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Lauren Livak Gilbert is a recognized ecommerce leader in digital and content strategy, renowned for her role leading the Digital Shelf Institute (DSI), where she connects more than 8,000 industry leaders, shapes industry standards, and hosts the "Unpacking the Digital Shelf" podcast. At Salsify, she worked with over 100 strategic customers helping them develop an overall commerce strategy and vision for their commerce journey, leveraging her work at Johnson & Johnson, where she was the owner of the digital shelf for the consumer family of products for North America.
Numerous brands, retailers, and digital thought leaders attended the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, an annual event for advertising and creative communication leaders.
The overarching theme? Brands and retailers are finally taking their blinders off, moving beyond outdated notions of in-store versus online shopping and embracing a more holistic approach to commerce.
They are redefining success by challenging long-standing metrics that no longer tell the true picture of performance. They are now focusing on creating shared goals, redefining success metrics, and fostering cross-functional collaboration.
One thing was clear: They are committed to partnering and finding better ways for everyone to succeed together.
Here are the top takeaways from the festival, including unique brand perspectives that offer strategic insights to drive digital shelf performance with creativity at the forefront.
Consumers now demand creativity and authenticity — and brands need to deliver it. Why? Consumers are more intelligent than ever before: They do more research. They can identify when brands are selling to them.
As competition grows, brands must develop an evident brand voice and use their content to tell their story authentically across all channels.
Just as consumers crave authenticity, they also want relevant product content and personalized recommendations. A critical part of personalization? Accurate data, which can be used to create the right content for the right consumer — at the right time.
One food brand, for example, shared that their shoppers also purchased store-brand beef when they bought their pasta sauce. They shifted ad dollars to market their pasta sauce with ground beef using this information. They also shared recipes for lasagna using both ingredients. These tactics helped make them more relevant to their shoppers.
There is so much noise in commerce — especially on the digital shelf, where the competition is fierce.
Brands must be bold to cut through the noise with an authentic and creative message to reach consumers. Additionally, brands must also learn to fail (and be comfortable with the process), as a willingness to implement a test-and-learn mentality can help drive innovation. This holds true for brands large and small.
UGC is consumed more than studio content, reinforcing the importance of the creator economy. Leading brands are working with influencers and leveraging UGC to meet this increase in demand.
Brands must have a clear UGC strategy, as well as a vision for reaching multiple generation groups, including Generation Alpha — which will be the largest generation group worldwide by 2025, according to estimates from Mark McCrindle, the social researcher who coined the name “Gen Alpha — and Generation Z.
According to new research from creative group Accenture Song, Gen Z will spend more time discovering new products on social media in 2024 than they will in-store. (On average, around 126 hours.) Their research also suggests that Gen Alpha will exceed these numbers, becoming the most digitally influenced generation.
“Everything and nothing has changed in marketing.”
— Eggleston Bracey, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer, Unilever
The focus of marketing is still to delight consumers and showcase the unique value your product drives for them, but the way we do that and the channels we do that on have changed.
There isn't a lack of creativity, but there is a lack of brilliant execution.
Before we create great content for all of our channels, do we know the consumer's path to purchase? Do we know their second and third touch points? Do we know their shopping behaviors?
Build a clear foundation first, then build your creative vision.
The center of every conversation was the consumer. This might seem like a basic principle, but it’s easy for brands and retailers to get lost in the tactics and metrics — and keep their blinders on when building their strategy.
Brands must now be laser-focused on knowing and understanding how consumers shop and shifting their strategies and tactics to keep consumers at the center.
Have you joined the Digital Shelf Institute (DSI)? Don’t miss your opportunity to unite with other ecommerce leaders, and build strategies that meet the demands of the digital shelf.
