Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 17
Inspiration from across the world for retail enthusiasts, e-commerce professionals, marketing lovers and technology fans.
🤖 Become friends with LLM’s
I think it is important to understand and become friends with LLM models. To understand how ChatGPT works. I stumbled upon this SEMRUSH article with a clear explanation.
A typical pre-training task is to predict the next word in a sequence. With the full training dataset as context, the model can apply patterns it’s learned in the task.
For example, it might learn that the word “going” is often followed by “to.” Or that “thank” is followed typically by “you.”
LLMs are generally functional after pre-training. But ChatGPT also went through another pioneering OpenAI process called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF).
Now what would an LLM do, if your brand is associated with publications on (high traffic) sites on topics you don’t want it to be associated with? That’s why it’s so important to understand how these systems work and to already work on your future branding.
https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-does-chatgpt-work/
🇯🇵 The restaurant of mistaken orders
Sometimes things happening in your life spark ideas. Innovation or creativity is sometimes applying an existing idea to a new context. This is such an example.
”The restaurant of mistaken orders” in Japan. This restaurant never serves what you ordered:
I think a great idea, we should have more of these concepts around the world. It’s also nice the founder created this restaurant to build awareness.
The idea for his project occurred to him when he was served a dumpling instead of a burger while visiting a nursing home. At first, he was going to send the dumpling back, but then he realized he was in a different world, with varying levels of functionality, including mistakes that didn’t really harm him. Why not just accept what he received as a way of respecting the difficulties the people around him faced, as an act of kindness and humility?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/justcapital/2023/08/18/the-restaurant-of-mistaken-orders/
🧑💼Product Management: The product strategy canvas
As I like product management or product ownership, I tend to read a lot about that. I found this post by Melissa Perri, which is from 2016 but I think still relevant. It has a good breakdown and template for building a product strategy.
Most companies fall into the trap of thinking about Product Strategy as a plan to build certain features and capabilities.
This isn’t a strategy, this is a plan. The problem is that when we treat a product strategy like a plan, it will almost always fail. Plans do not account for uncertainty or change. They give us a false sense of security. “If we just follow the plan, we’ll succeed!”
https://melissaperri.com/blog/2016/07/14/what-is-good-product-strategy
🇨🇳 Feature development: traffic light countdown in ride-sharing app
Let’s move on to China for a change😉. If you are using a ride-sharing (or navigation system) it’s possible to see in your app how long a traffic light stays red. Now as Chaniece says, Chinese traffic lights (in most cities) have a countdown system. They can be very annoying so this helps stay calm and also to find the optimal route.
🇨🇳 WeChat: meet a big fan since 2017
I am a fan of WeChat and I used it a lot when I lived in Shanghai, just testing features or for ease of use. I wrote about that already years ago. The Drum has an opinion article if WeChat is the direction Twitter X, goes.
WeChat made my life so much easier and transactions, so much more fun that I cannot wait until such a thing is created in the West. Integrated (global) payments are essential and maybe the most difficult to achieve unless…(hint ₿ lightning network).
Can the West catch up? I am not sure about that, but we surely should try to.
Is WeChat perfect? No, of course not, it has (at least for foreigners also some annoying limitations like file size limitations, HiRes sharing limitations, unneeded annoying verification), and sometimes half-translated pages. But all the things it can do do make up for that.
I recommend also checking the video mentioned in The Drum’s article, Ogilvy’s campaign on WeChat (and beyond) from Nescafé. This is because it shows the power of mini-programs and it goes beyond abstract messaging (which I agree, can be very annoying).
https://www.ogilvy.com/cn/eng/work/chunxiangwujin
🇨🇳 Podcast on Temu and Shein
Ok, the last China topic for this newsletter. I always read Mark Schaefer’s newsletter, and I have many of his books. Great inspirator on marketing and leadership.
I was triggered by his latest newsletter and listened to the podcast refered to in the article, about Temu and Shein.
Have to say, nice to listen to, but they seem so surprised by the rise of Temu and Shein and their business model that made me think this podcast views things very much from a US perspective, not a global perspective. Anyone interested in e-commerce and marketing around the globe already knew what is happening. There is so much to learn from other continents and countries. Temu and Shein are one of these things.
I don’t agree with everything they mention in the podcast, some things are incorrect or do not give the full picture but the topic is very interesting and there is a lot to learn, that’s why I recommend listening to the podcast. My takeouts/comments:
They say Shein is not a marketplace, but it is, it started marketplace services not so long ago.
Temu (and more marketplaces in Asia) use the consignment model. This means the factory just puts the products in Temu’s warehouse and the factory gets paid when the products are sold. Also often sellers can contact the platform and together with suppliers test (relatively risk-free) new products. A great way to boost assortment and innovation. This model is not available at Amazon.
They mention in the podcast that Shein is now a more popular brand than Nike, but if I check Google Trends that’s not the case.
Temu is -in line with other Chinese platforms, turning into entertainment selling. We don’t see that so much in the West yet, but with Temu it starts a little bit to touch base. It’s interesting to dive into that (but the podcast doesn’t).
Is Amazon in danger because of Temu? Probably not, at least not now. The overlap of Amazon vs Temu is minimal. Amazon in the US now has same-day delivery and that is something Temu cannot do. I do think Amazon’s convenience of ordering, can be challenged.
Where Temu, probably has a larger impact is at low-cost physical retail stores. For example, sometimes I find it easier to order on Temu than to go to the local physical Temu, Action. And I am not alone in that, in the US this trend has reached Dollar Tree, Besides that physical stores have a limited assortment. I just bought a very convenient toothpaste dispenser on Temu that is not available in any local physical store.😎
In the podcast they are very surprised, Temu does not (always) have SEO-focused elements like titles or descriptions. But that’s not so strange. China is much more app (or mini program) focused than the US. It is simply of less importance. They can focus much more on user experience and engagement (for example with KOL’s) than on keyword optimization.
What is I think fully correct and highly interesting is to understand “how they sell” There is a lot of focus on social proof, like a crazy amount of reviews (with pictures), an incredible amount of new products and variants, a highly intelligent recommendation engine, and last but not least the loyalty program: information in exchange for direct value. They do this via a point/refund system with for example:
Daily check-in gives points
Customers earn points for every dollar they spend on Temu products.
They can earn bonus points/free products for referring friends to Temu.
They can earn points for participating in social media campaigns or other promotions.
Get points for reviews.
Amazon does not have a loyalty program in the way Temu has, but they of course have Amazon Prime, of which the idea is, that by bundling all kinds of services into it, this should be a no-brainer for everyone to subscribe to. I understand that but the loyalty system from Temu has it advantages as well.
You can like it or not, but I have deep respect for the way Temu has set up this loyalty program. If you analyze it, they have so many neuro-marketing elements embedded in it, and I also found that the recommendation engine is really good. I could get free products for a referral and the way this flow is set up and the products I got offered. Compliments to the Temu team on that!
If you are working in an entrepreneurial environment, there are so many elements and features found on both Temu and Shein to test on your platform either in CRO or as features. I highly recommend analyzing it to test and improve your sales.
https://businessesgrow.com/2024/01/17/how-shein-and-temu-threw-a-bomb-at-ecommerce-conventions/
That’s it for this edition,
Cheerio,
Alex