Stop counting feet, start counting shopping bags

Having grown up in retail, I've always been fascinated by stores, shopping centres, customer service…

But there are times when I walk into a store, glance around and immediately walk out. Something just isn't right. Maybe it's a disconnect between the window display and what's for sale inside. Maybe the staff are obnoxious or too into themselves.  Whatever it is, it feels like a promise has been broken and a potential customer (me) is lost for good.

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Bring back a little discretion

Growing up in the Midwest, discretion was part of my DNA. Yes, I’m Canadian but in many ways we were culturally similar to our American counterparts. So like a character in a Garrison Keillor novel, I was shy with feelings and kept many things to myself. My family and I did not share freely nor did we expect to hear all and sundry from others. We closed the drapes at night.

I’m not saying this was the best way to behave. It’s just the way we were. And it meant I was often wondering about what, if anything, I could disclose.   (more…)

Last minute shoppers, there’s still hope

Guest post by Lindsay Peterson

It’s the end of the year and yes – as Gini Dietrich said, I am a last-minute shopper (and proud of it).  But not everyone is. Some people, like my colleague, Lindsay Peterson, actually think ahead!  So… in the spirit of the season, here’s a guest post by Lindsay on the holidays and some ideas to make it through the next 24 hours – gifts intact:

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What happened to Eatons?

Growing up, if someone had told me that Eaton’s would cease to exist, I would never have believed them. The department store was a Canadian icon. It had prime locations in downtowns and malls across the country, produced an aspirational Christmas catalogue, sponsored the Toronto Stanta Claus parade and, in Winnipeg (where I’m from), was the book end of a Portage Avenue stroll that started at the Bay and finished at the venerable merchant.

Yet here it is 2009 and Eaton’s hasn’t been a part of the retail landscape for several years. There are many reasons for that: different shopping needs, complacency, an inability to change.

I thought about Eaton’s after reading Matt Hartley’s article in the Financial Post on Canadian business’s reluctance to embrace online advertising (and I would say the same applies to other social networking opportunities, too).

It made me realize that a lot of what we consider certainties are time (and trend) sensitive. Sure it’s comfortable relying on the familiar. But in business, as in life, innovation, ideas and growth come from risk-taking and knowing when to try something different for a change.

When time is not of the essence

Maybe it’s the slower pace of Victoria Day (a holiday Monday in Canada). But I’ve been thinking about timeliness and how we seem to attach a sense of urgency to many things that may not require immediate attention. (That’s to say some attention is necessary, we just don’t have to jump.)

Certainly in communications and client service, we need to be responsive. And with social media’s ability to spread like wildfire (combined with some folks’ lack of judgement), it seems like there’s a mini online issue that must be dealt with every other day.

That’s the new reality. And we accept it.

However, I was catching up on some blog reading this weekend and tweeted about two posts I found to be smart, insightful and well written: Joel Postman’s thoughts on attribution and Gini Dietrich’s take on being a CEO-entrepreneur.

Both were ‘in the archives’, so to speak, in that they had been published in late April/early May. And I noticed I started my tweets – ‘catching up’ – as if I felt I had to explain my sharing delay. But does that lessen the value of the content? Of course not.

It got me thinking that in our world of Twitter-immediacy, we need to make sure we’re not solely focused on timing at the expense of ideas.

Sure, we’ve always paid attention to things that rise to the top (i.e. news). But, there’s a lot of important and useful information that happens to have been written yesterday, last week, last month, last year… etc.

And that content deserves your attention when you happen on it; when it’s most relevant to you.