BEYOND MEDALS is a Swedish street-wear fashion brand that has had great success through its development of an innovative digital business model. BEYOND MEDALS was started by a group of professional Swedish snowboarders that initially focused on the production of snowboard videos. However, with the creation of their fashion and apparel brand, they have been able to thrive and grow significantly over the last 4 years.

Over the last 5 years, we have seen considerable change in consumer trends within fashion – as Roger Lay of Deloitte pointed out, “the role of the consumer has shifted from one of passive observance to enabled dominance” (Deloitte 2018). People no longer want to simply buy a brand, they want to interact with it and be part of that brand. Brands now need to have an ethos that resonates with consumers and BEYOND MEDALS have been able to achieve this with their target market. Part of the brand ethos relates back to the founders’ own alienation from the bureaucracy of the Swedish snowboard team in which they were members, and their desire to get back to the roots of what snowboarding meant to them. In a quote taken from an interview with Menswear style in 2019, one of the founders, Kevin Backstrom stated they are “very much into the freedom of the sport. However, the system began to get too serious” (Menswear Style 2019). This slightly anti-establishment ethos resonated with BEYOND MEDALS’s target market of snowboarders and streetwear enthusiasts who liked the laidback freedom idea that they associated with the brand.

This image of the brand was revolutionary and was seen to resonate with consumers in a new and significant way. The creation of the brand with its ethos can be correlated with a dramatic shifting in landscape of snowboarding. After the Winter Olympics of 2014, the impact of BEYOND MEDALS can be seen when the Gold medalist, Sage Kotsenburg, retired from competitive snowboarding in favour of making digital snowboard films (The Wall Street Journal 2018). The next winner of the same event in 2018, Red Gerard, also took a similar direction saying that “I want to go film snowboarding pretty badly and just take two years to do that” (The Wall Street Journal 2018). BEYOND MEDALS’s use of social media to promote this message has not only raised the profile of the brand and resonated with consumers, but also, building on this shift in the industry, has been a key factor in the company’s success.

According to Global Digital Report in 2019, the number of active social media users globally is 3.484 billion (smartinsight.com 2019). Both the founders of BEYOND MEDALS have large social media followings with Tor Lundstrom having 31,800 followers on Instagram while Kevin Backstrom has 96,800 followers on the same platform (Instagram 2020). As a result, when the founders started the brand, they had a ready-made audience and were able to make the brand incredibly visual to their main target market. As noted in the LiveArea blog in (2019, November 7), many people are now discovering brands and products online using social media platforms such as Instagram. In the case of BEYOND MEDALS, this use of social commerce was at the centre of their business model and has undoubtedly significantly contributed to its success.

BEYOND MEDALS’s target market is global and, in the same way that Amazon and eBay were able to reach a worldwide audience using the internet, digitalization allowed BEYOND MEDALS to implement an internet-based business model (Gänßlen 2017-2018). The statistics provided by the Global Digital Report in 2019 suggested that the number of internet users was 4.388 billion, and BEYOND MEDALS, by using an internet strategy, has reached far more potential customers than would have been possible through the use of physical shops (smartinsights.com 2019).

BEYOND MEDALS’s use of video marketing has also been a significant contributor to their success. This marketing concept is emphasised by digitalmarketinginstitute.com who recommend video marketing as a means of engaging with customers given its versatility, the way in which customers can be provided with a real-life format for the product and the ease with which ideas can be understood across multiple platforms (digitalmarketinginstitute.com). BEYOND MEDALS have managed to use this format by providing a video series on the website that is released regularly as well as an extensive gallery for photos. The ability to see the products being worn and used has undoubtedly contributed to the success of BEYOND MEDALS and video marketing’s contemporary and immediate “feel” has actually reinforced the values and ethos of the brand.

With the rise of digitalization, fashion and lifestyle companies have needed to adapt and create digital business models in order to thrive in the new environment. BEYOND MEDALS’s success has undoubtedly been down to a number of different digital techniques that have allowed their products to invariably sell out in a number of hours (menswearstyle.com 2019). The values of the brand have undoubtedly allowed it to resonate strongly with its customer base but it has been the use of social media, website optimization and the use of the internet to sell items that has been mainly responsible for the company’s extraordinary rise in such a small period of time.

References

• Deloitte. (2018), retrieved from,
https://www2.deloitte.com/ch/en/pages/consumer-industrial-products/articles/ultimate-challenge-fashion-industry-digital-age.html
• Digitalmarketinginstitute.com. Retrieved from,
https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-gb/blog/the-importance-of-video-marketing
• S. Gänßlen, H. Losbichler, R. Gleich, S. Tobias. (2017/2018), Digital Business Model Innovations, Controlling in the Digital Transformation. retrieved from
https://www.icv-controlling.com/fileadmin/Assets/Content/AK/Ideenwerkstatt/Files/Dream_Car_GMI_EN.pdf
• LiveArea Blog. (2019). Retrieved from,
https://www.liveareacx.com/blog/5-digital-trends-reshaping-the-business-of-fashion/
• Mens Style. (2019). Retrieved from.
https://www.menswearstyle.co.uk/2019/10/11/introducing-beyond-medals/8752
• Instagram. Retrieved from,
https://www.instagram.com/backstromkevin/?hl=en
• Instagram. Retrieved from,
https://www.instagram.com/torlundstrom/?hl=en
• Smartinsight.com (2019) Retrieved from,
https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/
• The Wall Street Journal (2018) Retrieved from,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-star-snowboarders-dilemma-embrace-the-olympic-stage-or-leave-it-for-the-backcountry-1518519375

In recent years, we have seen significant strides in digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence or AI as well as the spread of social machine technologies, and this has been a driving force behind the rise of the digital economy.

Many firms and businesses have looked to implement these new technologies to take advantage of their capabilities and further their competitive advantage over their peers.

Insurance organisations are continually under pressure to improve their services and customer experience at a reduced cost.  Neal Baumann of Deloitte has noted that many firms have looked to implement new technologies such as AI to simplify the processes for customers and also reduce costs in their businesses (Deloitte).

One part of the insurance industry where these technologies have been instrumental in altering employment roles is the Auto Repair industry, in which firms like AutoGlass operate. Insurance claim managers working in this industry have always played a key part in the distribution of repair jobs as well as the assessment of claims to determine which course of repair or replacement is required.

Historically, when a customer sought to make a claim, they had first to take their vehicle to a service centre where the damage would be assessed (R. Singh et. al. 2019). Now, as I saw first-hand when I interned at AutoGlass, customers simply send in images of their damage where they could be assessed by an insurance claims manager in an office.  Furthermore, with insurance companies such as Aviva partnering with AutoGlass as their delegated care repair provider, insurance claims managers no longer needed to contact an insurer but just book an appointment online while the paperwork is taken care of by Aviva (AutoGlass website).  The days of substantial numbers of staff working in large offices taking calls from customers and quoting them prices for services had gone.

Effectively, digital technologies have significantly changed the skills required for the job of an insurance claims manager. No longer would an insurance claims manager need to have strong interpersonal skills and possess the ability to empathise with a customer; instead, they needed to be able to understand how to interpret orders that came through online and then turn those bookings into orders and send them out to the closest repair shop.

However, with technological developments continuing, the question now for people like insurance claims managers is what their job may entail in the future. One such key development for insurance claims managers lies in the increasing use of AI and apps. Nick Cleary, the Customer and Digital Director at AutoGlass, was quoted as suggesting that “AI is a fascinating area which I have watched closely over the last few years, and there is no doubt it has the potential to dramatically change many aspects of our society, whether that is in our homes or how we interact with businesses” (glassBYTES.com 2018).

AutoGlass, in partnership with Service Certainty imageproof, revealed details in an article in RDN Repairer Driver News (2018), of an app that they had created and trialled which allowed customers to take a picture of their damaged windscreen and then upload it onto this app. From there, an AI system would analyse the picture and determine whether the damage was repairable or would need to be replaced.  Since the testing period, the current AI system is scanning around 2,500 photos each week and, according to AutoGlass, is achieving an 80% accuracy rate (Fleetworld 2018). The company also noted that this will only “grow as the AI processes more data” (Fleetworld 2018).  For insurance claims managers, this development would clearly represent another reduction in their work requirements. For AutoGlass, the use of AI could be expanded into other aspects of repair service – and this potential new area has been termed by market operators and by Fleetworld (2018) as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, or ADAS for short.

Although the use of AI processes will result in a significant reduction in the need for insurance claim managers, it does not necessarily mean the end of any human assessment in the insurance claim management function. AutoGlass have maintained that there will still be a need for human involvement in cases where the assessment done by the AI and the app process were inconclusive (Repairer Driver News 2018).  In addition, insurance claims managers will have to develop new and different skills.  They may well need to be able to contribute to the firm’s success in terms of product development, sales and marketing or customer complaints.  They will need to be able to undertake other functions within a business and certainly need to understand the technology that underpins the use of the app.  The digital economy therefore offers many attractions for customers and company shareholders, but represents a need in workers, particularly in the case of insurance claims managers, to have the skills of adaption in a rapidly changing business environment.

• Retrieved from:
https://www.autoglass.co.uk/insurers/aviva/
• Retrieved from:
https://www.autoglass.co.uk/?ins=wt28&gclid=CjwKCAiAhJTyBRAvEiwAln2qBxKCMDfA6Wi1ebyoFWd9oohfCbtUosbjonuOuKDenL6aiIx5DEI2GBoConUQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
• Retrieved from:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_W64KQG0lNgJ:https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/financial-services/articles/insurer-of-future-claims.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
• Retrieved from:
https://fleetworld.co.uk/new-ai-app-can-determine-windscreen-repair-or-replacement-choices/
• Retrieved from:
https://www.glassbytes.com/2018/02/autoglass-launches-artificial-intelligence-technology/
• Retrieved from:
https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2018/02/16/safelite-u-k-sister-company-autoglass-using-ai-photo-estimating-to-decide-fate-of-windshields/

• Retrieved from:
https://roboticsandautomationnews.com/2017/07/01/adas-features-of-advanced-driver-assistance-systems/13194/
• R. Singh., M. Ayyar., T. Venkata., S. Pavan., S. Gosain., R. Shah., (2019). Automating Car Insurance Claims Using Deep Learning Techniques. 2019 IEEE Fifth International Conference on Multimedia Big Data.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

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