Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 143

Goodmorning everyone! Another edition of my newsletter on everything I find interesting. Mostly on Global Marketing & Retail. Go check out this edition.

Goodmorning everyone! 7 days and I am off to Istanbul. Hope to find some nice retail locations there that I can share with you. Also I am trying to get in touch with someone from “Hepsibaruda” or Trendyol to learn more about it or to visit the headquarters (so far no luck, so if anyone reads this that works at those companies, please contact me).
Now let’s get on with this week’s news:

🫢YourSurprise and it’s “thank you page”

I ordered a gift for a collegue from the HQ in Germany at YourSurprise a Dutch company that does very well (they are active in many countries now and still expanding). So to get my gift in the German language was very easy. What stood out for me was n their “thank you page”. Instead of having a promotion (that you sometimes see), they do profiling in a very smooth way.
I can imagine this can work for many company types (f.e. in travel and hospitality), yet you hardly see it.
The questions they ask are: For who did you order the gift? How old is the recipient? For which topic did you buy this present?, things like that.
Very valuable information for personalisation and retargeting.

But not only that, below the survey there is of course all information one needs from the order details and a performance branding video of the brand. (unfortunately not localised).
After you click “submit” of the survey, they give you the opportunity to store “birthdates” so they can remind you when it’s time to buy a gift.
I think they can use the results also for PR purposes and by that boosting LLM visibility for “gifts”.

Very nicely done! ****** Crossborder Alex Kudo’s

🎉 Build an audience first, then the app

As you know I am also busy with vibe coding apps. Just for fun. Together with a collegue we now vibe-coded a “task manager for farmers”. Appearantly the way we made it did not yet exist.
We are now validating it with farmers. It seems we are not the only ones:

Vibe coded apps do not lead to usage

So, what I already learned years ago as a niche of product sourcing, build an audience before you have the product. It seems to be also valid for these kind of things.
Building an audience or a community, doesn’t even have to be expensive i.m.o. It can be perfectly done with social media and if you are creative enough you do not need (a lot of) paid ads. It depends a bit on the goal, follow it by baking into your app “distribution” and see how it goes.

So I think it’s important to get your audience first then it’s easier to distribute and get re-usage of your vibe coded app.

This connects to something Mark Schaefer and Joe Pulizzi wrote this week that’s worth reading in full:

“you do not build a community first. you build the reason a community should exist. that’s the part most people want to skip. they launch the group. they open the Slack channel. they create the Discord server. they announce the membership. they schedule the webinar. they build the event page. and then they wonder why nobody shows up. the mistake is simple. they built the campfire before anyone had a reason to sit down in front of it.”

Now for the details:

https://businessesgrow.com/2026/06/08/content-creators-2/

and/or checkout these earlier newsletter editions, where I wrote on “Lovable” and their way of “community” building and baking into their service “distribution”.

And this earlier edition:

🦾 Inspiration: AI generated video ads that work

I am pretty convinved that I am creative enough -if I focus- to create working AI video advertisements. That’s why I read this article, to see which AI generated video ads won prices.

Check it out there are quite some nice ones like “The Watch” that I embedded above.

Details:
https://mashable.com/tech/generated-awards-ai-advertisements-videos

🇮🇳 India: Sleepyhead campaign launches city-wide treasure hunt across Bengaluru

I like those campaigns that combine on and offline. That sends people to physical stores. I always keep an eye at those. This one from India is worth a read. It’s for now Bengaluru only, but most likely they expand to other cities. Sharing it for creative thoughts! How it works?

• Starts with a puzzle/clue in a pinned Instagram reel.

• Mixes digital (online clues, QR codes) and physical activations (retail stores, physical challenges in later rounds).

• Grand prize: A full living room setup worth ₹2 lakh.

• Face of the campaign: Local creator Dumbo (@hey.dumbo), leveraging challenge-style content aimed at Gen Z.

• Tied to their “Dopamine Comfort” philosophy gamification, adventure, omnichannel engagement, and product discovery (mattresses, sofas, etc.).

Details: https://www.brandinginasia.com/sleepyhead-campaign-launches-city-wide-treasure-hunt-across-bengaluru/

🇨🇳 TechbuzzChina: Tencent’s AI action layer

I share again a techbuzz china post:

Tencent's AI Bet Is Not a Chatbot. It Is WeChat as an Action Layer

I think it’s interesting because it highlights how differently apps and AI are evolving across continents and it’s a bit contrarian to how most people in the west think about this. worth understanding and learning from it. Do read the article from Tech Buzz China Insider.

That gives Tencent a plausible opening. If the methods are widely available, what is scarce is access to good problems rooted in real user behavior. The company with the most daily-use products has an advantage in finding them. Yao said this was one reason he chose Tencent: the company has many products, many real user contexts, and the environments an agent needs to act. An AI can only order food if it is connected to a tool that can actually place the order.

Tencent isn’t trying to build a better chatbot. they’re turning WeChat already used by 1.4 billion people (including crossborderalex) for messaging, payments, and daily life into an AI that can act on your behalf. order food, book a ride, compare prices, all without leaving the app. The AI connects to millions of mini-programs (worth understanding how this works) already inside WeChat and completes tasks end-to-end. The model is almost secondary. the platform is the thing that is very hard to copy.

I think even if you are a smaller retailer in the West, and you do not have a complete ecosystem, like WeChat does, you can still learn from this. If you don't build your own AI layer into your app, Google or Meta will eventually sit between you and your customer and mediate that relationship for you.
Most western apps added a chatbot or even a chatbot for product details, and called it AI. The real opportunity is an AI layer that combines what the app (or it’s backend systems) already knows your purchase history, your preferences, live promotions, stock levels and turns that into outcomes. not answers, outcomes. I wrote on that before here

Most (not all) western apps have the data to do this. most are just not connecting the dots yet.

Details (Mandarin) : https://server.zhiding.cn/server/2026/0605/3189672.shtml

Checkout also this earlier newsletter (edition 121), I wrote on outcomes with these examples:

• An app that reads a lease and highlights the three clauses that matter for this renter, with plain-language explanations.

• A product that looks at Stripe data and explains why revenue moved last month and what levers to pull next.

• A mobile app that reviews photos of a home and suggests which repairs deserve attention first and why.

• Software that listens to a meeting recording and produces a short list of decisions, owners, and follow-ups.

💳 Outcomes, not answers a Revolut example

Talking about outcomes, checkout the experience the “Finance philosopher” had with Revolut. Now that’s an experience. He accidentally ordered an eSIM, the AI knew what it was about in 1 minute and started the refund automatically. no human, no email, no phone call.

Once you’re used to that level of service, you don’t want to go back. that’s the bar now.

Details here

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