Digital darwinism

The 10th annual Critical Issues Conference, staged by the Society for Foodservice Management and held last this week at JP Morgan Chase in midtown Manhattan, scored a winner with this year’s theme: “Technologies of Today, Trends of Tomorrow.” The four-hour seminar focused on how technology is, and could be, changing the foodservice industry, a subject that every segment of this business should be examining.

The speakers included Bill Geary, manager of retail and education industries for Fujitsu Biometric Solutions, who talked about palm scanning and how it can work in retail operations. He was joined by Art Dunham, director of foodservice for Pinellas County Schools, Tampa, Fla., whose program uses palm scanning to ID students as they go through the cafeteria line, and Bob Gottlieb, director of sales for VE South, which has created vending machines that disburse reimbursable meals to students in the same school district.

Stefan Saroiu, Ph.D., a researcher in the Mobile Computing Research Center at Microsoft, talked about the possibility of facial recognition software as a means to ID customers and allow them to pay for products without using cash or a card swipe.

Scott Snyder, Ph.D., chief strategy officer for Mobiquity spoke on social networking from mobile platforms and how this burgeoning trend can restructure the retail and foodservice industries.

Those presentations were, in and of themselves, fascinating looks at the technological possibilities available to operators. But the conference was made all the stronger by the setup, which came from Danna Vetter, vice president of consumer strategies for Aramark.

Vetter’s presentation made three points that, I believe, every operator needs to understand and embrace if they are going to continue to succeed in today’s world. The first is that consumers’ decision-making processes have changed, because consumers themselves have changed. Their reliance on computer technology and social networking has allowed digital technology to become the driver in how customers make their buying decisions.

As a result, Vetter said, marketers and operators must react to this change by understanding the latest technology and examining how they can best use it. Finally, they must learn to “engage the customer,” because knowledge plus engagement will equal a competitive advantage.

Necessary as it may be, it will not be easy, she pointed out.

“In 476 B.C., a noted philosopher said, “The only constant in the world is change,’” Vetter noted. ‘The biggest change today is the speed at which change in occurring. Technology has hyper-accelerated our changing world.”

Twenty years ago, she continued, the primary customer was the traditional consumer. Brands reached out to them through stores, product sampling, print and broadcast media, direct-mail pieces and call centers.

Ten years ago, the primary target of companies was what she termed the “tradigital” consumer. The ways to reach these people were through their desktops and laptops: e-commerce, banner ads on newsletters, email, podcasting and Web 2.0.

Today, the typical customer is the “connected consumer,” and the way to reach them is through their smart devices, digital signage, social networking sites, location-based services and mobile media.

Addressing the issue of how quickly the advertising world has changed, Vetter explained, “An advertisement in 2003 seen by one person would touch six people within a week. An advertisement in 2010 seen by one person would reach 130 people in seconds. Marketers who are not on Facebook lose 30 minutes of [potential contact] time per day.”

She also noted that social networking and the speed of Internet technology have rendered most news stories “dead” within three and a half hours.

“Connected consumers are in control,” she said, “not the marketers. And they want some measure of control over the development and the marketing of products.”

This is particularly true of 20-somethings, whom Vetter referred to as “digital natives” and Generation C. She noted that these customers flit back and forth among a host of social media sites and platforms 27 times per hour, on average. It will only get worse, she added: “By 2014 more people will access the Internet with mobile devices than with laptops or desktops.”

Pointing out that these are the people seen in classrooms and meetings glued to their devices while listening to presentations and tweeting, blogging and status updating about their experiences, she said, “You are now marketing to an audience with an audience of audiences.”
Why should this matter to foodservice operators? Vetter summed it up in two words: “Digital Darwinism.”

“Generation C will form 75% of the workforce by 2025,” she predicted. “If we don’t understand them or know how to connect with them, we are going to be in trouble.”

Vetter’s message is extremely important to operators in all market segments. It’s also very frightening, because the pace at which technology is changing means that operators who have not begun to make use of social media and the latest computer technology in their businesses are already dangerously behind the curve.

At CSP Information Group, we are doing our best to keep up with and make the best use of technology to benefit our readers. Yet, even on our sharpest days, too often I am reminded of an old Pennsylvania Dutch saying, “The faster I go, the behinder I get.”

Danna Vetter is right. Technologically we are traveling at hyper-speed. For better or worse, it is the only speed that will keep us riding that wave of progress. As Bette Davis once famously said in "All About Eve", “Buckle your seat belt. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”