The first Retail Mashup podcast episode had a great response. DeAnn and I decided to build on the discussion with Part 2 focusing on how music artists, entertainers and other brands can prolong engagement with fun pop-up experiences.
Table of Content
You can find this podcast episode on Spotify, Apple Podcast, iHeartMedia, and Anchor.
Introduction – Pop-Up Redux
Since our first episode went live, listeners asked about other pop-up retail ideas for music artists, entertainers, and other brands. This episode uses Harry Styles as a case study to explore what he could do for single releases. Additionally, we extend the discussion to cosmetics, and sports.
Transcript
Section 1 – Episode 1 Summarized
Welcome to Retail Mashup with Larry and DeAnn. And I’m DeAnn. I’m Larry. We just wanted to follow up. We were enjoying our last conversation so much. We wanted to follow up with a part two talking about the intersection of music, popups, retail, and customer experience. It’s four roads coming together and what that looks like as far as the industry goes.
Larry, you were saying some pretty interesting things about the Harry Styles pop-up that was in Toronto recently. So after our conversation, we talked behind the scenes and we were talking about what are the possibilities. Yeah. For Harry Styles. Should there only be one popup or should there be a popup for the entire length of the album release?
Section 2 – Harry Styles and Late Night Talking Ideas
He’s likely going to release three to four songs worldwide, and maybe each song should have its own experience that can be tied into merchandise. We were inspired a little bit by Lego sets. Harry Potter continues to be featured in Lego sets worldwide even though there hasn’t been a new movie specifically tied to Harry Potter for a long time. So why not have Lego sets featuring, different tracks that’s pushed as singles. So that fans could have limited addition Lego sets on specific items featured in the single’s release.
That could be a lot of fun. The second single is called Late Night Talking. Late night talking could mean that you need to be in a comfortable place. Maybe in your pajamas. Maybe you need a phone. Maybe you need food. So why not have a partnership?
If you go to the pop-up store, you can buy everything you need. Maybe even partner with say Uber Eats and have that Harry Styles package so that you can just buy it off and have a lot of fun with it. What do you think? I love that idea.
Section 3 – Retailer Involvement and Fanbase Activation
Or even have coupons with local restaurants to help promote sharing food and then connect fans with other fans to share that food remotely through a Zoom call.
Perhaps. You both enjoy the same kind of music and really promote that fan base by connecting people on shared loves of the same kinds of music. You could have a Zoom group meet for the late-night song, and they could have certain types of food.
Everybody has to bring sushi to the call or something like that. And then have a different call for a different track and have a different experience that goes along with it, with all of the accouterments that you can purchase, use, or bring that really enhance that experience to the max and make it very immersive.
Yeah, we thought that this could be a great idea because as songs can be streamed everywhere in the world now. There is less of an importance to actually release singles. And so all the singles could be a mini-event in itself if the artist thought about ways to do it and tie that back into retail.
And I’ve been wondering about that. Why not do it in a prolonged basis? People continue to have different types of experiences around the singles release and go back to the times when you actually lined up to get the single ahead of the album.
Section 4 – Macy’s and Beyoncé
And why can’t retailers maybe leverage some of that benefit by creating temporary experiences inside of their stores. Macy’s is looking for ways to connect to younger consumers. So connect bring some of that Harry Styles or we were talking about Beyoncé as well. Bring that experience into the store in a small way on a temporary basis and really plus up the engagement and interaction between the people who love the music, the fan base, and the musician itself, and then also the consumer and the products that really plus up that experience.
It would be very interesting to see what Beyonce’s team is going to do, whether or not everything will be just strictly online and then buying that one package that I talked about. Or would she be at a club or be featured in a club for a prolonged basis. If it’s house music, it would be great to have a club name after her.
And only playing her album at specific locations. That would be a really cool idea that I think fans would love to join. 2,500 people, 3000 people in the mega club where it’s gonna be a Beyonce dance party. I think that would be amazing.
Section 5 – Kylie Jenner And Sports
I think so too. Kylie Jenner, when she launched her makeup line, had opened a popup to huge fanfare and huge lineups.
Everybody treated it like an album experience almost with or the announcement of a big tour. This pop-up around her new makeup line. So why would that not play into musicianship and even into sports teams as well? I know we’ve talked about sports team experiences as popups in the past.
We have, especially, when there is such a long off-season, you actually want people to start thinking about the new season by introducing the players, introducing what may be new rules. If there are new rules and maybe something is different in the stadium you and I wouldn’t know about it, but if we are given a tour about the changes in the new stadium, I think people would go for that.
It’s really funny. I’m a huge hockey fan. I moved to Atlanta, Georgia a few years ago, and they don’t have a hockey team, unfortunately. So we try to go to the closest game to us as often as possible, which is Nashville. And we love the Predators, my husband and I. But the tickets are unbelievably expensive.
Unless you sit in. The nosebleed seats, tickets are gonna run you, 60, 70, 80, even a hundred or more dollars per person. And that’s a significant investment if you are a family with three or four children and you all wanna go to the game, that’s not even including the cost of snacks.
It’s really creating this difference in sports between the fans who truly love the game and are relegated to the cheap seats and the people who can afford the really good seats, who may still be fans, but they’re not as likely to purchase the merchandise, to wear the shirts, to buy the sponsor products, things like that.
And so it’s interesting to me how at the live, at the game, that split is starting to happen. And I think that popups in retail could really be an important bridge to close that gap a little bit, to keep the fire burning on these fans by giving them a chance to engage with their sports team, to learn about it, to buy merchandise to be around other fans and get all excited, even if they can’t afford those hundred or $200 seats in the stadium.
And that’s not even including the beer. Don’t get me started on beer prices, sports stadiums. But and it’s something that I have seen attempted recently, but it is not something that’s really common or thought of a lot in the industry as yet.
Section 6 – Conclusion
Maybe it’s because they haven’t heard it from us, and now that they have, then they jump and ask us what to do next. Yeah. And it’s a perfect time. Retail pop-ups are really hot. They’re easy to implement quickly. They have very fast results, fast payback, and they accomplish so many things.
And currently, too, there’s a just a huge amount of small awkward spaces that don’t quite work for a full permanent retail store but are absolutely brilliant for a pop-up store or a way to get closer into the community for a temporary period of time. So it’s great.
can’t wait to talk more about what to do with malls because there is definitely a surplus number of malls in North America, and a lot of them are asking what should we do.
Maybe that would be our future episode. I think it should. I am very passionate about shopping mall and I have a lot of opinions, so I’m excited to get to that show. Can wait until next time. Okay. Bye bye.
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