Video Commerce

Have retailers really embraced the concept of video commerce? What is video commerce anyway!

Video commerce: enabling commerce through video. The key being "commerce". Commerce is the transaction of business. Retail commerce is the transaction of business by providing goods and services to consumers. So Video commerce, in the retail world, would be enabling consumers to purchase goods and services through the medium of video.

Is this happening today? No. It is not. Retailers have begun to embrace the medium, yet have struggled with effective ways to link video content to commerce....making a sale. Why? Two key elements conspire to limit the impact of video in driving sales. Let's take a step back though. Why is this a big deal? Again, simply, in the advertising world, television commercials have proven to be the most powerful and effective mechanism for creating emotional connections and enabling branding. Period. Taking this one step forward, retail, at it's core, outside of commodities, is all about making emotional connections. And it better be about branding too....or it's all about price. Price retail is a bad business to be in unless you have the scale...of say Walmart.

So: waht are the two elements holding back retailers from using the full power of video programming? First it is a lack of familiarity with what the medium is actually best at doing. CPG firms and ad agencies know this because they deal with it all the time. Most retailers do not. TV has not been the easiest vehicle for any retailer to use, and even when used, tends to be solely a seasonal or brand related proposition. Very seldom has TV been used effectively to drive volume behind specific products. Makes sense: 30 seconds is not enough time to communicate much in the way of product benefits. Let alone consumer needs. So it makes sense that retailer marketers don't have the understanding of the power of video that other types of marketers with more familiarity do.

CPG and branding types know all about telling a story: it's what creates that emotional connection. And emotional connections are the holy grail of storytelling. Retailers know about pictures of products and descriptions of products ...... and do those very, very well. They do not know about storytelling. It's not their forte. However, without an appreciation for what storytelling does for SALES, video programming at the retail level will remain essentially animated still photographs, enhanced with music (maybe).

I'll post later about the second problem: technology. Before we get into that, it's important to take in the limitations imposed on anyone in business by what you know and what you don't know. If you don't know how powerful a tool, strategy, tactic or process can be.....and you don't know you don't know.....there's nothing you can do about it. Such is the case for video programming. Retail marketers, with some exceptions, simply do not know what they are missing.