tik-Tokkers will get the spaces they deserve, but big brand boardrooms will no longer echo to the demands for that ever elusive wow factor. Wows were so pre-Covid. We were heading here anyway, the coronavirus just hurried us along. Retail will mature very quickly in the coming months because our values have changed so dramatically. Smart retailers are sure to join us.

The advent of 5G was supposed to be the gateway to an instantly personalised future, so that even the mightiest of megastores would know our name, our cat’s name, and all our personal preferences. But in the post Covid climate who actually wants this sort of fake buddy-ism from the corporate world?

If we work together on this, DEVO can take us back to a gentler, more considered future with a stronger sense of moral purpose. So let’s not get too depressed as we watch our legacy brands in free-fall. They are clearing the way for fresh, young, agile entrepreneurs that will remind us just how beautifully simple retail should be.

Please join me on Twitter @retailfuturist for rants and wry observations

Howard Saunders Jul 15, 2020 Future, Retail, shopping, technology Comments Off Read More