Technological advances, and the growing popularity of social media, are changing consumer shopping behaviour and creating major implications for the fashion industry. Brands and retailers no longer have the power they once had.

But what does this mean for high street fashion brands competing for consumer attention in an increasingly busy marketplace both on and offline?

Online has opened consumers’ eyes to a huge world of choice. Social media has eased the process of inspiration to purchase. More sophisticated online visual shopping from the ASOS catwalk to augmented reality has bought consumers closer to products online. And the likes of Amazon Prime same-day delivery has set expectations for push-button shopping.

The continuous posting about daily lives on social media has given rise to greater pressures to adopt the latest trends and to constantly replenish wardrobes. You can no longer be seen wearing the same thing twice! Peer-to-peer consumerism through apps like Depop – where consumers can buy and sell fashion at second hand prices – means that ‘fast fashion’ is more disposable than ever. It doesn’t stop there; dozens of fashion companies have entered the sharing economy fray, providing consumers with rental sites giving access to items that are either only needed for one-off occasions, or are highly expensive and considered out-of-reach of mainstream consumers.

Consumers with more spending power and choice (but less commitment) are forcing fashion retailers to meet their demands through competitive pricing, providing instant access to the latest trends and a seamless omni-channel experience.

Imagine trying to explain to your Grandma what a meme is. Where would you begin? I struggled and resorted to showing many examples. I can’t say that really helped though.

The word ‘meme’ was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins used it to describe the way in which information moves within a culture – or how ideas and behaviours spread from person to person. The ‘internet meme’, a format we’re more than familiar with today, is a subset of the concept. In its simplest form, it means ‘to go viral’ (drawn from Dawkins’ initial metaphor of a meme being a virus).

The internet – and through that, social media – has given us a platform to instantly share, rapidly change, grow and shift ideas. Pop culture, current affairs, and stock photos are the inspiration for most memes. From the outside looking in, one might view them as pointless, sarcastic, childish procrastination. But for me, it’s not pointless.

Last year one of my own memes went viral being liked over 40,000 times and very quickly being re-posted/modified by others. As a result, the internet owns it now. It’s not about getting credit. For me, it’s about sharing, relating to others, and often trying to make light of some pretty unpleasant news stories. For example, a gorilla being shot at Cincinnati zoo. Remember, our generation tends to grieve online. (Saying that, Harambe memes are well out of date. You gotta keep up with your current affairs – memes are not just for Christmas.)

But don’t ignore the power of the meme, it can spread like wildfire, especially when there’s a political theme (which is more often than not). Pepe the Frog first appeared online circa 2008 and quickly became a world-famous character. He’s since taken a sinister turn after being associated with the alt-right. That’s not to say that all memes are destined to become hate symbols – but with constant changing, editing and recycling, what starts as something harmless could end up turning sour.

Some of the biggest memes in 2016 were based on the children’s show, LazyTown. They’ve since taken ownership of these memes and have responded by posting original content across their own social media and receiving millions of hits. This is refreshing from the programme’s producers, actively embracing meme culture. I wonder what would happen if a brand/brand symbol ever became a meme? If not embraced, like LazyTown, how would that end? Perhaps with the same fate as Pepe?

January 2016: Waterloo

• One open-plan office.
• Twelve Razors.
• Seventeen humungous desks.
• Two meeting rooms.
• Two dodgy printers.
• One kitchenette.
• One comfy corner sofa.
• One roof terrace.
• LOTS to coordinate.
• Soooo much clutter.

When Chloë and Steve first talked to me about moving Razor into a new home, I would never in a million years have imagined us ‘living’ where we are today. My original brief was to pretty much take what we had and replicate it on a larger scale (i.e. more meeting rooms). As close to our old office as possible.

I won’t bore you with all the details about the very lengthy and unproductive search. You already know by now that we changed our minds and went for co-working. But why did we?

As time progressed, we realised that having a larger office space would only be beneficial to us when we are all in the office at the same time. Which isn’t actually that often.

Almost all of our team are market researchers. They are out on the road – a lot. During our busiest times, there’d only be a few of us in the office. On rare occasions, I might even get an afternoon to myself (which is great when I want to play my cheesy music while having a massive re-organise sesh).

In short, we ended December 2016 four months into our tenancy at WeWork, Waterhouse Square. Less than two miles up the road, and a million miles away from the kind of office set-up we began the year with. 

For starters, the building we’ve moved into is stunning. It’s majestic-looking from the outside. (Its nickname is ‘Hogwarts’.) The décor inside isn’t too shabby either. Everything is well-maintained throughout the day and gives a fab impression to anyone coming to visit.

Almost all of our researchers are now hot-desking. Believe it or not, quite a scary prospect six months ago!

Having people from other businesses around is a plus. Handy for reminding us that there is a world outside of research. From a selfish point of view, I enjoy seeing those extra faces – especially when my team are busy travelling to their various locations.

Naturally, there are some downsides. Thin (mostly glass) walls. That feeling of being in a goldfish bowl. Echoing sounds. Loud footsteps. But we are also tucked away from the noisiest part of the building which, I think, is not a bad thing.

Our main workspace is much smaller than at our previous office. On the few days we are all in together, it is a squeeze. But this is where the shared workspaces come into their own – especially now that we have our brand new atrium and additional meeting rooms. Whether it’s a quick phone call, a quiet catch-up, or somewhere to spread your papers out, there is always something to suit.

The move also gave us a chance to go even more mobile. Out went the gigantic server and all the dusty wires that cluttered the floor space. In came the Cloud and its beautiful invisibility. Out went all the individual desk phones with their – you guessed it – even dustier wires. In came VOIP calling. We can transfer incoming calls to anyone, anywhere.  

I’d be lying if I said I had no personal concerns for my role at Razor. Much of the day-to-day maintenance I used to take care of is now handled by the brilliant team at WeWork. And if I used to spend ages looking for meeting room venues, I now simply click the members’ app and book a room in any of the offices world-wide. (Job done.) 

Instead of making me feel redundant, what all this has actually done is free up more time for me to get involved in other aspects of the business – something I’m very excited about.

(Speaking of exciting, I could quite easily bang on about the dog-friendly environment, the new prosecco tap, and lots of other fun things for hours. But I won’t. You can see all that via @razorresearch on Instagram.)

Though I’ve written this blog from my own perspective, I did ask the team for anonymous feedback to see how they’re feeling about the new set-up. There are some small niggles that should be easy to fix. And there’s one that’s been a conundrum for me since even before we moved in. All the things that gave our previous office its ‘Razor’ personality came from all the furniture and knick-knacks that we’d accumulated over time. How do we replicate that character in a smaller office without filling it with clutter?

We’ll figure that out eventually. But overall, I’m happy to know that we’re all embracing the change. We’re nothing if not flexible.

So, as we look at the year ahead (our tenth birthday year, in fact!), here’s where we’re at…

January 2017: Holborn

• Three offices
• Eleven Razors.
• Fourteen non-humungous desks. 
• Loads of meeting rooms to choose from.  
• A communal printer that’s not my responsibility!
• Kitchens galore.
• Sofas aplenty.
• No roof terrace, sadly. But we’ll live.
• A LOT LESS to coordinate.
• Still some clutter. (I’d better work on that…)

I am, of course, referring to our previous two blogs/Chloë’s love letters to television. She’s made watching TV an art that I am quite envious of. This blog is about the paradox of choice – and why it stresses me out.

If you’re anything like me, your TV viewing habits might have become almost non-existent over the last few years. It’s not because I hate TV, I love it. But with the rise of catch-up TV – and an ever-increasing number of channels – I find myself with a growing viewing library of clutter and with even less time to watch it. Call me a Luddite, but I miss the days of ‘appointment-to-view’ television. There are few shows that make me physically sit down to watch on a big screen (either at their scheduled times or on demand). Shows like ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, ‘Only Connect’, and ‘Bake Off’ (may it rest in peace).

For everything else on my Sky+ hard drive (other on-demand facilities are available), as soon as the numerous drama/comedy series recordings start to build up, the thought of getting myself up-to-speed by binge-watching starts to fill me with panic. Please don’t suggest that I should watch them during my commute to work – I tried but found it hard to concentrate while stuck under a stranger’s armpit. So I now choose not to invest the time as it’s easier to miss out altogether. This is why I’ve never watched an episode of ‘Game of Thrones’ or whatever else the cool kids are into. This is why I can hardly take part in Chloe’s office conversations about the latest must-watch drama.

But Christmas…that’s a whole other thing. If I treat TV viewing like tapas throughout the year, December is a time to treat myself to a full platter. First of all, I ditch the EPG and get my hands on a copy of The Radio Times’ Christmas TV Guide. This in itself is an event. Flicking through each page, picking out the films and shows I want to watch in REAL TIME. If I’m feeling ultra-nerdy, I’ll whip out my highlighter pen or sticky tabs and mark certain pages. I don’t even care how sad this makes me sound, it gives me a sense of calm in a world full of technological chaos. There’s an element of nostalgia too. I’m old enough to remember the days of having to buy The Radio Times for the BBC listings AND a copy of TV Times for ITV and C4.

Four TV Channels. Ahh, those were the days. But buying TWO TV GUIDES! Can you even begin to imagine the inconvenience?!?!

RIP Coach Taylor.

RIP Clear Eyes Full Hearts Can’t Lose.

RIP Friday Night Lights.

I started watching the first of five series of Friday Night Lights about 6 years ago and I’ve been eking them out ever since.  If someone had done a focus group of one with me (which I realise is in fact a depth interview) I’d’ve said what I wanted from the best ever drama series would be America, some trucks and blokes drinking bottles of beer the way that only they drink bottles of beer, high school kids, not so much of the singing, almost no dancing, team sports and ergo changing rooms.  I might not have got quite as far as requesting a Coach Taylor or a Tami Taylor or a Gracie-Belle Taylor but if you’d paid me a little extra incentive I might have done…

I started watching FNL when I still owned a DVD player and I finished it streaming from Amazon Prime on my telephone. There’s progress for you.  I started it weeping and to be honest, I finished it weeping too.

It tugged at my heartstrings and coincidentally, so does BBC Three’s American High School: Straight Outta Orangeburg.  Very different shows with some similar issues.  Neither one, probably, very real. 

I’ve loved Friday Night Lights.  Soap without suds.  Dudes and no duds.

I’ll miss you Buddy Garrity, Jason,  Landry, Tyra, Lyla, Matt Saracen,  Julie, Smash Williams, Mindy,  and all the dozens of others.  I’ll miss you Tim Riggins.  

Goodbye Dillon, Texas.  Forever.

Everyday I walk into work and ask the same question…”did anyone see Married at First Sight/SAS: Who Dares Wins/American High School/The Fall/Planet Earth…” etc. and most days, unless I’m very lucky, I’m met by blank stares.  I work in an office of people who simply don’t have the same all-consuming relationship with ‘content’ as I do.   Or maybe they have busier lives.  I fit TV in with a rigid timetable of podcasts, the books, the news, social media and bloody hell, the interruption of doing actual work.  Exhausting.  But also vital, transporting, surprising, hilarious and quite simply something I can’t do without.  For an average of 15 hours a week (yes, I counted).

We work in a WeWork co-working space and I’m one explosive documentary away from suggesting a daily ‘meet up’ of fellow telly addicts.  I fondly see myself bonding over tapas and Transparent or a panini and Planet Earth. 

I watch telly to watch it.  I set myself invisible rules around not looking at my phone (mostly obeyed), not doing the washing up (more often obeyed). I am allowed chocolate and if I’m really lucky, cigarettes.

I set off to work and consider how to get there with one eye on what I want to watch or hear.  If it’s walking, it’s a podcast (I can get in a whole New Yorker Radio Hour or This American Life) on the way.  It’s a bus – such a treat – downloaded TV.  There are days I pray for traffic or pause on the way to finish something off.

So I reckon it’s time I started a TV discussion.  Mostly with myself but prompted by an analysis of SAS: Who Dares Wins with some colleagues – perhaps also, finally with them.

SAS: Who Dares Wins

I’ve got a lot of women in my life.  My mother is one, my sister is one and she just gave birth to another one.  Many of my friends are women, my colleagues are and even my wife is one.  There is something viscerally exciting, affirming and reassuring about seeing men being men.  And that’s why I love SAS: Who Dares Wins. 

And before you suggest that I’m taking this too far intellectually, you’d be right, but I am also fascinated by and admit to a quickening of the heart when I see them, the course leaders.  It’s bloke porn.  The editors know that creating visual snapshots (silhouettes of them waiting to ‘interrogate’ in the tin hut, the close-ups of them talking about ‘them’, the brief opportunities to actually see them be tough) is all grist to my mill and I thank them.

But more than that, I love that it’s a programme that celebrates masculinity.  It’s the cave men, the protectors, the warriors, the tough-guys.  The He-Men.  Every episode exposes a temporary lapse in tough guy and we see a few shells peeled off by discussions of grief, crime, anger, turmoil) – we’re never left to believe that they’re just fists and fight for too long.

I get that it could be reductive and maybe even sexist (last year’s the BBC’s Ultimate Hell Week was actually won by a woman) but in SAS world they’re entirely absent (until the final stage where the only woman sort of plays the ‘nice guy’)’.  I get that it’s a celebration of warfare and bro-hood and a winkling out of the weak.  But I’m okay with that.  Just as my lifelong passion (obsession?) with cowboys will attest, I appreciate men.  I appreciate their strength, their stubble, their stubbornness, their grit.  Reader, I did not want to marry one.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to indulge in their muddy, sweaty, sweary, beefy, brawly selves – for an hour a week at least.

We worked before but now we work at WeWork.

Excuse the tautology but as you might have guessed we’ve moved to a WeWork. For those not already familiar, they provide ‘co-working’ spaces with a boutique-industrial feel.

A self-described “physical social network”, WeWork prides itself on its community of ‘creators’. Want to test your product? Ask your neighbours. Want a recommendation for a designer? Put it out on the network. Fancy a beer? Help yourself – it’s literally on tap.

Now we’ve been here for a few months and are starting to look beyond the Silicon Valley hype, the handwriting and the excesses of Friday’s WeWork London’s Halloween party, we’re more aware that WeWork is essentially a property company – albeit the hippest one most businesses will ever interact with. Their core product is short-lease office space and it couldn’t be more suited to the ultra-flexible ‘sharing economy’ we’re moving towards. This, more than the community ethos and the  ‘do what you love’ brand, is the real reason for their $15 billion valuation.  Fair play to them.

And that’s also why WeWork is perfect for a research agency like us. While other areas of the economy find themselves flat-footed – ‘disrupted’, even – by this new landscape of uncertainty we in market research have always been enabled and constrained by flexibility.  

Suffice it to say, we’re quite at home at WeWork Waterhouse Square. So drop by and have a beer with us – did we mention it’s on tap?

Clapham Common tube station has this week been overrun by cats. And no, it’s not an army of strays or a mass escape plan from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home- although come to think of it that would be awesome. It is in fact in the form of plastering nearly every single advertising space throughout the station with images of our furry feline friends, with the hashtag #catsnotads.

Powered by “The Citizens Advertising Takeover” (CATS- I like what they did there), the organisation actually behind all of this is called Glimpse. Their manifesto is rooted in making people think a little differently about the world around them, and inspiring a drive for positive change. They want to use creativity for good, as rightly it should be.

Glimpse ran a Kickstarter campaign that swiftly raised over £20,000 to replace a London tube station with something good. But they also needed it to catch people’s attention- and what’s the one thing that the world loves more than ads? Cats of course. The result is an incredibly impressive blanketing of cats throughout the station, that’s seen me witness more than one double take in the last two days, and a whole lot of smiles. I have to admit, it’s much nicer than the usual plethora of insurance, travel and burger joint ads that I usually whizz past on my daily commute.

It also genuinely seems like it’s not just a big publicity stunt that’s masking some big brand with a corporate goal, or even an attempts for Glimpse to gain five minutes of fame themselves. Dig a little deeper into the motives behind the movement, and you’ll find out that a majority of the cats featured are actually from Cat Protection and Battersea Dogs & Cats home, the takeover being used as a way of encouraging people to re-home, or sponsor an animal.

Whilst #catsnotads might seem like a big statement against the establishment, supposedly Glimpse are not against advertising per se, but more about reminding the ad world and all those who are a part of it that the work they do is a powerful, and that maybe such a powerful platform could, and should, be used more creatively, and for doing more good.

And if I’m honest, I have to agree with them.

As a 17 year old, I am considered to be in the heart of the expanding cohort of social media users. Brands have recognized this new platform for advertisement, setting up their own profiles and pages to target the online world. Yet, I think that brands tend to rely far too heavily on the fact that this new advertising opportunity exists, forgetting that just because we have twitter (and all the rest of it), there is no guarantee that we will be exposed to the self-promotion that they release onto these sites: they will have to work a little harder to gain our ‘follow’ and appear on our smartphone screens.

In my view, this has been the failing of this year’s Olympic sponsors. The Games have a range of partners this year who are sponsoring athletes and producing global advertising campaigns to promote both their product, and the Olympics themselves. Proctor and Gamble (P&G) have pushed various such campaigns, as have Samsung and Visa. Each have released lengthy television adverts, and their online presence is strong: the twitter, instagram and facebook profiles of these huge names are entirely alight with Rio-based hashtags, simpering images of elated medallists who they, by contract, have to support. So why is it that no one seems to have any idea that these companies are even part of the Games, suggesting they have failed to ‘exploit’ them in the ways they could?

P&G and all the brands that it owns have made a considerable effort to promote themselves via Rio. Gillette has released a rather dark, intense and three minute long advert with the tag line ‘Perfect isn’t Pretty’. It features various athletes suffering injury, illness and family tension all at the hands of sport, making admirable sacrifices for their discipline and showing impressive resilience. Once or twice during this excessively long video the athletes use a Gillette razor and conduct a fairly cursory shave. Despite the brand reposting this advert with gusto numerous times on their social media, I have not seen it on UK TV, or on billboards or public spaces. Also, the link between shaving and the Olympics is not well established, but translates as being rather forced: surely if ‘perfect’ is not ‘pretty’, the need for shaving in the first place is removed. All in all, the advert is weak, in more ways than one. However, twitter is where I believe P&G to be making all the right choices with regards to their Olympic campaign, even though I do not follow them myself. For one, they make use of Australian singer Sia having produced a song especially for the Gillette advert, by ‘retweeting’ one of her tweets about the collaboration. Although I do not consider celebrity involvement to necessarily make advertising more successful, seeing a familiar name in association with a campaign is effective in making that campaign more memorable. Furthermore, P&G are unique in that they ‘retweet’ the comments of normal consumers, portraying them to be an imminent and personal brand rather than some detached, inaccessible and irrelevant corporation.

Samsung is another name that I was unaware of being affiliated with the Games, despite their highly sentimental advert and use of social media. Again, this advert is more of a mini-film, around 3 minutes long, so one would imagine it to be powerful. Yet, any emotional power is completely undercut by what the advert is aiming to sell. In ‘The Chant’, we see Margret Rumat Rumat Hassan, a 19 year old 400m runner from South Sudan, preparing for the games with her whole community supporting her by chanting her name. The fact that 2016 is South Sudan’s first year in the Olympics, after gaining independence from Sudan in 2011 following a long and brutal conflict, gives the advert a definite ‘tug on the heartstrings’ factor as a story of overcoming barriers and achieving victory against all odds. At the end, when we are all appropriately moved and Margret is about to race, she removes from her ears a pair of cordless headphones through which she has been listening to her friends’ motivating chanting. This relatively superfluous product does seem to undercut the impact that this advert could have had, and the minimal coverage of this advert on TV further limits its success. Aside from TV advertising, Samsung has been tweeting almost every day, cheering on its athletes with the obstacle-defeating hashtag, ‘DoWhatYouCant’. With millions of followers on such platforms, Samsung is reaching many with their Olympic campaign, but the wider audience of TV viewers has not been fully tapped into in a similar way to Gillette.

Visa has also created a TV advert, featuring athletes from around the world making a fantastical journey across land and sea to Rio from their respective nations (using their Visa cards to fund it, of course). It showcases Brazil’s incredible landscapes, and defines the Olympics as something fun, exciting and magical. Without a doubt, this is the most successful advert. Although the link between sport and credit cards is again somewhat tedious, it is not quite so inappropriately realised as the two previously discussed, and succeeds in both of an Olympic partner’s objectives: creating enthusiasm and excitement for the product and the Games, not just for the product. But, yet again, this has hardly been on our television screens. With regards to social media, Visa has no official instagram or active facebook, yet every single tweet since the 2^nd of August (3 days before the Olympic start date) has been dedicated to ‘#TeamVisa’, their 30 plus sponsored athletes. Whilst this is an effective way to get their name out there, it focuses entirely on their own athletes whilst other brands have released far more general, inclusive posts encouraging and congratulating the sporting success of all competitors, which is an off-putting and thus limiting aspect of their Olympic inspired self-promotion.

After researching these three major sponsors and their relentless attempts to drive their campaigns, I am surprised by how little knowledge I had of their connection to Rio, and thus how they have failed to achieve their two objectives as a sponsor. The fact that I do not follow any of these companies on twitter and instagram is the main reason for this disconnect, and limited followers is the main barrier to similar businesses being able to effectively use social media to sell themselves. The committed and clever online networking of companies like P&G becomes futile without followers to see it. I know very few people my age, or indeed any age, who follow brands online, unless these brands are offering useful information regarding new discount codes and special offers (in other words, unless they can personally benefit from clicking the follow button). Why would you sacrifice your precious followers to following ratio otherwise? So, social media should not be the main means of promotion to rely on for any promotionary campaigns, with this being the weakness of Gillette, Samsung and Visa. Considering the only brand I knew to be an Olympic partner (Always) was the one I had seen advertised on television and billboards, these platforms strike me as far more vital for targeting the consumer than sites like twitter. Perhaps the message here is that the best advertising techniques have not, as is the modern viewpoint, actually changed as a result of the existence of social media… at least not yet. Until brands start luring in whole nations of online followers with the promise of self-gain, the ‘old-fashioned’, back-to-basics methods of television and posters in public spaces may be the way to go for both Olympic, and small scale, advertising.

After nearly 7 years housed in the grubby but getting better bit of Waterloo Road – we’re off!

Our decision to move has been protracted but was rapidly accelerated by a need for a space with um, more space, more flexibility and more Itsu’s.

And then we met WeWork. If you haven’t cruised past one of their 12 London (and many more worldwide spaces) yet then you will soon. Lofty exposed ceilings? Tick. Funky art and beer on tap? Tick. Office dogs? Tick. Hoards of hipsters on Macs plotting the next tech revolution? Double Tick.

What we love already about our personal slice of WeWork space is all of the above and more. It heralds our shift into being more focused on what’s going on outside of research than what’s in it. We want to take the company’s lead by collaborating with other WeWork members and finding newer, cleverer ways of doing what we do. If we need instance videographers, we can find them. If we need to find an App developer, there they are. If we reach out to those new challenger brands and work with them, they’re right where we are.

It’s time Razor had an office as grown up as we are. This is a grown up space full of grown up people. Grown ups who are entrepreneurial, collaborative, nimble and clever. That’s us.

Come and visit us…and if you don’t fancy taking part in Wednesday Yoga or Thursday Lunch and Learns…at least have a go on the swanky coffee machine.

Our new address is:

Razor Research

WeWork Waterhouse Square

3 Waterhouse Square

138 Holborn

EC1N 2SW