The Most Successful Brands Treat Social Commerce Like a Focus Group

The problem is clear: You can’t sell to young customers if you can’t talk to them first.

In short, all the big-budget, TV ad-spend in the world will do nothing for a brand or retailer these days if the young consumers they’re trying to reach are under 25.

Add in the unique desire of this emerging and coveted demographic to not just hear what brands have to say but to also talk back to them, and the viable venue for communication effectively drops to one.

“AllSaints believes social commerce is the future,” Adam Heslop, global head of digital eCommerce at the trendy fashion retailer told PYMNTS, noting that it’s not only a “personal, authentic, and visual experience” that his customers want, but a way to directly connect and be a part of a brand they like.

To that point, the U.K.-based operator of 281 standalone and store-in-store locations in 27 countries has created an “AllSaints army” of sorts, by encouraging its customers to upload and tag photos of themselves in their favorite outfits that run alongside — and often within — the retailer’s own professional online content.

“Share your style. Be inspired. Mention @AllSaints in your photos to be featured [on our site]” the brand’s gallery landing page instructs, adding that shoppers who like the real-life looks they see on other real-life customers can then purchase the garments or shoes directly from the page.

Countless Creators With Cameras

It wasn’t that long ago that big brands looking to make a splash would readily spend a million dollars producing a single, high-stakes video commercial, Social Native CEO David Shadpour told PYMNTS. Whereas today, a retailer can empower customers to create and contribute their own campaign and get “1,000 videos from 1,000 people” in a matter of days.

Not only will brands be delighted by the creativity that pours in from this battalion of camera-wielding consumers, the Los Angeles-based executive said, but the effort will generate a level of feedback and authentic customer connectivity that is simply unavailable in any other medium.

“That’s a new muscle that a lot of brands still have to learn to use,” Shadpour said, while encouraging companies to embrace the fact that the next generation is growing up in a world where every single person on the planet is now capable of creating content.

Said another way, it’s why social platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and others are now “the biggest publishers in the world” even though they don’t actually create any of their own content.

“It’s all made by average consumers,” Shadpour said of the completely democratized social commerce space.  “If I want to sell to the future consumer, I need to learn how to talk to the future consumer,” he added, and that means accepting the “attention span shift” that exists within a generation that “just operates differently.”

From AllSaints to Walmart

To be sure, social commerce is gobbling up more and more budget from brands aiming to connect with young consumers, whether they’re growing high fashion players such as AllSaints, or massive global titans like Walmart that are also connecting with the consumer of tomorrow via the hottest platforms of today.

“We believe the future of retail lies in social commerce,” Walmart U.S. Chief Marketing Officer William White said in a November blog post announcing the launch of the company’s expanded livestreamed holiday shopping events.

While Shadpour says social commerce and short-form videos are a great fit for young digitally native companies or visual fashion, cosmetic or CPG brands, the medium poses challenges for other ad-heavy industries, such as banks and pharmaceuticals, not only from a demographic standpoint but from a regulatory basis as well given the unique and substantial disclaimer boilerplate they are required to display.

But even there, Shadpour believes, an unleashed and empowered cast of creators would be able to come up with an imaginative solution.

“That’s how a lot of the biggest brands are finding the most value,” Shadpour said. “Let me empower my customers, influencers, advocates, whoever it may be, to express themselves and of that large subset of people, there will be assets or pieces of content that really rise to be sticky, viral and interesting.”

So, instead of taking a “megaphone” approach to branding aimed at getting everybody to “look at my product” while also deleting all negative feedback from the conversation, he said the winning retailers and brands of today also use social commerce to listen.

“The customer can speak back to you, [It’s] like your own little petri dish,” he said. “The focus group of yesterday is social media today.”