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| Infographic based on a keynote at the Millennial 20/20 Summit 2017 in Singapore about how AI will customise the customer journey. The keynote was presented by Avis Easteal. Head of Consumer, Luxasia, and Vivek Vaidya, CTO, Marketing Cloud, Salesforce. |
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| Chatri Sityodtong, Chairman and CEO of ONE Championship. opened the summit’s first day with a keynote on how to engage and embrace an audience at scale. Infographic based on the keynote. |
The second edition of the Millennial 20/20 Asia Summit has charted the future of retail marketing and commerce as it is likely to impact Asia’s digitally-savvy consumer landscape. A record 3,000 attendees from 31 countries examined innovation and disruption across key industries in anticipation of the “experience revolution” for future commerce over two days.
This year, the Millennial 20/20 Asia Summit welcomed new industry segments and content such as finance, AI as well as virtual and augmented reality, plus hosted experiential showcases by Facebook, Salesforce, Unilever Foundry, The Economist, Mondelēz International, Blippar, and Ksubaka.
The brand showcases allowed visitors to interact with innovations and technologies set to unlock new possibilities and frontiers, unearthing greater insight and analytics that will better equip them to tackle challenges from tomorrow’s ever-evolving marketplace.
Feeding the Future by The Economist gave visitors a taste of manmade, sustainable meat, while A Vision of Marketing of Tomorrow and a Plan for Today showcase by Facebook saw visitors order coffees through a chatbot. Salesforce, one of the main sponsors for the summit this year, showcased Salesforce Einstein that helps businesses connect to their customers in a whole new way. Finally, the Unilever Foundry Start-up Street brought together some of the world’s most ambitious startups.
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| Free tacos from The Economist's booth. |
Speaking at the close of the summit, Simon Berger, Founding Partner, Millennial 20/20 said: “It’s great to see that the success of last year’s event has reached a new level this year! The lineup of speakers sponsors and showcases raised the bar this week, and I am already excited for next year’s agenda. The highlights for me this year included the Salesforce closing party and the successful launch of the inaugural Millennial Ones to Watch Awards. I thank all our partners and trendsetting brands and industry innovators that support the summit and I look forward to seeing you all again soon! M20/20 really embraces the new way to do business!”
Highlights from day one included the opening keynote by Chatri Sityodtong, Chairman & CEO of One Championship, who shared how the largest sports media property in Asia, which he built from scratch, answers the painpoints of engaging a younger audience. Personalisation in e-commerce and the revival of brick-and-mortar through curating in-store experiences as discussed by Levi Strauss & Co., Kimberly-Clark, and Criteo were also a hot topic.
Standout sessions from day two included a presentation by pioneers of the sharing economy, Uxin Group, Homeaway, Agoda, and Go-Jek on how to market products they do not own, and what ingredients are essential to define a unique value proposition for their company. A panel in the Food & Beverage track discussed how Accenture, The Coca-Cola Company, and Uber are leading the Asian consumer revolution with their grasp on the region’s demand for personalised services, multiple languages, channel agnosticism, delivering services and solutions that meets Asia’s immediate desires, and its "collective personality".
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| Facebook encouraged visitors to order coffee by chatbot. |
Personalisation was the name of the game in the discussions.
· Fusion of traditional values with innovation needed for the travel and hospitality industry
Speakers in the Travel & Hospitality track deliberated on how there is still a need to accelerate the pace of change and innovation while still holding traditional values that work in reaching out to today’s Millennial traveller. Personalised and bespoke experiences formed the crux of many of the successful case studies shared by speakers.
· Fashion and beauty: it’s all about me!
Fashion and beauty brands and retailers today are being tasked with knowing customers better than they’ve ever known them before, and delivering an experience tailored to them. Personalisation continues to be the key to success in retail. Major brands discussed the demand to blend creativity into experiences that can be rolled out across all consumer touch-points.
· E-commerce of tomorrow to focus on frictionless, “human-first” approach
The hyperconnected consumer of today has more than one way to buy products and services, and to discover and interact with brands. Today’s consumers are also the most tech-savvy to date, expecting seamlessness in omnichannel commerce. Speakers on this track concretised strategies that put the consumer at the forefront, also discussing how best to remove hindrances that could mar the consumer’s overall experience and overall impression of the brand.
· Personalisation key to demand generation in food and beverage industry
With street food, popups and unique food experiences on the up, established brands are facing an uphill task of generating demand for their products. Major players in the food & beverage industry discussed how they can leverage newer technologies to create lasting relationships with consumers.
· Convergence of finance and technology giving rise to the future of banking and money
Speakers of this track converged to discuss the rise of mobile money, cryptocurrencies, and other digital technologies that continue to take banking beyond its physical branch context. Industry veterans also debated on whether physical cash is heading towards extinction, given the sharp rise in mobile wallet payments in the region.
· Decentralised media consumption key to defining marketing and advertising
Marketers and advertisers of today are challenged with engaging technologically-savvy consumers across generations. Future-ready marketers discuss the decentralised approach to marketing to the masses, harnessing new platforms and formats to reach consumers in creative and unique ways. Games, influencers and artificial intelligence (AI) formed some of the positive case studies shared during this session.
· Innovation beyond “brand gimmicks” to define the future of e-commerce
Innovation towards tomorrow’s e-commerce should revolve around the empowerment of communities. Brands need to constantly evolve and adapt to not only avoid losing market share, but to also drive effective consumer experiences and growth. The region’s most innovative companies came together to explore the future of mobility, which sees services going to consumers rather than the other way around, as is traditional.
· AI and bots will be a retail mainstay
With a strong indication that a majority of customer interactions in retail will be managed by AI by 2020, retailers gathered to discuss how best to leverage this technology in meeting the dynamic demands of tomorrow’s consumers. Retailers also discussed how new-age partnerships with non-retail firms may be needed to meet the demands of Millennial consumers.
"The brands and showcases at Millennial 20/20 congregated some of the brightest minds in retail, marketing and commerce. The customer of today is in control of their shopping experience. The holy grail for retailers and marketers is to meet them on their terms," said Simon Tate, APAC Area VVP, Marketing Cloud, Salesforce.
This year’s summit also saw the launch of M20/20 Backstage, a closed area of the summit that hosted brand and retailer roundtables, workshops and lunches. The backstage programme included closed-group discussions on opportunities and challenges facing the industry. Highlights of the programme included:
· The Future of Brands and Retailers: Commerce Marketing hosted by Criteo. In the discussion, brands and retailers discussed the future of technology to shape customers’ expectations, personalisation, retention of a strong voice with consumers and the ingredients to create a vibrant future.
· Data Driven Customer Experience Management hosted by Salesforce. C-suite brands and retailers addressed the fourth industrial revolution.
This year’s summit also supported the Accenture Consumer Technology Awards (ACTA) as well as the launch of the Millennial 20/20 One’s to Watch Awards (MOWA). The MOWA were designed to celebrate the ecosystem catering to consumers. Winners included:
- Mondelez for their China Oreo Music Box Campaign in the Killer Campaign category,
- Ksubaka for Best Retail Solution,
- DBS for Millennial Brand 2017,
- Unilever Foundry & Level 3 for Eco-system Star of the Year and
- Arcadier for Millennial Commerce-Enabler.
The ACTA recognises and rewards early-stage innovators that are pushing the boundaries to better engage with the Millennial consumer in the automotive, consumer goods & services, retail and travel industries. Raincheck, LittleSea, Simgo and ProxToMe walked away with the Millennial Shopper, Millennial Consumer, Millennial Traveller, and Millennial Driver prizes respectively.
Teo Correia, Senior MD, Accenture, noted that the company has been the global title partner of M20/20 since the beginning. He said the event continues to be relevant and lead the way for future business events. "Accenture and M20/20 promote the new way of doing business!’’ he said.
Highlights from the showfloor included:
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| Salesforce had a discussion area set out like a camping ground. |
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| Boxgreen snacks are packaged in snack-sized packs and come packaged in handy boxes which can also act as a display case. |
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| Subscribe to get Boxgreen snacks for the office pantry. |
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| Cafebond for offices offers freshly roasted coffee for office pantries. There are two blends to choose from, Espresso Dark Chocolate & Spice which is full-bodied with low acidity and Filter Caramel & Raisins which has a finish of "rum and raisin, pecan, buttered fruit toast and taffy". Subscriptions begin at S$12 per bag for individuals, and S$34 a kg for offices. |
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| Digimind offers social media and competitive intelligence. Statistics displayed at its booth included the fact that 60% of the 2.3 billion Millennials in the world live in the Asia Pacific region. |
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| Augmented reality is changing the retail experience, says Chris Bell, Commercial Director, APAC, Blippar. |
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| The five keys to enabling digital conversions at scale are deliverability, design, content, contextualisation and globalisation, says Scott Heimes, Send Grid CMO. |
The Millennial 20/20 Summits focus at a unique time in the industry, where brands and retailers are dealing with a more-complex and ever-evolving consumer that requires them to think of innovation, disruption and technology as key components of their future. The event series looks to address this like no other event series has done before through a curated experience of multiple conference stages, immersive and experiential showcases and organised networking experiences.
Each of the regional summits look into the future of next-generation commerce from the perspective of a digitally savvy consumer with a micro-focus on key pillars that include: retail, marketing, mobile, payments, video, social, e-commerce, customer relationship management (CRM), advertising, big data, virtual reality, augmented reality, voice, Blockchain and AI. The multiple conference stages are run with industry specific tracks including retail, e-commerce, marketing & advertising, innovation, travel & hospitality, food & beverage, finance and fashion & beauty.
Explore:
The 2018 Summit will take place again at the ArtScience Museum in Singapore on 3 and 4 October 2018. Email Millennial 20/20 at team at millennial20-20.com to participate in 2018.
Hashtag: #M2020
