Knowing what your industry is buzzing about certainly helps when you try to "sharpen your saw" and ensure your skills and knowledge don't get rusty. Here, we continue our observations about the keywords shopper marketing industry uses to define the agenda for its most prominent annual event.
On September 26-28, 2017, hundreds of shopper marketers from all over the world will convene in Rosemont, IL for the annual Path 2 Purchase Expo. They will discuss a wide range of topics, many of which have been on their radar for years, while others rapidly rise and fall in popularity. We have been tracking the Path to Purchase Expo and Shopper Marketing Summit agenda keywords for the last four years, building word clouds and making observations to satisfy our curiosity.
THE METHOD
We gather the Expo & Summit Brochures that are published by the Path to Purchase Institute, upload their text to a word cloud software, suppress generic and frequently used words like “shopper”, “market”, “retail”, “brand”, etc. that obscure the rest of the keywords, then we generate rankings and word clouds based on the frequency of each keyword.
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Top 10 Keywords in 2017
Here are the top 10 2017 Path 2 Purchase keywords compared to their rankings for the same event a year ago. Green rows show any significant (10 points or more) increases in mentions, white rows indicate little to no change and red rows indicate significant declines. The world of shopper marketing has changed dramatically in this short time span!
WHAT STAYED THE SAME
Digital is an evergreen popular keyword that never leaves the Top 10 charts. It consistently occupied top spots every year for the last 4 years. Perhaps because it is such a broad term that encompasses all the latest industry trends—from growth of click-and-collect and home delivery services, subscription-based business models, personalized content and offers, to curated omni-channel shopper experiences, and so much more.
Insight is consistently among the top 10 winners, and this year, it maintained its strong #3 position.
SURPRISING WINNERS
Two biggest winners, Learn & Understand are a surprise. These are the two keywords that rapidly rose to top 10 from obscurity. Is our collective mindset humbled by the rapid changes and overwhelming amount of new information our industry is awashed in? Are we subconsciously preparing ourselves for the unknown and truly seeking knowledge in the brave new world where nothing seems to be standing still?
LOSERS
This year, several once popular terms are missing from the top 10, or even top 20 list.
- Solution, a consistently popular term, almost made the top 10 list, it went from being #1 last year to #11.
- Integrated, which occupied the #2 spot last year, dropped significantly farther down, from 69 mentions to a mere 7.
- Collaborate, or Collaborative dropped from #7 to #31. Did we feel we got it all figured out, or, perhaps, the opposite, decided to take a break from and admit to ourselves that sustainable collaboration is hard to achieve?
- Mobile dropped from 40 mentions in 2016 to 9.
- Measure decreased more than twofold, from 37 mentions to 13.
2016 P2P Expo Agenda Keywords
Were you surprised by any of these findings? What trends do you think are here to stay and what topics are on their way out? What hot topics would you like to see debated by the industry in 2018? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
