BrainTrust Query: Inspiration Point (of Sale) – Tumblr’s Retail Trajectory
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the newmarketbuilders blog.
What if someone figured out a way to layer retail onto an existing inspiration hub? Digital agency Coexist Digital is doing just that with its recently-launched Tumblr Commerce platform for retailers and brands.
In a one-one-one interview with newmarketbuilders, Dan Coe, principal, Coexist, said the new platform was inspired by a user-generated content contest on Tumblr, the photo sharing and blogging site, that the digital agency had developed for Bath & Body Works. In the course of the project, Coexist realized that it had developed all of the capabilities required to add a commerce layer onto a Tumblr blog.
"With Tumblr, you don’t have to choose between commerce and brand engagement," said Mr. Coe. "It does the two simultaneously, and I think it does them both brilliantly as well. For bigger brands, their www sites are built on platforms that are really thorough and rigid. They don’t have a lot of leeway in terms of integrating content into the experience, and the sites become big enterprise tools without a lot of flex. With Tumblr, you can sell while having the experiential component be just as strong."
"We try to think about commerce on Tumblr as a gallery-like experience," said Mr. Coe. "You initially walk in a gallery for inspiration, and you also go to a Tumblr blog for inspiration, and if you connect with something, you can take it home. It’s not overt price tags hanging all over the place and overt marketing and big banners and things. It’s just knowing that you can take something home if you feel a connection with it. That’s also the difference between going to a gallery and going to a museum."
Coexist offers two levels of pricing for business interested in using the program. At the green level, a retailer can launch a blog within a couple of weeks.
"It’s a great fit for launching a product line or promoting an event that’s happening around a brand," said Mr. Coe. "It could be tied into fashion week or a specific holiday, for example. Some blogs can work on an eight-week duration and focus on what’s happening during the holidays and what’s on trend. After that, the blog essentially goes away. Or it can be a completely new commerce channel that they’re committed to on an evergreen basis as a larger, ongoing initiative."
Mr. Coe agreed that Tumblr Commerce can almost work like a pop-up shop that doesn’t have to be permanent. He elaborated, "Imagine if every brand capitalized on the viral opportunities that occur through Tumblr and that migrate outside of it. We don’t see Tumblr as traditional. You aren’t going to sell everything on Tumblr that you would on your www. You need to think about new, different ways to shop, and when we talk to retailers and brands about offering their customers a new way to engage with their product, it gets really exciting."
Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions: What do you think of Tumblr Commerce? How do you think the shopping experience and sales opportunity on photo sharing and blogging sites compares to conventional e-commerce websites?
Tumblr offers another avenue to reach consumers. The key is to gain followers who will purchase from the site. What Coexist offers is convenient, but not unique. Brands and retailers should be continually looking for ways to engage and active consumers. Tumblr, Pinterest and Facebook are ripe for experimentation.
It’s somewhat difficult to tell just by reading this article, but Coexist has built a slick experience right within Tumblr for buying products that appear in the blog (to see a live example, take a look – I didn’t really understand the capability until I went there and played with it).
Although I don’t know how big this solution will be on Tumblr in particular, Tumblr Commerce definitely addresses a key challenge with the monetization of social and digital media today; specifically, that the venues in which people prefer to do their social sharing and exploring (Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) tend not to make it easy to pivot from discovery to purchase. The more seamless the experience becomes for users to go from the “oh, wow, that’s cool!” moment to the “I just bought it” moment, the better.
In retail, we used to reply to some shopper complaints with this response: “We promise that we will give your complaint all of the attention it deserves.”
For Tumbler Commerce, it certainly should receive all of the attention it deserves.
A long-time popular term is “Flash in the pan,” which applies in this case. Just check Facebook’s share price for a better understanding of this term, or you can go here.
I like the idea and think it could be beneficial for certain brands although it wouldn’t apply well to certain categories or products.
One of the challenges brands will face is the integation and alignment with their other channels. Being able to sell through a new channel is exciting and for some brands is worth piloting. However, they must consider the future need to gain access to the consumer touch-point data (not just transactions) and integrate the personalization experience across platforms. This will be important to provide effective measurement and understanding of this channel and prevent it becoming another detached silo.
Nice idea, however, perhaps not so unique. It is becoming increasingly difficult to create compelling, hard-to-duplicate commerce channel sites. One of the keys is to make the process painless and quick for the shopper. This platform attempts to do that. We’ll see where this goes and how the dust settles in the next 12 months or so with competing platforms.