This year Instagram will rival Amazon in terms of ecommerce disruption

This time last year Instagram launched Checkout in beta in the US. The feature, currently only available to a number of selected brands, points to a very near future where most of our shopping takes place on social channels.

Checkout, in a nutshell, lets users order and pay for items within the Instagram app itself. While we see other platforms in the US and UK building ecommerce functionalities into their offerings, like Pinterest’s Lens, Facebook’s shoppable tags and sales alerts, all of them currently still direct users to the retailer’s website for the final transaction. Instagram Checkout is the first in-app commerce development and is blurring the lines between social and ecommerce.

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It's the Technology, Stupid

In designing the strategy for Bill Clinton’s successful presidential run in 1992, James Carville knew exactly where to focus. As he memorably put it: “It’s the economy, stupid.” When it comes to modern marketing, we can replace ‘economy’ with ‘technology’.

Technology allows brands to do things that simply weren’t possible before. AR, VR, 3D printing, customisation at scale, interactive or real-time outdoor; the list goes on. It’s easy to focus on some of these jaw-dropping techniques, but they’re really just the icing on the cake.

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Understanding People’s ‘New World’ Brand Expectations

If you work in marketing, you might want to look away now. The brutal truth is… the vast majority of people don’t care about your brand. In fact, 81% of the brands sold across Europe could disappear overnight and consumers wouldn’t be concerned. They probably wouldn’t even notice.

Various dynamics are at play here. Firstly, abundance. With up to 30,000 new products being launched every year, we’re all spoilt for choice. With so much variety on offer, very few brands feel truly indispensable. Secondly, unbrands. We’re increasingly exposed to no name brands from the likes of Amazon, Aldi and Lidl. When these perform well, it undercuts the perceived value of traditional brands. Finally, loss of trust. It doesn’t take many rotten apples to spoil the brand barrel and there have been lots of examples recently of world-famous brands apparently acting in bad faith.

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For us Creating more successful campaigns begins with a better understanding of how people interact with communication

We call this the Science behind the shop.

Filter information and rely on very simple visual cues to navigate, orientate and find.

We only process a tiny fraction of everything that we see.  We deselect 99% of visual information and only process 5% of the remaining 1%.

A lot of time in store is spent navigating, orientating and searching in store not engaging & shopping.

Our brain fills in the gaps – to help us shortcut.

Which is why on average a shopper can’t read more than 15 WORDS in one go,

Generally process only 5 touchpoints on a typical shopping journey.

Keep communication focused, short and relevant.

A “nudge” in the back of the taxi letting people know how much a 20%, 25%, and 30% tip was made a huge difference to the size of tips.

Filter information and rely on very simple visual cues to navigate, orientate and find.

We only process a tiny fraction of everything that we see.  We deselect 99% of visual information and only process 5% of the remaining 1%.

An important emphasis of using one sale to drive broader acquisition.