Experience Manifesto

Brand Experience Lab: Creating a Branded Retail Experience | Flooring The Consumer

Christine (C. B.) Whittemore found an old post from when she first met me during a program for POPAI at the Lab about 4 years ago. Glad to see she was paying attention during the presentation! I've put some highlights here and agree that some of our conversation is even more relevant in a down economy. I can't find the original presentation, but you can click here to download the BEL POV Overview and see how we think. And, if you're not reading CB's blog, you should be!

In preparing for Social Media Series: David Polinchock on Bridging New & Old, I came across notes I took while first listening to David and experiencing the Brand Experience Lab. I thought I would share them with you here as they seem as relevant today - if not more so - as they did four years ago.

Here goes.

I participated in a fascinating seminar at the Brand Experience Lab + walking tour of SoHo on May 5, 2005 to discuss how to build a branded retail experience. This program was sponsored by POPAI [point of purchase advertising international]. The premise is that of the $900+ billion spent on marketing, $18B is spent at retail because traditional advertising no longer works. Power has shifted to the consumer, and the consumer is responding at the point of purchase, where the brand experience becomes critical for success.

• Many products/services are becoming commodities;
• The consumer has become increasingly knowledgeable, and comfortable making purchasing decisions, relying less on traditional marketing and sales efforts;
• It takes more effort/resources/etc. today to create a compelling brand identity.
• Challenge is how to ignite passion, inspire loyalty for your brand?

Components of compelling brand experience include:

• Culture - need to thoroughly understand cultural trends, customer needs, and knowledge of what is coming in the future
• Creativity - take your customers beyond your brand's features/benefits to create a visceral connection via storytelling
• Technology - audience is accustomed to using technology is daily life; so find relevant new technology to help tell your brand story better

Defining brand experience:

• A product/service is nothing more than an artifact or act around which customers have experiences. Over time, your brand will be defined by a total impression of those experiences rather than the products or services themselves.
• The right experience set creates a strong, emotional and consistent connection with the consumer. This is a force that captivates your audience and arouses anticipation of benefit upon brand recognition. Various elements such as advertising and marketing contribute to this group of experiences, however they are rarely the sum total of brand identity.
• Never underestimate the degree to which your customers and consumers will go out of their way for a better experience. Similarly, never underestimate the degree to which one bad experience can undo all other positive efforts.

Brand Experience Lab: Creating a Branded Retail Experience | Flooring The Consumer.

Pure Dark(TM) – Chocolate Harvested From Nature

I know that Mars is getting a lot of attention for what they've done at Skittles.com, but in NY, they've also opened up a high end chocolate store in the West Village to tell a different story about chocolate.

Look what OZOLife had to say about the new store at Mars Attacks / Daily Food / OZOlife.

When it comes to chocolate, we will take it any way it comes – bars, barks, disks, nibs, liquefied. The fact that we do not discriminate has kept big candy in business for years. But just as we started retreating from the processed treats (because we realized candy wasn’t supposed to be waxy and taste like plastic), Mars Snackfood – makers of the barely-natural Skittles and Snickers candies – pulled us back in with a new chain of all-natural chocolate cafés called Pure Dark. The first one recently opened on New York’s Bleecker Street and another is slated for Ohio. The cafés pair different forms of dark chocolate with a variety of seasonings, nuts, candies, and fruits. And, while we're not fans of the Mars thing, we have to admit the chocolates are delish. Whether this is pure heaven or pure evil will have to depend on the chocoholic.

I've been to the store several times and it's really well done. And yes, it's damn good chocolate, although I wasn't crazy about some of the spice/chocolate combinations. I did find it interesting that there's no Mars branding anywhere in the store, you have to look at the tiny print information on the package to realize that it's being done by a large, candy company.

The staff there knows their chocolate and they do try to educate people about chocolate. Lots of opportunities to sample and to make your own combinations. And, although I haven't seen anything about it yet, I hope that they will use the space to create more social events as well. I'm still surprised at the number of companies willing to play with social media, but not willing to play with social experiences in their physical locations.

At Pure DarkTM, it's all about the purity of the pod. This is the delicious, raw essence of dark chocolate: the precious fruit of the cacao tree at its simple, natural best.

The Pure DarkTM collection is chock–full of robust ingredients harvested straight from nature: thick, hand–crafted Slabs, Barks studded with plump, dried fruits and crunchy nuts, Rounds dusted with exotic flavors, and lightly roasted cocoa bean Nibs all deliver an authentic, earthy chocolate experience.

It's potent, natural, elemental perfection: Pure DarkTM.

Pure Dark(TM) – Chocolate Harvested From Nature.

Archives - Confection & Snack Retailing.

Pure Dark - Manhattan/West Village - New York, NY .

Mr. Clean Takes Car-Wash Gig - WSJ.com

I'm a big fan of this idea and hope that it will be successful for P&G. I think it's really an excellent way for P&G to put the Mr. Clean brand front & center with consumers and probably a whole lot cheaper then a large, national ad campaign!

The giant manufacturer of household staples including Pampers diapers, Crest toothpaste and Gillette razors is forging a new business model: franchising car washes.

To jump-start plans for a nationwide chain of Mr. Clean Car Wash franchises, P&G in December acquired the franchise assets of Atlanta-based Carnett's Car Wash, which has 14 locations.

"We need to look for new opportunities to allow us to grow," says Bruce Brown, P&G's chief technology officer. "That isn't limited to things within our current business model."

P&G is under mounting pressure to find new sources of revenue growth, particularly as more cash-strapped shoppers think twice about buying its premium-priced products. Wall Street is increasingly skeptical that the mammoth company can garner meaningful gains in its slow-growing product categories and a tough economy.

Known for exhaustively testing new ideas, Procter & Gamble has been quietly experimenting with service businesses in recent years. Since 2007, it has operated two Mr. Clean Car Washes near its Cincinnati headquarters. Last year, it unveiled three Tide dry-cleaning shops in Kansas City, Kan., area. Also in 2007, P&G said it bought a minority stake in membership-based medical services firm MDVIP, based in Boca Raton, Fla.

Professional car washing, which rings up about $35 billion in sales a year in the U.S., according to P&G estimates, won out as the company's first major franchise push. "We want to blow this out to a national network of car washes," Mr. Brown says.

The car-washing business has a handful of competitive advantages, says Nathan Estruth, vice president of P&G's FutureWorks, which develops new business ventures. It lacks a dominant national chain, aging baby boomers are reluctant to wash cars themselves and more water-strapped communities are pushing professional car cleaning as a conservation measure.

Mr. Clean Takes Car-Wash Gig - WSJ.com.

360 Degree View: Case Study: Retail "Free Riding" Hurts Technology Adoption

Just came across this blog today and they had a great story about Sylvania's challenge in creating a better marketplace for color TV's. Funny to read about a brand that used to be in the forefront of its industry and no longer seems to occupy that position. At any rate, I loved their conclusion at the end. Nice to know that our position on creating better retail experiences was actually determined by the Supreme Court! They have a number of good articles on the blog, so after you're done reading this full article, make sure you spend some time reading their other articles.

Territory protection was an essential element of the franchise strategy. Without it, a Sylvania retailer in one geographic area might free ride on a franchised retailer in an adjacent geographic area, by using lower prices to steal consumer sales away from the local franchised retailer (who would presumably have higher costs from investing in the new consumer experience in areas such as product education, in-home trial, repair service, etc.). Within three years, Sylvanias’ national share had doubled, with share in high priority geographic areas reaching as high as 15%.

But in 1977, a renegade Sylvania retailer entered an adjacent territory in which it was not authorized to conduct business, advertising significantly lower prices to those offered by the local Sylvania retailer. Sylvania promptly terminated its entire business relationship with the offending retailer, who sued on antitrust grounds.

In one of the most discussed and debated antitrust cases in history, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Sylvania’s right to protect its products against intra-brand price competition. The court found that competition between brands – its primary concern – could actually be lessened when consumers lacked the retail experience required to discriminate between manufacturers. Put positively, the court determined that by offering a differentiated retail experience, consumers would be in a stronger position to make informed choices, and inter-brand competition would increase. (Emphasis mine)

360 Degree View: Case Study: Retail "Free Riding" Hurts Technology Adoption.

The Coming January Retail Headache

Right before Christmas, I had the chance to walk 5th Avenue with Natalie Zmuda from Ad Age (see Retailers Forced Into Heavy Pre-Christmas Discounts) and, like the rest of us, I've spent the last few days visiting a variety of stores in the post-Christmas rush that's being dubbed the new "Black Friday." From the news reports I've seen, holiday shopping was down across the boards, with the exception of Amazon, which seems to have had it's best holiday ever. According to an article in the Washington Post today:

SpendingPulse, a division of MasterCard Advisors that tracks spending, said its preliminary data show that online sales fell 2.3 percent compared with last year's holiday season. Overall retail sales fell 5.5 percent to 8 percent. Excluding auto and gas sales, the decline was 2 percent to 4 percent.

On Sunday, we went up to Woodbury Common Premium Outlets and it was pretty busy, even at 6 PM when we arrived. What was amazing is that we went into some stores where not even a 50% discount was enough to get people to buy. I know that was certainly the case with us in several stores. I mean, if I could buy jeans at Eddie Bauer's for $19.99, why would I take a 20% discount on $60 jeans elsewhere? There were stores advertising a 20% - 30% discount that we didn't even walk into -- nothing less then a 50% discount was going to get us across that store threshold! And we certainly did some buying, but not as much as we would've done in past years and, much of it was just staples, like new turtlenecks for Sydney. And I'm not sure that we spent more then about $10 on any one item. And I can only say that anecdotally, I'm hearing similar things from friends and acquaintances. People weren't really buying the big gifts that they've bought in the past. Lots of smaller, more practical gifts.

And this is from a piece at msnbc.com today:

But consumers who saw plenty of bargains before Christmas still seemed to be spending carefully — meaning even the big discounts may not be enough to salvage one of the most dismal holiday shopping seasons in years. Some were unimpressed with even rock-bottom prices while others were just flat-out returning items for cash.

Sales of women's clothing dropped nearly 23 percent while men's clothing sales slipped more than 14 percent. Footwear sales fell 13.5 percent. Sales of electronics and appliances fell even more drastically, dropping almost 27 percent.

Retailers for their part, did whatever they could to get us into the stores, short of just giving everything away. According to a story in the Wall Street Journal today:

In the final countdown of one of the worst holiday retail seasons in decades, more retailers have extended hours and are staying open for 24-hour periods or more in a last-ditch effort to capture sales. Macy's Inc., L.L. Bean International, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Hennes & Mauritz AB's H&M chain added extreme hours at select locations this year, they said, as a way to enhance customer service, reduce congestion and compete for last-minute sales.

"In this kind of environment, you do whatever it takes," said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Part of the problem, however, was that when you went into these stores, you couldn't always find people to help you and some of the cash register lines looked like they went on for blocks. And again, my experience this year was that in most stores, the odds of finding someone to help you were about as good as finding buried treasure. And sometimes, it would've been just as valuable! Twice now I've been in stores where literally, the person helping us stopped in the middle to announce that they were on lunch/break and needed to go. And they did! I guess if I had gone into some of the stores really late or very early, I would've gotten better customer service, but I always thought that they should be sensitive to my needs, not the other way around.

And I have to say, that some of these stores looked like they were on their last legs. Without the proper staffing to maintain a store, they can start to look pretty rough around the edges, pretty quickly! And I know that they were trying to tell us about their good prices on things (and we did do some buying!), but was Old Navy trying to tell us something with signs that screamed Going, Going?

Amazon was one bright spot on the retail horizon. Again, according to a recent article in the Washington Post:

Online retail giant Amazon.com said yesterday it recorded its "best ever" holiday season this year with a 17 percent increase in orders on its busiest day, bucking the generally grim news coming from retailers, including other e-commerce sites.

I think that given the hell that much of retail is today, it's not surprising that a retailer who uses technology to make it easier for people to buy is going to do well. And, of course, they can have lower prices since they don't have all of the overhead of brick & mortar stores, namely the brick & mortar! They can also better use their staff to help customers, since the delivery of the product is handled elsewhere. We've spoken extensively about this issue in the past, that if stores don't create a really unique and compelling reason for us to walk through the door, it really is easier to shop online. And all of that expensive real estate will simply become a very expensive "web site," where people come to look at things, but they do their actual purchasing online.

Usually, come January, consumers have that January headache, where we get all of those bills from the holidays and we get a headache trying to figure out how to pay for them. This year, I think that we'll see lots of retailers with the headache of trying to figure out how they're going to pay for all of those sale prices they gave us this month. And, clearly they'll be a few that won't survive.

Retailers Look to Capture Night Owls - WSJ.com. (Registration required)

Amazon Hails Strongest Holiday Sales Season Yet - washingtonpost.com.

Retailers hoping for post-Christmas miracle - Small business- msnbc.com.

Small stores face big holiday test - Small business- msnbc.com.

Is There Hope In This Market?

More bad news about the advertising industry coming across the wires today and it just doesn't seem to stop. More retail woes in the news too, which is also dragging down the ad industry. And, let's not forget about the possibilities of the auto industry going down in flames and what that's going to do to the advertising industry.

Like many folks, I've spent a great deal of time in the malls looking for Christmas presents, although I haven't bought anything yet. But to be fair, that's not an economic thing. I always wait for the last minute to actually buy, but I do love to shop! I've seen a couple of things while I've been out and stores that were busy had two things going for them:

The had great sales.

They had great experiences.

So, the first one is pretty easy. Lots of places had great sales over the last two weeks and we, as consumers, know that more sales are coming down the road. Just look at the prices of consumer electronics lately. They've been crazy! Today, Best Buy has a 32' Sharp LCD for $399. At Circuit City, you can get a Lenova IdeaPad for $399 too. Walmart is even really jumping into the electronics space pretty aggressively, with even rumors of a $99 iPhone coming at the holidays, although that doesn't seem to be true right now. Costco seemed packed when we were there over the weekend, with lots of people both looking & buying, proving that good values are still seen as good buys, even in this economy.

So, having a great sale certainly helped drive big traffic to retail stores. Conversely, stores without good sales seem to be pretty empty the days I've been to the malls. I have to admit, the Abercrombie stores, usually pretty bustling, looked empty the days I've been in the malls. But while those great deals might translate to good traffic and even good sales figures, what will be the long term effect of this price cutting? We don't know yet, but we can certainly look around to other industries living off of a non-stop cycle of sales to see how they're doing. Will anyone buy a car without 0% financing? And what happens when stores like Saks begin discounting luxury items? Are we training the next generation of luxury consumers to wait until the price is right before actually purchasing? At a birthday party over the weekend, a lot of the financial people I spoke with thought that when we see how bad the holiday retail really was and people start to lose their jobs, the economy will get even worse.

On the other end of the spectrum, having cool stuff always works. Every time I went to the Garden State Plaza, the Apple store there was packed. Not only were there a lot of shoppers there, but there were a lot of employees too. And it looked like people were really buying things, not just looking. Lots of folks buying iPhones for sure, saw a lot of them being activated. And Sydney and I were at Build-A-Bear (once to buy, once just to look) and they seemed pretty busy there too. Unfortunately, they were having staffing problems the day we were there to buy, and that made it a lesser experience then it usually is. Build-A-Bear has now added an online component, similar to Webkinz, and Sydney has really enjoyed that. In fact, last weekend she became a CyBear Guide last weekend, which is a very clever way to get kids to spend more time online.

It's possible that as Wall Street's influence gets reduced, maybe companies will be able to get out of the quarterly results game and into the more long term look at where they're heading. Maybe they'll read the stories about how Circuit City cut its best sales people to make the quarter, but seem to have really hurt themselves in the long run. If you read In Hard Times, Is Best Buy’s Best Good Enough? in the NY Times a few Sundays back, you might've read about some of the things they're trying.

With unemployment rising sharply, and consumer spending plummeting, Best Buy managers are bending over backward to attract shoppers and are encouraged to put their personal stamp on the stores. For Ms. Adoniz, that means stoking employees with caffeine and carbohydrates and catering to customers’ pets.

It's nice to see that a major retailer like Best Buy is starting to really understand the importance of its in-store staff for growing a profitable business. And, according to the Times:

For now, though, Best Buy has a potent weapon in its battle with the discounters and online sellers: its staff. Members of Best Buy’s sales staff, a k a “Blue Shirts,” go through a 20-hour training program, then spend two weeks shadowing an experienced sales staff member around the floor. Historically, the Best Buy training program has been so strong, some people in the industry say, that competitors often waited for Best Buy to let staff go after Christmas, and then snap them up.

“The importance of the salesperson is directly related to the price of the product being sold,” says Chris Denove, vice president at J. D. Power & Associates, the consumer research firm. “If you’re talking about toothpaste or pencils, the salesperson is immaterial, but when you’re talking about high-end electronics such as flat screen TVs, the salesperson can be critical.”

So, maybe brands will be looking at the Best Buy model in the future and figure out how to use their sales staff to actually better enhance their guest experience. Hopefully they'll start to realize that their actual physical space can be used so much better then it is now. The malls were crowded and people were in the stores they liked!

It'll be very interesting to see who thrives, who survives and who dies this retail season.

MediaPost Publications - Bottom Falls Out Of The Ad Market, Literally - 12/12/2008.

B(AD) NEWS SPREADS ON MADISON AVE. - New York Post.

Retail sales fall for fifth straight month - Retail - msnbc.com.

The Associated Press: Retailer KB Toys files for bankruptcy protection.

Retail Walking Tours with Ad Age

As you know, we spend a great deal of time looking at what's happening at retail (see Experience Manifesto: Retail Design Diva -- Has Shopping Lost Its Charm? for a recent posting). A few weeks ago, we had a chance to take a walking tour of Soho retail with Natalie Zmuda & producer Jill Bauerle of Ad Age and they've got some great video up on their youtube channel. We spent the day exploring a number of stores in the area to look at what we believe separates ordinary retail from extraordinary retail. Some key take-away's from our day:

Large or small, retailers need to do a much better job creating compelling, authentic & relevant experiences for their guests.

Great, well trained and knowledgeable staff is no longer a luxury. It's a must have.

Use the store to create a social environment, making sure your connecting with guests and employees.

There may be one more video from this series, so make sure you sign up for the Ad Age youtube channel for all the latest. We're also hoping to go to other neighborhoods in the future, so if you some favorite retailer that you think should be included, let us know and we'll check it out.

Link: Ad Age Single Player.

Link: Ad Age Single Player.

Link: YouTube - AdAge's Channel.

Retail Design Diva -- Has Shopping Lost Its Charm?

This was at the heart of our discussion about the socialization of place and now there seems to be some numbers to support the theory. His what we think. As more & more people do their actual purchases online, what's to become of the physical real estate of retail? We first wrote about this back in 2005 and then again in early '06 at Retail Design Diva -- Socialization of Real Estate and we think it's going to be even more important in the future. Here's what we said back then:

It made us ask the question, what is the value of real estate for retailers today? Does a record store really need to exist as it's been for the past 40+ years? Or banks, grocery stores, fashion retailers? If, thanks to the internet, people are much more comfortable getting their purchases sent to them, rather then getting them right away, do we need that much space dedicated to merchandise? So, if we can do away with the inventory portion of most retail spaces today, what else would you do with the space? How could you make it a much more social environment, rather then being a retail environment? After all, this is exactly why places like Starbuck's or the Apple stores have boomed -- they created a social space, rather then a retail space.

And these numbers seem to support the thought that people just aren't going to the stores like they used to. Now, the economy is also having real challenges today and people are not shopping as much as they were, say a year ago, but this was about traffic, not shopping and I think we'd be seeing some declines no matter what the economy was doing. Yes, there was also a decline in online shopping of 1%, but you can't compare shopping data with traffic date. With gas being up (although now we can get it for about $3.55 by our house, so it's dropped about $0.80 recently) and retail experiences tending to be so bad, it's creating a huge reason not to go to stores.

When you combine that with the consolidation that's hitting the retail industry and you're coming to a perfect storm of reasons not to go to the local mall.

So, if you're a retailer and you're not looking to significantly increase your retail experience, then understand that you're going to be losing more & more money on your real estate holdings. It's just not worth the hassle for people any more. Back in its time, if I went to a place like Spag's, I was cool with it being such a difficult retail experience for the bargains I got. Or look at the annual wrestling match more commonly known as the Filene’s Basement World Famous Bridal Event. But, if we're going to Macy's or Old Navy or Target or any one of a thousand of look-alike retail experiences, with many of the same items at very similar prices, you'd better start thinking about what that real estate is worth to you and how much you're going to need to spend to create a compelling, relevant and authentic retail experience.

We also wrote in early 2006:

Raise your hand if you’ve ever gone to a store, taken up a great deal of the sales persons time, only to go home and buy online because you could find it cheaper? Come on, you know you have. Everyone does it. And this helps to turn the retail space into a showroom, rather then a place to actually purchase. Worse, technologies like SCANBUY Shopper let you check the price on something by using your camera phone to take a picture of the bar code and then finding the best price. And that’s before we start talking about AI shopping bots!

So, you make the retail experience worse and worse and we use it less & less causing you to make it worse & worse, causing us to use it less & less....see where I'm going with this?

The truth is too many retail experiences are either neutral or they plain suck, so we find other ways to buy. Sam Ewen from Interference recently commented on a post about brand ambassadors and said "Would you spend $250,000 on a tv spot placement and then hire a high school film student to direct?" Yet we have no problem spending billions on the actual real estate while paying your employees as little as you can get away with. In a recent blog post entitled Shouldn't Every Employee be a Brand Ambassador?, I posed this quesiton -- "Do you hire to save money or to find the best people possible to represent your brand? The consumer will know the difference."

So, if your physical retail real estate has real value to you, then you need to treat it likes it that important. You need to:

Staff it like us being there is really important to you. Ever go to a house where you're not quite welcome? Well that's sometimes how we feel at your stores. And it doesn't make us want to come back!

Although it's not a retail experience directly, take a look at Coca-Cola 'rewards' may have cost longtime employees their jobs - Vallejo Times Herald. So frequently the employees are treated like they're not welcome either and that feeling ends up deposited at the consumers feet. They work for you damn it, treat them like a guest! They're your front line in the war to be successful, why do you spend so much time hobbling them? If you treat them well, I can guarantee you they'll treat me well. If they feel unwelcome, so will I.

Look for better ways to combine your offline & online retail. You need to E-tail Your Retail. If i can do it online, I should be able to do it in-store.

Ask yourself what your space would be if it wasn't about inventory management. What would make me, the consumer, come in?

Are you experimenting with social media, whatever that is? Well, bully for you! No really, that's good. But are you doing anything social in your space? After all, every day, thousands of people walk through your doors and you've probably never thought of the social media power of your own space. Walk over to the Apple store and see the results of retail as social media.

There's a lot more to think about, but this is probably enough for one post. I'd love your feedback. What stores are doing a great job retaining guests despite this drop in traffic? I'll be they'll be the ones still standing when the economy gets back on its feet!

According to research by TNS Retail Forward, most shopping venues are losing audience at a steady pace, year-by-year [has shopping lost its charm?]. The TNS Retail Forward ShopperScape survey found that shares of monthly shoppers are declining the most at shopping centers, including both traditional malls and lifestyle centers. Regional mall traffic of monthly shoppers declined from 34 percent in 2006 to 30 percent in 2008; while lifestyle centers showed a decline in monthly shoppers from 24 percent in 2006 to 20 percent in 2008. According to the report, both formats need to do more to attract shoppers.

Power centers held firm at 59 percent of monthly shoppers in 2006, and 60 percent [slight increase] in 2008 [no surprise, with price driving more purchases in this economy]. And factory outlets increased from 10 percent to 13 percent, while strip centers with grocery anchors decreased from 55 percent to 49 percent. Online sales lost 1 percentage point, falling from 43 percent to 42 percent, over the period. That’s not much of a difference, but it seems at odds with analysts who speculate that the downturn is driving [no pun intended] more shoppers online, seeking to save money on gasoline.

Link: Retail Design Diva.

Link: Retail Design Diva -- Socialization of Real Estate

Link: Experience Manifesto: Socialization of Place.

Link: Experience Manifesto: Brand Autopsy: Designing Retail Experiences – The Apple Way.

Link: Experience Manifesto: Luring MP3ers Back to the Mall - January 01, 2006.

Link: Experience Manifesto: The Socialization of Real Estate.

Adrenalina, The Extreme Store

Came across this new store yesterday here in Orlando. Pretty cool stuff and people were really getting into the Flowrider. Certainly a good example of retail as experience. I'll write more about the concept later, but wanted to let you see it!

Link: Adrenalina.

Umpqua Bank Unveils Innovation Lab, Creative Online Weekly

Umpqua Bank Unveils Innovation Lab In Portland, Oregon

Umpqua Bank, has opened its new store concept in Portland, Ore.'s South Waterfront neighborhood. The store will serve as Umpqua's Innovation Lab, showcasing emerging and existing technologies that foster community and redefine what consumers can expect from a banking experience. As a testing ground for new initiatives, the Lab will change regularly to feature new technology, products, services and community events.

Umpqua has collaborated with numerous technology companies including Cisco, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Nexus IS, Inc. and Planar to develop and integrate technology that enhances the customer experience and store operations. In many cases, it is the first time these technologies have been implemented in a consumer setting.

"Umpqua has long been known for its innovation around the customer experience. Now, with the opening of the lab we have a unique setting to consistently experiment with new technologies, engage the public and learn from evolving customer preferences," said Ray Davis, president and CEO of Umpqua Bank.

Link: Creative Online Weekly, February 4, 2008.