Today we launched enRICH for Brands, a new brand-advertising vehicle that enables dynamically personalized ad placements on major retail sites—real estate that is garnering the term “Shopping Media.” I’d like to take a moment to pause and strike this moment into our corporate history. The launch of this product represents a seminal moment for our company, online retail and the advertising industry. It also represents years of work by every single member of our team. Be forewarned: I am going to take this opportunity to wax poetic about how all of this came to be.
First, a little bit of history. Three years ago we launched RichRelevance as a cutting edge recommendations/personalization company, to help retailers build much needed sophistication into their sites. However, we also saw another potential market opportunity: “How do we bring together the scale and volume of internet advertising with the fundamental data and value of ecommerce?”
Though I don’t work at Amazon anymore, I am still a big fan of their business and all of their products. As a proud Amazon Prime member, if I need a single 99 cent black pen tomorrow, I can get it via next day air! This Black Friday weekend, I thought I’d reconnect with my former ‘Zon Komrades by snooping on their website (also known as shopping).
One of the most interesting things I saw over the Black Friday weekend was the pricing strategy of Amazon. I added a few TVs to my cart and then just observed their price changes over the course of the weekend. How? Amazon made it easy whenever I logged back in to track pricing changes for the items still in my cart. Although I am sure my timing wasn’t exact, I was able to generally watch the rise and fall of pricing as well as product availability.
Paco Underhill and David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance at the National Retail Federation Big Show, January 2010
I’ve had the immense privilege and pleasure of spending a good part of my year with the one and only Paco Underhill, as we met with hundreds of merchants and brands nationwide to share perspectives on the challenges and opportunities with cross-channel retailing. The overarching theme through all these presentations was tying together all the disparate parts of our business through stronger customer analytics.
Greetings from across the pond! I’ve just spent the past week in London, where I had the opportunity to meet with a host of retailers — both pure play and multi-channel—to discuss a crucial issue: managing the expectations of today’s empowered consumer.
The backdrop for these meetings was the unveiling of a study that we conducted with Forrester Research in concert with Bazaarvoice, which uncovered some interesting findings on how UK shopping behaviour has evolved with the advent of social and mobile. These changes have surfaced a critical imperative for retailers: designing a customer-centric vision in order to define a consistent, seamless customer experience, regardless of channel.
Wow, Shop.org was full of creative people and creative ideas this year. We got a chance to meet everyone from folks setting up Facebook storefronts to the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders!
There were three key trends I picked out, and fortunately, {rr} gets to be a part of each of them:
- Interest in Mobile is accelerating: Every retailer was interested to learn how things are progressing and every vendor seemed to have a mobile strategy. {rr} even got headlines in the local press for the personalized mobile app we built in partnership with Sprella for Patagonia. Numerous retailers are seeing significant sales from mobile web, iPhone and iPad applications.
Last weekend, I had the great opportunity to attend and speak at the DDi (Display and Design ideas) forum in Sonoma, and it was a great eye opener. This week, I’m at the Shop.org Annual Summit and am very excited to see all of the innovation here (not least of which is the unveiling of ClickSee 2, RichRecs+mobile and InstantShopper of {rr} Labs!!!). I’ll keep you posted as this week unfolds as well.