Let’s get Phygital…

Jill Dow

CEO

No, we didn’t fall asleep on the keyboard. Phygital is a real word. And a real marketing opportunity.

Quite simply, Phygital is the merging of physical and digital marketing. Phygital brings together physical strategies with digital applications to create seamless, complementary experiences in both worlds.

Which makes a lot of sense. Because if your brand personality is different online from your personality in the physical world, your customers will be as confused by your brand. 

Here are some statistics we found on how consumers interact digitally and physically.

• 63% of shopping begins online, but 49% of people still prefer shopping in physical stores.
• 82% will browse on mobile even while they’re in a physical store, looking for reviews or deals even before speaking with a sales associate.
• And offline spending that’s been influenced by a mobile experience has exceeded $1 trillion.

Interesting, right? Now you can see how important it is to share the same brand voice and carry over the same experience from online to in-store. 

At York & Chapel, we’ve been making things Phygital for years. 

To help launch Nikon’s AW1 Sports Camera, we launched a digital adventure drive. Inviting camera enthusiasts to enter our AWdventure contest with the most captivating picture winning a trip to Chile. Together with our retailers, we snapped up 161,000 entries, 6,000 tweets, and 28,450 leads. Leads that Nikon retailers turned into in-store trials.

For Culturelle, we turned Phygital into a force for good. Working together with the leading probiotic brand in the US, we created the “Be good Inside” campaign. Asking consumers how they support their well-being while doing good for others.

Then we transformed these positive digital messages into physical acts of kindness. Each submission in the digital space was converted into a meal donation to the World Food Program USA. The winner of the “Be Good Inside” sweepstakes was even awarded a volunteer vacation. That felt pretty amazing.

If you’re wondering how one of the world’s biggest brands is doing Phygital, we can’t think of a better example than Nike. 

The new flagship Nike store on the corner of Fifth Avenue in New York City is a colossal 68,000 square foot workout wonderland. It’s also packed with brand-new customer experiences and spaces that are personal, responsive, and customizable.

“Imagine the website, live,” John Hoke, Nike’s Chief Design Officer, calls it. “The future of retail is going to be less fixed, more fluid, and hyper-responsive to consumer trends and needs.” The Nike app and Nike Plus allow customers to interact with the store, bringing the physical and digital worlds together.

If you’d like to find out more about making your brand more fluid and more interactive between physical and digital, we’d love to talk to you. 

Or, if you’d just like an opinion on what color Nike Alphaflys you should buy, we’re here for that too.