Santa Monica Blvd.'s Capital One Café

Capital One is offering free Wi-Fi, local coffee and food, and complimentary money coaching. It wants to attract the 80 million Millennials, and thinks this is its advantage in getting to know them. 

Millennials now bank online, they manage their money online, and they don’t see a good reason to go to a bank’s branch office. In fact, a survey by Scratch says they don’t trust traditional banks, and 75 percent say they'd be more excited by a financial offering from Google, Apple, PayPal or Square over that of a nationwide bank. 

Brick-and-mortar stores everywhere should pay attention. With the imminent demise of Sears and Kmart, many department stores are at risk. Retailers of all kinds, especially supermarkets, which have felt that the technology culture wouldn’t have an effect on them, need to wake up.  

No matter what kind of business you're in, it's all about relationships. That’s all you’ve got. Traditional trade shows need to look at SXSW for the future. Banks need to look at Capital One. Supermarkets need to look at Amazon. There’s no doubt that the business worlds and the consumers that they serve have changed. What will it take for you to move your business into the future? It’s a question you should be asking yourself each day -- before a survey is published that says that the under-35-year-olds would prefer to buy their foods from companies that might not even exist yet – except for Amazon, of course.

Ask your consumers what they want and how they want it – and you might be surprised. It’s probably not price – the model that so many of our supermarkets still lay the foundations of their businesses on.