The RetailWire Podcast

Revolutionizing Brand Identity in the Digital Age: Insights from Sonal Gandhi, Chief Content Officer at The Lead Innovation Summit

• RetailWire | Brian Crum | Sonal Gandhi • Season 1 • Episode 11

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Get ready to revolutionize your understanding of brand identity in a digital world. We promise you won't look at Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) strategies the same way again after hearing from our esteemed guest, Sonal Gandhi, Chief Content Officer at The Lead Innovation Summit. Drawing on her rich experience with big names like Macy's and eBay, Sonal shares insider insights on how established brands have successfully navigated the crowded marketplace to foster a unique identity and own their customer relationships. You'll be fascinated by the engrossing case studies of brands like Away Travel, Psycho Bunny, Nike, Lululemon, and LiquidDeath, who have deftly used their unique identities to stand out.

But our enlightening conversation doesn't stop there. We delve into the future, discussing the evolving shopping experience and how brands can seize growth opportunities in this rapidly changing retail landscape. From creating immersive customer experiences to answering the call for sustainability, Sonal gives us a glimpse into the future. We touch on the innovative ways brands use their physical presence to articulate their identity and create engaging content for platforms like TikTok and Instagram. So, if you've ever wondered how to create a brand that compels, connects, and sticks, this episode is your guide to breakthrough insights and industry trends.

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Connect with Sonal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonal-gandhi-2ba76a2/

Learn more about The Lead Innovation Summit: https://the-lead.co/

RetailWire is the retail industry's premier source for news, analysis, and discussion. With a focus on the latest trends, technology, and consumer behavior, RetailWire provides a platform for industry experts and thought leaders to share their insights and perspectives. Whether you're a retailer, supplier, or service provider, RetailWire is your go-to destination for staying informed and ahead of the curve.

Be sure to leave us a comment and let us know what you think. You might even hear your comment read on the next episode!

To learn more, or to join our Daily Discussions, visit RetailWire.com.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Retail Wire Podcast.

Brian Crum:

Hey everyone, welcome back to another great episode here on the Retail Wire Podcast. I'm really excited because we have a guest with us in the studio today, that we've not had anybody like this before to what we're getting ready to talk about, and I'm super pumped because today's conversation we're going to be centering around brand identity what it is, why it's important, why you need it and why it's important for brands to really understand their own brand identity. This person that I have in the studio with me today. she is involved in leading strategy at brands like Macy's, ebay Shop Talk There's a long list of strategy and then also is currently the chief content at The Lead Innovation Summit, which is actually coming up here in a couple weeks from my first one, where we're recording this. Without further ado, i want to introduce Sonal Gandhi. Welcome to the show.

Sonal Gandhi:

Thank you. Thank you for having me, Ben.

Brian Crum:

Absolutely. It's wonderful to have time with you and I'm really excited because I know you are currently working really hard The Lead getting Summit up and running right. Yes, It's coming up in a week.

Sonal Gandhi:

It's just about 10 days or so away from it It's on July 12th.

Announcer:

We're actually over subscribed right now, but we're not at fire capacity.

Sonal Gandhi:

We can still register more people. But yes, we've definitely gone above our expectations of about 25, 2600 people registered.

Brian Crum:

That's got to feel really good, doesn't it?

Sonal Gandhi:

Yes, it does Yes.

Brian Crum:

We'll definitely talk The Lead about here in a little while. I'm really excited about this because we haven't talked brand identity on the Retail Wire podcast yet. To have you here, to have you join me this is going to be really fun for me because I love branding, and it's funny because when you say brand, you have so many people that think, oh, a cool logo or a catchy name. I guess, first of all, before I gave a brief introduction of some of the brands you've worked with and the things you've done, but tell us a little more about who you are and kind of how you came to be in the space of strategy and brand strategy.

Sonal Gandhi:

Sure, i started my career as an industry analyst at Forrester and I still consider myself a student of the industry or somebody who analyzes what's going on in the industry. I did spend some time in the industry at Macy's and eBay and so I got to see things from the inside. but for the better part of my career I've spent sort of analyzing trends, both in retail but also. I started with Forrester in media and then moved to retail when I worked with Macy's, so I consider myself a student of the industry.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, well, i mean and I think that's important for anyone no matter how big or broad you go to always remain that student. You always have to have that learning mentality, because the second that you think you've learned at all, you're probably one of the farthest people behind.

Sonal Gandhi:

So, yeah, And things change really fast, even though a lot of things remain the same. You know, technology is new, technology is coming up so fast all the time and consumer behavior changes so fast that you can never really think that you know everything, because of the change tomorrow.

Brian Crum:

Oh, absolutely, And especially with all the technologies we have kind of entering the marketplace right now and ways that we're unlocking technology that we've already had for a while. But now we're able to compound that and we're able to kind of combine some resources together, right. So you started out with Forrester and then now one of the things we were talking about a little bit, we're talking about D2C, right, brand or strategy. We can kind of jump just right into this. Do you think, when it comes to D2C, are we calling that more of a brand or is it a strategy, right? Is it something that D2C is just who we are, what we are, or is it more behavior minded?

Sonal Gandhi:

You know, if you asked me this, five, six years ago, there was a lot of brands that were we are a D2C brand. The identity was linked with this business model. But at the end of the day now, especially since the pandemic, a lot of brands are D2C brands. Almost all brands are D2C brands. Right, d2c is a go-to-market strategy for how brands engage with consumers. Some of these more traditional brands used to primarily go to market through wholesale retail partners and have now really substantially invested in their own direct-to-consumer capabilities, like the Ralph Laurenz of the world, you know, or Nike's of the world, and so it's not their identity, it's just the way they go to market And it affects everything else they do. It affects their wholesale business, it affects their licensing business or their marketplace business Almost core to a brand strategy now.

Brian Crum:

So now, what do you think was the driving factor behind? I mean, obviously, i think I know some of the reasoning, but what do you see as some of the driving factors behind why it's less about the strategy and I should say, less about something that they were able to add on, and now it's just what they do.

Sonal Gandhi:

So I think that brands have always wanted to own the relationship with their customer since the days of the internet.

Sonal Gandhi:

Right, they all start, put up their website, started having some transactions on the website, but for the most part they were worried about competing against their own partners online, so they were kind of keeping a low profile. Whatever sales they could get through digital marketing they were happy to take what they can get. But once the pandemic happened, stores were closed. A lot of the retail partners stores were closed, and so it sent a lot of traffic to their own websites. And that pattern continued over the course of the three years and they realized that this was an opportunity for them to really now put all of their investment power behind it, because, at the end of the day, building a direct relationship with the customer means you can keep the customer, you can treat them the way you want to treat them, you can get to know them, you can get all that data and help take that data all the way back into the supply chain and build products that your customers want. So that is the sort of the goal behind having a direct to consumer marketing strategy.

Sonal Gandhi:

There are margins consideration, right, if you don't have a middleman selling your product, you think you may have better margins But at the end of the day that's still debatable because you still have the market and you still have to do fulfillment. But I think that data component owning that relationship with the customer is really important to the brands now, especially because we're living in an age of data.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I can see being also just a layer of usability for that and importance would be when you go not only is it good for the products you have but the products you're developing then you don't have to kind of go through that middleman right, that middle brand, or kind of the holder of brands right, that is saying, oh well, here let me explain to you why I want to sell this product and what it means for your customer, because you're selling direct to customers, so at that point you just go to your customer and say, hey, by the way, did you know we also have X, y, z And they're good to go, you know, and you can explain it. I would imagine that simplifies that process of explaining it exactly the way you want to explain it, right.

Sonal Gandhi:

Yes, I think that you can build more loyalty to the brand because you're able to create that direct relationship with the customer. I think the one important thing to note is you know retailers multi-brand retailers were good at aggregating demand right. That's why brands relied on them. They didn't want to be, going out on the market to aggregate demand And they were good at delivering. They were good at delivering on the promise of the operations. But with the internet it's kind of a level playing field, right The brands?

Sonal Gandhi:

can go and do digital marketing on their own, although it's expensive. And also there's a lot of now point solutions and technologies that you can use to deliver just as good of a shopping experience if not better to your customer. So you know, whatever the capabilities of retailer can have, you can have it too. And that will help make that possible.

Brian Crum:

Well, and yeah, exactly, i think it plays really well to small businesses, especially because, like you said, the internet's a level playing field, so you can have as big of a presence visually as you really can imagine, right, like you can create this image, this persona, that your brand is much larger than it actually probably is. You know, you could be somebody selling out of a garage, but you can have an online web presence that, if you know how to brand properly and if you know how to connect with your customers and how to create targeted ads across the different social media platforms, like you're saying, you could totally outperform the big brands. You could outperform the Nike's on a some scale right, some level, some niche market. You can absolutely outperform some of those big brands because you know who you are And that ties right back to brand identity.

Sonal Gandhi:

Right, absolutely, yeah, definitely the internet has leveled the playing field. I mean brands like Nike have deep pockets and are able to stay in front of the consumer, up a funnel tactics and spend on that, but for a small, young startup brand, you could still eat away on that market share.

Brian Crum:

Oh, absolutely.

Sonal Gandhi:

Yeah.

Brian Crum:

Well, and it's like you know, you think about the small business or the medium business taking on the big giants in the industries. The giants have kind of they do have the advantage that they can take loss leaders. right, they could take a product that might not be making the money, but if it's leading you to purchase deeper, then you know they might be willing to take that risk, whereas your small or medium business might not have that flexibility, and so they're going to be a lot more intentional, right? You know you see your large brands that are willing to take risks on scattershot everywhere. Let's get everything we can out there, because something will lead to productivity, something will lead to income. But you know your small businesses have to be a little more tactical with exactly where they go to start their ball rolling, right.

Sonal Gandhi:

And they have to have a very compelling value proposition and they have to be very earnest about who they are. Right, consumers are looking. They go to small brands because they want that. The feeling of closeness that you get with a small brand right, that that brand gets me and is building this product for me well, is responsive to me. You know, i get to talk to a person when I call, or something of that sort, you know. And so that you know that authenticity, which is the overused word that a small brand can provide, that larger brands are definitely trying to, that the paint.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, and I think you know the larger brands are starting to see that more. We're seeing a shift right now and we've actually written a couple pieces on it recently where you know, is it good for big brands to have their CEO or their CMO or somebody actually have their own personal account on TikTok or Instagram to connect with people? And we're seeing that more and more because, like you said, the authenticity, which is funny because it does get overused but people can smell fakes And if you just are a brand that's throwing out an account and you come up with a fake persona and you come up with this character that is selling through this account, people are going to figure that out pretty quickly. But I think it's really cool to see when you know your head of production for somebody might be out just showing you their day to day, you know, and so then you start relating and seeing them as less of a brand and more of the person that happens to be associated with that brand.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, and you know, let's talk brand identity for a minute. For people who are listening, maybe there's someone who doesn't know what we're talking about or maybe they're still wrapping their minds around it. They're fresh to the industry. When we say brand identity, what actually is brand identity Like? what are the components that kind of make up what brand identity is in 2023 and beyond?

Sonal Gandhi:

To me it's always been the same thing. It is the image that you invoke in a consumer's mind when they hear your brand's name, or the emotion that you evoke. So if I look at some brands like Nike that have had that staying power, it's like what is the emotion I get when I hear of Nike or see an image of Nike or see that product? It's the emotion of a well-made product that's going to enable me to be better, enable me to be better performing at whatever sport.

Sonal Gandhi:

To me, that's the association. So what's that association the customer has? That's personal to them. It isn't about your product. It's about how you make me feel when I hear your product, and I think that is what brand identity is. I'll give you another example of Away Travel, which is one of those DTC brands, or brand that started as a DTC brand, or we call them digital natives, to be specific. Actually, when you look at their imagery, when you think about Away, you think of traveling to exotic places.

Sonal Gandhi:

You don't think about suitcases, you think about travel, you think about the lifestyle that you want to aspire to, to be able to go to some cool place and travel with my trendy luggage. That feeling of being cool is what they inspire And I think that to me, is a brand identity for Away.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, absolutely. You're instilling the sense of the feeling of freedom. You're instilling the sense of I've made it, I've accomplished something. Now I get to go and chill and just relax.

Sonal Gandhi:

I get to go see cool places and be cool, because we also live in the social media era, where nothing's real unless it's recorded.

Brian Crum:

Right. And even then, who knows? because there's AI.

Sonal Gandhi:

So if I can take a picture of myself with my Away luggage in Egypt or wherever in Paris, then now that's cool. So that's what a good brand identity is, and that invoking that positive feeling in the consumer about themselves, about something, escalation.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, i think you nailed it there because it's not about. I think a lot of times, especially brands that are starting out, maybe they have a killer product right, they have an incredible product but then they're going okay, well, how do I market this to people? Well, i need a sexy brand, i need a cool hook And it's going to be oh, i'm going to have this really amazing logo and I have these colors, and there is some color theory and everything plays in with that, obviously. But I think sometimes people get so in the weeds on what the brand actual brand name looks like that they flip it and they forget exactly what you're saying. It's not about I'm not selling you like. I love this.

Brian Crum:

By the way, this is not a knock on this brand. I'm getting ready to show you I love the image that you've probably know this one Psycho Bunny. So they're a really cool clothing brand Fantastic, but I think it's they don't sell based on this right, and that's what makes them really cool. This is all over their product, absolutely. But they're selling this sense of like a little edgy, very cool, but also very classy, very high end, and this actually came off of. I wasn't even planning on talking about this, but this came off of some swim trunks. It's a floating key chain, and so that's where exactly what you're saying.

Brian Crum:

They have their identity. Sure, they have a logo and it's really cool, but they also know who they are and who they're going after. Right, they're going for that young crowd, that crowd that thinks, even if you're young and heart, instead of young and body. You want to feel edgy, you want to feel really cool laying by the pool or out on the golf course or whatever else. And it's funny because you think we keep talking about Nike a little bit. It's funny how much crossover in some areas that Nike has with Lulu Lemon. But they have an entirely different audience and they have an entirely different way they make you feel, but in some senses they sell the exact same products, just in a different way.

Sonal Gandhi:

They do, and they're both brands that people look up to.

Brian Crum:

Absolutely.

Sonal Gandhi:

And again it has a certain sense of you know. You know a Lulu Lemon customer. When you see them, you know what type of customer is going to buy Lulu Lemon and what do they aspire to. And so they've carved out this niche in a very crowded marketplace, right Like at leisure or athletic wear just so many different brands out there And they both seem to be really successful in creating that identity, that hook by themselves and keeping that customer base. You know, coming back for more.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we've been talking about a few things. You know, one of the things is it's funny because we've been talking about brands, and one of the brands that I absolutely love is LiquidDeath. Right, and so this is not a promotion or anything like that, it's not paid or sponsorship, but you know, it's funny because we think of brands like LiquidDeath, you think of brands like Tesla, you think of Walmart or the Home Depot. These brands have figured out their identity, who their core shopper is and what makes them different, what makes them set apart in such a way. And we could go on for probably hours naming brands that have truly figured out who they are at their core, who they want to sell to, and then they figured out how to connect with those people. So I just I could go on and on about this. I love brand identity because we get so wrapped up in so many different details, but at the end, like you said, it comes down to the image that you're presenting to your customer, right?

Sonal Gandhi:

I think LiquidDeath and some of the brands that you mentioned. You know, people call it the brand purpose, right? What is the purpose? Why do we exist? Why do I need another water brand? What is your?

Sonal Gandhi:

so knowing that purpose is a lot of different. You know, even sort of somewhat legacy brands that started with the purpose have somehow, you know, gone away from it, forgotten for us, right? And they're now because a consumer today wants to know why should I buy this? Who are you? You know, and so they are going back and digging back into their own history, into their own heritage, to reconnect with their purpose and find the purposes. So we have a brand who's talking about it at the summit, the, you know Faso, which is a watch brand that stands for craftsmanship, right, and you know, in heritage. And every new generation needs a reminder what they stand about. They need to be told a story again and again. You can't imagine that a 40 year old and a 20 year old will look at your brand the same way. So every brand has to keep going back and retelling that story in a new way to a different generation of consumer.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny too, because not only is it about passing that down, but it's also knowing what to pass on, like what to what to overlook, right, what to get rid of and how to stay focused. Because you know it's funny, you brought that up too with the. You know, just, they need to be retold. And I think of you know heritage, just in general.

Brian Crum:

You think of any culture, right. You think of any of any of our pasts and the families that came down. You know the way that they passed on the culture of the brand identity right Of the family, and that is by sitting around the campfire or sitting around the kitchen or sitting around, you know, the RV park and hanging out while you're camping and showing, hey, we've just, we're always a really outdoorsy family, or you know anything like that, or we come from a long line of this. I think that's so important because it gives you identity, it gives you brand right And so that that does drive your purpose later And you go. I do have something to contribute And it's probably going to be centered around this And so yeah.

Brian Crum:

I think that's really important.

Sonal Gandhi:

Storytelling is, like the, the most important thing for brands right now, just as it is for human beings. I've been home and beings love stories And what we're finding is that's how we connect, that's how we know who we are. Like you said, we know the stories of our family, what our grandfathers do and grandmothers do, and where they came from and why they came to where they are. That that makes us, gives us a sense of our own identity. So brands to keep doing that, keep retelling that story.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, so. so let's shift a little bit and say, like I know we've been talking about establishing brand identity, right, but how do you, how do you define growth for different brands? How do you go from once you've established your identity, once you've established, kind of, where you're at and who you're serving? You know, growth isn't like a one size fits all, right, so physical expansion, like if you're, if you're growing here, it might mean different things. We mentioned the Nike and Lululemon thing we mentioned. you know you have your liquid death versus the Sonny or someone like that, and so your growth is going to look different across any, any different market. But but how do you define that for different brands?

Sonal Gandhi:

So it does depend on you know where you are in your journey. For a brand like Nike that is already well established and has an identity, very clear identity, they are now. What I've seen is now sensing the shift in the consumer right. The consumer isn't just about sort of running or sports, right, they're also about wellness and they're also about feeling good about who they are, and so you can see them shifting their tactics a little bit to fit into that. So that's joy. So to me, the growth is about evolving with your consumer right. The consumer is not static. Their generations change. They want different things, but also I am a different person than I was 20 years ago, and so if I want to still like Nike, is Nike still a relevant brand for me?

Sonal Gandhi:

Do they get me who I am now Right And so evolving with your consumer. staying relevant as a brand As norms change, as sensibilities change in the society, as aspirations change, is to me what defines brand growth right. Being able to continue to be relevant.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's so key because I think we tend to think that if someone likes the brand now, then they'll just like my brand forever, right. But you're right, i become a different person. If you look at me five years ago, versus 10 years ago, versus 15 and 20, i was probably four different people across all of those than the fifth person I am today. So I think it's so good to be reminded of that that the brands need to shift, they need to evolve, they need to grow And sometimes a brand just doesn't grow with you or you just don't grow with the brand, right.

Announcer:

And that's okay.

Brian Crum:

But then I think that's where it's so important for other brands to know their own identity. So that way, when you start looking then you go, oh that's me, that's me over there. Okay, i know what to do here, i can transition away from this and I can go into this And it feels very natural. Right, it's funny because New Balance gets like this big dad image, you know, because they're such a comfortable shoe. But there's a reason for that, you know, and it's like hey, maybe you're not the Nike customer anymore, maybe you're not the Adidas or the you know whatever the Hoka brand, maybe you're not the runner you used to be, maybe you're not that, but you know, you still have some edge, you still have some cool, you still have that desire. But you also want to be really comfortable and you don't want to deal with this, not going to lie. So I've looked into Crocs for the first time ever. Finally, i don't know if I should admit that on the air. Don't tell anybody, right?

Sonal Gandhi:

So, um, that's the thing.

Brian Crum:

Well, they're extremely trendy and I'm not going to lie, i put on my very first pair the other day and they know their customer, their customer, once, their customer does not care if they look cool. Yeah, customer cares, they're super comfortable, they're versatile And, you know, you see it in the medical field, you see it across a bunch of different industries, and so I just think that's really good. Anyways, that was a tangent, but, um no, i think it's really good to know. You know that your growth is going to look different at different points across your journey, like you said, and your customer's journey.

Sonal Gandhi:

But I mean, at the end of the day, all brands want is to grow revenue. You know, let's not kid ourselves, but it's how do you find either, find relevance with younger customers so that, if your customers aging out of your brand, that you continue to feed that funnel with younger customers?

Brian Crum:

Yeah.

Sonal Gandhi:

Or you grow with your customer as they grow and stay relevant so that they keep coming back to you. You want to protect market share and you want to grow and you know and find even if your customer is you know a certain behavioral segment, if you want to branch out of that segment. Right, if you're always appealing to a runner and now you want to be appealing to a yoga fanatic, then you kind of need to evolve with that.

Brian Crum:

Yeah Well, and you know this, this wasn't like on our our kind of our pre-plan, but it made me think.

Brian Crum:

You mentioned the pandemic a while ago, and then you think of how brands have had to evolve in some elements, right, right. So I think our generation and our culture today has experienced something that obviously every culture and every, every society kind of goes through their shifting points. But I can honestly say I don't think we've ever would have expected that to happen and shut the world down the way that it did. Were there any brands that you can think of right off the top of your head that shifted and grew alongside their customers as their customers were forced into this whole different life, a whole different world that they weren't planning on? When you think of what happened during the pandemic, are there? first of all, it's a kind of a two-parter Is there, is there brands that you saw shift better than others and and really just latch and they knew what to do, they got it, even in the midst of total fire, they just got it. And if so, what do you think made them so successful in doing so and shifting on the fly like that?

Sonal Gandhi:

And I think I saw. You know it's okay to flounder for a little while when big things like that happen, and I think a lot of brands, like all of us, were caught off guard a little bit And I saw two different things happen. I think on the more sort of large brand side, i saw brands get more focused. Right, what's the core? Who am I? I have all this assortment, i have this in this line of style. I just need to find who I am and focus on the core and sort of do away with. You know, ralph Lauren is such a brand like that That, when decided, you know I have too much going on and I need to focus on the core.

Announcer:

Yeah.

Sonal Gandhi:

On the smaller end, brands that were about like going out, going out clothes, going to office, really were sort of you know, on the suffering end of things, right, because people weren't buying those types of clothes. And I saw a lot of brands sort of take a, you know, take a minute and say, okay, what do we do now? Yeah, and then sort of start to shift the assortment to what people wanted while they were still in, you know, still at home, for the better part, you know, of the next year or two. So I think a lot of brands took a minute and took that as an opportunity to do some introspection and to look at themselves and see, you know, how do we sort of go through that And came out of it.

Sonal Gandhi:

You know better as a result of it, you know they took the opportunity to remove some of the noise into the product or whatever, Or to move, to shift away from what they were and then come back. I mean Brandleg and Tuckett, for instance, which was selling men's shirt and men weren't going to the office, definitely had to do that rethinking, right, Like what do we do now? And now they're back again and people are wearing shirts again and you know, and going to the store. So it's.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, shirts without a mustard stain, right They're wearing now I mean, we all realize we wore shirts in the pandemic.

Sonal Gandhi:

It's just we weren't wearing, you know, belts and formal pants. We're wearing jobbers. So Absolutely Yeah. So I think that that ended up as a good lesson for all brands is to know who you are, like you said, know who your customer is and have the ability to pivot. I mean, if it's, if people aren't going out and they're not buying shirts, you've got to sell them something else, Yeah, or, you know, narrow your scope for a minute until you can come back out again.

Brian Crum:

Yeah, well, and so now, shifting away from the past and kind of looking towards the future, what do you see as some good opportunities for future growth, maybe in the evolution of shopping, like the shopping experience as a whole? right, like we think of where we're headed right now. We've got a really cool marketplace. We're back open again. The world is primarily open again. We have shopping experiences are back. Malls are still different than they ever have been before. That's a whole different story.

Brian Crum:

But now you're starting to see new technologies come in, right. I mean, apple just released their mixed reality headset, you have AI, you have VR. You have all these different opportunities. But where do you see What do you predict for the future of kind of the shopping experience for customers as brands figure out their identities, like you said, they've stripped down some of the noise, some of the fluff that they had, and now I feel like you know, really it was a great thing for them to do, because I think it made them come out of the pandemic like a rocket right And they were just, they were dialed in. Now they're crushing it, probably better. A lot of brands are crushing it better now than they were when they went into the pandemic because they got focused. But yeah, where do you see the future of the shopping experience?

Sonal Gandhi:

So I think there's few things I'm really excited about. One, as you mentioned in-person experiences. People are putting a lot of creative thought into it. We have someone from H&M talking about their concept store that they've created here in Brooklyn, williamsburg, and it's a new concept every few months, right? Sometimes it's a clothes, sometimes it's not. I think this month they're doing like a whole gallery experience.

Sonal Gandhi:

So I think brands are really starting to have fun with the in-person experiences. It's not just about I'm going to go to H&M and buy myself a shirt. It's about I'm going to experience a whole. You know, i'm going to discover something new. I might find some interesting art or some kind of a music event. So brands are really sort of rethinking their physical presence as not just a place for a transaction, but as a place to express themselves and their identities to customers And, in the process of doing that, create content for the content beast of TikTok and Instagram that they need to do that all the time. You need to have fresh ideas and fresh things to talk about. You can't just talk about your assortment all the time, and so that is certainly something that you know. I'm seeing a lot of creativity and creative expression there, which is really exciting, and just being out in person and seeing brands sort of embrace a whole new way of being in person is physical stores is amazing.

Sonal Gandhi:

And then the second thing I am personally more passionate about is the pressure that brands have to really look at everything that they're doing from a carbon footprint at least all those kinds of criteria and really sort of look at how can I be better, how can I make less, you know, use less resources and do better in terms of my supply chains, my stores, my last mile to be a better citizen of the planet. So I think those are the things that I am really excited about. In terms of technology, you know, it's amazing to see the rise of generative AI in business so fast.

Sonal Gandhi:

We've been talking about AI for 10 years or so, or maybe not 10, but five or six years, but the adoption of generative AI on an informal basis is within the last six months. It's incredible, yeah, so we're gonna see a lot, lot of action in that, not just for a copywriting or for imagery, but also for planning and design, and You know all kinds of Decision-making where you can ask your you know questions about hey, which store performed well, instead of actually having to go through databases to find that answer algorithms. Generally, i can give you an answer right away, right? so, yeah, you can. So there's a lot of interesting Way brands are gonna change the way they they run their business based on this technology in the next coming years.

Brian Crum:

It's really good. It's really good, yeah, i mean we, we have so much coming down the pipeline. I think it's gonna be incredible. So Whenever we think of you know things that are coming, we think of you know the stuff on the cutting edge and Reinventing brand image and things like that, i mean that's, that's actually exactly what you're doing with the lead, right. I mean that's where the lead comes back in. It's an innovation summit, right? Can you tell people just a little bit about what is the lead and and what maybe they can expect if they were to attend the lead or Interact with your, your summit, at any way? What? what's that about?

Sonal Gandhi:

Sure. So I think our North Star is really about helping brands Get better at the go-to-market strategy of being direct to consumer. Right, how do you become a better direct to consumer business Or or have a better that to consumer business, better performing, and so we look at The entire value chain of the rep to consumer business, marketing, e-commerce stores, last mile, sustainability and some of these other aspects of how do you, how do you, how do you run a great, great business. And so we have two days of content Across these different topics, featuring some of these amazing brands that I just talked about, including fossil and H&M and tapestry. You know, these winning brands that are really sort of owning their direct to consumer journey or destiny really, and, and. We're gonna be having these brands share their success stories at the summit We're in New York City on the water in July, so Hopefully it's gonna be a great time to be in New York and And and and come here from some amazing brands.

Brian Crum:

Absolutely Well, i know I know Chase and I are gonna be up there, so my CEO will be up there and so we're gonna get to hang out with you. I'll get to meet you at some point there and we're really looking forward to it because we want to see, yeah, what, what does growth look like? What does you know brands taking that next step look like? so Thank you so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate your time and I know You know there's. we could go on for hours. if someone wanted to know more about you or about You know, obviously the lead or anything like that, i'll go ahead and put the leads website down here, but is it okay if listeners wanted to reach out to you on LinkedIn or some Way through that?

Sonal Gandhi:

Yeah, absolutely, the lead is on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. We'd love, as I said, you know we're we're definitely happy to have more people there, although we're over over our goals, but, you know, always can take more. So happy to have more people join us for the summit. And, yes, please reach out directly and, as I said, i'm a student, always look, we look to learn from others.

Brian Crum:

Awesome. Well, i'll make sure and put the link to your LinkedIn and everything down here in the description, as well as the link to the Lead, and people can get to know a little bit more about you. Thank you.

Sonal Gandhi:

Thank you, this was great.

Brian Crum:

Absolutely. Thank you so much and, yeah, if you are listening to this as if this is your first episode, listen to the retail wire podcast, make sure and hit that subscribe button, because we're on all your favorite podcast platforms. We're also on YouTube, so if you want to see what Sonal or I look like, you can actually hit over to our YouTube channel over retail wire and you'll be able to find us there. And, yeah, connect with us. Leaves a comment. You might see a comment pop up on the on the next episode or the next couple episodes, because we love hearing from you. So let us know what you think and we will see you next time here for another great episode On the retail wire podcast.

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