Marketing a Smoke-Free Future by David Pringmill

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Phillip Morris Industries (PMI) has invested over 4.5 billion USD in the development of its new products. More than 5 million adult smokers have switched to IQOS from cigarettes. The company currently has two applications pending with the FDA regarding the sale of IQOS and what the company characterizes as modified risk properties.

Mary Cochran, co-founder of Launching Labs Marketing, told DMN that the company also has to overcome the perception of distrust.

https://www.dmnews.com/marketing-a-smokefree-future/

 

Marketing a Smoke-Free Future

Philip Morris International became the world’s leading tobacco brand by selling…well, cigarettes. Now it’s planning on a smoke-free future

David Pring-Mill
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If you’re a LinkedIn user, you may have been surprised to see a recent anti-cigarette ad — paid for by Philip Morris International. The tobacco company is promoting a self-proclaimed “manifesto” online declaring their commitment to a smoke-free future. The company sees itself “replacing cigarettes with a portfolio of revolutionary products.” The manifesto notes that the company’s success has given it the resources to pursue a new vision, and to meet an ethical responsibility. It states, “Society expects us to act responsibly. And we are doing just that by designing a smoke-free future.”

Industry trends are changing, but some consumers are reluctant to adopt new products, such as “alternative devices” and e-cigarettes. Additionally, health risks remain. A study published in the journal Pedriatics noted that the presence of harmful ingredients in e-cigarette vapor has been established. The study concluded, “Our findings can be used to challenge the idea that e-cigarette vapor is safe, because many of the volatile organic compounds we identified are carcinogenic.”

PMI is promoting a device called IQOS, which heats tobacco without combustion, fire, ash, or smoke. Although news outlets have erroneously referred to IQOS as an acronym, the name is simply intended to convey the impression of new technology and a new product category. The company says that the product reduces the level of harmful chemicals because the tobacco is heated, not combusted. The difference between IQOS and e-cigarettes is that IQOS produces vapor by heating actual tobacco, while e-cigarettes convert a liquid solution containing nicotine into a vapor.

Reporting in other news outlets suggested that PMI could take IQOS data about smoking behavior, such as numbers of puffs, and use it to optimize marketing, and to fine tune devices. Corey Henry, a media relations manager at Philip Morris International, told DMN, “We do not use data for marketing purposes.”

The company says that it uses device data to address warranty claims and better understand how a device may have malfunctioned. “And we do that download with the permission of the consumer, under the terms of the warranty that they would sign at the time of device registration and purchase,” said Henry.

Although the IQOS product is considered to be smoke-free, it does release a flavorful nicotine-containing vapor. Scientific studies have found that nicotine is a highly addictive substance, which negatively affects brain development.

“IQOS is for adult smokers who want to continue enjoying tobacco products but are looking for an alternative to conventional cigarettes. Now obviously nicotine is a big part of why people smoke,” said Henry, explaining that IQOS is marketed as a transitional product.

“Nicotine is a naturally occurring substance in tobacco. People smoke for the nicotine. They are often looking for an alternative way to continue using nicotine. So, some people will switch to, let’s say, an e-vapor product that you’re probably familiar with. Others aren’t able to make that switch to an e-vapor product because it doesn’t provide them with the same level of, you know, ritual satisfaction, experience,” said Henry.

He added, “And also to be clear, IQOS is not an alternative to quitting nicotine altogether. It’s an alternative for people who want to use a different type of nicotine product. You know, the best choice for a consumer who’s concerned about the health risks of smoking is to quit using tobacco altogether.”

According to PMI, when consumers walk into IQOS stores, they are asked if they are current, former, or non-smokers. Former or non-smokers are actively discouraged from buying the IQOS product.

“From our company perspective, our goal is to convert every adult smoker who would otherwise continue to smoke cigarettes to our smoke-free products such as IQOS,” said Henry.

When asked if the online manifesto is intended to combat negative PR from the past, Henry explained, “It’s really all about a recognition of where consumers are right now.”

The company is attempting to meet a consumer demand and expectation for alternatives to conventional cigarettes. As part of this shift in business strategy, the company must first raise awareness about their new heat-not-burn product. “You need to explain that to a consumer. And then you need to get them used to a slightly different ritual and a slightly different experience,” said Henry.

Henry said that although IQOS aims to deliver nicotine in a fashion that is similar to a conventional cigarette, with comparable flavor, taste and aroma, it is different. It also requires users to actively charge and clean an electronic device. He said that if an adult smoker tries IQOS and stays with it for two weeks, then they are very unlikely to go back to smoking conventional cigarettes. The product is on the market in about forty countries and is most popular in Japan, where IQOS is close to 16% market share of the tobacco category as of Q1 2018.

PMI has invested over 4.5 billion USD in the development of its new products. More than 5 million adult smokers have switched to IQOS from cigarettes. The company currently has two applications pending with the FDA regarding the sale of IQOS and what the company characterizes as modified risk properties.

Mary Cochran, co-founder of Launching Labs Marketing, told DMN that the company also has to overcome the perception of distrust.

“PMI has an uphill battle of changing a core belief that they tried to hurt their customers,” she commented. “The soda industry is having a hard time with this too, right now, with regard to dealing with the perception of empty calories. People in the U.S. have the right to do something bad for themselves, if they want to, as long as it’s not hurting others, but overcoming the perception of distrust is going to be tough for PMI.”

Marketers’ Favorite Social Media Tools

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On average, content marketers use 17 tools to help them do their job. And with more than 5,000 tools available, it can be overwhelming to know what tool is the best for your team and your marketing goals.

When it comes to social media, the right tools can make a huge difference in the time saved, analytics uncovered, audience engagement and much more.

https://www.brandpoint.com/blog/marketers-favorite-social-media-tools/

 

“I prefer keeping my followers clean rather than having millions of followers that don’t match my subject matter. So I use ManageFlitter to review my Twitter followers and delete those that are irrelevant. It allows you to manage your followers, easily remove accounts that don’t follow you back, aren’t relevant or don’t have photos. The paid versions have sharing, content searching and easy following. ”

-Mary Cochran, Co-founder, Launching Labs Marketing

 

Marketers’ Favorite Social Media Tools

 

On average, content marketers use 17 tools to help them do their job. And with more than 5,000 tools available, it can be overwhelming to know what tool is the best for your team and your marketing goals.

When it comes to social media, the right tools can make a huge difference in the time saved, analytics uncovered, audience engagement and much more.

We asked marketers to tell us about their favorite social media management tools. Their answers were surprisingly all over the board with hardly any repeated platforms, proving every marketer’s needs and goals are different. While some may need to use design tools to assist with their visuals, others need more streamlined ways to chat with their customers.

Here are the social media tools that marketers love the most, organized by category. Are there any that can help you meet your social media goals?

Posting and scheduling
Platform management
Audience development and engagement
Promotion and influencer engagement
Design and visuals

[RELATED: Top Social Media Monitoring Tools]

Posting and scheduling

Loomly

“Loomly allows me to schedule posts in advance across multiple platforms and has one of the most user-friendly interfaces I’ve seen in a social media management tool. The calendar view is probably my favorite feature because I can easily see my posts for the entire month! The advanced analytics features on Loomly also allow me to create more comprehensive progress reports for my clients. All my visual content is saved for future use, and I can also create post templates for evergreen content.”

-Jackie Kossoff, Social Media Consultant, jackiekossoff.com

Meet Edgar

“Meet Edgar allows you to create a carousel of prescripted social posts and set a publish schedule. When you reach the end of your scheduled posts, it goes back to the beginning and starts over.

It’s best used for your evergreen content: blog posts and images that you can continually share with your audience because they have value for many years. Meet Edgar allows me to maintain an active social media account without constant work or attention. It is truly a lifesaver!”

-Allen Michael, Founder & Editor, TheStickVacuums.com

Missinglettr

“Social media tools are dull. Take a link, share it on a schedule, return analytics on engagement. Helpful? Sure. But boring. More so, they don’t do the one thing business owners and marketing professionals desperately want: To create a relevant, unique and tailored social media campaign based on their content — automatically.

Missinglettr does just that.

Give Missinglettr a link to your content, and it will automatically pull out relevant quotes and photos. From there, it generates a 365-day social media promotion campaign complete with text, hashtags, auto-generated ‘quote bubble’ images and links back to your post. Review and approve this campaign at your leisure and let Missinglettr do the work over the next year for you!”

-Michael Mehlberg, Co-founder, Modern da Vinci

PostBeyond

“PostBeyond is a wonderful social media tool to get employees sharing content to their personal networks. As the admin, I push relevant content into the platform where staff can see and share it with one click. We’ve all heard that people are more likely to trust a person than a brand, so this tool is great for that.”

-Chandler Larson, Social Media Specialist, MentorMate

SocialFlow

“SocialFlow may not be one of the most known platforms, but it packs a powerful social media marketing punch. One of my favorite features is the ability to utilize the platform’s algorithms to post my branded messages across multiple social channels at the most opportune times for maximum reach, engagement, and conversion rate.”

-Stephen Seifert, Marketing Director, Your Doctors Online

Tailwind

“Tailwind is a big time saver for Instagram and Pinterest. It allows me to grab pins or images from the web using their handy Chrome plugin.

For pins, hit the Tailwind icon, choose your boards and schedule them. I noticed a drastic increase in site traffic when I increased my daily pins from 10 to 30. But scheduling through Tailwind took the same amount of time as doing it manually.

For Instagram images, you hit the icon, write your message and you’re done. You can even pre-define hashtag groups to add in. They make it so easy!

Plus, there’s an app to go with it. You can discover new pins, schedule images and more right from your phone.”

-Rebecca Bertoldi, Account Director, Meehan Digital

Platform management

IFTTT

“IFTTT is an integration tool that allows you to connect various applications to work seamlessly together. Nothing else comes close to the number of tasks you can do or apps you can integrate. For example, if you’re managing a bunch of social media accounts, you can easily set up functions that automate content posting and management for most available platforms. (E.g. you can set up a function that logs all your Twitter or Instagram posts into a spreadsheet for easier management OR you can set up a function that automatically reposts Instagram images as native posts on Twitter.)

In a nutshell, if you can think of it, IFTTT can do it. Best part is that people are constantly sharing recipes for different functions on IFTTT’s website and various marketing communities, so you rarely have to figure things out for yourself. It might take a little getting used to, but once you’ve got the ball rolling with IFTTT, you won’t know how you survived without it!”

-Pierre de Braux, Content Strategist, Spiralytics Inc.

Jarvee

“The social media tool I think is the most underrated is Jarvee. It supports Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr and Youtube in one tool. You can also manage multiple accounts on each platform, which is often a much more expensive offering from the more well-known social tools available.

My favorite feature is the simplicity of adding RSS feeds to the system so I can greatly speed up my workflow when I want to share the best content from my favorite sources.

The only thing to keep in mind with Jarvee is that you have to install it on your own virtual private server or run it from your own computer, so it cannot be accessed from the cloud.”

-David Alexander, Digital Marketer, Mazepress

Quuu

“We operate in an era where a company’s content isn’t enough for a healthy social media presence. There’s an additional art of content curation. However, scoping the internet for helpful articles that align with industry standards AND your company’s values could take an entire day’s work. Quuu helps by giving a select number of suggestions from around the web that would align with our content curation goals. I can then link our Quuu recommendations to our Buffer account and get the autoposting sorted.

If at any time the Quuu suggestions don’t reflect our brand, I can go back into Quuu and easily change the keywords Quuu uses for picking out content pieces. Quuu and other services have helped us not only build our brand value but also connect with other content creators within our industry.”

-Shelby Rogers, Content Marketing Strategist, Solodev

Audience development and engagement

Chatfuel

“It’s difficult running a Facebook page with the big drop in reach and engagement due to the algorithm changes, so using a chat bot is one solution. One of the better chat bots for Facebook Messenger that I’ve tested is Chatfuel, which allows me to create a bot without any coding. The bot welcomes people that try to get in touch with me either on my Facebook page or on my site, answers simple questions automatically and allows me to build my Messenger audience list so I can contact these people through Messenger in the future.”

-Marko Saric, Freelance Marketing Consultant, HowToMakeMyBlog.com

Crowdfire

“My favorite social media tool is Crowdfire (see my Crowdfire review here). I primarily use it to build my Twitter following and keep my social content flowing, and it does a great job. I can quickly find people tweeting about the kind of topics I’m involved in and gain followers who will actually engage with me, rather than just playing a mindless ‘numbers game.’ I only need to use it for a few minutes per day to keep everything on a steady incline.”

-Ben Taylor, Founder, HomeWorkingClub.com

Followerwonk by Moz

“For me, Followerwonk is one of the best social media tools out there because of how powerful it can be when used in tandem with other tools and methods. In a previous role, I managed the social media for a golf tournament that was held in the West Midlands. So it’s pretty clear who the target market was — people in the West Midlands that like golf. Using Followerwonk, I found people whose bio and location matched that and then followed them from the tournament’s account.

I then used Crowdfire to send automatic DMs to those who followed back, letting them know they could apply for free tickets. This was a really effective way of generating local buzz for an event, but similar steps can be taken for almost any business type to find people worth connecting with.”

-Izaak Crook, Digital Marketing Executive, AppInstitute

Full Contact API

“Full Contact API will turn customer and lead email addresses into social profile data, allowing us to quickly find their Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn handles for easy outreach. This has helped our follower growth, but has really helped our engagement.”

-Curtis Boyd, Director of Operations, Future Solutions Media

ManageFlitter

“I prefer keeping my followers clean rather than having millions of followers that don’t match my subject matter. So I use ManageFlitter to review my Twitter followers and delete those that are irrelevant. It allows you to manage your followers, easily remove accounts that don’t follow you back, aren’t relevant or don’t have photos. The paid versions have sharing, content searching and easy following. ”

-Mary Cochran, Co-founder, Launching Labs Marketing

ManyChat

“My favorite social media tool is ManyChat. This allows you to grow a Facebook messenger contact list for your brand and to automate it with answers using a messenger bot. I believe Facebook Messenger marketing will be a big part of the future of online marketing and growing a list now is critical. With ManyChat, we get close to an 80 percent open rate on our broadcasts to our list with only 20 percent on our traditional email list.”

-Ryan O’Connor, Co-founder, One Tribe Apparel

Objection Co

Objection Co reads our customers’ bad reviews and automatically formulates a review removal strategy. My favorite part is the notifications it sends that include instructions on how to remove the review that was just published.

-Curtis Boyd, Director of Operations, Future Solutions Media

Promotion and Influencer engagement

Easy Promos

“With Easy Promos, I can create contests directly on various channels including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. They offer great templates and they adapt depending on the brand I am working with.

I can keep all contest rules within the platform and link it to any of my campaigns as well as randomly be able to pick the winners and have a Certificate of Validity to share (this is very important in larger markets where my reach is in the 100,000’s).

I can also adapt these campaigns depending on the language spoken in a particular market, may that be Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German or English.

-Renata Sandor, Marketing Specialist, Netquest

GaggleAMP

“I love GaggleAMP, a social media amplification tool we use for our monthly new product showcase events. GaggleAMP allows us to drive between 2.6 and 3 million views per month. Every month our Mass Innovation Nights (MIN) events help launch at least 10 new products in the Boston market. In nine years, our crowd promoting model has contributed to social media visibility for more than 1,000 products. Almost 400 community members have signed up to be a part of our ‘Gaggle,’ helping to spread the word about local startups and their new products. I love that both sides of the equation win when you use GaggleAMP. We get increased visibility for local startups and our Gaggle members get great content to share.”

-Bobbie Carlton, Founder, Carlton PR & Marketing

PeopleMap

“PeopleMap is an Instagram marketing tool that I first discovered when I started managing Instagram growth and influencer campaigns for clients. It’s incredibly affordable, super well designed, and SO EFFECTIVE. It allows you to build lists (such as competitors, influencers you want to work with, current partners), track influencer campaign analytics, search hashtags and analyze user profiles to find new accounts to engage with and organically grow your following.”

-Kayley Reed, creator, consultant and influencer marketing manager, kayleyreed.com

REP

“My favorite social media tool is one of which I’m a co-founder: REP. Through it, you can connect with influencers, access profile analytics (like audience interests and engagement rates), message and hire directly, or post free, paid, and pay-per-click offers.

Additionally, we just launched a new feature called Raffles, which we view as a crowd marketing tool. Users redeem tickets for a chance to win a variety of prizes and can procure tickets in a variety of ways, including promoting the products on display. It’s worth mentioning that we see a lot of social media enthusiasts connecting via our community to help one another with growth and give each other shout-outs.”

-Isaac Lekach, Co-founder and CMO, REP

Design and visuals

Canva

“We’d be dead without Canva. It’s truly a design tool, but we make all of our social media graphics with it. From bio blasts to quote cards, infographics, GIFs and everything else in between, we’d be lost without Canva. It makes design easy and fast. Whether we use one of their templates or create something of our own, they help elevate everything we do on social media for our own agency and all of our clients.”

-Jesse Ghiorzi, Director of Brand Strategy, Charge

Fliptastic

“Fliptastic, a slideshow app for ioS, helps us get more eyes on our daily postings. It’s a simple app that converts a collection of photos to a video, lets you control transitions and timing, and comes with pre-set music options. It works for Instagram but it’s ideal for businesses who use Facebook because that platform serves native video posts to a much higher percentage of viewers than posts containing only text, photos, or links.”

-Steve Spatucci, Marketing Manager, Sugarplum Studio

Venngage

“One of my favorite social media tools is Venngage. Using this tool, you can easily create graphs, charts, and infographics to share on social media. People are first hooked by visual content, so having a nice-looking post will draw the user’s eye. Venngage is also free to use, so there’s really no downside to trying out the platform.”

-Maggie Aland, Social Media Analyst, Fit Small Business

Bynder

One of my favorite social media tools is a digital asset management platform called Bynder, which makes posting images on social media faster and easier. We store every image we own in Bynder. The Bynder AI Search feature actually scans the contents of each image for the keyword I search for, letting me find the image I need pretty quickly. When it comes to downloading the image for use, Bynder can be configured to automatically resize the image depending on the social media platform I’m using so I don’t waste time resizing the image in Photoshop.

-Jack Saville, Online Marketer, OnBrand

Planoly and AdParlour

“I find the tool Planoly useful to plan out future Instagram posts. I can ensure the Instagram feed looks aesthetically pleasing and that the photos sit well together in the grid. Another tool that I find particularly useful is AdParlour, which allows you to mock up Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest posts. This is really useful visual tool for showing clients how certain posts will look in their final form.”

-Katy Lowe, Social Media Executive, Passion Digital

Plann

“Plann allows me to plan my Instagram posts in advance and has some of the best editing features I’ve ever seen in an Instagram management app. I’m a graphic designer and since downloading Plann, I’ve only used Photoshop once to edit a photo! Plann also has wonderful hashtag management capabilities and extremely helpful performance (analytics) features to bring further insight into my strategy. Not to mention, I can plan my Instagram Stories in advance with Plann, too.”

-Jackie Kossoff, Social Media Consultant, jackiekossoff.com

A social media strategy gives your brand a roadmap to ensure you’re connecting with a meaningful audience, posting relevant content and capturing the most important KPIs. Learn more about developing a social media strategy.

Amazon Go Storms the Retail Barricades by David Pring-Mill

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Amazon Go Storms the Retail Barricades

In DMNews, David Pring-Mill talks about Amazon Go stores, acceptance and branding.

Amazon Go store

“Branding and consistency will be key,” said Mary Cochran, co-founder of Launching Labs Marketing. “Products will have to be recognizable through other branding, marketing, and packaging efforts from both web and on-shelf presence. Good branding will enable customers to grab and go without research, or thinking too hard.”

Perhaps in the near future, historians will trace a major economic upheaval back to this point in time. In downtown Seattle, on January 22, a catalyst for change was unveiled to the public. A technologically-sophisticated grocery store, dubbed Amazon Go, allows shoppers to put items into their bags and then leave without any kind of checkout process. I went to Seattle to visit the store in its second week.

Amazon Go represents a revolution in retail. As in all revolutions, power dynamics will shift, people will get hurt, and previously impossible things will become possible. There is excitement in the air–and also fear. In this instance, the collateral damage could include some of the 3.5 million cashiers employed throughout the United States. A Cornerstone Capital Group report indicates that “large-scale automation of retail labor could disproportionately affect women.”

The revolution will not be televised. However, it will be filmed — by about 100 cameras mounted to metal beams, and intricately wired on a dark ceiling. Amazon Go is capable of monitoring and automatically billing all of its customers by using computer vision, sensors, and deep learning. This isn’t self-checkout, it’s no-checkout. And it will add to the toll of automation-induced casualties.

The entire process of shopping becomes quick and effortless — but lines, chit-chat, and cashiers are no longer a part of it. Of course, some critics might argue that the cashiers aren’t collateral damage at all; they’re the intended target of this revolution. Amazon has willfully designed an AI-powered system of sensors that will allow retailers to lay off redundant staff, and increase profitability.

Next: It’s more complicated than that.

However, it’s more complicated than that. As AI automates tasks, some workdays will become more efficient and other types of work will become obsolete. Technology is evolving at such a rapid pace that it is even replacing its own predecessors before they have been fully adopted. Even historically recent inventions, such as contactless payment, mobile payment services, and error-prone self-checkout machines, are rendered obsolete by Amazon Go.

In person, I found the experience of shopping at Amazon Go was enormously positive. Some people have reported that they accidentally shoplifted; Amazon says this happens very infrequently. Others have tried various methods to deliberately trick the store, with the implication being that unmanned stores are unsustainable due to errors and theft. These criticisms miss the point. Amazon dominated eCommerce and brought in $177.9 billion in sales last year. They achieved their success, in part, by reducing friction in the customer experience on the online side. They’re now bringing those same principles into brick-and-mortar.

When you consider the competitive advantage of this streamlined shopping experience, and couple that with the reduced labor costs, the problem of shoplifting becomes close to irrelevant. Perhaps that is why Amazon Go’s vice president Gianna Puerini wasn’t worried when a reporter mistakenly wasn’t charged for her yogurt. “It happens so rarely that we didn’t even bother building in a feature for customers to tell us it happened,” said Puerini.

The friction of my customer experience wasn’t just reduced. It was gone. I didn’t have to wait in a long line, fumble with my wallet for money, and the right loyalty card, or repeatedly scan an item into an uncooperative self-checkout machine. I simply scanned the QR code generated by the Amazon Go app on my phone and entered through the gates.

Shelves were well-stocked with a diverse selection of high quality items and Amazon Go correctly tracked every item I put into my bag. This is in spite of the fact that I was bouncing around the store quickly, intermingling with a fairly dense crowd, and documenting the store’s cameras and sensors with my own flash photography and video.

Next: It feels so wrong…

There is a considerable novelty factor to the store. It will wear off, but for the time being, it is making shoppers giddy with excitement and even trepidation. Inside of Amazon Go, I observed many shoppers clustered around the gates after they had made their selections. Some were afraid to leave. “It feels so wrong to just walk out,” said one man to his friend, laughing nervously. “It feels like I’m shoplifting.”

“Okay. Are we gonna do this?” said the friend. After mustering up a small amount of bravery, they walked out and, later, received their clearly itemized bills.

With the public constantly flowing in and out, Monday to Friday from 7 to 9, flaws will be exposed, and Amazon will have the opportunity to make adjustments. Perhaps most bewilderingly, I found that the store’s WiFi was a little weak — a problem that is both predictable and, given the other technological hurdles already overcome, easy to correct.

It should be noted that there are currently many employees in the store, clearly identifiable by their puffy orange jackets. This is likely temporary. These staffers are there to assist, answering the public’s questions, and resolving any apprehensions. Others are there to prepare fresh meals and stock shelves.

Overall, the store definitely feels like a glimpse of the future. It’s on the same block as the Amazon Spheres, three surreal-looking glass domes that house rare tropical flora in addition to Amazon employees attempting to tackle their workloads. (Amazon hopes that the “biophilic design” will inspire creativity and improve brain function.) It isn’t uncommon to see several LimeBikes or Ofo bikes on the sidewalk out front. These are community-shared bicycles that can be rented out using a mobile app and then abandoned anywhere for the next user to find. It all feels like a sci-fi novel, roaring to life.

Amazon Go has been described as a convenience store, which conjures up images of a 7-Eleven, or perhaps a New York bodega. This is inaccurate. Amazon Go is essentially a miniature Whole Foods, which makes perfect sense given Amazon’s recent acquisition. Most of the items available for purchase are healthful and the labels “fair trade” and “organic” appear abundantly. It isn’t difficult to imagine Amazon Go’s technology licensed to other retail outlets and gradually rolled out across Whole Foods’ 477 locations.

People would be able to quickly grab a meal during their coffee and lunch breaks, with more time left over to actually consume their food and relax. In turn, Amazon would gather massive amounts of valuable data on consumers’ buying habits. The store’s reduced labor costs and monetized data might even translate into lower prices, which would help Whole Foods shed a negative brand image. In the past, critics have derisively nicknamed the chain “Whole Paycheck,” in reference to its high prices.

But what would this mean for the specific brands on all those retail shelves? In these stores of the future, there might not be as many employees in the aisles to help nurture sales. Brands would need to adequately convey their products’ value, both in the product packaging and in their digital marketing.

“Branding and consistency will be key,” said Mary Cochran, co-founder of Launching Labs Marketing. “Products will have to be recognizable through other branding, marketing, and packaging efforts from both web and on-shelf presence. Good branding will enable customers to grab and go without research, or thinking too hard.”

Next: Brands must brace themselves. 

Brands may also need to brace themselves for sudden changes. By monitoring customers and conducting data analysis, retailers could deconstruct the thought processes behind purchase decisions and adjust stock accordingly.

“Shopping is an experience that retailers create for their customers. The more data that Amazon can get their hands on, the better their capability to hyper-personalize these shopping experiences. Each store could optimize their dynamic stock of goods, based on season, neighborhood, customer habits, etc. This means that there will be less wasted space or stock and customers will always be able to find what they’re looking for,” said Aaron Glazer, CEO of Taplytics, a company that seeks to improve customer experiences through experimentation, A/B testing, push notifications, and messaging.

“Consumers are always looking for ways to make better use of their limited spare time, and will certainly find value in being able to pick up everything in one ‘Go’ at their convenience,” he added.

A large number of cashiers will probably lose their jobs, but the final chapter of this story is not yet written. By redeploying resources and integrating data-driven strategies, companies will be able to pivot and expand into new areas, creating new opportunities. The new jobs will require new skillsets, which presents an opportunity for motivated workers to continually learn and grow. Education is no longer a finite period of time prequalifying eager young workers for guaranteed employment. In this newly emerging economy, education might become a constant if workers want to be relevant instead of roadkill.

Some people will resent that so much effort is now required just to survive. Others might value the continual intellectual stimulation over a stagnant job where they’re just counting down the days until retirement. Therefore, the interpretation of this rapidly evolving economy and adapting workforce is dependent upon a series of personal value judgments and capabilities.

Beyond that, AI and robotics could significantly improve the human condition. The technology has already led to incredibly beneficial advancements in healthcare, and will likely play a major role in space exploration. If AI does lead to widespread redundancies in retail labor and other sectors, our societies and political systems will be uniquely pressured to adapt. After all, AI-powered stores can’t sell goods to a population without any money to spend.

Of course, these long-term outcomes are unclear and any efforts to shed light are inherently speculative. However, if the appropriate safeguards and levels of transparency are put in place, it is certainly possible that the ultimate impact of AI will be a net positive. Admittedly, this proposition will be difficult to accept if the technology behind Amazon Go and other unmanned stores causes pink slips to be handed out to workers all around the world.