2009: A Space Odyssey

For more than a year now, I've admired an unusual vegetable garden in a middle-class St. Louis neighborhood. The owners, Chinese immigrants, have carefully designed the space to house lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers, berries and all varieties of climbing and flowering foliage. What's unusual is that it's all in the front yard -- a space the other neighbors reserve for traditional landscaping. Compared to the austere evergreens on either side, the garden is a beautiful, bountiful, dynamic space that transforms year round. And it reflects the reinterpretations and reappropriations of space I see springing up in the post-digital marketplace.

Retailer emphasis is coming full circle, from brick-and-mortar to digital, and back around to a new blend of virtual and physical experiences.  At last week's fifth annual Forbes CMO Summit, Rishad Tobaccowala, media futurist and chief executive of Denuo observed: "We're now in a post-digital world...People are analog."  He went on to say that engagement will mean marketers -- even Web-based outfits and technology companies -- will need to deliver memorable, real-world experiences and events to their consumers, as Apple does with its stores. For some retail and service brands, reconsidering how they use physical space is a step in that direction.

Looking around more intently over the past week, I've seen evidence of brands reimagining space and story:

Not-so-super Walmart

The Bentonville giant reduced the average size of its supercenters from 180,000 to 150,000 square feet over the past year and promises "that number will continue to come down." Interesting that Walmart, long associated with crushing the neighborhood store, may soon be offering their interpretation. How will a reset of the company's "bigger is better" mantra influence brand meaning?

Holiday Pop-ups

Toys "R" Us, American Eagle and others are hoping pop-up stores provide extra traction this holiday season.  The locations reach high foot-traffic areas without the expensive real estate costs associated with a permanent store.  This "market stand" approach is smaller and nimbler, giving big-name retailers a chance to evolve their brand and consumer perceptions.

Taking Consumers Hostage

Swedish womens' wear designer Ann-Sofie Back opened "hostage store" -- a fascinating test of pop-up storytelling and case study for post-digital retail experience. According to NY Times Style blog, "a mysterious group of fashion fundamentalists dressed up as shabby facsimiles of Anna Wintour...released a four-part series of YouTube videos of themselves kidnapping and terrorizing Back...each segment declared that the designer would be held hostage until she stops committing her crimes against fashion, evidence of which would be on exhibit for four months in a temporary 2,800-square-foot 'hostage store.'" Back added additional layers to the story by building out the temporary location just a Molotov cocktail's throw away from the site of the original Stockholm Syndrome hostage drama, borrowing meaning from its location instead of simply manufacturing it.

While these efforts point in the right direction, the opportunities to interpret space and story in a post-digital marketplace are far greater and more complex. Interesting models can be found in unexpected places: the give and take between nature and industrial structures at New York City's Highline development; Tokyo's micro rice farm growing from a formerly empty lot in the bustling Ginza district; and Urs Fischer's brilliant exploration of space at the The New Museum, to name a few.

A favorite, however, comes from Turkish Nobel Laureate, Orhan Pamuk.  Long before he began writing Museum of Innocence, Pamuk collected the objects his future novel's protagonist would also save.  Now Pamuk is planning to open a real Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, making the fictionalized collectibles available for fans to experience in new ways.

In all four instances, the developers, artists and authors use physical space to tell layered stories that don't just serve an economic means to an end.  They remind us of cultural differences and social evolution, the scarcity of space and the power of personal, "tangible" experiences.  Pushing the boundaries of how we use space, interact with it, and treasure it requires learning from our shared history and planning how we can use space and technology to enhance physical experience.  Brands can play a major role in this odyssey if they wish.

I hope they will.