Rick Denton: 0:05

You're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode well talk with our guests about great CX, travel...and just like the best journeys, explore new directions we never anticipated. I'm your host Rick Denton. I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. Customer Experience isn't just be nice. Now that's vital. But it's not everything. CX is human. It's digital, it's physical. When you walk into an experience, be it retail, be it entertainment be grocery, the environment effects the experience. Now we could do an entire episode on how Vegas casinos use all of your senses in the environment to influence your experience there. We don't always think about the physical and visual environment with cx. But today's guest Daniel black, founder of glass media thinks about it a lot. Have you ever seen a really cool display in a store? Something with great visuals, creative imagery, intriguing storytelling, something that just captures your attention. That's what Daniel and his team do for clients around the globe. I met Daniel NRF. Remember in person conferences a few years ago in New York and was blown away by the creativity and the technology his company provides. But beyond tech and creativity, Daniel gets customer experience. I can't wait to dive into his thoughts on how to create that amazing physical customer experience that helps companies truly stand out Daniel, welcome to CX Passport.

Daniel Black: 1:42

Yeah, thanks for having me, Rick, I appreciate it.

Rick Denton: 1:45

Glad to have you. This is it, seeing it and all of that this is what's going to be fun. I can't wait to talk about this. So but let's first let's just start kind of with some definitions here. So I imagine not everyone fully understands what visual merchandising is. Let's start there. What is visual merchandising?

Daniel Black: 2:00

So it's, uh, you know, it's very correlated with CX, right? Yes, it's all about people's perceptions and feelings about things. visual merchandising is largely the same. It's really a marketing discipline, or practice, where a visual merchandiser is taking floor plans, Whiting displays technology, and really enhancing the physical retail environment and hopes that one, of course, you purchase something, but more than that, that you you know, you get this emotional connection to the brand, you build some brand equity, and that's whether you purchase something or not.

Rick Denton: 2:34

So I'm thinking about that visual merchandising space, right? And he did kind of allude to it, there's emotions and that sort of stuff. But this is a podcast about customer experience. And so how does that visual merchandising how Why are we talking about that in the context of cx? How does it really draw and make up that component of customer experience?

Daniel Black: 2:55

Yeah, absolutely. So you know, when we looked at the online space, e commerce, customer experience oftentimes is more about eliminating friction, right friction and clicking things, easy checkout. In the physical space, it's not just about what you see what you smell what you hear. It's also even about people flow, right? Sometimes you go into stores where there's too many aisles, and there's too many people, it's crowded, and you kind of want to get in and out. Visual merchandisers are doing everything from how they set the mannequins, what the mannequins were, what that vignette looks like. And so for a lot of us, anytime we walk into a retail store, the goal is to stop us in our tracks. If we're just going in, and we're going straight to I'll be and we know exactly we want to purchase. There's no upsell, cross sell opportunity. And it's not very memorable, right, which is why a lot of grocery stores and convenience stores often actually change up the aisles, right? So you walk in, you get a little perplexed once in a while, you're like I thought the bread aisle was out for and now it's aisle seven, is actually a number of even department stores like Target and Walmart that actually do that once in a while. It's kind of throw us off a little bit.

Rick Denton: 4:05

Yeah. So so that's the thought of it that way, Daniel, because the stuff that you and glass media do is that they absolutely like cool vein and and this is an audio podcast. And so but in the show notes, we're definitely going to guide some folks to how they can see some of these great visuals, and some of the exciting things. So that's the sort of irritant side of customer experience the I'm going to move things around and then freeze your brain a little bit. But I'm thinking about some of the just the cool things that you've seen out there and some of the things that you're a part of helping create. And I know we'll talk about destinations in that aspect of it. But in general kind of this visual merchandising, what are some of the areas that you're playing with?

Daniel Black: 4:44

Yeah, so interactivity is really important, right? So we're now in the physical world, how do you get someone to better leverage their smartphone to actually engage with the display, okay. So, you know, that's something we're seeing. How do you make the smartphone an extension of the display where you might able to scan a QR code and actually control something, you might be able to get more information on your smartphone. And everyone right now really cares about the whole personalization aspect. So where a lot of you know a lot of retailers going now is if you have a mobile app, and you're logged in, and you've given them permission, they can actually personalize experiences where they can say, hey, Rick, welcome back to store, you know, x, y, and V. They can also look at kind of your tastes and preferences, and maybe tailor the recommendations to what you've seen before. But the same thing, we're actually doing a lot of work now in kids, kids areas of stores, okay, kids want to play games. And so there's really neat things we can do with projection, creating a digital game on the ground or on a wall. And using something called gesture recognition, no one needs to physically touch anything anymore. So coming out of the pandemic, it's interesting pre pandemic was all about physically touching things, right? Touching products. Now a lot of retailers are asking if there's ways to create a more frictionless way to interact with things. And so using computer vision, a lot of companies now are are creating interactive digital signage, either using a smartphone or your hands, or something, something to that effect.

Rick Denton: 6:14

That's interesting. So you're bringing back in a memory. And, Man, I wish I could think of that it's probably in the realm of almost a decade at this point. But we took a trip. And listeners may be familiar with this one. But you know, so we took a trip to Disney World in Florida, and specifically Epcot. And in the world section, which is great for adults, because that's food, that's beverage that's adult beverages, and we enjoy that part. But the kids Oh, okay, that's great. China, Germany, Japan, thanks. That's fun, Dad, Mom. But what they built was this, I can't remember the animated character, but an interactive experience for the kids that they gave them a what was a mobile phone, but it was obviously a dedicated device for it. And as they went to the different countries, there were missions that they had to unlock that then whatever was happening there. So the glockenspiel, the big one that is there in Germany, the the kid would be able to control it with the device in their hand, and it was a bit of a mind blowing moment for them, both the big and little, small, almost hidden, Mickey esque type things that would happen. So for you to describe now, a decade later, this idea of having kids interact and play in the store and build that connection makes a lot of sense to me. And I can see a lot of fun out of that.

Daniel Black: 7:26

Yeah, we refer to it as gamification, right? Everybody knows that gamifying the experiences. So whether it's a scavenger hunt, kind of like you're alluding to, or something else, the goal is, you know, again, how do we make that emotional connection? How do we build a little bit more brand equity and create a unique experience that you can't get somewhere else,

Rick Denton: 7:44

right. And at that time, I mean, I'm still talking about it a decade plus later, and Disney is known for its magic. And some of the things you create are absolutely magical at that retail space, as well. But it also had this sort of guarantee that someone's one of the Imagineers realized, hey, if we have the kids really involved in the world, and there's this path that they go through, I guarantee mom and dad are gonna buy a snack and a beverage and each one of those countries, whereas they might have just blown right through all of them. So there's a retail or a, I guess, a transactional financial component to it as well, not just the EU, that's nifty, as well. So So I did mention that you and I met at NRF. And we know New York continues to be and this is pandemic aside, we know things will get better. But it's a destination for great and innovative retail half of the reason why our team took that trip to New York was both a conference but then to just travel through great stores. And this is true. With Regent Street in London, cities like Dubai and Hong Kong and other global destinations end up where the retail itself becomes the travel destination. So I know you've traveled a time, where are you seeing the retail experience become the destination, rather than just this accessory to the trip?

Daniel Black: 8:51

Yeah, it's a great question. I think there's there's been a big paradigm shift as of late. And I think it's actually even before we travel now, if you actually look at what's happening with airport retail, and luxury brands moving into airport, retail, a lot of these, a lot of these brands are realizing, hey, the average person's in an airport for at least an hour. It's going to be constant traffic, right? Whether it's a pandemic or not, there's millions and millions of people every year, going through airports. And so we're starting to see brands like Louis Vuitton, the Harry Potter store, right and Gucci. All of them are doing these really immersive experiential pop ups in airports. And I think that's been a huge shift for me as I continue to travel. These are unique experiences, you're not going to see them replicated from airport to airport. And I think, you know, the data they're supporting is showing it's building consents, consistent brand equity. I don't know how many people are actually purchasing a multi$1,000 handbag at an airport. But at the same time, they're really building that brand equity, people are talking about it and there's definitely been a tremendous ROI.

Rick Denton: 9:59

That's So that's the airport. One's interesting. You're actually doing a little talk back unintentionally. I don't know that you realize this but misty Contreras. Sorry, Misty. Cisneros Contreras. I think I got that. Right. It's off memory here. Episode 14 was a, she leads guest experience at the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport. And we talked about that the airports becoming a destination through that the retail, the dining that aspect of it. And so as you're describing that in the airports, and now I've seen some of those handbags purchase, but it does tend to be in the Hong Kong's and Dubai's. But walk me through that. So how does a brand become a destination? How does a retail store become a destination? What are the things that you're seeing that make that where someone would say I want to go to that store, not just that city that happens to have that store?

Daniel Black: 10:42

Yes, I'll give you a few real world examples. The first that's fascinating to me is Restoration Hardware. So Restoration Hardware decided, let's do a total rebrand. And let's start opening up showcases and showrooms around the country. They just opened one here in Dallas, right? You have a high end restaurant. Yeah. Beautiful, really, it is a destination right? Everyone in Dallas talks about it people love to go there. I think they've been really really successful and kind of rebranding their physical identity. Second is another trend we're seeing which is actually mobile stores. So we've it runs another good example. There's a company in Switzerland that makes watches, a lot of people are now doing kind of Airstream pop ups where they'll build a very custom pop up experience. They'll travel to a different city or a town and they'll set up shop and you know, they'll put seating outside they'll put a stage and create these really really cool immersive pop of experiences and I think it's all about scarcity right? And people just knowing that there's one unique pop up and it's traveling from city to city and so if you know it's going to be in your city or it's going to be somewhere nearby a lot of people are certainly making that a destination and they're going to visit they're going to experiences they're going to post videos and images on social media. I think that's a trend we're really gonna see continue Yeah, so it's uh you know, it's it's fascinating and the last thing I'll say on that as well as you know, limited edition Special Edition a lot of brands too are realizing a supply chain if they can't make 1000s of you know one item let's create something a little bit unique and you know, sell out very quickly create that scarcity that demand and I feel that's working as well.

Rick Denton: 12:41

Well, Daniel, I don't know how much the air stream is going to have the first class lounge but I do know this that you have had plenty of travel and I do need I do want to shout out somebody here as we enter the first class lounge Krystl Amaral l and I worked together back at Bose and she was instrumental in doing one of those Airstream trips for Bose holy cow that you're absolutely right the scarcity the the excitement of it, the the rarity of it, those were absolutely genius things now, I bet you this, the crew that was behind that trip needed a little first class lounge, but you and I get to step into the first class lounge today. And hopefully we'll move quickly here and have a little bit of fun as we go along the way. So what is a dream travel location from your past?

Daniel Black: 13:22

So for me, it's a little bit interesting. I was one of those people until the age of, I guess almost 30 had never been on a cruise. Okay, so when my wife and I got married, we actually did a cruise for a honeymoon. And we took like a luxury high end cruise and so for me sure it was about the destinations who were visiting. But for me as an entrepreneur, it's really hard to check out and so it's really neat to get on a boat have no WiFi right? I was one of those people that did not purchase the Wi Fi right? They just kind of be out in the ocean. And so I remember you know, waking up every morning crack of dawn natural sunlight, eating an apple on the deck or the patio overlooking the ocean and said in a weird way it would be cruising for me.

Rick Denton: 14:06

That sounds really nice. Now I am you mentioned 30s I'm someone I'll go ahead and be honest here. Hello listeners. I'm 48 and have never been on a cruise so I've got you beat there. But it does sound delightful. I have a friend who just took one and there's pictures that he had that that morning cup of coffee just looking over the ship into just empty water and how beautiful that is. Well thinking of that that sounds like a glorious trip from your past what's a dream travel location? you've not been to yet

Daniel Black: 14:33

without question, Ibiza.

Rick Denton: 14:36

So nice, yes,

Daniel Black: 14:38

yeah, my wife and I every time we travel over in the Middle East area, we're always like can we get there Can we get there before we come back and so hopefully one of these days

Rick Denton: 14:48

you're gonna have to find some way to I don't know have your trips to the Middle East and maybe maybe Iberia. Yeah, to fly through there and you have to connect into Spain or something along those lines so that you get some of that Mediterranean beach going for you what is now Mediterranean beautiful food beautiful great things What is your favorite thing to eat?

Daniel Black: 15:08

I'm a big seafood guy fresh seafood you know we have some of it in Dallas but it's not the same as being on the coast Yeah, I think I spoke in West Palm Beach and every time I visit you know there's nothing like fresh tuna pokey right or stone crab claws right from the ocean without a question it's it's seafood. Oh, that's

Rick Denton: 15:28

so good. Yeah, we did a it was it was a snorkeling trip and they were fishing off of the back and yanked in a tuna and slice that up and had it right there on the boat and there's nothing quite like truly fresh seafood. Yes. Our Airlines Flight in here into landlocked North Texas, Dallas. And yet it's still not the same as the coast. I'm with you there.

Daniel Black: 15:49

Yeah, my I was gonna interject and say really quickly. One of my favorites was my friend had a bachelor party in Destin, Florida. And we went deep sea fishing, and that was one of the best meals I've ever had. And the restaurant did it three way right they do it black and they do it fried. It was it was phenomenal. Yeah.

Rick Denton: 16:07

Oh man. There's some great they're made fresh seafood. Maybe the one that is the most spectacular because especially because you can be like I just yanked this out of the water. This is awesome. Let's go to the flip side. What is the thing your parents forced you to eat, but you hate it as a kid.

Daniel Black: 16:23

So for me, my parents never forced me to eat anything. But at the same time, for some reason. I was young, I was scared of artichokes. And I can understand that. Yeah, there were a number of times where I was probably more my sister than my parents. But I kind of was forced eat an artichoke and I remember it to this day.

Rick Denton: 16:42

That is a beastly frightening. To call it even a food item to a kid is shocking. You want me to wait. I'm sorry. That's a weapon, not a food. Daniel, you've traveled a ton. We'll talk about that too. But what is one travel item you will not leave home without.

Daniel Black: 17:01

So I'm pretty risk averse for me to powerbanks for my son. My wife one of those people were phones kind of always on 4%. I'm one of those people if they get to 60% I start to panic a little bit. And I've had a number of those, you know nightmare scenarios where your wife delayed things happen and having a having a full full phone where you can listen to music and check your emails always feels great.

Rick Denton: 17:33

Daniel, back to the visual merchandising, it is great to have fantastic creating creative visual merchandising, right. But I wonder, Is it hard to know when the customer what the customer actually thinks about what they see? You know, there's the coolness factor. But then what is the customer doing with that in this world? How do you listen to the customer know whether what you're doing is effective? And I think to really what's the definition of effective here?

Daniel Black: 18:01

Yes, I think it's three fold. I think first and foremost is what we refer to as social listening, right? Yeah. It's social sharing. You can see people talking about it online posting photos to Instagram. I think that's very, very important for visual merchandisers. Right? There's, there's actually a term now, right? Making something instagrammable. Right? How do you create a space that actually incentivizes or motivates people to actually partake, right and become one with that experience and share that experience? I think number two and three really are, you know, you have a qualitative approach and a quantitative approach to everything we do in digital signage. On the quantitative approach, there's things we can look at like footfall right. So a lot of retailers have foot traffic counters, we can actually look at if we're driving more traffic to the store, because we have an immersive digital storefront, right, or something unique. And then we can look at the point of sale, and we can look at sell through category list. That's kind of the more metrics side of things, which is boring, but very, very important. On the flip side, you have the qualitative side. Yeah. And oftentimes, it's very important that the visual merchandisers and retailers are not just setting things up, they're actually speaking with customers, right? If they're videotaping it, they're trying to learn, you know, why are they videotaping it? What's so special? what's so cool? Yeah, they're taking those learnings and they're applying it to, I guess, continually optimize what they're already doing both inside the windows and inside the store.

Rick Denton: 19:28

So there's a couple things you said in there that really hit me. And one was that instagrammable and I'm, I'm actually not overly Instagram type person. That's not kind of what stirs my drink. But even I, my wife and I were walking through Old Town Scottsdale yesterday, and there was a mural on the wall. And it both my wife and I had the same thought of man, they should have done this, and it would be so instagrammable and I've caught myself going Wait, why on earth am I saying that so somebody is layman and not really in that seat? And not as an influencer type scene is feeling that way. You're absolutely right. And I can I can see that. And the second is you talked about that sort of social impact and and and how that is sort of spoken out. And there's an example that was floating all over LinkedIn and I think in other social media platforms as well. And that was that sorry example that was stunningly beautiful. Now I'm not sure I think you and I may have talked about it, whether it was real or not, but the social impact was absolutely real. So you know, we know the visual merchandising can be amazingly effective to that overall cx delivery. What are some of the barriers to creating great cx for the visual merchandiser?

Daniel Black: 20:39

Yes, that's a great question. First and foremost. You know, there's a lot of organizational silos, so to speak. Sure, what typically happens in digital signage is it's usually the IT department that from behind the scenes controls everything. Okay? What does that mean? That means the visual merchandisers don't have any influence into the creative, right? It should be the opposite, right? They should be able, they should be empowered to leverage digital to bring visual merchandising to life, right to bridge the gap between physical and digital. And we typically see that as a huge, huge bottleneck for visual merchandiser. I think the second one is your example of Zara, which is great. There's also silos between physical visual merchandisers and the marketers, which are the e commerce folks. Okay? It is our example. That was 100% marketing, no visual merchandising people and that entire organization, I can guarantee it that works in the store had any influence over what they did with CGI, really. It was a marketing initiative. They're saying, hey, let's create some buzz. But the visual merchandisers played no part in that. So I think, you know, the The difficult thing here is how do you empower visual merchandisers to have more influence over the overall decor and experience in the store? And how do you let them leverage technology? So that's a big thing we're working on currently. Right? Now, when you think of digital signs, you think about a TV on a wall, right? When you think about something where it's not modular, it's kind of set it and forget it. For us, we're trying to work on ways to make things modular, where a visual merchandiser has the ability to move a scrim, right, or move or projection, right, and, and that way, they actually can leverage it every time they do plan agreement, right, they've kind of reset the store. Right now, it's kind of archaic. That TV is on the wall, they can't touch it, they have zero influence over the creative. And so their hands are a little bit tied.

Rick Denton: 22:35

That's one of the things though, that I like about the things that I've seen you and your company create is it allows for that incredible flexibility, like some of the things you you've shown me, I'm not entirely sure how it happens. And that's great. That's the magic, I don't need to know the scene behind it. But when you're working with a company, and when you're working with visual merchandisers, some of the barriers you're described, I'd imagine you have some influence or trade have some influence in breaking those down, how are you helping kind of break some of those down so that you have that massive impact with some of the really cool things that I see come out of your world?

Daniel Black: 23:10

Yeah, first and foremost, for us, all of our solutions are powered by a 4g LTE network. What that means is we don't run Ethernet cable and we don't piggyback on the end for a Wi Fi. Very important because if we do you get into the IP, IP protocols, the firewall changes and then it gets to control everything. So for us, you know, we're partner with at&t, Verizon, T Mobile, we have our own network. And what that means is we don't need to talk to them. So now we can spend all our time really working with the visual merchandisers on what they want to see happen. Second is, you know, a lot of these retailers have large agencies record right like w PP publicist, Omnicom, they do a lot of their marketing for us if we can stay in the visual merchandising space. And like I said, Give them influence over the creative. If we can say and create our own little bubble, we find that we have a lot of autonomy over what we do. And that's really the win win.

Rick Denton: 24:04

Yeah, that makes so I see, it's kind of both a mixture of, hey, let's break down some of the silos but actually, let's leverage those silos by we're gonna go play in our own sandbox and be able to be as creative as you want to in our own sandbox. There's some genius there. Now, I know we talked about the pandemic a little bit before and we're still trying to find our way out of it, sadly, but I know that we will find a way out of it, we know that things will get better. So I imagine you're already starting to see some things post pandemic, people are saying the mall is dead. But is that true? What are you seeing out there?

Daniel Black: 24:37

Yes, the mall is very much alive. I'll give you a quick summary kind of what's happening with the mall. So there's what we refer to as Class A, B and C malls. Class A mall is over $500 per square foot. B is between three and 500 and a Class C ml is under 300 per square foot. Or we're gonna see almost all the class females over the next five years. They're gonna be eradicated, they're all going to become, you know, basically zoned for housing, right and apartments. On the flip side, we're seeing the class animals that have really morphed themselves into destinations, and just kind of multi use spaces being extremely successful. So you look at northpark Mall here in Dallas, one of the top five malls in the entire country, right? Class A malls are basically going to gobble up the BS in the seats. And so I think that's really the future. And that's good. Because, you know, we're seeing a lot more innovation coming out of these moles. It's not just the restaurants they're putting in there. But they're really kind of gamifying their space and making it a destination where people want to go, and trying to what we were talking about earlier, it's not just people from Dallas, it's people that are coming to visit any part of Texas oftentimes will say, hey, I want to go visit North Park Mall, or let's try and get through Dallas, so we can go there. So I think we're gonna see that and then when he talks about store retrofits, and renovations, it's all about CX, though, right? Everyone's getting out of their bad leases, they're closing their low performing stores. And at the same time, they're going to invest in the stores that are doing well. And so I'm really excited about the future. I think, like I said, there's probably only going to be 300 core Class A properties in the entire country, not 1000s. That's really where these retailers are going to play, aside from the airport's aside from these travel experiences talked about. But I think the future of physical retail is still very exciting. And I think it's only going to get more exciting as the investment kind of meets demand.

Rick Denton: 26:39

And this is great. Well, it is encouraging to folks like you and me who have an affiliation with and have enjoyed the retail space in the past. It's not dead, right? And that's the classic quote, right? retail is not dead boring retail is and, and we're going to see that. So Daniel, we are sadly out of time. But I thank you so much for joining on cx passport today. How can people get in touch with you? Where can people see some of the cool things that you're putting out there? What's a way for people to get in touch and learn more about you and your company?

Daniel Black: 27:10

Yeah, so in most of the Class A malls around the country, if you see anything cool, I'm hoping it does tie back to us. Our website is digitalstorefront.com so if you want to visit us there, you know, drop us a line if we can help you in any way. And like I said, our goal you'll be seeing this holiday season ton of our stuff throughout the country. So we're pretty excited.

Rick Denton: 27:32

That's awesome. Daniel, thanks so much for being on the show today. Yeah, I've learned a ton. I've enjoyed hearing your stories. I I have an even greater appreciation for the visual merchandiser. Absolutely. Thanks so much for being on the show. Daniel, I hope you have a wonderful and fulfilling Lee creative day the rest of your day.

Daniel Black: 27:54

Thanks for having me on Rick. Really, really appreciate it.

Rick Denton: 28:00

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. Make sure to visit our website cxpassport.com where you can hit subscribe so you'll never miss a show. While you're at it, you can check out the rest of the EX4CX website. If you're looking to get real about customer experience, EX4CX is available to help you increase revenue by starting to listen to your customers and create great experiences for every customer every time. Thanks for listening to CX Passport and be sure to tune in for our next episode. Until next time, I'm Rick Denton, and I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport.