Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 115
Inspiration from across the world for retail enthusiasts, e-commerce professionals, marketing lovers and technology fans. Welcome back! I summarized some great links again, I stumbled upon this week.
Goodmorning from Bangkok! I am at holiday here in this great city again but that doesn’t stop me from writing the weekly newsletter.
Let’s get started:
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia’s AI Ambition: land of opportunities?
I read more and more great things on Saudi Arabia, especially when it comes to tech and AI and their future plan “Vision 2030”. It really seems to be getting a “land of opportunties”.
This talk is really interesting if you want to learn more on what is happening in Saudi it covers multiple topics but mostly focuses on the story of “Humain” a company founded in Saudi Arabia.
Humain created an Arabic-first + regional language & cultural context LLM. This means not just translation of English models into Arabic, but models trained with dialects, cultural nuances, and region-specific context. Really nice someone jumped into that.
Tareq Amin says: “I learned innovation here in the US. When I moved to India I learned scale. When I moved to Japan I learned precision and quality. You come to Saudi Arabia and I’m learning optimism and vision truly.”
Saudi Arabia has the potential to become the third largest country globally in AI infrastructure outside the US and China, capitalizing on its abundance of power and land.
Historically, Saudi Arabia led the world in energy exports via oil. The current opportunity is to look at leading the world through energy exports via tokens. Now first time I hear about that, but that is very interesting of course! It means exporting compute (tokens) to boost/ create a high-speed, global digital service economy.
Important to understand as I think these kind of visions and energy lacks in the EU, so it’s good to understand where change is coming from and where opportunities are.
🇯🇵 🇹🇭 % Arabica → the minimalist brand
I stumbled in Asia and the Middle East, already a few times at a coffeeshop that has an “all white” minimalistic decor. I read they had a new flagship store in Bangkok, so I decided to take a look.
First in short about the brand:
% Arabica started in Kyoto in 2014, founded by Kenneth Shoji, a Japanese entrepreneur with a passion for coffee, design, and travel. The brand exploded globally thanks to its minimalist aesthetic, high-quality Arabica beans, and consistent store experience. Today, % Arabica has become one of the world’s most recognizable premium coffee chains, especially popular across Asia and the Middle East.
Every shop I visited so far had:
Minimalist white design
Logo-driven branding (the % sign everywhere)
High-end equipment ( at least so it seemed)
Same product quality
Photo-friendly interiors (very very photo friendly)
I visited the branch on the the 55th floor of Empire Tower in Bangkok, which is an experience in itself. You step through a bright white entrance, walk through a forest-themed hallway, and take an express elevator that brings you straight up to the 55th floor. Really nicely done and I saw many people take pictures/videos and share that online.
I made a short video on how it looks.
Curious how long it will take until the brand comes to Europe.
PS: sorry for the annoying music behind the video, but it was one of the few free to use background songs on Kinemaster.😅
Fun fact, I saw multiple same style pictures of local stores, on Google My Business, all with waving staff. Very nice idea! Have to remember that🧐
🗲Fastcompany on Duolingo’s vibe coding initiative
Nice publication on Duolingo where employees used “vibe coding” to create a chess game that is now very popular. Basically they vibe coded a prototype that was then handed over to engineers. Very nice inspiring story, that vibe coding helps productivity and is fun!
Duolingo’s new chess course is the clearest illustration of how a large, public company can use AI coding apps to accelerate its product development and empower employees.
As they make clear, AI is not replacing engineers, but it is giving them a head start. Vibe coding has become a phenomenon, but we don’t have any high-profile examples of a hit product that relied on it. Until now.
Nice to read, especially for people like me that like vibe coding and to make prototypes but are not always so good in design.
PS: Cursor 2.0 was just released and I think there is even a Chinese open source model behind it:
Details: https://www.fastcompany.com/91429115/exclusive-how-duolingo-vibe-coded-its-way-to-a-hit-chess-game
Unpaywalled : https://archive.is/8WXJg#selection-686.0-686.1
📰 Dara Denney with lots of tips on Meta Ads via creators
It’s time for a Dara Denney video again. I am sharing this video as I also want to save it somewhere, this one can come in of use in the future.
It’s our performance marketing guru, Dara Denney again and this time it is on how to succeed with Meta ads without an agency.
It’s I think, a very interesting video and -also if you are an agency- there are plenty of takouts that you can use for clients.
Basically they have setup a co-creator strategy that they combine with paid ads.
The problem explained in the video: two years ago, Caraway struggled to get creator content that actually performed (translated to revenue when run as a paid ad), even though it looked good and got engagement when posted organically. The solution:
Caraway built an internal system called the paid UGC program to partner directly with creators.
The goal is to drive performance, not just general awareness.
last year, partnership ads through this platform were the most scalable and top-performing creative in the ad account, making up 40% of Caraway’s total budget on Meta overall.
Caraway manages their creative work in-house because they believe no one knows their brand better or cares more than their internal team members.
The Paid UGC program is completely separate from Caraway’s ambassador influencer team, which sources content specifically for organic social content. The acquisition pod has its own budget to ensure they get the exact type of content they need (e.g., specific voiceovers, shot lists, hooks, and CTAs).
Creator Deliverables: After the briefing, the creator provides the raw assets as well as a rough edit directly to Caraway. This significantly speeds up Caraway’s editing process, allowing them to only add necessary text overlays or captions.
Testing Campaign: Ads are launched in an ABO creative testing sandbox campaign, usually running for two weeks to gather performance data. If the creatives are exceeding goal, they are duplicated into scaling campaigns. If the creatives lose, they are immediately turned off, and the team documents why they think the creative failed.
Worth a watch!
📖Andromeda: Hands-On insights from an expert practitioner
I wrote earlier on “AndroMeda” the new Meta ad algorithm, now I found a real good video with a good explanation of the algorithm by an expert practioner. Check it and take advantage of these lessons.
A few takouts:
It’s all about creative diversity. Don’t limit to Top of Funnel (branding) or Bottom of funnel (conversion). It all works together in one campaign. The strenght is the combination.
Stop using generic hooks and near-duplicate ads and instead focus heavily on creative diversity across concepts, angles, and formats.
The new recommended ad structure is highly simplified: use one campaign with one broad Advantage Plus ad set loaded with a high number (10 to 50) of different ads.
Reduce the update frequency because of learning phases, but think about f.e. dropping new creatives one to two times per month and removing low performing ones.
Link to the post mentioned in the video: https://www.jonloomer.com/meta-andromeda/
🇹🇭 Central Park Shopping Mall & park Bangkok is amazing
Today I visited the “central park mall” in Bangkok. They really do these things right in Thailand. The mall is amazing and there is always an attraction to get you to the mall. In this case they have huge outdoor skywalk/parc with great views.
The rooftop park, named “Dusit Arun Park”, spans ~11,200 m² and occupies 4th-7th floors. a garden above the city, with views of Lumphini Park, wellness zones, pet-friendly areas and even a children playground. It’s really nice and you see everyone taking pictures.
The escalator set inside the mall, went viral on the internet, many people go there to take pictures of the escalators and you will find much better pictures online then the one I took. I personally liked the advertising space, it’s really in your face and you see it all around the escalators.
Of course, as often in Asia, it’s perfectly connected to public transport, both skytrain and metro are directly connected to the mall.
🇹🇭 Thailand: tourists can get a crypto powered digital tourist wallet soon
Well look at that, that’s very nice! Thailand is making a crypto friendly step. Soon tourists will be able to get a “digital tourist wallet”. On this digital tourist wallet you can put crypto currency’s that are then converted into Baht’s (not crypto Baht to be clear).
Really hope this works out. There are some risks, I think like:
Too difficult registration/steps for tourists that can cause a huge dropoff.
The interface and UX might feel clunky or not globally intuitive,given the diversity of tourists Thailand receives, the system should be built for a wide cultural base. If you now look at the TDAC (Thailand Digital Arrival Card) interface, I hope it will not look like that, because that is a horrible UX.
If spending is restricted to certain categories or only specific merchants, the scheme risks being too narrow and won’t serve general tourist spending behaviour. It can prevent scams or unwanted transactions but when one restriction is set, it’s easy to set more.
Ideally, tourists should be able to convert leftover Baht back into crypto (or at least have an easy exit). If that isn’t allowed, that could reduce appeal.
Anway very interesting and encouraging idea and setup. Really cool! I have many ideas to make the tourist experience much better with this wallet.
Details via de Bangkok post:
🇳🇱 🇩🇪 Coolblue & SEO: CTRL+C, CTRL+V ≠ TRUST
As you know by now I am a big fan of Dutch company Coolblue. They focus at customers first and they do that with “product journey’s”. I wrote about it many times in this newsletter, for example here.
This slide deck is on Coolblue’s expansion to neighboring Germany and their localisation & SEO efforts. Worth a share I would say if you are interested in localisation, the German market and differences between cultures.
Full slide deck: https://speakerdeck.com/lindahogenes/spotlight-ctrl-plus-c-ctrl-plus-v-trust-scaling-seo-for-international-success
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Thanks for writing this, it clarifies a lot; it's intriguing how countries are leveraging AI infrastructure, and as someone who enjoys a good analytical book, I'm always curios how such rapid technological advancement aligns with broader societal progress, especially regarding human rights and transparency.