Miller Zell | Building A Digital Practice

Build With Nothing

Brand: Miller Zell
Project: Build digital department and capabilities
My Role: SVP (strategy and development)

Data Used:

  • Client use of digital to date

  • Revenue of digital projects

  • Industry trends for retail digital adoption

Gist: Miller Zell was historically a print and fixture company looking at growing digital capabilities to stay relevant in the retail experience design space.

Insight: While the company was already offering a few digital services, it needed a lot more credibility and capabilities to attract and keep the attention of the big names on their client list. This would take demonstrating without yet having.

We created a digital lab for clients to see relevant technologies Miller Zell could provide. Even though we hadn’t done the work yet, it let clients see we had a credible partner and understood how to leverage the technology. It also showed we knew how to orchestrate a digital solution and test it properly before deploying it.

Then we expanded partnerships to increase (overnight) the capabilities we could offer. Digital talent is expensive so partnerships was a way to test the waters on what tech clients would buy and where the opportunity was before spending the money to own it or bring it in-house.

Results:

Went from 2 clients using Miller Zell digital services to 7

Expanded into the critical retail vertical (NAPA, Sunbelt, Church’s) adding to the collegiate and financial we were already in

Tripled digital capabilities/solutions we could offer clients

The cherry on top:

Miller Zell client digital work has won 10 awards for experience design, brand activations and store technology integration!