A few weeks ago, Bob and I attended “Connections on Retail Insights and Consumer Engagement” in Monterey, California. An exclusive, invite-only event organized by the Produce Marketing Association and Progressive Grocer Magazine, “Connections” brought together produce suppliers with cutting edge marketing service providers for 20-minute private meetings. We spent the day “speed-dating” with fresh produce growers, shippers, packers, and marketers, a total of 14 different companies whose candor and openness enabled us to quickly and effectively assess fit and opportunity. 

What we learned

Conversation after conversation brought to life the elaborate supply chain, operational complexities, and distribution challenges in bringing fruits and vegetables from farm to table. Sourced all over the world and subject to the threats of Mother Nature, fresh produce is constantly evolving in the face of competition, commoditization, and finicky consumer trends. We learned:

• To be or not to be…a brand: What distinguishes a Well-Pict berry or a Monterey Mushroom from the generic baskets of strawberries or boxes of loose fungi in the produce section? Differentiation on quality, flavor, freshness, packaging, branding, and promotions are just a few of the dimensions. On top of supplying high quality product on a consistent basis, retail tactics must be carefully orchestrated and executed to convert shoppers into long term consumers who first recognize then choose your products. Otherwise a berry is a berry is a berry.
• Innovation at work, to meet demand: We met with several companies launching new products and trialing alternative placement opportunities. They aim to address the needs of picky consumers who increasingly demand year round availability, shopping convenience, and distinct benefits like health and wellness at low cost. These companies operate at unfathomably tight margins in sourcing globally to deliver locally. (Meanwhile, I can’t wait until I can swing by my neighborhood 7-Eleven for a snack pack of Fresh One sweet cherry tomatoes or the nearest Safeway for a bag of microwaveable artichokes.)
• There’s serious shrinkage, beware: According to industry experts, “up to one in seven truckloads of fresh food delivered to supermarkets gets thrown away”*. The causes of this waste? Some cite theft or product decay, while others blame supply chain issues and logistics gaps. Most disturbing: with such extensive distribution channels and dependence on third party brokers to collect data and combat retailer complacency for competing accounts, it can be extremely difficult to pinpoint exactly why and where.

That’s where Gigwalk comes in, by serving as the eyes, ears, arms, and legs to any organization with an offline footprint seeking information and action along those frontlines — that critical last mile where consumers are filling their baskets. Our flexible, location-based workforce focuses on getting each individual job done in their neighborhoods, while our product aggregates in real time the photos and information they submit.

Hmm, Earthbound’s bagged salads look a bit flat and understocked at my neighborhood Whole Foods.

Gigwalk already includes among its customer base an impressive roster of household brands, from leading consumer packaged goods companies to top tier management consulting firms. That Gigwalk can also aid fresh produce purveyors, these family-owned businesses who for generations have tilled the land and sought to bring the best quality fruits and vegetables to our homes, makes me proud. Our platform of 220,000 on demand, mobile workers in 6500+ cities are ready and waiting to be activated in an instant, to extend the reach of these businesses and maximize sales by improving merchandising and the customer experience wherever the store.

“Connections” is just one of many events we’ll tackle as the Gigwalk growth story continues and we find new and innovative ways to augment our product capabilities and mobilize our active base of Gigwalkers to best serve customer needs across industries. Stay tuned!

The newest member of the Gigwalk team, Tanya will be looking after customer acquisition and business development. Find her on twitter: @tloh.

*Source: “A Retailer’s Recipe for Fresher Food and Far Less Shrink” by Oliver Wyman

Wow…Thank you Fast Company.

It’s nice to get such a big pat on the back.  See their Top 10 list of most innovative mobile companies here.

From the founding of Gigwalk we have doubled-down on making investments in our engineering and product teams – asking them to design, build, and deploy technologies that push the boundaries.

Our engineers aim for products that deliver unprecedented value to businesses.  We are lucky to have an extraordinarily talented technology team.

At the same time, we have a lot of work ahead of us to stay ahead of quickly evolving mobile platforms, develop ever more efficient Gigwalker-to-Gig matching algorithms, and to continually satisfy our customers’ business needs.

If you’re an engineer, designer or product person looking to work on a growing team tackling large scale data problems, maybe a career at Gigwalk is for you.

— Matt Crampton
   @mattccrampton
   Co-founder / CTO

What if we told that you’d only heard half the conversation about mobile technology’s potential to improve your business performance?

Mobile’s hot and everyone’s talking about it. But the majority of the discussions taking place in media and the trades focus on how mobile makes life easier for consumers. Mobile features allow you to easily pay for products, access coupons, and even showroom (trekking out to a local store to check out a product in person, then doing price comparison on your smartphones before deciding to buy online or in the store). As an example - the words below are from a prominent retail news blog’s mobile section (bigger means more mentions)

There’s also a lot of noise about the potential of mobile tech to help marketers more effectively reach consumers. Yet the application of mobile for small businesses goes way beyond using geo-fencing to offer location-based coupons or engaging your customers with interactive games. There’s a missing piece of the conversation: how mobile is helping businesses become more efficient.

A recent report from Harris Interactive is telling. 88% of small business owners they surveyed are using smartphones. The majority are still leveraging their smartphones for basic functions: 76% are using it for communications, 48% for calendars and scheduling and 42% for navigation. When the research team asked managers where the greatest future potential for mobile tools was in their businesses, mentions of marketing increased by 94%; making and receiving payments increased by 82 percent; and customer relationship database management increased by 63 percent. But what about functions that make everyday business operations better, faster, cheaper, and easier?

Very few businesses are really looking at the potential for mobile from the standpoint of business efficiency.  We’re still primarily using mobile in the same way we did in the last two decades: to check email, talk on the phone and consume information. The potential of mobility to help create efficiency in every day aspects of our businesses isn’t properly ingrained in the DNA of how we operate.

Consider these scenarios:

• Management consultants travel around the country to gather research data from retail clients, spending thousands of dollars on airfare and tens of hours in-flight. Why aren’t they leveraging networks of local, mobile workers to complete these tasks instead?
• Companies that use field workers invest tremendous amounts of time and money working with search firms and temp agencies to get adequate coverage. Why not mobilize your workforce in the regions that you need them, when you need them, with a mobile work platform - all through a single gig posting?
• Consumer Goods Companies with product displays in locations around the country take it on faith that they are being represented the way they want to be in retail locations and restaurants.  Why not leverage a local with a smart phone to visit locations, answer specific questions, and send photo verification of product placements, pricing and more?

While the consumer and marketing applications of mobile technology are advancing rapidly, the business efficiencies that can be gained from mobile tech are just as important to the bottom line. Contact us to see how Gigwalk’s network of mobile workers can help you reach your business goals today.

They were all topics of discussion at the ARF Industry Leader Forum in San Francisco. Bob and I attended, and it was a day jam-packed with information from some of the best minds in the industry. 

Gigwalk was a breakout session sponsor, and we got to talk directly to insights professionals about the future of insights and what the industry needs to do to get there. Here’s just a bit of what we learned.

Methods of market research: Surveys are often the first thing to pop into people’s heads when you think about market research. So what are some of different ways to get insights that keep the subject engaged?

Observational research was a hot topic of the day.  What kind of insights can be garnered from observing how people behave in stores, or when exposed to different advertising? Companies such as Neuro-Insight are even bringing brain-imaging technology to the world of market research. 

One method we’ve seen many of our clients use is on-location interviews. There’s so much value to data collected on location, when shoppers are in a buying mindset. 

There are lots of different qualitative methods, but how do we make the survey better? In Andrew Reid’s presentation, “Stop Asking Stupid Questions,” he spoke about the reality that is the future of research: Fewer questions, that are better targeted and more relevant.    For example, using social integration to answer the questions that have already been answered, like marital status or occupation. 

Research challenges and their solutions: Agencies and clients alike are expected to deliver more, faster.  However good research can’t be rushed.  Fortunately, there are companies out there helping researchers  deliver on these increased expectations.  Kaggle is organizing the world’s data scientists to help solve your big data crunching problems, and companies like Gigwalk are helping you collect the data you need, faster.

There were so many great conversations and talks, we couldn’t possibly cover it all here. We’d love to talk more with insights professionals and shopper marketers about where they see the future of insights.  Get in touch and we can tell you about how to use insights for a presidential campaign and what kind of people like Cheetos. (No really… one of the highlights of event was John Thorpe’s talk about the methods used to get insights for the award winning Cheetos campaign)

~Kamla Kasichainula

Marketing Manager at Gigwalk

Many of our customers come to Gigwalk with a tough problem.

The sales of their products rely on tricky channels such as family restaurants, kiosks, commissaries, bars, theaters, salons, coffee shops, school cafeterias, corner stores, etc.

All of these channels have a several common characteristics. 

They are fragmented – Often controlled & owned by varied sets of owners, managers, franchisees – not always central corporate offices.

They are hard to control – You never know what is going to happen in these places. They have inconsistent physical layouts, foot traffic patterns, and types of audience.

They are geographically dispersed - Sometimes in out-of-the-way spots such as an army base, a university cafeteria or a hallway vending machine.

These factors make consistent execution and product sales especially difficult in these channels. You almost need to be everywhere at one time.

Our customers use Gigwalk to change this equation in their favor: http://gigwalk.com/h/storeauditpackage

- Bob Bahramipour, CEO

Get more information about retail audits with Gigwalk

The Super Bowl is the most watched TV event in the US, drawing in over 111 million viewers. 

Of course, not everyone watches it for the game. Commercials get almost as much glory as the players, and advertisers pull out all the stops so they can get the most out of the priciest 30-second spot on television.  

For all the money advertisers spend ($250 million in 2012), consumers spend even more. It is the second biggest time of the year for food according to the National Retail Federation, and between the beer, hot wings,  jerseys, those foam hand things, and even TVs, consumers spent over $11 billion dollars on it in 2012. 

So while the Super Bowl may not be as big at retail as Christmas or Thanksgiving, perfect retail execution for it is just as important for some products, and even more important for others (see: foam hand things)

That’s where Gigwalk comes in.  We can help you get any kind of retail work done in time for the big game, whether it’s retail audits, mystery shops, or even setting up and fixing displays. After all, the Super Bowl gets some of the best displays of the year. (Check out a few of our favorites below)

We can have your retail work ready to go with plenty of time before the big game.  Get in touch today, and we’ll help you get started.  

(via www.bustedcoverage.com)

(via www.partnershipactivation.com)

(via www.bustedcoverage.com)

Movies, books, and TV have the power to spark our imagination, transport us to new worlds, make us laugh, cry and scream in terror.  They also have the power to get us excited about technology, and all the possibilities it can bring.

1980’s Sci-Fi introduced us to the tablet. Robots that clean our houses were a dream from a cartoon in the ’60s, and television showed us something like Google Glass back in 2010. 

However, sometimes we get let down (Hoverboard anyone?).  It’s already 2013, and there’s no time machine to be found, car accidents are still way too prevalent, we can’t clone humans yet, and no one has figured out how we can be in lots of places at one time. 

That’s the thing about technology though. Sometimes it’s flashy just like in the movies, but what really makes it amazing is how it solves problems.

Time Travel:

(xkcd)

In 2011, people in New York found out about an earthquake before they felt it thanks to Twitter. The speed at which information travels today is astounding, even if we can’t make a fortune betting on sporting events from the 1980s.

Driverless Cars: Google’s self-driving cars are now legal in Nevada and California and could mean incredible things for safety on the road when they are ready for prime time.

Cloning and Teleportation:

The Gigwalker community is growing by the minute, and every day we see amazing people with amazing stories doing amazing work. Last year we did a series of blogs called Featured Gigwalkers. We’re bringing it back so everyone can hear the same great stories we do.

Today we want to introduce you to Brian L’heureux. Brian’s been earning money on Gigwalk since September of 2012 when he did his first mystery shopping Gig for children’s tablets. Since then, he’s completed almost 300 Gigs.  You can find him all over Seattle in restaurants taking Panos for Bing, (He’s done nearly 200 Bing Gigs!) and helping out his fellow Gigwalkers on Facebook with their questions. So we asked Brian a few questions about himself, and he was happy to help us learn more about him!

How did you hear about Gigwalk?

I heard about Gigwalk when I went to West Virginia. I saw a report on the news.

Why did you start using the app?

I started using Gigwalk because my wife went into surgery. We needed the money because of her absence from work.

What do you do when you’re not using Gigwalk?

Believe it or not I constantly watch Gigwalk for Gigs. I consider this my full time job since I’m a stay at home dad to our pets lol.

How has Gigwalk helped you?

Gigwalk has helped us get by and has helped me learn the area since I’m new to Seattle. I have met great people and found great paces to eat.

What tips do you have for people who are trying to do Photosynth Gigs?

The best tip I can give for the Photosynth app is practice in your home before going out. The best technique I found was to hold my phone on the side and take one pic. Then lean the phone up then down, then turn it right and left, then repeat until you get the whole image.

What was your best experience while you were out doing Gigs?

One time, a business owner gave me a meal.  He wanted me to take his daughter and son in law out, show them how to do Gigs, and teach them how I talk to business owners to get in and quickly do the Photosynth. He paid me $100 to take them out for a day and train them.

We love hearing your Gigwalking stories! Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, or in the comments below if you’d like to be a Featured Gigwalker. We’ll be doing one every month here on the blog.

2012 was a great year for Gigwalk, and 2013 is looking even better. We want to thank our customers, Gigwalkers, and everyone who’s been a part of our family since the beginning. We wish you all a Happy New Year!

We often describe Gigwalkers in our mobile network as a “workforce”.  That term has important meaning to businesses that use Gigwalk to get jobs done out in the world.

We have built the Gigwalk workforce to consist of real people with real identities, skills, backgrounds – not a faceless crowd of consumers with iPhones who just happen to be at the right place at the right time.

And we have built the Gigwalk workforce to do work – real work.

Yes, they can be your eyes and ears to collect data and photos from the field.  But they can also be your arms and legs to actually touch the world on your behalf.

We have seen businesses deploy Gigwalk workers to do administrative work,  interview consumers, put up signage, deliver goods, hand out flyers, and so much more.

We have gathered more than 1 billion data points on the Gigwalk workforce in the field; we know more about our workers than anyone has ever known in the history of workforces.  Through our mobile platform we have an unprecedented window into Gigwalkers out in the world; we can observe promptness, reliability, productivity rates, responsiveness, successes, failures, and demonstrated skills.

All of this data allows us to instantly deploy the best Gigwalker with the right skills & profile on any given Gig – no matter how complex, exacting, time consuming, or harrowing. 

There has never been a more talented group of 200,000 mobile workers in the world – Come see what their eyes, ears, arms and legs can do for your business on Gigwalk.

Bob Bahramipour

CEO

Gigwalk’s CEO, Bob Bahramipour conducted a webinar for the National Association for Retail Marketing Services (NARMS) about the importance of speed, flexibility, coverage, and accuracy when conducting retail audits - especially for important holiday retail executions. (Which also exist outside of Q4 by the way…) Check out a recording of the webinar, or get in touch to learn more.