Speaking Topics
As one of the world’s leading retail experts, Doug Stephens offers an array of cutting edge and compelling keynote topics, suitable for any business audience. Every keynote is crafted to be entertaining, visually rich, enlightening and specifically relevant to each and every audience audience. Each keynote can also be structured as a workshop or a webinar.
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The Future of the Retail Store
Are we witnessing the death of the retail store or its astonishing rebirth and the beginning of the true Golden Age of retailing? It’s a topic of ongoing and passionate debate. One thing is certain, the store of the future will be vastly different. In this fascinating talk, Doug Stephens will show you the store of the future, from staffing and store design to technology and marketing – and how each will will change dramatically in the months and years ahead. You’ll gain the vital insights you need today, to design the store of tomorrow.
Doug is represented exclusively by The Lavin Agency.
The Future of Consumerism
It’s the end of a very fat and lazy era of consumerism. The uniquely favorable conditions that gave meteoric rise to mega-retailers like Walmart, Home Depot and Tesco are unravelling quickly, giving way to an entirely new and far more precarious consumer marketplace. Who the consumer is, in addition to how, where and even why they shop, is changing rapidly and forever. For brands unwilling to meet these changes, this new consumer age will bring almost certain disaster. However, for savvy, courageous businesses both big and small, it offers unprecedented opportunities for growth and success. This fast-paced and entertaining talk sheds light on the key shifts in economics, demographics, technology and media that are completely transforming the consumer landscape and the very essence of how we buy. You will gain insight into what smart brands are doing to re-imagine their businesses and capitalize on this historic shift.
If you’d like Doug to present to your organization, contact us.
The Road to Remarkable: 7 Things The World’s Most Innovative Companies Never Do
In a world where mediocre will no longer cut it, what are the common strengths that the world’s most dominant brands bring to market? How exactly do the best retailers and manufacturers innovate to create uncontested market space and most importantly, what pitfalls do great innovators avoid that most others fall into? Referencing years of research, The Road to Remarkable examines the surprising links between the world’s most successful businesses and provides actionable ideas and steps to emulate their success. It’s an uplifting and mind-expanding peek into the realm of radical innovation and strategy.
The Third Shelf: Moving Beyond Omni-Channel
Retail marketing has always been focussed on two “shelves” – the shelf in the physical or online store where the customer purchased your product and the shelf in their home where they kept your product until they needed more of it. For centuries, marketers have placed their time, effort and spending to influence consumers at these two shelves, with a combination of mass media, in-store promotion and other forms of interruption. But today, thanks to technology, there’s a third shelf and it can be anywhere in the world your brand wants it to be and where consumers need it to be. In The Third Shelf, you’ll see how savvy brands are thinking beyond channels, mediums and devices and instead taking their stores directly to consumers wherever they are, completely hijacking the rules of retail marketing in the process. You will never think of your store the same way again!
If you’d like Doug to present to your organization, contact us.
The Destination is YOU!: How Big Data Is Reinventing Retail
For the last 2000 years, retailing has fundamentally operated along the same set of principles. Manufacturers make, retailers sell and consumers simply consume. Today however, technology is rewriting both the rules of retail and the roles that each of these actors play in the equation. The very concept of what a store is, is being challenged, reshaped and shifted almost daily. Mobile technology, location-based services, machine to machine connection, big data, augmented reality and more are all conspiring to forever change the concept of retail. The Destination is You will provide a glimpse into the future and examine the implications of this new and amazing marketplace, where ultimately the “best store location” is exactly wherever the consumer is standing…right now.
Social Marketing: From Mass to Meaning
For the first time in almost 100 years, small remarkable companies have the capacity to earn consumer awareness, interest and loyalty on the same order of scale that large, mediocre companies with deep pockets can buy it. For those businesses who commit to it, social marketing has become the great equalizer, allowing some to achieve amazing results that would have been impossible only a decade ago. But social media is evolving rapidly with new networks, new analytics and new consumer behaviors emerging constantly. We’ve moved way beyond the novelty of a “like” or a “check-in” and are now working to understand the deeper economic, commercial and social shifts that social media is fostering and what businesses need to do about it. In this amazingly fast-paced and interactive talk, Doug examines the rapidly shifting social media landscape and shed light on the myths and realities surrounding social marketing success. He’ll share the best practices of brands who accepted masters of social marketing as well as provide a simple and concrete means of measuring your company’s progress and success.
The Future of Commercial Real Estate
The days of the ten year lease, static rosters of mall tenants and percentage-of-sales lease rates will soon be a distant memory. Increasingly, commercial real estate professionals and mall management will have to become brilliant and creative curators of remarkable, thrilling and constantly evolving retail experiences. Pop-up, virtual, omni-channel and collective store spaces are challenging age-old paradigms around what a store is, where it’s located and the terms on which it’s leased. In this talk, Doug Stephens paints a picture of the retail real estate landscape of tomorrow and shares the critical new competencies that industry professionals will require to succeed in this radically different retail reality.
