In Clear Focus

In Clear Focus: Many physical retail developments are failing to attract the crowds required to be sustainable, impacted by both online shopping and changing consumer behaviors. This month's Bigeye Book Club selection, Future-Ready Retail, examines how brands can develop winning strategies to create engaging stories that recruit and retain customers. The book's author, Ibrahim Ibrahim, is a futurist, retail strategist, and designer. In this episode, Ibrahim discusses key ideas in his book.

In Clear Focus: In this encore, our guest is a successful business leader with international experience. Voted Number One Woman in Tech, Dr. Christine Bailey joined us to discuss topics from her book, Customer Insight Strategies. Christine provided a practical framework for leveraging four types of data to help make marketing more remarkable, with case studies drawn from B2B and B2C brands. Christine offered advice for women working in martech, and explains why we all need to feed our brains!

In Clear Focus: Bigeye recently released ENVISION 2022, an on-demand video exploring key findings from our report, Retail Disrupted. This week's podcast is an extended interview with ENVISION guest Doug Stephens, a retail futurist, author, and CEO of Retail Prophet. During our interview, Doug shared his thoughts on luxury retail's resilience among Asian consumers, Amazon's experiments with physical store concepts, and social and sustainability issues around retailing in the metaverse.

In Clear Focus: Rebecca Brooker is the co-founder of Queer Design Club, an organization celebrating work that happens at the intersection of queer identity and design worldwide. Rebecca talks about growing up queer in Trinidad, the difficulties she faced with her US work visa, and the circumstances that inspired her to co-found Queer Design Club. We discuss some of the results of the second Queer Design Count and learn what attendees of the first-ever Queer Design Summit on July 7 can expect.

In Clear Focus: Celebrating Pride month, our guest is Graham Nolan, the co-founder of Do The WeRQ, an organization on a mission to increase queer creativity, representation, and share of voice within the advertising industry. Graham identifies some of the Pride campaigns that have caught his eye this month and reflects on why rainbow-washing seems less prevalent this year. We also discuss some of the greatest challenges faced by people identifying as LGBTQIA+ working in the industry. 

In Clear Focus: Our guest is Mike Stevens, the author of The Direct To Consumer Playbook: The stories and strategies of the brands that wrote the DTC rules, this month's Bigeye Book Club selection. Reflecting stories from the founders of Tails.com, Huel, and Casper, Mike shares valuable insights about what works in the DTC space today. IN CLEAR FOCUS listeners can claim a 20 percent discount on The Direct To Consumer Playbook at KoganPage.com by using the promo code BIGEYE20 at checkout.

In Clear Focus: Our guest is Jerry Daykin, an internationally recognized expert in inclusive marketing. Reflecting on his personal experiences as a gay man, Jerry speaks to the business benefits of representing marginalized groups of consumers and discusses how brands should approach activations during Pride Month. In Clear Focus listeners can claim a 20 percent discount when pre-ordering Jerry's new book, Inclusive Marketing, at KoganPage.com, by using the promo code BIGEYE20 at the checkout.

In Clear Focus: Bigeye recently released ENVISION 2022, an on-demand video exploring key findings from our report, Retail Disrupted. This week's podcast is an extended interview with ENVISION guest Andy Sheldon, founder of the direct-to-consumer consultancy Think Straighter. During our interview, Andy shared insights from his tenure as Chief Creative Officer at Home Shopping Network and discussed where he sees untapped opportunities for DTC brands to leverage social livestream shopping.

The LGBTQ economy is changing advertising, and provides many creators with a viable alternative to traditional employment. Guest Nick Wolny is a prolific writer and the founder of Camp Wordsmith, a business and writing incubator for entrepreneurs. Nick offers advice for anyone considering becoming an independent creator, and explains the LGBTQ economy is pushing the importance of values and ethics within brands. Nick also shares his views on artificial intelligence-based writing tools.

In Clear Focus: Bigeye recently released ENVISION 2022, an on-demand video exploring key findings from our report, Retail Disrupted. This week's podcast is an extended interview with ENVISION guest Ingrid Milman-Cordy, who leads digital marketing and e-commerce for Seattle-based Nuun Hydration. During our interview, Ingrid shared surprising insights about channel strategy, Nuun's e-commerce tech stack, and why she believes the metaverse and Web3 offer brand marketers exciting opportunities.