Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 12

Inspiration from across the world

🛍️Great interview with Jeff Bezos

A happy emotional customer using one-click shopping at Amazon, read more on that below

If you haven’t listened to this podcast, I can recommend it. The first part is about the space program, which is nice, but I especially liked the latter part, where Bezos and Fridman talk about Amazon, leadership, and innovation. I liked the practical side of things. Solve those corporate obstacles and really prioritize the customer.
I have to say as a very frequent buyer of Amazon products via the app, I really do like to shop via the app, it makes shopping fun. Now, some Asian shopping apps are even better with their integrated video selling, but from a Western point of view Amazon is far ahead in frictionless shopping.

I have read a lot of books on Amazon, and many of those topics are also covered in this interview, but still, because it is a talk, there is more to distill than just reading a book.

Some highlights:

Focus on the big things that will not change over time. Bezos believes that businesses should focus on the things that will be important to customers in the long term, such as low prices, fast delivery, and wide selection

“I like a crisp document and a messy meeting. And so the meeting is about asking questions that nobody knows the answer to and trying to wander your way to a solution. And when that happens just right, it makes all the other meetings worthwhile”.

And this is so much better than having a slideshow presentation, a PowerPoint presentation of some kind, where that has so many difficulties. But one of the problems is PowerPoint is really designed to persuade. It’s kind of a sales tool. And internally, the last thing you want to do is sell. Again, you’re truth-seeking. You’re trying to find the truth.

Talking about the “crisp document” Bezos means the 6-page memo, that Amazon and now also Blue Origin use. Worth a try for every company, I think. An outline of such a memo can be found here.

Amazon has a special team to fix “paper cuts”, tiny little frictions in customer experience. They might seem not important or small but many small problems can accumulate.

I think Bezos is 100% right. Many companies prioritize features often at impact/effort but then often those smaller frictions might be left untouched for a long time.

It’s very common, especially in large companies, that they’re managing to metrics that they don’t really understand. They don’t really know why they exist, and the world may have shifted out from under them a little and the metrics are no longer as relevant as they were when somebody 10 years earlier invented the metric.

I think also true, for example, if someone one day in a company, decided to focus on NPS, but the follow-up processes or activities are not in place, why then still focus on it? Then either fix these processes/activities or switch to an alternate metric. In this case, maybe there are nowadays better ways to get customer feedback than NPS (often the case).

On one click shopping:

There is in the perfect invention for the perfect moment in the perfect context, there is real beauty. It is actual beauty and it feels good. It’s emotional. It’s emotional for the inventor, it’s emotional for the team that builds it. It’s emotional for the customer. It’s a big deal and you can feel those things.

🌐Revolut: on cross-cultural design

I use Revolut, I think already since the beginning. Partly because I like the concept, but especially because they really try to make the app better continuously.
Recently I found this sketch from I think Krisztina Szerovay at a talk on Revolut’s redesign. I wish I could sketch like that ☺️
Revolut really does effort to localize the app. 👍

Revolut collaborates internationally through its “Design Ambassadors program”. This program allows designers from different countries to share their expertise and insights:

• When Revolut was expanding into India, they worked with a team of Indian designers to create a design that was tailored to the needs of the Indian market. This included using specific fonts and colors that are popular in India and making sure that the design was compatible with the most popular Indian mobile devices.

• Revolut also works with a team of international designers to test their designs with users from all over the world. This helps Revolut to identify any potential cultural issues with their designs before they are launched.

How Revolut designs its app cross cultural

🇯🇵Japan’s Central JR holiday ad on YouTube

Japan = Shinkansen, the high-speed train. High-speed railways are just like in China “Connecting”. Connecting people and regions and boosting economic activity, is something often not understood in the West. If you want to understand cultures, this connecting infrastructure is something to experience and understand.

Central JR Railways created an ad, just on this topic for the holidays. In my opinion a great ad, with different perspectives, and emotions, so you keep on watching.

• The two-and-a-half-minute ad follows a Japanese man’s journey through his Christmas and New Year’s holidays, a time when hundreds of thousands of Japanese people travel via Shinkansen to see their families

• The ad starts from a third-person perspective, viewing the main character riding the Shinkansen, but as he reaches his stop, it changes to a first-person point of view, switching between different people’s experiences of leaving a JR station to meet their family members and loved ones.

• The ad switches between horizontal and vertical filming, giving it authenticity.

https://soranews24.com/2023/12/27/central-japan-railway-releases-tear-jerking-shinkansen-bullet-train-ad-for-the-holiday-season/

🧔‍♂️The future of (digital) agencies

Hipster people in a digital agency, rethinking their proposition (image created by mid-journey)

I have a love-hate relationship with digital agencies. I like them because it is nice to help people and companies. I do not like them because often they are over-promising and under-delivering, they are often quite arrogant and certainly mostly not transparent. This article describes the impact of AI on agencies.

“What works on TikTok doesn’t really work on Facebook, and so a lot of times when you have an in-house team, you’re creating one asset and then you’re just cutting it in sizes for different platforms,” said Trust & Will Chief Marketing Officer Dale Sperling. “It’s not the best strategy to get that authentic connection and growth on those different social channels. So I do see a use case for having a specialized creator or agency that knows that platform and is really good at that style.” 

As major players such as Google and Meta continue to automate much of what strategic media buyers once did, certain types of agencies will see their value lessen dramatically, Drabicky said.

He set up a company designed to work as a business partner with clients, rather than as a vendor solely hired to deploy media campaigns. That meant providing a wider set of functions, including new market and business development, auditing marketing technology partners and evaluating talent, he said.  

I think this makes sense. For example, relatively new positions like a MarTech manager might be beneficial for organizations to hire via an agency, it’s a position that might be less easy to replace by AI than a performance marketer.
Also helping organizations with more customer-focused processes or insights (see the Jeff Bezos video above), might be very beneficial.

Original paywalled article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-2024-mark-the-end-of-the-digital-agency-78459f5a

Archive.is unpaywalled: https://archive.is/wfCfW

📼Pika: Unleash the power of AI to create captivating short videos in minutes

If you haven’t tried “PIKA” yet, give it a try. With Pika you can generate AI videos, based on just a few images. Or you can simply add elements to existing videos. It’s all just in the beginning, but I am sure very soon, marketers and creative people make video ads via tools such as Pika in a fraction of the time it costs now. After that complete movies can be generated.

This video below is completely generated by Pika and Midjourney. You can find the prompts here.

🇨🇳 Shein a light on China

Shein a light on China. This picture I took in Lujiazui, a great commercial district in Shanghai, which I used to visit a lot.

I recently read this LinkedIn post by Ed Sander (see screenshot below), and I think he is right. It is worth sharing his post here in the newsletter as well to better understand China and commerce strategies.

Shein and also Temu are some of the largest advertisers on Western social media.
I think the consignment model, Ed refers to is very interesting. I wrote on this topic earlier when visiting Thailand. Haven’t seen it here yet. This model can help (starting) sellers on platforms, boost innovation and entrepreneurship and so create happy consumers.

Ed Sander 👍 on cross-border e-commerce from China

Thank you for reading,

Alex