Platforms? What are you talking about? You mean those awful shoes!?
If only. No, I am talking about the digital platforms that have almost sneaked up on us over the last five years to quietly take over so much of our daily working and personal lives. The likes of Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Netflix...the list goes on. In fact take a quick look at your smartphone and look at all the apps you have. How many are for actual brands and retailers and how many are for what those in the digital world call platforms? Each providing you with a portal to either a specific world, like music and Spotify, films and Netflix, social media and Instagram, or seemingly the whole high street and Amazon Prime.
OK I get it. But we still like our favourite brands and will go back and buy from them surely?
We do, or at least we like to think we do, but how often do we actually end up going back to our tried and trusted brand or retailer now that we have all these platforms to act like our own personal shopping and lifestyle assistants. Think about the last few purchases you made online. How often did you go to an individual retailer’s site, and how often did you rely on one of these major platforms to quickly aggregate all those stores and their products and present you with a so called “preferred” list? You might have set out to buy a pair of adidas trainers, but when Amazon Prime revealed that you could buy an equally good alternative for much less - and what’s more they could deliver it to you by the end of the day - then that brand loyalty goes out of the window. Even if you do use a specific retailer’s app, the transaction will all be recorded by the smartphone platform, be it Apple, Microsoft, Google etc, so they win either way.
Yes, but it feels a bit like Big Brother is taking over.
It does, but whilst we might complain about the likes of Facebook having too much access to our personal data, we don’t mind when these sites make shopping, and let’s face it, living in general, so much quicker, cheaper and easier. We are turning to these platforms in our millions. Just look at the Top 10 list of the world’s most valuable brands. The top five are all what you might call platform brands: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon. Companies that are essentially all trying to do the same thing and become omnipresent in our lives. The retailers and brands, if you like, that we are most loyal to and will use for whatever service they offer us.
Speak for yourself. I try and avoid them like the plague.
Do you really? Are you sure? If you do then you’re missing out on a brave new world. Where else can you get a personalised playlist based on your listening history than Spotify? Certainly not HMV or Virgin Records as they have gone out of business. Even if we don’t want to use these sites it is increasingly hard not to. Look at TVs. The home page is not set up to show you what’s on BBC1, instead you are given a vast choice of different portals, from Netflix to Apple TV, that then take you off to different worlds of streaming films and TV shows that puts you, and not the terrestrial TV planners, in complete control of what you watch and listen to.
But haven't Tesco and other chains been trying to do the same with all the services they provide?
They have indeed. Tesco, as you know, is no longer just a grocery supermarket but a general lifestyle retailer that over the years has looked to offer us everything from banking to mortgages, insurance to holidays. But one by one they have failed to take off in the same way that Amazon Prime has. Because at heart Tesco is a belt and braces retailer. These digital platform giants are exactly that. Technology beasts with the knowledge and expertise to create and dictate our futures. Apple started life making computers, now it’s all about what it calls "enriching lives" and only this week we have seen it announce plans to create its own Netflix TV and film platform, become a publishing platform and run its own credit card where the user decides what level of interest they pay by how much they pay off every month. It can't carry on re-inventing technology. It needs to find new ways to "enrich" how we live our lives. Google is buying up and controlling other digital platforms, such as YouTube, and a host of advertising and lifestyle platforms that between them made a cool $97.1bn in 2018 alone. If you have stopped using Facebook, but love Instagram, well that’s owned by Facebook too.
So what’s next?
You might not take much notice of what goes on in the gaming world but Google’s announcement this month that they will be providing a Spotify equivalent for gamers could have big ramifications for us all. Its new Stadia platform will allow anyone to log on and start playing a game online without having to use a console like PlayStation or X-Box. All very convenient. But by doing so Google’s understanding of your likes and behaviour goes to a completely different level. It can now track, monitor and mine how you respond during a game, what decisions you make, how you react under pressure, how risk adverse you are. All invaluable data to then work out the kinds of products and services that are going to emotionally appeal to you. Now that’s a real game changer. That’s not to even mention the enormous differences that voice search and voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home are making. As IWSR’s Mark Meek said this month, the power of voice search means these machines will soon be making our choices for us. Having friends over for a BBQ? The likes of Alexa will know, based on your shopping record, which items to buy, from which retailer and for what price. Scary....but kind of helpful too.
That’s all well and good but what, as ever, has this got to do with wine.
Everything. How relevant are you, your business and the wines you sell to any of these platforms? Or more importantly the people, like you and me, who use them. It's going to be fascinating to see what Naked Wines does with the "Naked" brand now that it is looking to drop the Majestic Wines name. Could it create the first real digital platform for wine under a "Naked" banner that offers you a portal into a range of exclusive services, on and offline, that look to "enrich" Apple-style how we buy and enjoy wine by bringing us closer to winemakers, producers, brands, and private label wines in ways that have not been done before? The opportunity is there. We need to completely change how we sell and market our wine if we are to be relevant in this platform world. Getting a listing in Tesco or Aldi or at 67 Pall Mall is not going to be the holy grail of the future. Coming up as the recommended wine on Alexa, Prime, Vivino, or whatever platforms we have in the future, will be.
This article was first published on Grapevine for the London Wine Fair.