Global Digital Marketing & Retail by Alex 86
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! A fresh saturday, beautiful weather here in NL. Time for a new newsletter!
🇨🇳 Visiting Shanghai now: It’s a blue-sky, app-based life
Shanghai, I still miss Shanghai so now and then. When I lived in Shanghai, back in 2017/2018 it was already much more digitized, in some ways still even more then we in most of Europe are now. The NYT wrote an article on the new Shanghai. Use it to foresee the future!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/travel/shanghai-post-pandemic-apps.html
Unpaywalled: https://archive.is/nofIj
📖Report time: The Global Consumer Products Engagement Report
🔄 77% of marketers say major engagement transformation is needed
The Global Consumer Products Engagement Report discusses the state of consumer product (CP) brands in an environment of inflation, supply chain disruptions, market saturation, and lack of consumer brand loyalty. The report highlights that marketing has entered the “Engagement Era,” where brands must create a dialogue with consumers across all channels and throughout the entire customer lifecycle. For that they developed the Maturity Index Score.
Link to download: https://emarsys.com/app/uploads/2025/04/Global-Consumer-Products-Engagement-Report-2025_Global-Edition.pdf
Or direct via my dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/kigk6osy2fapck8nfayws/Global-Consumer-Products-Engagement-Report-2025_Global-Edition.pdf?rlkey=jung4tygtqi0mz4jkhz85p63d&st=u7nt0vg9&dl=0
🔎See your brand how AI tools see it → Free tool
Give it a try. More and more companies want to know how AI sees their brand. This is directly related to brand mentions and usage in AI tools like ChatGPT.
This free tool gives you some insights.
🇺🇸 Snapchat: more creative promotions generated a much stronger response on Snap
Good news for people like me (but also a confirmation). Creativity boosts engagement. Says not me, says Snapchat and they researched it.
Details: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/snapchat-happiness-drives-ad-response-report/744927/
Or the complete study here: https://forbusiness.snapchat.com/blog/happy-audience-high-attention
🇺🇸 Amazon: annual shareholders letter full of customer focused ideas
This is a must read, I think for everyone who wants to understand Amazon and for everyone who has a customer heart. I think for many more traditional organisations, there is a lot to learn from in this letter and enough ideas to test or adapt in your organisation.
A Why Culture
A one-way door decision is one where it’s quite difficult (if not impossible) to walk back through that door if you get the decision wrong, so these decisions are made more methodically. But, both of these constructs assume the door is unlocked. A lot of invention is about trying to open doors that have historically seemed bolted shut. And, over the past 30 years, we’ve found one of the most important keys to unlock these doors has been a simple question: “Why?”
“Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.”
“Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.”
We stopped presenting information to each other inside the company via powerpoint in 2004. Given how high level powerpoints are, we found that powerpoint was easy for the presenter to prepare, but harder for the audience to understand the substantive issues.
Go read it the complete letter, worth it! :
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-2024-letter-to-shareholders
🇮🇳 Campaign India: why brands must rethink the marketing funnel
I do not think tradtional marketing funnels in this time, are the best to choose when setting up campaigns. Traditional funnels like “see, think, do” for example seem more and more obsoleet, so I am always on attention to articles that confirm this opinion and dive deeper on it.
This article does not dive so deep on it, unfortunately, but it does make you think on this topic.
The article suggests a shift from this linear f.e. see, think do setup, which is often siloed approach, to a dynamic, more interconnected system, driven by richer data and real-time optimization.
Upper Funnel (building awareness and consideration):
Relates to "See" and early "Think": This is about moving beyond just broad reach. The article emphasizes transforming awareness into admiration and setting the stage for deeper engagement. Key Difference: The focus is on measuring the quality of awareness and early consideration using metrics like brand recall, favourability, and purchase intent lift (through Brand Lift Studies). It's not just about seeing the ad, but how it changes perception.
Mid Funnel (converting interest into intent):
Relates to the later "Think": This stage is about nurturing interest and demonstrating that consumers are actively considering options.
Key Difference: The article stresses measuring intent more directly than just clicks or site visits. Techniques like Inferred Brand Intent (analyzing relevant online behaviors) and footfall data (connecting online to offline consideration) provide a clearer signal of genuine interest. This moves beyond simply providing information to understanding behavioral indicators of consideration.
Lower Funnel (turning intent into action):
Relates to "Do": This is still about driving conversions and sales.
Key Difference: The article highlights the power of using real-world purchase data (retail data) to target individuals based on their actual buying behavior beyond the point of initial interaction. It also emphasizes real-time optimization based on which channels and creatives are driving actual sales. This is a much more precise and measurable "Do" phase.
https://www.campaignindia.in/article/why-brands-must-rethink-the-marketing-funnel/501911?
🔉 Hear Hear, motivational Sam on idea generation
Videos like this motivate me a lot! Sam Altman on surrounding yourself with people who do not shoot your ideas. Good ideas come when you talk to people.
Listen to Sam:
👮AI Agents corporate or decentralised?
Last week, I shared that Amazon is testing with an AI agent that shops on your behalf on external sites, see the details here in the previous newsletter:
https://www.crossborderalex.com/p/global-digital-marketing-and-retail-ed85
Now listen to Jack Dorsey who double clicks on the AI agent trend but also reflects on the corporate-controlled model, like Amazon uses.
Will the future lean toward decentralized systems where AI agents operate on open networks, offering greater transparancy? I hope so, just like Jack.
🔍Google’s assessment on AI content
Important to realize that Google rewards original content -as always-. But equally important to think more about this, just like Paul Hewett says. This might increase the ‘inbalance’ that there already is.
So for all publishers: do not only think on Google, but rethink your strategies—perhaps by focusing on direct audience relationships or diversifying revenue streams—rather than relying solely on Google for traffic.
That’s it for today,I hope you liked it, I enjoyed writing it. Thank you for liking and subscribing.
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