WDCast

There are competencies that strong innovation teams need to have but what’s really missing is the secret sauce of rebellion. The mentality that, ‘I know the rules but I’m willing to break them in order to make something noticeably and meaningfully different in the world’. Join Lee Peterson as he talks with Leah Cotterman, Senior Director Strategy & Insights at WD Partners, about how people are gravitating towards unique brands and experiences effectively disrupting the retail and brand model as we know it.

VR, AR, MR, XR, all the Rs! Extended Reality or Experience Reality is the name of the game but it’s not just for gamers. This technology is so sophisticated that brands can (and are) use it to help them develop the store of the future. In this episode Lee Peterson talks with Ryan Joy, Director of Visualization Services at WD Partners, as they discuss how to use this technology to “gamify” a space in order to make real-time decisions on lighting, layouts, fixtures, design & product assortment without building a thing.

While many banks are closing branches, our latest guest believes there’s potential for banks to evolve their “stores” and go beyond the transactional experience to create a place of connections, advice and security. It’s where the magic of data coupled with thoughtful and knowledgeable advisors go from “let’s get you a savings account” to “let’s talk about the options you have with a new baby on the way”. But it’ll take courage and patience to get there. Join Lee Peterson and Adam Ferguson, SVP Brand Director at Huntington National Bank, as they discuss issues banks are facing today and what the future can hold.

Over the past five years, the retail industry has been turbulent to say the least. Brands are being rocked by forces all around them—shifts in shopper behaviors, generational preferences and local nuances to name a few. Simply put the old prototype store model doesn’t work anymore. It’s too inflexible and tone deaf to serve the needs of today’s customer yet brands are having a hard time letting them go. Lee Peterson and Elaine Kleinschmidt, EVP Strategy & Experience Design at WD Partners, discuss what these radical shifts means for today’s brands and what changes should be made.

Buy Online Pick-Up in Store, Click & Collect, Ship to Store, BOPIS…no matter what you call it this offering has become a retail table stake. As a crucial fulfillment method, the adoption of BOPIS is phenomenal and in a recent WD study, 86% of consumers rated BOPIS as the number one digital integration they wanted to see in store. Lee Peterson & Google’s Chris Lydle discuss BOPIS efforts, the importance of this not so new retail concept and how brands can be doing it better.

What does the routine healthcare picture look like today and how different might it look in the future? WD talked with more than 2,600 healthcare decision makers to find out how they make decisions, what their preferences are and what needs to change in the industry. Lee Peterson & Dan Stanek discuss trends and the results of our research in this week’s episode.