Why are we still talking omni-bollocks, when we should be talking retail?
Why all the jargon?
Why all the omni-channel cliches and the multi-channel job titles? Why all the endless debates about whether digital is right for a brand or not, or digital versus in-store?
Our new Marketing Budgets Report 2016 revealed some interesting facts about how company budgets are being spent.
One of the biggest trends highlighted was a continuing desire to provide a valuable and cohesive customer experience, rather than one-off or standalone campaigns.
QR codes never really took off in the West.
I had nothing against them, just their implementation (on a creative and a technical level).
However, I wanted one at the weekend so I could leave feedback about a store visit.
Apple’s recent announcement that it is preparing to bring one-touch shopping to the mobile web points to a major milestone in mobile commerce.
Brands are moving past mobile hype and towards delivering options that customers want.
Sadly, for years affiliate marketing has been seen as the poor relation of the digital advertising family.
Tracking networks and technology companies typically selling the channel as a no-frills, “no-win no-fee” way to pad out marketing plans.
Buried deep in newspaper reports and press releases about 2015 figures and a pessimistic outlook for retail chain Next this Easter weekend was some fundamental news.
“Next is planning to save £8m by not sending out glossy catalogues to shoppers who don’t want them” said The Telegraph on Good Friday. The money freed up would be directed into digital, it stated.
Whilst multi-device consumption is quite typical, for a marketer these usage patterns can be difficult to navigate and gaining a clear view of the user journey can be challenging.
So, how to improve cross-device measurement and deliver a seamless brand experience, with relevant, timely messages to audiences across all screens?
The ‘customer decision journey’ has long-ago replaced the ‘funnel’.
It’s now up to marketers to make sure that their brands meet consumer expectations.
In a previous post I asked the question “Is AO.com the best ecommerce experience online?”
In my opinion there are four areas in which the brand excels and that are the foundation of a market-leading online experience.
These are:
Programmatic advertising goes far beyond data and automation.
Our Creative Programmatic event is coming up on 2 March and we caught up with two of the speakers at the event, O2’s Head of Digital Excellence, Nick Adams, and TUI’s Head of Media, Sammy Austin.
Between them they discussed some of the biggest emerging trends and challenges in programmatic, and offered their opinions and advice on where creativity fits within this channel.
Just after Amazon Pantry’s launch at the end of 2015, research was conducted to see how Pantry stacked up on price against the major UK supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, Waitrose and Ocado) on its selection of approximately 4,000 grocery products.
We discovered that those competing grocers were priced between 16% and 29% higher on identical products.
And while Amazon does not typically disclose exact numbers for services like Pantry, Amazon UK boss Christopher North confirmed that it would be adding thousands more products to Pantry this year given its initial success.
According to our friends at Google, the most searched for fashion term in 2015 was “How to walk in heels”.
This may come as a disappointment to fashion brands who have been told search is all about sales.
Customers were NOT hungrily Googling the latest pictures from catwalks in Paris or Milan and working out where they could ‘get the look’.