Wahl emphasizes importance of engagement with consumers

PHILADELPHIA — The 8th Annual Emerson Group Retail Industry Day set the stage for a day of deep thinking on how to better go to market, how to better compete and how to better innovate with a keynote presentation from motivational speaker and TEDx lecturer Erik Wahl, author of the aptly named book “Unthink: Rediscover Your Creative Genius.”

Wahl quickly brought the room of suppliers, retailers, marketers and members of the private equity community back to the first day of grade school with a new teacher, when everyone was a little hesitant to bring attention to themselves, with the question, “Who here can draw?” No one volunteered, of course, but that was exactly Wahl’s point. Ask a room of businessmen to put themselves out there like that, and very few people volunteer themselves for that kind of peer scrutiny. Ask a room of five year olds, however, and every child would have a hand in the air.

“At what age did that creative river that once did flow so freely, effortlessly, through each and everyone of us; at what age do you think it started to dry up?” Wahl asked. “Pablo Picasso said every child is an artist. The challenge, ultimately, is how to remain an artist once we grow up," he said. “How to retain that childlike passion, that childlike ability to differentiate, to creatively solve challenges and ultimately plug it back into your adult life, your retail business, your connection to consumer. To stop selling and start engaging."

Rethinking, or unthinking, how you approach business could be the creative spark that you need to truly connect with the consumer and wholly differentiate from the competition, he said.

“And more importantly, for you in retail, in health and beauty, you can also tap into a wealth of new ideas, creativity, innovation, to plug back into your brand, to connect to your consumer, to transcend the commoditization that has the potential to become just simply a transaction,” Wahl said. “Defy your competitor, even major brands and CPGs, and use this time of ultimately economic, as well as technological and political, uncertainty to actually shift and go on the offense and brand yourself as that category of one.”

Wahl is himself in the business of creating disruptive strategies, he told the Emerson Group audience. “That concept of creating disruptions, absorbing disruptions, navigating ambiguities or complexities as the consumer changes, even that concept of creativity itself, I think it’s been wrongly diagnosed as being a genetic trait that we either were born with or without,” he said. “It’s a practice and disciplined skill that every single one of us in this room has access … to tap into, not to simply tap into, but to plug back into your strategy, back into your brand, back into the authenticity of the engagement with your consumer,” Wahl said.

“Business is social,” Wahl concluded. “And the future of the economy is going to be social, and those who are able to build trust into your brand and amplify it through social channels are better equipped to be able to succeed in the future.”