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The format was a nice, intimate one: a couple of dozen digital and ecommerce folk, cosy restaurant on Piccadily and, er, me.

It was only after I’d accepted (and the first Netimperative email landed) that it dawned on me that I’d never done a ’speech’ before. Much as I hate powerpoint, all of my public speaking to date had involved a projector, a script and some pictures. I suddenly felt very nervous indeed!

Turned out OK though – the time passed very quickly and the questions were lively. I spoke on some themes I’m keen on:

• the role of ecommerce – taking some of the points from my musings on the Chief Electricity Officer (blog post)
• data (trying to cover the notions of epiphenomenology without pictures…) (see my presentation at the Future of Digital Marketing conference)
• the Obama-Preedy Pricing Principle – yes, there’s a well-overdue editorial on this that’s notable by its absence…

Thanks to Justin, Davina, Danny and all of the guests for breaking me in gently!

Danny took notes, but I’m not sure what’ll be left after he’s edited for language, career-limiting comments, confidential asides etc. Maybe a photo?

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The event brought the great and good together to hear from Google and each other and followed the successful and enjoyable inaugural event last year (Google’s site, my blog post).

On my panel I was joined – with great humour and good will – by Steve Robinson, CEO, M&M Direct, Nick Lansley, Head of Innovation and R&D, Tesco and John Hinchcliffe, CMO, N Brown Group. We’d decided beforehand that we’d avoid the blander approaches one sometimes gets at industry events and try to deal head on with some of the hard choices and real differences this Christmas. I was really pleased that they entered into this and can’t remember chuckling so much during a panel before Hats off to Steve, Nick and John.

Here’s the eminent Peter Fitzgerald of Google opening proceedings: note the Lolo colours, courtesy of ToyCamera iPhone app…

The next panel was on KPIs and featured Michael Ross of eCommera (@manross) in fine form on his pet topic – KPIs. I won’t quote some of his excellent one-liners since not only would that be ‘goal-poaching’, but because Michael’s doing an article for November’s Internet Retailing magazine and I don’t want to scoop ourselves. Watch this space.

Finally on the photo front, here’s the lab squad (or some other name) of Google engineers around to answer questions. All good fun.

I understand that the event was filmed and so – if our panel session makes it past the censor’s cuts for language, sarcasm and career-limited comments – I’ll post the link.

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Anyway, the event was held at the rather spectacular Congress Hall and upon entering I realised both that is was a great presentation venue, and that 350 marketers is quite some audience

There were some spectacular and energetic speakers (Jonathan MacDonald in particular), and two sessions that interested me in particular on digital publishing and ecommerce in retail.

The presentation went well and I used the time to reprise themes from previous FODM presentations, wander into the realms of Augmented Reality, build on some KPI discussions I’d been having with Michael “KPI” Ross and finally introduce the “Obama-Preedy Pricing Principle” (the result of a beer-supported discussion with Tony Preedy on how discounts and promotions should be related to a specific place, time and – increasingly – appropriate behaviours). Maybe it should have been the Pavlov-Preedy Principle??

You can see all of the presentations on the Econsultancy page (you need to be a subscriber), or you can see my presentation via the Slideshare link:

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What makes a good logo?

Leaving aside my antipathy to tooth-rotting schmaltzwasser, this is a great timeline of competitive head-to-head logo change.

From http://justcreativedesign.com and via @peterabraham

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Inspiration Index – MyDeco takes the top spot in the “Customer Engagement” dimension – Internet Retailing

So – it’s not official: MyDeco.com has grabbed the top spot.

You can read the full results and analysis of the second ‘dimension’ of the Internet Retailing Inspiration Index (IRII) at the post above.

The next dimension is open for voting NOW and for a week, just a week, until 8 June…

Vote here:

https://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=349531418

Vote now. Tell your friends.

This time, it’s “Operations and IT”: who do you envy? admire? copy? Tell all – the gloves are off!

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I agreed (very pleased to have been asked) and then immediately regretted it (a combination of _hating_ being filmed and a bit of a panic attack that I’d have nothing to say in such august company).

Both of these concerns were well founded and the first attempt was utterly awful. Google kindly allowed me to hit the virtual ‘delete’ button and re-shoot. I (and all viewers) owe them a debt of gratitude

The format was a difficult one: a straight-to-camera piece on a topic. This requires more skill and preparation that I had understood. I generally prefer a ‘Q&A’ approach – being interviewed by someone else makes it easier to keep on topic and respond to a lead.

That said, I’m really pleased that I’ve had this experience. At InternetRetailing we’re starting our video podcasting programme in June and going through this experience has been a timely shock that I hope will improve our approach.

In the meantime you can find me burbling and only loosely in charge of a Welsh accent here:

In fact, this piece was a ‘version’ of my ‘profit per pixel second‘ metric provocation that I’ve been covering in print. It’s an area in which I’m interested, but I think it suffers here from being too long (maybe I’m too used to giving this as part of a presentation?).

All of this goes to prove Mark Twain’s (well, Blaise Pascal) thought: “I have only made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter”. The same seems true of videos

You’ll see in the linked videos some very impressive (and more succinct!) contributions from a great range of people – from Boris Johnson, Mayor of London and Martin Sorrell of WPP to numerous leading academics and practitioners.

I’m pleased to be in illustrious company (even if as the slight splotch on the otherwise immaculate canvas) and I’ve learned some good lessons about video presentation.

You can see the whole channel here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/survivalofthefastest

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The Post-Graduate Diploma in Internet Retailing (which I created along with Econsultancy.com) has just been accredited by Manchester Metropolitan University as the UK’s first Masters programme in Internet Retailing…

We’re about to change the marketing blurb and website to proclaim ‘MSc in Internet Retailing’, but for now I’m just enjoying the glow of pleasure after over 3 hours of grillings!

Thanks to @cragster and @groovegenerator for their hard work.

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• given a keynote for the DAS/Omnicom “Innovation in Retail” CEO briefing, along with Mary “Queen of Shops” Portas, FutureLab and Oxford University;
• provided the keynote for the FDIH (the Danish eCommerce Association) conference in Copenhagen on social media
• opened the Royal Mail’s in-house Retail Insights conference in London

• For BBDO University’s CEO conference outside Paris, and
• a presentation to Westfield’s “World Retail Study Tour” in London.

I was particularly taken with the venue for BBDO U: an hour outside Paris in a chateau run by Chateau’Form, a business-only venue format that takes stately piles, renovates them and then makes them available for business summit and conference hire. For more cost-effective and characterful than hotels, and providing a convivial atmosphere – ideal where networking and team building go alongside the more formal presentation and conference activity. Chateau’Form de Mello was a chateau on top of a fort and a really amazing place:

I managed to grab a few mins to try my hand at archery. Ahem:

While I’m pleased with getting one on the target, the two in the wood show my aim’s a bit ‘off’ and I’ve ignored the arrows on the floor and in the trees behind!

After my presentation and Q&A I headed back into Paris for meetings, pausing only just long enough to wander through the Jardins du Luxembourg and get caught in an almighty downpour: here’s a panorama from my shelter:

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http://www.ianjindal.com/the-walpole-yearbook-article-on-social-media/

The article was a short one, written to stimulate debate in the luxury sector, where adoption of social media both lagging and also challenged as to whether it’s relevant to the sector.

Research on this was really interesting, and I came across some fun companies (especially ThisNext.com which is now a firm favourite as an exemplar of social-meets-brands-meets-commerce).

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To recap for those who missed the IRII announcement, the InternetRetailing Inspiration Index focuses upon:

those moments of admiration, enjoyment and – frankly – envy: when we look at another retailer’s activities and wish we’d thought of that first, had implemented as well, or have an open regard for a difficult problem elegantly overcome

You can see the full article from InternetRetailing Magazine here:

IRII Article (pdf) – download

The next dimension – Customer Experience – is now available and awaiting your comments. Please follow this link to the eDigital Research survey page:

https://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=473664927

Results and the site review will be published in the May issue of InternetRetailing Magazine.

Other links

• You can subscribe to InternetRetailing magazine  and our email newsletter on our publisher’s subscriptions page.
• You can grab the RSS feed or follow us on Twitter.

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My pleasure turned quickly to a feeling of privilege, however, during two days of open, candid, revealing and utterly stimulating presentations and discussions.

I’m unable to recount details or attendees, but I can say that the leading stores in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey, Mexico, Sweden, Spain, Switzerland and Chile were represented.

A further highlight was the informal discussion time in the evenings, where I found in particular the directorate of IADS to be in possession of a mine of information, challenging ideas and an archival historic view on the sector… We’ll be hearing more of this in future issues of InternetRetailing!

My (publishable) take-aways from the meeting were:

• a focus on the customer and customer expectations, rather than technology
• concentration on ROI, and investing in business process and ‘cross-channel’ as much as in ‘building the web store’
• a tension between comprehensiveness and focus when it comes to online range – along with a view that there’s no single, simple answer
• a focus on growth (surprising in this economic climate) – geographically, in terms of range and scale of operations.

I’ve lost count of the number of conferences I’ve sat through, but I can’t remember the last time that I sat through two days without a single weak presentation, scribbling notes and ideas all the while and having my preconceptions challenged to regularly.

In my view this emphasises the benefit of smaller, peer meeting that allow for candour. I’d certainly be pleased to attend any further events by IADS based on this exemplary conference, and will reflect on the format for upcoming InternetRetailing events. A well-spent couple of days.

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This true story recounted to me yesterday says all that’s needed about the power of a brand – even with competitors…

A friend, let’s call her “Nicole” for the want of a spare false name, had recently requested a PAC code from her mobile provider (let’s call them T-Mobile, just for the sake of the story). The PAC code closes your account and allows you transfer the number to another network.

As well as a PAC code, the request invariably triggers calls from the bowels of the contact centre and the ‘customer recovery’ team – those rare beasts empowered to grant your tariff desires, issue free phones, and generally persuade you to cancel the request and ‘de-churn’ yourself.

Said T-Mobiler introduced himself to “Nicole” and started the spiel. “Nicole” tried to cut him off saying that nary a blandishment nor inducement would change her mind and could he please leave her alone.

Silence for 10 seconds. Then – “You’ve bought an iPhone, haven’t you”.

“Yes”.

“OK. I understand. Thank you very much.”

When even your competitors’ battle hounds decide to go home and floss their teeth you know that your brand is in a strong position.

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Acquisition Manager, E-commerce, House of Fraser, House of Fraser | Econsultancy

A quick heads up for a new role at a client, House of Fraser.

This is a really interesting post in a vital and growing aspect of HOF’s ecommerce activities.

Initial setup of the affiliate and acquisition activities has been done by Chris Bishop, so it’s by no means a greenfield situation, but it’s an evermore important part of the marketing mix.

Customers expect not only to see retailers present on niche, offer and voucher sites (that’s now obvious) but two important new factors are emerging:

• closer working with key affiliates like MyDeco and ShopStyle (both demanding of product data, imagery, metadata, collaborative campaign and promotional management), and
• ever-tighter cross channel working – leveraging the in-store activity, PPC, SEO and on-site promotion for maximum customer satisfaction and of course profit.

The integrated, friendly and capable team at HOF are the cherry on this particular cake!

Note that applicants need to add a supporting note to their CV stating in 500 words or fewer the three tactical, “day 1″ things you’d do to improve SEM and/or affiliate activity.

Applications to:

Rebecca Bedwell
Resourcing Advisor
House of Fraser
27 Baker Strert
London
W1U 8AH

Tel: 020-7003-4809

resourcingho@hof.co.uk

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I covered this for the last two years in presentations, culminating in my Digital Trends series given this month where we reach a level of ‘epiphenomenology’ and magic by extension of these trends. The slides for this presentatio are available on Slideshare.

In tandem, I’ve been working with clients and collaborators on advancing approaches to online merchandising – the art of selling online. We’ve covered this twice so far at the European eCommerce Forum (notes of the inaugural ECF are posted last year) and it’s also a module in the upcoming Certificate/Diploma in Internet Retailing. The aim of course is to maximise the profitability of the merchandised ‘page’ online.

This approach was fine where eCommerce was in a growth phase and customers seemed keen to spend evermore time online. However, in a saturated market there’s evidence that online customers are settling into a core group of a dozen retail sites (where ‘retail’ include aggregation/affiliate, voucher and cashback portals who – from a customer’s perspective – are simply alternative ways to shop). The battle now is for the customer’s attention as much as for their money once you have that attention.

These two themes come together in a measure for merchandising effectiveness – profit per pixel second.

This combines the notion of ‘yield per pixel’ presented to a customer, with the idea that one only has a given time in which to persuade the customer AND that those seconds have been ‘borrowed’ from the customer’s other activities, their other favourite sites or simply from calls upon their time in the ‘real’ world.

This approach means that we might no longer want to ‘retain visitors’ on our sites for a long time – rather, a quick, effective visit might be best for the customer. We can also start relaxing about multiple, short visits to our sites (for example research, or monitoring stock availability or trends) if we can see that contributing to sales. The ‘yield’ or profitability measure focuses our efforts upon getting the most profit rather than buying the highest turnover.

I’ve been doing some initial work on how this proposed measure might inform day to day merchandising activity, or even be measured (since we know that ‘not all pixels are created equal’), but I’d appreciate thoughts and help on this, not to mention alternative suggestions or rebuttals.

Do let me know either in the comments or via direct email, as well as volunteering to help with some data – in confidence, of course.

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It was lovely to have an excuse to visit Brighton again, and a quick, chilly wander along the seafront with my new-old Minolta CLE and tack-sharp 28mm Elmarit-M and a roll of Fuji 1600 ASA (golfball-grain)… results shared in due course if acceptable – although do see the results from Paris last month…).

The venue was cosy and there was an interesting group – many digital agencies, a sprinkling of retailers and some software vendors.

The fun began (ahem) when we realised that there was neither a projector nor a screen available. A couple of frantic calls later and we realised that they were ‘lost’. Hmm. In the Hove lanes we could see into people’s Home Offices and so was tempting to have Craig push in a door and ‘borrow’ a 40″ plasma, however in the end the cafe downstairs lent us their menu blackboard and – drumroll – a piece of chalk!

So – with the support and chuckles of the assembled, alcohol-fuelled crowd, I cracked on with a presentation with the power of waving hands and – yes – chalk

It was a laugh and the questions from the audience were tough, robustly-put and really engaging. I had a great night.

Indeed, I _knew_ it was a cunning group by the way they took my demonstration of Google History to heart. I’d mentioned how APML and attention tracking were alive and with us, witness Google’s history (and showed mine, noting how one should be careful sharing this in case of compromising past activity!).

Anyway, after the presentation I left my laptop at the front for people to see some of the demos and realised that a couple of people were looking a little _too_ sneakily pleased with themselves (yes, you know who!).

Turns out that they’d indulged in a little guerilla history frigging, gently porn surfing (along with the kindergarden ‘reset home page’ routine) in order for this to appear in my history: excellent!

I know that an audience has taken my points to heart when we see this sort of behaviour I can teach them no more than this

During the evening we took a journey that looked at the phenomena that occur when ever-better structured data, metadata, behavioural data meets open, free exchange over increasing numbers of nodes. We then considered further possibilities – ‘epiphenomena’, if you will – and how these in short order would become indistinguishable from ‘magic’.

It was a great opportunity to think a bit beyond the pressing commercial exigencies of 2009 and envision the services we’d be engaging with in a couple of years.

If you’re interested in seeing the slides they’re online at Slideshare:

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The slide deck is available here – looking at how data + open interaction + standards + behavioural insights can lead to an ‘epiphenomenology’ or, put succinctly, ‘magic’.

I don’t want to spoil things yet (especially since I’m delivering the presentation in Brighton on 11 February), but I did want to note that this was the first time I’d had an event ‘twittered’.

So we all know about twitter – microblogging, or a public-ish exchange of sub-160-character messages (think of a group instant-messenger session, or an IRC channel ‘done’ via single message) – but at this event there was someone in the audience ‘twitting’ my points.

On twitter you direct message at people by the incantaion “@[username]“, so for example to be certain that a comment appeared on my ‘radar’ you’d include “@ianjindal” in the message. Think of this as a way of ‘attaching’ messages to me.

A further development are ‘hash channels’ – anything prefaced by “#” creates (or adds to) a channel. These can be created on the fly (eg #createdonthefly): the genius of these is that they act as a ‘tag’ or a collector: without the need to establish a ‘channel’ in any formal fashion, twits from any number of people can be aggregated into a feed.

This was shown to good effect with #uksnow (coverage of the recent snowy weather in the UK) or channels that formed to cover the recent emergency landing of a jet on the Hudson.

There’s no ‘ownership’ of the channel and there can be conflicting claims (eg #TCUK was claimed by TechCrunch UK and The Co-op UK). The only ‘right’ in this instance is ‘might’. You can’t claim, own or protect a channel. However, as an ad hoc, current and flexible ‘collector’ these are ideal.

One such is #digitalshorts (you can see this here at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=digitalshorts). You can see that @GeorgiaBrown did a great job in transcribing activities – especially since I don’t seem to have been misquoted at all

So – let’s see whether Brighton manages to micro-blog the evening

In the meantime, here are the slides from the evening.

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Vote now! Internet Retailing’s “Inspiration Index”

We’re pleased to launch today our “Inspiration Index“. Speaking with senior etailers we’re struck by the attention they pay to competitor and peer activity, continually seeking new ideas, better ways and cunning angles to improve their multichannel activity.

What do we mean by ‘inspiration’?

We’re focusing on those moments of admiration, enjoyment and – frankly – envy: when we look at another retailer’s activities and wish we’d thought of that first, had implemented as well, or have an open regard for a difficult problem elegantly overcome.

We decided not to go down a company or ‘awards’ approach since these tend to favour the established large players or the shiny new ones – in reality we’ve found that people covet the delivery capabilities of one, the design elements of another and the promotional campaigns of yet others.

There are six ‘dimensions’ to the Inspiration Index:

1. Moments of brilliance and delight
2. Customer experience
3. Operations and IT
4. Merchandising
5. Marketing
6. Strategy

How will it work?

Every other month we’ll ask our readers and members of the LinkedIn group to undertake a short survey on ONE of the dimensions. We’ll then cover the results in the coming edition of the magazine.

Over time we’ll build a picture of inspiration in internet retailing.

Best of all the winners will know that they’ve been nominated and rated by their professional peers — this is not a PR-led or sponsorship-driven activity: you can’t buy or promote prominence — it’s a question of whether you inspire others!

We’re really pleased to be partnering with eDigital Research on this. We’ve worked with them a great deal in the past and we welcome their support as a research partner on this project, helping shape the questionnaire and analysing the results.

I hope that you’ll make the time to take the survey and we’re really excited to see the results!

More in the March issue of Internet Retailing, and of course on the portal.

Here’s the link to the survey: https://ecustomeropinions.com/survey/survey.php?sid=986312169

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Nectar email

And so it came to pass, yea in the fourth hour of our confinement, that Nectar manage to get into their office and fire off an ‘if you’re snowed in you can still shop online’ email.

Impressive – and with a Valentine’s touch too.

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For the last couple of years I’ve presented at the “Digital Shorts” events in Manchester and sometimes Leeds (but this year ‘and Brighton’).

The events – organised by Econsultancy and regional partners – are an opportunity for digital marketers and ecommerce folk to meet for drinks and discussion based around a review of the Christmas/2008 trading and predictions of emerging trends.

2 years ago I said we were in denial about a recession; last year we covered social media platforms and rich media; while this year we’re going on a data journey where data + social + behaviour + exchange leads towards epiphenomena. Or ‘magic’ (since, as Arthur C Clarke said in 1961: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”).

If you’re going to be in Manchester let me know since I think we’ll ‘do dinner’ afterwards, while in Brighton it’ll just be beers and the late night train home!

Details of the events are on the Econsultancy shiny new website:

Manchester Digital Shorts, 4 February 2009

Brighton Digital Shorts, 11 February 2009.

Updates and echo-locating via Brightkite.

Digital Shorts – Retail, Christmas, Recession and Emerging Trends for 2009 | Econsultancy

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