Facts & Findings From The World of Social Commerce
May 9, 2013
We’re delighted to announce the launch of a brand new Co-buying channel for Tesco – the UK’s largest retailer. Co-buying is the fast-emerging new form of online retail, allowing the customer to define what’s on offer and for the offer to increase in value as more people participate; smart rewards rather than blanket discounting. It turns social media into a powerful transactional channel, driving customer acquisition and insight. Powered by buyapowa’s award-winning technology, Tesco’s Co-buying channel features products selected by their shopping community. The more people who buy the better the price becomes for everyone. Whoever brings the most other people into [...]
April 22, 2013
Take a look at your favourite brand’s Facebook page. It’s pretty mature, isn’t it? It’s well managed, it’s active, those guys really know what they’re doing. And it’s not just Facebook – look at the way businesses use Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest and a million other tools. Social has definitely come of age. And then step back and put all this into context. It might seem like we’ve reached an end-point, like we’ve gone as far as we possibly can but, in truth, we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of social’s potential. How do we know that? Because [...]
April 19, 2013
Hey, look! It’s a Friday! That must mean yet another company unveiling its great new social commerce campaign which ISN’T ACTUALLY SOCIAL COMMERCE. NB: this also happens on other weekdays plus, occasionally, if the agency who’ve been commissioned to come up with this stuff are charging enough, Saturdays and Sundays. It seems that social commerce is the buzziest of buzzing buzz trends right now, but very few people are doing it right. So, here’s our top five ways to tell that your social commerce campaign isn’t actually social commerce. 1. There’s no actual in-situ commerce Linking to your bog-standard e-commerce [...]
April 18, 2013
We originally wrote this article as a guest post for socialmouths - one of our favourite blogs covering social media. We’d strongly recommend joining their mailing list for insightful advice and commentary. Last year, the blogger Francisco Rosales wrote a brilliant piece asking whether we were ready for Social Commerce. It was a strange time: on the one hand, research companies like Gartner were saying brands were about to start generating 50% of their web sales via social. On the flip-side, F-Commerce (ie, bolting old-fashioned e-stores onto your Facebook Page) had crashed and burned all over Zuckerberg-land, making social selling about [...]
April 17, 2013
“The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself,” said William Churchill and, given that he reputedly drank 42,000 bottles of Pol Roget champagne in his lifetime, you’d hope there’s some truth in that. Here’s a little nugget of purest nonsense we stumbled upon recently, based on research carried out by The Logic Group and Ipsos MORI. According to their survey of over 2,000 customers, people are more likely to be motivated to shop by earning loyalty points (27%) than they are by discounts (11%) or offers (9%). We smell a rat. A fishy rat. We’re not saying that the survey isn’t 100% [...]
April 15, 2013
We’ll keep this one short but sweet. In fact, you only really need to read the quote in bold below. It’s a biggie. So, here we go… We had a fascinating meeting with the Marketing Director of a consumer goods giant this morning. It would be wrong to name names, but this company’s high up in the Forbes Global 2000, they’re a household name brand. And one line struck us hard. It should strike you hard, too: “We need to stop doing competitions. They’re worthless to us. We need to prove that the fans we’re attracting to our Facebook page are [...]
April 14, 2013
It’s a bit legendary is Le Renais de Venise – a restaurant where there’s only one thing on the menu. Steak. No choice of cut, no choice of sides. You’re getting an entrecôte with their secret sauce, fries and a green salad with walnuts, or you’re going somewhere else for your dinner. Offering absolutely no choice is a bit brilliant for a restaurant. It shows passion, expertise and a certain cheeky charm. But it’s a rotten way to run promotions if you’re in retail. And yet, that’s exactly what most retailers still do – they push one or two prescribed [...]
April 12, 2013
This morning on my journey into work, I was given a free little can of pop, a crappy plastic ticket wallet, an international SIM card and a voucher for a free dental checkup (not by the same people who gave me the fizzy drink, obviously). The drink tasted… kinda fruity? Maybe? A bit like bubblegum? Whatever it tasted like, I’m buggered if I can remember the brand. The ticket wallet will go unused; the SIM card went straight in the bin and I’m pretty sure the dental ‘checkup’ would just be an excuse to upsell me expensive treatments once I turned [...]
April 11, 2013
Never move house. Just don’t do it. You pay a fortune to own the same old stuff in a different place. And then, to cap it off, your better half decides that you need a new washing machine when everyone knows it’s perfectly adequate just to take your smalls down to a riverbank and whack them with a stick. Yeah, I’m feeling the pinch. Anyway… buying a washing machine. With a million online shops and a trillion online ‘customer’ reviews, you’d have thought picking a brand, model and retailer would be a doddle. Well, guess what? It ain’t. And that’s mainly because [...]
April 8, 2013
It’s not often we’re treated to a bona fide good news story in retail, but Hilco’s rescue buyout of HMV most definitely qualifies. First, Hilco have an excellent track record with these things and, secondly, hopefully some of HMV’s amazing team will be retained to help paddle the boat back upstream. I worked at HMV for a short time and, take it from me, some of the people there are the most extraordinary, passionate and gifted folk working in retail today. We wish them the best of luck. But – and you knew there’d be a “but”, right? – if HMV [...]
