On July 7th we were invited by Elias Constantopedos, the Chief Music Technologist of CORD, a brand consulting firm based in London, to attend a retail workshop entitled “The Big Shopping Pop-up.” We showed Scentee to conference attendees comprised of marketing directors, product managers, and new media technologists representing many international brands. The conference was situated on the HMS President ship docked at Victoria Embankment in Central London. Incidentally, it was located right by the Tour de France passing point which we got a cool glimpse of.
The day was full of informative talks and “labs” which were panel discussions given by guest speakers from affluent companies like Unilever and Microsoft. They spoke of their imagined future of the retail experience and how technology will impact the retail space and influence customer choices in stores. They also gave criticism of some technologies like augmented reality, and praise of others, such as radio-frequency identification. Some companies like CORD even gave demos of their own technology to much fanfare.
After the discussions there were drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and we showed Scentee to some brand managers, many of who were intrigued and fascinated with it, describing it as kind of cool gadget. Ultimately for Scentee, we can see it used in a retail environment as a kind of sensory branding, however, it will be necessary to build some use case scenarios in order for people to “get” its potential for brand building. We spoke with other CORD employees and they shared their feedback on how it would be used in this manner. We thank CORD for the invitation and for the wonderful experience aboard the HMS President!
