Do you know what is taking place on Tuesday, June 4 at the Retail Innovation Conference & Expo? If you guessed pre-conference workshops, you’re correct! Workshops are an excellent precursor and collaborative environment to experience with industry peers before digesting all the content on the two main days of the event – Wednesday, June 5 and Thursday, June 6. Fun fact: If you have secured an All-Access Pass or Conference Track Pass, you can attend the workshops for FREE. If you haven’t decided on your pass type yet, let me fill you in on all the workshop details to help you choose the right pass type!
Pre-Conference Workshops
There will be a few concurrent workshops taking place on Tuesday, June 4 starting at 2:00pm CT, with a second block of workshops taking place at 3:30pm CT. All workshops are 75-minutes, ensuring ample time for you to network and collaborate in an intimate environment with industry peers. So, what topics will the workshops dive into? Let’s get into it!
2:00pm-3:15pm (CT)
- Develop Your Playbook to Unleash Innovation, Drive Advocacy and Craft Unforgettable Retail Experiences
In today’s ever-evolving retail landscape, the traditional “sofa to shelf” purchase journey has given way to a dynamic and non-linear process. Retailers are now tasked with meeting elevated consumer expectations driven by technology, transforming every point of engagement into a potential purchase opportunity. Amidst this challenge, however, lie promising opportunities for strategic retail innovation.
Join us on this journey with Angela Gearhart, Executive Practice Director at AAG Consulting Group and Senior Partner at MediaMaxx, as she shares a step-by-step approach to leveraging the digital-physical-human experience, offering a comprehensive playbook for success. Whether you work for a retailer, brand, or tech firm, this presentation promises actionable strategies to thrive in the evolving retail ecosystem.
During this workshop, attendees will dig into:
- Solving the customer journey challenge and understanding the future of retail;
- Driving sustainable brand advocacy with the new value equation;
- Maximizing human-physical-digital experiences to disrupt and connect to make experiences sticky;
- Purpose-driven technology integration, including the role of AI and experiential technology; and
- How to bring great ideas to life.
- Marketing Attribution: How to Optimize Spend for Maximum Revenue
As growing brands add more sales and marketing channels, and user-level tracking becomes more and more restricted, it’s increasingly difficult to make confident decisions about where to allocate ad spend. Join Madan Bharadwaj, Founder and CEO at M^2, to learn how to develop and deploy an advanced attribution strategy that will enable you to measure the performance of marketing campaigns and optimize media budgets to meet business goals.
During this workshop, attendees will:
- Learn the fundamentals of top attribution approaches, including incrementality testing, marketing mix modeling (MMM), and multi-touch attribution (MTA);
- Review real-world examples that demonstrate how to translate attribution reads and apply them to marketing investment decisions;
- Learn how to shape a measurement strategy that is specific to their brand and how to prepare their teams for success; and
- Get their toughest measurement questions answered by an expert and start developing a tailored attribution roadmap for their organizations.
- In-Store Retail Media Playbook – From Customer Journey to Measurement
Understanding consumer and shopper behavior and how individuals interact with in-store and Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertisements is crucial for creating effective retail media strategies. Modern consumers expect not just transactions but experiences that are engaging, personalized, and seamless across all touch points. The ongoing evolution in data analytics and privacy regulations will require retailers and brands to be agile and forward-thinking, ready to adopt new methodologies for measurement and optimization.
During this hands-on workshop led by the VP of Measurement Addressability Data at IAB, Jeffrey Bustos, attendees can expect to participate in groups to collaborate on the following:
- Map the Journey: Develop a customer-centric strategy throughout the store that focuses on solving consumers’ problems and reducing friction;
- Outline Store-Specific Strategies: Consider the unique characteristics of each store location, seasonality variations, layout, customer demographics and sales data to customize messaging; and
- Engagement and Interaction Metrics: Understand ways to measure the quality of engagement and interaction with in-store media and develop a testing framework for success!
3:30pm-4:45pm (CT)
- An Innovation Audit – Assessing Your Speed to Market
You’ve got a hundred groundbreaking ideas, but are they the right ones? Are you bringing them to life fast enough? In the fast-paced world of retail, execution is everything. Don’t let slow processes dull your competitive edge.
In this hands-on workshop hosted by author and retail innovation nerd Andrew Smith Co-founder and Managing Partner at ThinkUncommon, you’ll embark on a comprehensive innovation audit of your organization. You’ll identify the root causes of the bottlenecks that stifle your creativity and identify best practice methods to navigate through them or remove them completely.
Register for this workshop to learn how you can:
- Diagnose Delays: Work individually and collaboratively to pinpoint exactly what’s holding you back;
- Strategize Solutions: Identify three major roadblocks and develop actionable strategies to overcome them; and
- Accelerate Execution: Leave with a clear plan to enhance the speed and efficiency of your idea-to-market journey.
- Retail Women in Tech: Meet Up!
Retail Women in Tech (RWIT) is a community dedicated to supporting and empowering women who have a passion for retail and technology. You could be in the business and want to get into tech, you could be from the business and are now in tech, you could be in tech and are/want to be in retail or you could just be in retail tech. No matter what, the reality is that there aren’t enough of us. RWIT has been making a difference for some time now, but there is even more potential to make a significant impact in the industry. Join this workshop to be a part of the conversation with fellow women leaders!
Don’t miss your chance to network and collaborate with retail’s brightest community in Chicago! Register by Thursday, April 18 to secure your pass at the discounted rate and get ready to dive deep into retail strategies.
