What a privilege it was to speak at the Salesforce Retail and Consumer Goods Industries Summit in Melbourne. And what an incredible experience it was to visit Australia after all this time.

My plan was to deliver a keynote that explored retail and customer trends transforming the new future landscape for brick-and-mortar, online, and hybrid shopping innovation. At the last minute, I changed my mind to instead focus on the challenges and opportunities facing executives in the room.

Over the last two-to-three years in particular, everyone operated at break-neck speeds to digitize and modernize customer touchpoints and journeys and every system and process that supported them. Now they're tasked with reimagining retail for a digital-first/hybrid world. And they're likely just getting started for what should be a long-term overhaul of retail itself.

Instead of a deck, I wrote a letter to those change agents, innovators, and optimists tasked with building this new future. This moment was for them.

I'd like to share this letter with you as it applies to anyone who believes that the future doesn't have to just be normal, it can be exceptional. This letter, if you strip out references to retail, applies to just about any industry, any market, where innovation will create a better experience, and greater opportunities, for everyone.

This was for them. And it's also for you...

Dear new friends and old friends,

When you think about the future of retail, what comes to mind? Robots roaming the aisles, metaverse, virtual reality, holograms, 3d printing, edge personalization, web3? 

Yes, it’s all those things in varying forms at varying times. 

But it’s also very human. 

It’s about trust.

It's about...

• Sustainability and values
• Community and relationships
• Peer-to-peer influence
• Data, insights, personalization
• Integrated and innovative experiences and connections
• Storytelling
• Immersion
• And most importantly, getting back to basics

It’s all about using digital to be more human and to unlock more meaningful experiences, in store, online or in hybrid applications

That’s what’s at the heart of retail innovation…it’s about people and designing experiences that enhance outcomes foster more meaningful relationships. 

To grow opportunities not just adapt analog or pre-disruption processes in this new world. 

If you’re here today, you endured incredible, unpredictable, and never before seen disruption. You led the greatest retail acceleration and transformation we’ve ever seen. And yet some c-suites, boards, and shareholders still don’t understand the importance of what you do and its role in shaping the future of retail

Take a moment to think about how much you’ve already done. Now think about how much you can and will do. 

I want you to think about this. Digital’s role in the future of retail is largely untapped. Since the rise of the consumer internet and e-commerce in the 1990s, we’re still building on industrial-era retail designs and models and yet technology and customers are evolving faster than ever. 

It’s time to reimagine retail for a digital-first world. It’s time to raise the importance of digital in the back of store, front of store, online, in app, in the supply chain, throughout the entire ecosystem, in the C-Suite, and most importantly, for customers and our employees and associates. 

This is how we scale, increase margins, eliminate the obsolete, and drive growth.

This is how we enchant customers, foster relationships, and deeper loyalty.

That takes vision and leadership.

You are the change agents and you are, each in your own way, the architects of the future.

Please give yourself a round of applause for all you’ve done and all you will do.

Your fan and supporter, 

Brian

p.s. it was indeed a real letter.