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Category: Retail & eCommerce

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  • 5 Takeaways From SXSW 2019

    5 Takeaways From SXSW 2019

    SXSW Interactive has evolved over the past decade that I have been going. For starters, I’ve watched ridesharing services come, go, and come back again, but it doesn’t seem to help the traffic situation either way. This year there were scooters on top of everything, which come with their own set of issues. It was bigger and more crowded than ever this year, but SXSW is still the best place to learn about the cutting edge of business and technology as well as the latest trends.

    Of particular note this year was the first ever tracks for blockchain and cryptocurrency as well as one for the business of cannabis. Both sectors are red hot right now, and while cryptocurrency isn’t always at the forefront of the news cycle these days, blockchain is more popular than ever.

    The great thing about SXSW is that you get to peer into the future of technologies and businesses that most people don’t yet know exist, or in some cases that we often just take for granted. Here are the 5 biggest takeaways from SXSW 2019:

    1 – LinkedIn went way bigger than last year.

    From a tradeshow booth at the SXSW trade show to an entire creator lounge at Brazos Hall, LinkedIn was all in for SXSW 2019. There were multiple stations for a series of creator speeches that included Brian Solis and his new book, Lifescale, Goldie Chan on brand reputation, and Rosanna Durruthy, LinkedIn’s Head of Diversity. Numerous LinkedIn creators were filming live content, which is only available to a very small test group at this time. There was even a fireside chat with Mindy Kaling about how to live your best work life, which included tips like owning who you are and focusing on focusing.

    Photo: Brian Wallace

    2 – Scooters were the new Uber.

    This was my 10th SXSW over the last 11 years, and I’ve watched the city grow and get significantly more and more crowded during that time. Popular ridesharing services entered the city, got kicked out and made way for new local ridesharing services, and then the original ridesharing services finally returned. What I wasn’t expecting this year was to see an onslaught of scooters and the dangers that they entailed. According to CNBC, the number of scooters in Austin during SXSW from five different companies was around 9000, solidifying the trend of ‘micro mobility’. It was concerning to see so many scooters and so few people wearing helmets or obeying traffic laws, but as with any new technology there’s always going to be a learning curve.

    3 – Crypto/Blockchain and the Cannabiz were the new kids on the block.

    This marked the first year that SXSW had official tracks for cryptocurrency / blockchain and cannabusiness. Unfortunately, they were mainly happening after the SXSW Interactive days, so many of the business and marketing folk didn’t get the opportunity to learn more about these growing industries. This year at SXSW was the second annual Just HODL It event, which featured speakers from multiple blockchain and cryptocurrency startups. Among them was my friend Adryenn Ashley from Loly.io, who is using blockchain to develop a revolutionary dating app. The main crypto and blockchain track focused on the future of these technologies, how policy will affect their use and implementation, and what the future might hold.

    4 – The Mercedes TechSet Lounge is SXSW’s best kept secret.

    The TechSet lounge, hosted by Mercedes this year, has been the best place to grab some downtime for the last 12 years at SXSW. The lounge’s co-hosts were Brian Solis and Stephanie Agresta. It’s one of the best kept secrets for a solid place to work, meet, network, get great coffee, recharge, and watch a full plate of speakers. Mercedes did a fabulous job with the lounge this year!


    Photo @aaronrogosin of @outer_elements 

    5 – Mental health tech like calm.com is the next big tech frontier.

    By some estimates, one in four people worldwide will be affected by a mental health problem at some point in their lives. The tech folks, entrepreneurs, political enthusiasts, and the rest of the people who end up at a place like SXSW are often driven to their breaking point at times. It was great to see a number of SXSW panels dedicated to mental health themes this year, most notably Calm.com. Calm.com, which produced an app to help folks with mindfulness, meditation, sleeping, and more, is the first mental health unicorn company. Their booth at the trade show was all about relaxation — and it even featured a sloth!


    Photo: Michael Acton Smith @acton

    If you missed out on SXSW this year, it’s time to start planning for next year. After all, where else are you going to see a sloth?

    Top Photo via: Jordan French

  • Autonomous Driving is Coming No Matter What, Says SoftBank CEO

    Autonomous Driving is Coming No Matter What, Says SoftBank CEO

    “Autonomous driving is coming no matter what,” says Says SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. “That’s the destiny of where technology is going to drive us.” He adds: “When autonomous driving comes the cost of providing the service will dramatically get more efficient. It will also dramatically reduce the rate of accidents compared to human driving accidents. I think autonomous driving will be definitely coming very very soon.”

    Uber Still Experimenting with Autonomous Vehicles

    Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank, also discusses his support for both current Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and former Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick in an interview on CNBC:

    I Definitely Believe Uber is Going to Grow Exponentially

    I would like SoftBank to remain invested in Uber as long as possible. Of course, it all depends on the share price (after their IPO). Sometimes the share price goes up too high too quickly and then we have to harvest a little bit. It all depends on the market conditions. But do I believe the company is going to grow exponentially?  I definitely believe so.

    I’m very respectful (of our) dialogue with the new management (led by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi). He’s very very smart and very well balanced. He can be very offensive (strategically) in increasing the business and he can also be very cost-efficient (and good with) employee morale and so on.

    Travis Kalanick is a Pioneer

    I respect that but at the same time, I also have to mention that I respect (Uber co-founder and former CEO) Travis (Kalanick) tremendously. He’s one of the best entrepreneurs. He is a pioneer. When you pioneer a new frontier you have to have the energy, the passion, and out-of-the-box thinking. His aggressive is one of the best. Potentially, I would love to support him in his new ventures. It all depends on the price. But I have tremendous respect for him.

    Autonomous Driving is Coming No Matter What, Says SoftBank CEO


  • Direct to Consumer is a Fundamental Platform Shift, Says Tim Armstrong

    Direct to Consumer is a Fundamental Platform Shift, Says Tim Armstrong

    Direct to Consumer, or DTC, is a fundamental platform shift, according to former AOL and Verizon digital properties CEO Tim Armstrong. “There have been a couple times in my career where there has been what is basically a fundamental platform shift,” noted Armstrong. “I felt like direct-to-consumer was something that was going to be a platform shift. Not for probably the obvious reasons, but some of the reasons that were less obvious, but things that I thought were important for the future.”

    Tim Armstrong, former AOL and Verizon Oath CEO and current founder and CEO of The DTX Company, discusses how direct to consumer (DTC) ecommerce businesses represent a “fundamental platform shift,” in an interview with Recode’s Kara Swisher and Jason Del Rey at An Evening with Code Commerce in Las Vegas:

    Direct to Consumer is a Fundamental Platform Shift

    About a year and a half ago I started spending a lot more time just on where the underlying infrastructure in the world was changing around the internet and mobile and all the things that we’ve talked about for years. One of the things that stood out to me was there’s been a couple times in my career where there has been what is basically a fundamental platform shift. I felt like direct-to-consumer was something that was going to be a platform shift. Not for probably the obvious reasons, but some of the reasons that were less obvious, but things that I thought were important for the future.

    One was data management, just in terms of things like GDPR and similar things that were happening. I think the power and data is going to shift back more towards the consumer side over the next 10 or 20 years. I thought that would fuel direct to consumer. The second is that the product development cycles that were happening at the direct the consumer companies were much faster and much deeper than what was happening in the normal channels of product development. I think that’s another thing that over a 5, 10, 15, 20 year period these companies are going to have a real advantage in terms of how they develop products and distribute them.

    Customer Communication: Two Way or No Way

    The third thing was just the two-way communication. At DTX we have a growing team, but one of the things we say is two way or no way. Two-way communication with the customer having a direct relationship with companies. The last thing is how the relationships between consumers and companies are going to change. This seems like a really important trend and probably there’s a really big opportunity here. There may not be but that that’s what got me interested in it.

    What we’re doing right now is really kind of two simple things. One is we’re putting investments directly into DTC companies and we’ve done a number of those and we’ll do a few more. The second thing we’re doing is spending a lot of time on an acronym that I hear all the time now which is CAC, customer acquisition cost. Really, on the operating side of the business what we’re doing is not CAC, it’s CRAC, which is an unfortunate acronym, but it’s customer revenue and acquisition cost. Having the balance on the equation of those two things we’re going to be testing things in 2019, some experiences and and other things that will hopefully put the R back in the CAC equation.

    DTC Might Re-Engineer the Entire Way Commerce is Done

    All of my experiences and basically all the stuff I did on the media side was all two-way relationships. The more time I started to think about really what happened was the reason I thought about DTC’s. I started to go back to those memories based on meeting a lot of the DTC founders and of coaching CEOs for DTC founders. I started to think about things like GDPR and some of the things that are happening underneath the surface that I think is going to change long term. I thought wow, this might actually re-engineer the entire way commerce is done and this is a really interesting opportunity.

    There are a bunch of spaces online now you can look at where people are piling money and where there’s probably over investment. But DTC overall, if you went product by product, category by category, industry by industry, in DTC, there are so many companies that you’ve never heard of and rightly so. The Casper’s, the Warby Parker’s, those are amazing companies and they get a ton of notoriety. There are also about 10,000 other categories. They don’t have ten people, they might have one or two, but they’re doing interesting things in them.

    People ask us all the time, is there a DTC ceiling, these companies can only get so big? That may be true but I don’t think it’s true. What will happen is the aggregate of all these things together. If you have ten thousand DTC brands and they’re $10 million or $50 million or $500 million they may not have to look like Google and Facebook right now, but when you add up all of them together over time and what’s likely to happen with a condensing of the market in the next 10 or 20 years (it is significant).

    DTC Could Be an Amazing Transformation

    There are two things that stand out to me. One is every major press article around traditional commerce tends to be negative. Not all the time, but there’s so much angst around what’s happening in retail overall. A lot of it is deserved, but there are a lot of interesting things happening in traditional retail. The second one is the DTC categories that are super hot, the four or five super hot categories, get 90 percent of the coverage and press. What we’re seeing and we have people coming in offices all day doing DTC and there’s just an amazing amount of ingenuity, invention, and innovation happening in different categories.

    I think again it’s one of these things you’re going to wake up 5, 7, 10, or 15 years from now and say, wow, this was like a really amazing transformation. It’s going to be for the reasons that these companies all talk to their consumers all the time. The amount of product innovation that’s happening is truly tremendous. If you take the Beauty category or any category and you dig into all of the DTC brands and micro categories within, if you went to a Procter & Gamble or Unilever and look at all of their products, each one of their products has multiple DTC companies trying to innovate that space.

    I think you’ll end up seeing the recreation of really large consolidated companies. It may not happen for years, but I think it will happen. The reason is not because they were cheaper than what happens in the Unilever Procter & Gamble it’s because the product innovation is hard. Having spent so much time now with DTC companies, the amount of product innovation that happens at that those companies with direct consumer interactions seems to me to be deeper and faster than it is at most other traditional companies.


  • How To Keep Your Remote Employees Feeling Connected

    How To Keep Your Remote Employees Feeling Connected

    Video meetings, persistent team chat, and consistent in-person connections are all important for keeping a connected feeling with remote employees, says Lisa Walker, Vice President of Brand & Corporate Marketing at Fuze. “Remote employees will always talk about how they feel disconnected from HQ and disconnected from the company,” notes Walker. “That’s just one of the things you always hear from people who are remote.”

    Lisa Walker, Vice President of Brand & Corporate Marketing at Fuze, discusses how to keep your remote employees feeling connected in an interview with Logan Lyles of Sweet Fish Media on the B2B Growth Podcast:

    There is Just a More Personal Connection With Video

    What’s really interesting in managing a distributed team is the importance of video meetings. We know that if a leader turns on video then the rest of the employees on the call will turn on video as well. You have to lead by example there. The nice thing about video is that you are seeing everybody. There is just a more personal connection when you are able to see everyone.

    What I say to both managers and employees participating in video call is that it is all about creating the perfect frame. You don’t have to have a clean house, but you have to have a clean shot of yourself in the video. There is kind of a personal brand here. If you have a large team on a video conference from around the country or around the world, everyone has that opportunity to present a personal brand moment. You should be curating at least one good frame. There could be chaos around that frame but there is an opportunity for you to be consistent on that weekly team call.

    Video Meetings Help Remote Teams Feel Connected

    Every time that team call happens and that video flips on you know what you are getting from people. That’s what we are talking about in terms of work mode. You have to create environments where you can be productive. One of those important environments is video. I think it is really important as a manager to have those video meetings. In those video meetings when you get together, start with a few of those conversations that are more personal and then segway into company updates.

    Remote employees will always talk about how they feel disconnected from HQ and disconnected from the company. That’s just one of the things you always hear from people who are remote. Make sure that you are getting ahead of things your team may be hearing about the company. It’s important that you give a very transparent company update when starting a video call. Then get into the team stuff. Just do those first two things off the bat to make sure the team is feeling connected.

    Keep a Persistent Team Chat Going

    Second, for me is chat. Some people do it over Slack. We obviously here do it over Fuze. There are lots of different tools out there. Keeping a persistent team chat going in that asynchronous communication is just a great way to have the team feel bonded. They will talk about personal and professional in that chat stream and that’s fine. For specific projects where it needs to be more formal, you can create those project chat streams that are separate.

    Fuze Team Chat Platform

    Bring People Together In Person

    The third thing, which is the hardest, because it cost more money, is bringing people together in person as often as you can. For us, within the marketing team at Fuze, we do that twice a year at a minimum. We just did that this past week. It was wonderful. We had our sales kickoff and then we stayed together as a marketing team yesterday and had that time together. Make sure that you are finding those opportunities and making the case for budget if you need to.

    The other thing that a lot of managers don’t do and is a potential missed opportunity is that when you are out in other cities meeting with customers or at a conference if you have an employee within striking distance, meet them. Even if there is no office there, take them to coffee or lunch. Take those opportunities, don’t just fly in and out. If you have employees in that region, find a way to go have a personal connection with them and meet face to face.

    >> Listen to the complete B2B Growth podcast interview.

    What is Fuze?

    Fuze sees itself as part of the future of work movement. Digital technologies are generating significant opportunities for both people and companies alike. Employees are demanding consumer-like experiences to match technology in their personal lives, with greater flexibility on where and how they work. Work is personal and employees want the opportunity to choose their workstyles, schedules, and tools.

    Fuze – Part of the Future of Work Movement


  • Rakuten Super Logistics To Open 6 New Ecommerce Fulfillment Centers

    Rakuten Super Logistics To Open 6 New Ecommerce Fulfillment Centers

    The recent USPS shipping structure changes will increase retailers shipping costs, says Rakuten CEO Mike Manzione. What Rakuten does is help retailers offset these increases by utilizing a network of order fulfillment centers, thereby controlling shipping costs while decreasing shipping times. “With the change to zone-based pricing for First Class Packages, all clients must reconsider how to locate their product closer to their customers,” says Manzione.

    Mike Manzione, CEO of Rakuten Super Logistics, discusses RSL’s plan to open six additional ecommerce fulfillment centers in 2019:

    Retailers Must Locate Products Closer to Customers

    Our continued expansion into major metropolitan markets is a commitment to our clients. We’re creating a network that provides our clients a greater choice and flexibility that aligns their customer base with their product. With the change to zone-based pricing for First Class Packages, all clients must reconsider how to locate their product closer to their customers.

    By 2021, worldwide retail e-commerce sales are projected to be 4.9 trillion dollars (USD). At the same time, customers are demanding shorter shipping timelines. RSL is uniquely positioned as an industry leader with our nationwide network of fulfillment centers. With our increased major metropolitan presence, RSL will reduce ground transit delivery to within one day.

    RSL To Open 6 New Ecommerce Fulfillment Centers

    Houston and Los Angeles will be our first 2019 expansion markets. The new Houston facility will be strategic for our clients importing product and materials from all over the world – including Brazil and Germany. Los Angeles will be strategically located near the Port of Los Angeles, a major container port. The Los Angeles location will be instrumental for our clients that import product from Asia.

    As a leader in the order fulfillment industry, RSL will also be employing state-of-the-art technology in all six new facilities. In 2018, RSL began deploying ‘order fulfillment robots’, developed by inVia Robotics, in its facilities nationwide and will be expanding with inVia’s automation technology in the new warehouses.

    About Rakuten Super Logistics

    RSL  Fulfillment Centers have been carefully managed from the ground up, to create unique, high-velocity operations:

    • Maintain complete control of your fulfillment with a cloud-based fulfillment management system.
    • Save on shipping costs and expedite shipment times with the 2-Day Delivery Network.
    • Improve customer satisfaction and earn repeat business from shoppers.
    • Focus on your business by partnering with the industry leader in eCommerce order fulfillment.
  • Retail Demise Due to Rise of the Internet and Inability to Keep Up

    Retail Demise Due to Rise of the Internet and Inability to Keep Up

    The demise of many retail chains is due to the rise of the internet and the inability of some retailers to keep up, says long-time retail executive Gerald Storch. “The proximate cause of the demise of chains like Charlotte Russe, Gymboree, Payless, Toys R Us, and Sears is the rise of the internet and their inability to keep up that environment,” said Storch. “It’s the decline in physical traffic to bricks and mortar stores and the mall.”

    Gerald Storch, CEO of Storch Advisors, and an innovative retail executive, formerly CEO of Toys “R” Us and Vice Chairman of Target, discusses why some retailers are failing while others are thriving in an interview on Fox Business:

    Retail Comp Store Sales Up 6 Percent During Holiday

    Retail sales have been very strong this holiday. Of course, there are winners and losers. The winners are the people who are doing it right, who are mastering the internet and who are driving value to the customer. You see 4.2 percent out of Walmart, almost 6 percent out of Target, over 7 percent out of Costco, and about 18 percent in the US out of Amazon.

    I put out an index called the Storch Advisors Index and the volume weighted comp store sales gain of major chains in the US was 6 percent for the holiday season. Of course, there were some poor performers but that’s because they are not keeping up with the consumer. Whether it’s JC Penny, Sears, Macy’s, Kohls, some of those are becoming yesterdays.

    Gov. Report Showing Retail Sales Down is Absurd

    I know the folks at the government work hard to collect that data but I think there’s something missing there. The world has changed. First of all the internet has happened and I think that makes a big difference. There is no way, if you look at those numbers it says the internet was down in December. Only a report from Washington could say that. That’s ridiculous. It says the internet underperformed department stores for December. Absolutely absurd.

    Why can that be true? Actually, the raw data said that sales were up about 9 percent in December. But then they applied a negative 10 percent seasonality discount because it was December. I’m not sure that discount factor was correct. Among other things, both Cyber Monday and Black Friday fell in November this year and they were huge as we saw by all accounts. There is something a little wonky about that report. I choose to put it on the side and say it’s not typical about what’s really going on in retail right now.

    Retail Demise Due to Rise of the Internet and Inability to Keep Up

    The proximate cause of the demise of chains like Charlotte Russe, Gymboree, Payless, Toys R Us, and Sears is the rise of the internet and their inability to keep up that environment. It’s the decline in physical traffic to bricks and mortar stores and the mall. The origin though comes down to the fact that all of those companies have one thing in common, hedge funds and private equity put huge leverage on those businesses.

    So at a time when the world changed and the internet happened, they had to invest huge sums in the internet and they had to make their stores more beautiful than ever. You can only do that with money. All these firms were leveraged right before, bang, this retail apocalypse happened. They had no money to make any difference. It didn’t matter if you had the best management in the world. The management at Charlotte Russe is pretty damn good. But they couldn’t do anything about it because they didn’t have the money to spend. Walmart did have the money to spend. They’ve been spending it and that you are starting to see in the results.

    Walmart and Amazon Battle it Out

    You have Walmart buying a lot these ecommerce companies to get stronger in ecommerce. Then you have Amazon buying the bricks and mortar. Why did they do that? One reason. To keep up with Walmart in grocery. Grocery is the ultimate perishable, food. It has a lot of waste. Grocery is already around the corner from everyone’s homes. You have to ship them from the stores. Walmart has the stores to do it and they are proving it now. Groceries is one of their best performers in the latest quarter.

    Amazon was looking at how do we beat Walmart in grocery? Grocery is a huge market and one of the last ones that Amazon hasn’t conquered. They thought, well, we could try to ship it from wholesalers and centralized locations. They started that way and it does not work. So they bought Whole Foods so they could be around the corner from people’s homes. That’s why they are expanding Whole Foods. They may be the only grocer in the country that is adding locations, all so they can ship to your home.

  • The Real Secret to Venmo is the Social Experience, Says PayPal CEO

    The Real Secret to Venmo is the Social Experience, Says PayPal CEO

    The real secret to Venmo is that it’s not just a payment transaction, it’s really a social experience, says PayPal CEO Dan Schulman. “It really is tying into this desire in the millennial generation to tie into your social network,” noted Schulman. “It’s really a social experience. You do a payment, you tag it, you put an emoji next to it, you share it with your friends, and they see what you’re doing. It’s exploded.”

    Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal, discussed PayPal’s fast-growing social payment platform Venmo in an interview on CNBC:

    The Real Secret to Venmo is the Social Experience

    Venmo grew at 80 percent year-over-year in terms of its volume process. This year we will process over a $100 billion on the Venmo platform. The real secret to Venmo is that it’s not just a payment transaction. It really is tying into this desire in the millennial generation to tie into your social network. It’s really a social experience. You do a payment, you tag it, you put an emoji next to it, you share it with your friends, and they see what you’re doing. It’s exploded.

    We’re adding more and more services to that like enabling you to use Venmo to buy things at merchants, to take money off instantaneously, and to have a debit card associated with your Vemma account. That’s allowing us to also monetize Venmo. We’re really seeing a tremendous turn in our ability to take that business model and turned it into a very profitable one for us over the medium to long term.

    We exited last year at an approximately $200 million run rate for Venmo. That’s practically up from nothing twelve months ago. It’s obviously hitting an inflection point in terms of its revenues. But in terms of profitability people shouldn’t expect it to be profitable in the next one to two quarters. My view on Venmo is it’s an incredibly precious asset for us. We ought to keep investing in it, adding more services to it, continue to monetize it, and see the revenue start to scale quite nicely. Eventually, that will lead to profitability, but I wouldn’t predict exactly what quarter we will turn profitable on that.

    Peer to Peer Payments Are Exploding

    I don’t think it’s unfair at all that the banks partnered to create Zelle. That’s the way of the world that companies are coming together and sharing platforms. We share our platform with other banks and financial institutions as well. P2P or peer-to-peer payments is exploding in the market. It’s a multi-hundred billion dollar marketplace. This will definitely not be a winner-take-all.

    The difference between a Venmo and a Zelle is pretty stark. On average a Zelle transaction is $250. The average Venmo transaction is about $50. The average Zelle transaction happens about once a month. Venmo happens four or five times a week. It’s a very different market and I think both will both will grow. We’re seeing all-time record net new actives coming into Venmo. The amount we’re processing is accelerating. I think the two will live side by side and it won’t be a winner-take-all.

    This is a $100 Trillion Market

    Asia is one of our fastest growing regions in the world. It has been for quite some time. That’s the thing about digital payments. It’s a great industry. It could be you know a $100 trillion market. That’s the total addressable market we’re playing in. We may have one to two percent share of that market today. Every region of the world is one that we can expand in, but every region of the world today, almost equally, is growing at a double-digit pace for us. I’m quite pleased with our progress in Asia but I think we can do so much more there still.

    India is one very large opportunity and we’re gaining traction there. We launched domestically in India about a year ago and I’m really pleased with the traction we’re getting. You look at Japan, Indonesia, China, and they’re all great opportunities for us including other markets there.


  • Hulu Private Marketplace Gives Programmatic Advertisers Choice and Control

    Hulu Private Marketplace Gives Programmatic Advertisers Choice and Control

    “The invite-only auction, which is I would say our new shiny toy that’s getting wrapped in the PMP, provides us the opportunity for a variable floor price,” says Doug Fleming, Head of AdvancedTV at Hulu. “So now the advertiser pays what they deem appropriate for that specific audience. It gives them more choice and control. When we look at our offering that’s what it’s about. It’s the genesis behind us rolling out a programmatic offering. Advertisers want choice and control and we want to allow them to have that.”

    Doug Fleming, Head of AdvancedTV at Hulu, discussed Hulu’s embrace of programmatic advertising via their new private marketplace in an interview with BeetTV:

    March Towards Automation

    Since the inception of programmatic advertising, the goal always was that it was on equal footing with direct sold. We didn’t separate it. This wasn’t a remnant solution. As we’ve grown to 25 million subscribers we now have enough inventory and enough access that we have decided to create a team under me to go out and affect those agency trading desks and those folks that have decided to bring programmatic buying in-house.

    When we look at the landscape you can see this march towards automation and we’re not going to get in the way of that. We’re going to embrace that and we’re going to do it  in a very private curtailed way. There is no concept of a remnant provider reselling our inventory. Everyone has to be blessed and driven through the Hulu process.

    Hulu Works with Telaria But Owns the Delivery Logic

    On the demand side, it’s a mix of everyone. There is client direct, there are agency trading desks, and then the DSPs are good partners too. In each of those scenarios, we need and identify the brands before they come in so that they are attributed to the appropriate seller on our side. There’s no semblance of a DSP just hanging on and reselling in an always-on situation. We actually curate that environment and make sure that all of our t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted so that we know who the advertiser is coming in and we can manage that.

    What’s unique about our work with Telaria is really that the Hulu ad server owns the delivery logic. So in this case what separated Telaria was that they enabled us to do things the way we wanted to do them. They kind of powered us. We have very smart people in place who oversee these positions and they came in and worked with us to develop the appropriate technology for us to go to market the way we wanted to go to market.

    Hulu Private Marketplace Gives Advertisers Choice and Control

    What it’s given us is the ability to take all advertising in. We can category block appropriately, so people maintain their category exclusivity within pods. We have the ability to take multiple advertisers and a single deal ID and manage all that blocking. It also allows us to open up to the programmatic marketplace a full suite of products. We’ve always run a private marketplace. However, in the past, we had automated guaranteed and unreserved fixed. Those are fixed price deal types. Unreserved gave you the ability to make a data-driven decision and if you chose to take that impression you paid the fixed price that we agreed on.

    The invite-only auction, which is I would say our new shiny toy that’s getting wrapped in the PMP, provides us the opportunity for a variable floor price. So now the advertiser pays what they deem appropriate for that specific audience. It gives them more choice and control. When we look at our offering that’s what it’s about. It’s the genesis behind us rolling out a programmatic offering. Advertisers want choice and control and we want to allow them to have that.


  • We Are Not Going Back to Old Retail

    We Are Not Going Back to Old Retail

    With the future of retail we have crossed over the demarcation line, says Walter Robb, the former co-CEO of Whole Foods. “We’re not going back to the old retail,” said Robb. “It’s just not going to happen. That’s the combination of digital and physical. We’re in what I would call new retail, which is the integration.”

    Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods, discusses the retail revolution currently underway in an interview on CNBC:

    Traditional Retail Models Are Under Pressure

    From where I sit the customer is doing pretty well. They’re spending. They’re pretty strong. There was a lot of pessimism at the back half of last year that was reflected in some of the stock prices, but I think that was overblown. We’re going to see a customer that’s doing pretty well this year in 2019 and might surprise a little bit to the upside. That being said, traditional retail models are under pressure. The customer is spending their dollars in so many different ways and places than they could before. You used to just open up four walls and open a store and now the customer has so many more options.

    We do know that in the United States we’re about 24 square feet of retail space per capita and that’s two and a half times more than any other industrialized country. We have too much space so there’s going to be a winnowing out that’s going to happen here. There’s going to be winners and losers and we’re already seeing that. In 2019, I think that continues, but I do think that we’re in the second half of that. What we’re actually seeing that the mall is beginning to switch over and putting in exciting new uses and we’re seeing retail stores start to open again.

    We Are Not Going Back to Old Retail

    With the future of retail, we have crossed over the demarcation line. We’re not going back to the old retail. It’s just not going to happen. That’s the combination of digital and physical. You’re seeing the digital retailers, the Allbirds, the Warby Parker’s, come out and say, alright we’re going to open physical stores because we realize our customers want to experience our brand and be with us in that way. They’re bringing new ideas to that presentation of retail, which is pretty exciting.

    At the same time, you’re seeing physical retailers adapt to digital ways. Take a look at Target and how they’ve employed all the new tools that they have for the customers, in-store apps and those sorts of things. You’re seeing a combination of these two. In some cases it’s adolescent and in some case it’s more mature, but we are not going back to just the simple form retailer. We’re in what I would call new retail, which is the integration.

    The edge of which is actually in China with a supermarket called Hema from Alibaba, which is which is simply fantastic. It’s integrated on the back end and on the front end. I think you’re seeing retailers say, we’ve adapted to the age of Amazon and we understand this is how customers want to shop. We’re seeing a whole new generation of businesses and entrepreneurs say, I’m going to bring the customer this fusion of digital and physical in a way that’s really exciting and really compelling. We’re not going back. I opened my first store in 1978 but that’s just not as easy to do anymore because you have to have that the tools to really understand your customer personally. I think it’s pretty exciting to see what’s happening.

    Physical and Digital Retailers Need Each Other

    The business model on the last mile is very challenging unless you’re connected into a physical store. If you just out there floating without a connection to physical retail those have not proven to be sustainable. I think it’s clear to me that the customer wants that choice. I think the data is very clear that they want both. They’re not going to give up physical stores and that’s why you’re seeing these digital and physical retailers. They need each other and they need both parts of that to make the thing actually compelling for the customer.

    I think there’ll be a shakeout. You seem some consolidation already, but the most interesting combinations are where the physical retailer buys the digital, where Target buys Shipt and where Walmart buys Flipkart or whatever you see around the world, realizing the combination is the most powerful. That will be the most sustainable from a business model perspective.

    We Are Not Going Back to Old Retail, Says Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods

    Also Read:

    Nothing Short of a Revolution Happening in the Food Marketplace

  • Geek+ Robotics CEO Says There is No Strong Competitor Outside of China

    Geek+ Robotics CEO Says There is No Strong Competitor Outside of China

    The CEO of Geek+ Robotics Robotics, a China-based company, says they don’t see any strong competition outside of China and this includes the United States. “We’ve already entered Japan, Europe, Australia, and the United States and we are seeing a big demand for robotics and automation,” said Zheng Yong. “We almost cannot see any strong competitor outside of China.”

    Zheng Yong, the CEO of Geek+ Robotics, discussed the companies future this morning on Bloomberg:

    Robotics Market Potential is Quite High

    We think the market potential is quite high. We hope in the next four years we can deliver 20,000 to 50,000 robots per year. Our customers come from two directions. One is the retail companies including ecommerce. The second direction is the manufacturing companies.

    There is very strong competition in China with lots of strong robotics companies that are growing very fast. We are not only starting automation solutions with robots to our customers, but we also provide logistic service to our customers. We own a lot of operational experiences and we combine those experiences inside our system. We have a lot of data and that will be a long-term advantage.

    No Strong Competitor Outside of China

    We haven’t got any money from the Chinese government directly. But because the government is promoting this concept in their Made in China Industrial Plan it can help us in the market. Overseas expansion will be our first priority next year. We’ve already entered Japan, Europe, Australia, and the United States and we are seeing a big demand for robotics and automation. We almost cannot see any strong competitor outside of China.

    Our business is being impacted by the trade sanctions, taxes are higher. Our plan to grow our business in the United States is a little bit slowed down. We want to see the results of the trade conference between China and the US.

    About Geek+ Robotic

    Focusing on Logistics and Warehousing, Geek+ leads the technology revolution, by applying advanced robotics and AI technologies to realize high-flexibility and intelligent logistics automation solution. Geek+ provides leading, reliable, one-stop enterprise-level service with strong technological strength, precise customer understanding, thorough after-sales service, and ISO 9001: 2008 quality system.

    Geek+ R&D team consists of Ph.D. and master graduates from Tsinghua, PKU, CAS, BEIHANG, USTB, etc., with much solid research and practice experience in the fields of robotics, embedded development, software engineering, artificial intelligence, most of them have joined domestic/international robotic contests and won the championship. All products are developed independently and possess the core patents, with a world-class level performance.

  • Domino’s AI-Powered ‘Piedentifier’ Stars in New Ad Campaign

    Domino’s AI-Powered ‘Piedentifier’ Stars in New Ad Campaign

    Domino’s software engineers and digital ad team have created a unique AI-powered ‘Piedentifier’ to launch it’s Super Bowl week marketing blitz. Domino’s is encouraging people to send in a photo of any pizza, even if you made it yourself, and it’s system will determine what type of pizza it is and give you ten points toward a free pizza in their rewards program.

    ‘Piedentifier’ launching for Super Bowl week marketing blitz

    Ritch Allison, CEO of Domino’s Pizza, discussed the new Piedentifier ‘Points for Pies‘ ad campaign with Jim Cramer on CNBC:

    Domino’s AI-Powered ‘Piedentifier’ Ad Campaign

    We’re going to give Piece of the Pie Rewards points for any pizza. Our customers are going to be able to use our great technology to take a picture of any pizza, send it up to us, and earn ten points toward a free Domino’s Pizza. The great thing about this is our team got together and created something called the ‘Piedentifier.’ What it does is it uses your phone to look for what they have referred to as the open-faced expression of crust sauce and cheese. Anything that looks like a pizza and you’re getting ten points.

    Today we’ve got more than 20 million active members of our Piece of the Pie Rewards program. We don’t know the exact number of how many customers will come on board with us, but as the leader in the pizza category, we see this as a great opportunity not only to grow the overall pizza category, but also to invite new customers in to download our app and to try our product. We feel that when customers try our product we’ve got the opportunity to bring them back again and again.

    This Sunday is a huge day for us. On Super Bowl Sunday, we’re typically up about 40 percent over a normal Sunday. We’ll sell about 2 million pizzas and about four million chicken wings. Each year, it’s the biggest day of the year for us. It tends to not matter which teams are in the game. Certainly in individual cities maybe it does, but broadly across the US it’s a huge day no matter who’s playing.

    Average Franchise Makes $140K Per Year EBITDA

    Opening up a Domino’s Pizza store is still a terrific return for our franchisees. Across the globe cash on cash returns are better than three years in our business. Just a few weeks ago at our Investor Day, we released again our unit level average for our franchisees in the US. Once again it went up. We’re expecting it to be somewhere between $137,000 and $140,000 a unit in the US on EBITDA on a Domino’s Pizza store that you can open for $350,000.

    Driving is Still a Great Opportunity

    Driving for Domino’s is a great opportunity because of the volume that we do out of our stores. In a lot of cases, drivers are able to come in and earn a lot more than they can driving for some of these other businesses. As we continue to tighten down our territories through our fortressing program, it’s giving our drivers the opportunity to get more runs per hour. That means more tips per hour and in turn, higher wages.

    In addition to a job that earns a decent wage driving at Domino’s is also an opportunity potentially to be a franchisee in the long term. Over 90 percent of our franchisees today started as drivers or started in as CSRs answering our phones in our stores.

    Self-Driving Cars Will be Here Someday

    Self-driving cars will be here someday. We don’t exactly know what day but we’re working hard to really try to understand how our customer interface with that car when it pulls up to their curb. They’re used to having a uniformed Domino’s pizza delivery expert bring that pizza to the door. So we’re learning. As the technology evolves we’re going to learn how the customer wants to interact with us and we’ll be ready when it does get here.


  • We Are Definitely Under a Digital Transformation at Chipotle, Says CEO

    We Are Definitely Under a Digital Transformation at Chipotle, Says CEO

    We are definitely under a digital transformation at Chipotle, says Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol. Chipotle is in the midst of a digital and innovation revolution that is starting to see results. “Our digital business is up dramatically and the good news it’s also incremental so the total business is up,” said Niccol. “You have to have innovation happening all the time.”

    Brian Niccol, CEO of Chipotle, discusses their digital transformation and new innovation culture in an interview on CNN Business:

    We Are Definitely Under a Digital Transformation

    Our digital business is up dramatically and the good news it’s also incremental so the total business is up. We are definitely under a digital transformation at Chipotle. We are creating access through all these mobile applications and then obviously the website. But the big transformation is actually digitizing the restaurant. We have a second line where we now have put up all the digital capability there.

    When you order in the app it doesn’t interact with the front line where consumers coming into the restaurant are. It has just increased the speed, increased the accuracy, and it’s also increased the opportunity for additional forms of access. Whether it’s delivery or our new Chipotlane we are testing where people can literally just drive up, grab their food and go. We are just going to give people more ways to interact with Chipotle with a lot less friction.

    Innovative Chipotlane Speeds Digital Pickup

    Chipotlane is just taking your off-premise order and giving you access where you don’t have to get out of your car. This is literally where you order ahead in the app, you select your pickup time, and when you get to our restaurant you will see your name on a board and you can come around and pick it up.

    We’ve got it in ten restaurants right now and it’s going really well. Every restaurant already has the second make line, so we are just putting in the digital capability. The other key piece of the puzzle is that when you walk into the restaurant there’s a place for you to pick up your digital orders. Whether it’s the deliver driver coming in to grab the food and go or whether it’s a customer coming in.

    You Have to Have Innovation Happening All the Time

    Consumer expectations are changing faster than ever. When you look at one of our key groups that loves Chipotle is this 18-25 year old crowd. Their attention spans are built from social media. That’s why I think it’s important to show up in the places where they are consuming media. We’ve really revolutionized the way Chipotle has communicated through our social, mobile, and digital channels. You have to have innovation happening all the time.

    It could be little things that show up in social or it could be big things like we are working on doing a new quesadilla or the new advertising that’s coming out or new restaurant designs. You see innovation at big levels but we are trying to create a culture at Chipotle where we want creativity and innovation to be happening all the time. Then we need to be accountable for what this innovation teaches us, the good and the bad.


  • Yum CEO: Driverless Cars, Robots Making Pizzas, This is All In Our Future

    Yum CEO: Driverless Cars, Robots Making Pizzas, This is All In Our Future

    Yum Brands which owns Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and other restaurant brands are at the forefront of technological innovation. Yum also isn’t afraid to experiment with seemingly outlandish ideas either such as their announcement of the Toyota Tundra Pie Pro which makes pizza on the go.

    Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed recently discussed Yum’s use of technology:

    We Love Our Relationship with Grubhub

    “We love our relationship with Grubhub, it’s a great partnership,” says Yum Brands CEO Greg Creed. “By the end of the year in the U.S., we’ll have about 2,000 KFC’s and probably close to 4,000 Taco Bell’s delivering. In the stores that are already delivering we’re getting check increases and incremental sales that are coming from it, so we’re very excited about this partnership. We think it obviously bodes well for the future sales growth for both KFC and for Taco Bell in the U.S.”

    Driverless Cars and Robots Making Pizzas is Our Future

    Pizza Hut has partnered with Toyota to develop a zero-emission Tundra PIE Pro, a mobile pizza factory with the ability to deliver oven-hot pizza wherever it goes. The full-size pizza-making truck was introduced at Toyota’s 2018 Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show presentation.

    “I love our partnership with Toyota,” added Creed. “This is really about technology, this is about robotics, this is about what the future is envisioning. Driverless cars, robots making pizzas, this is all in our future. Is it in our future next week? No, but is it in our foreseeable future, absolutely. Everything that we can do to make the brands more relevant, make them easier to access and more distinctive, that’s what will lead to continued success, not just for Pizza Hut but also at KFC and at Taco Bell.”

    Pizza Hut Partners with Toyota on the Tundra PIE Pro

    Pizza Hut has partnered with Toyota to develop the one-of-a-kind, zero-emission Tundra PIE Pro, a mobile pizza factory with the ability to deliver oven-hot pizza wherever it goes. The full-size pizza-making truck was introduced at Toyota’s 2018 Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show presentation.

    “Nothing tastes better than a fresh Pizza Hut pizza straight out of the oven,” said Marianne Radley, Chief Brand Officer, Pizza Hut. “The Tundra PIE Pro brings to life our passion for innovation not just on our menu but in digital and delivery in order to provide the best possible customer experience.”

  • Nothing Short of a Revolution Happening in the Food Marketplace

    Nothing Short of a Revolution Happening in the Food Marketplace

    There is nothing short of a revolution happening in the food marketplace today and it is not a quiet one, says Walter Robb, the former co-CEO of Whole Foods. “It is disrupting things left and right, all the way up the value chain back into the farmer’s field,” says Robb.

    Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods, discusses the revolution happening in the food marketplace in an interview on CNBC:

    Nothing Short of a Revolution Happening in the Food Marketplace

    There is nothing short of a revolution happening in the food marketplace today and it is not a quiet one. It is disrupting things left and right, all the way up the value chain back into the farmer’s field. For me, to see these (organic) brands and to see it show up at the Super Bowl, the biggest media stage of the world, is kind of an exciting thing.

    Some 75 percent of the food we eat is from 12 plants. Somebody’s woken up to that realizing, wow, there’s a whole lot of stuff that we can create from stuff we don’t even know yet. The Natural Food Expo, which is the next month in LA, 85,000 people are going to that show. This is where the energy and the edge of the food industry is at right now.

    We’ve broken into this area now where there’s an amazing amount of innovation with young companies and entrepreneurs. This is where the growing edge of the food industry is now. It’s not just natural and organic but it’s this innovation around new foods and new food types.

    Amazing Amount of Innovation With Entrepreneurs

    You have to build the tools to really understand your customer personally. I think it’s pretty exciting to see what’s happening. On the physical side, Walmart is doing a lot of things, Kroger is doing a lot of things, and Whole Foods is doing a lot of things to try to integrate digital and physical retail in a way that gives the customer a very rich experience.

    I do think in terms of the food service delivery, Grubhub has had phenomenal growth. What’s happened is the world has woken up to how exciting food is again. We kind of went along after World War two for a number of years with this kind of dull drum of production, just regular stuff with the major CPG brands.

    If you get a $5 latte and it’s probably a $5 delivery charge at what point does the customers say that’s a great value problem? I don’t know, but I think we’re going to find out. I do think this idea that the customer wants the convenience is here to stay and that they’re used to having that option. In some cases, they will choose it. Where that line is it’s too early to say exactly where they’ll say, that’s too expensive or that’s not a good deal.


  • A Great Time to Be In the Love Business, Says Match Group CEO

    A Great Time to Be In the Love Business, Says Match Group CEO

    It’s a great time to be in the love business, says Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg. She says that the primary driver of their growth has been the introduction of their paid subscription feature, Tinder Gold, which allows users to see who liked them.

    “Tinder remains the centerpiece of our growth story,” said Ginsberg during the earnings call. “Direct revenue at Tinder was up nearly 100% in the third quarter compared to last year and subscribers grew 61% and ARPU rose 24%. Even though we launched Tinder Gold over a year ago, it continues to have a meaningful impact on the business. More than 60% of the 4.1 million subscribers on Tinder are now Gold subscribers, up from 50% plus in the second quarter.”

    Ginsberg says that their strategy to increase Gold subscriber penetration is to add more features to the Gold subscription package, making it even more compelling to their users.

    Mandy Ginsberg, CEO of Match Group, discussed the massive growth of online dating throughout the world following their very strong earnings announcement in an interview on CNBC:

    A Great Time to Be In the Love Business

    This is a great great time to be in the love business for many reasons. We really are seeing tremendous growth from Tinder. Then as we have talked about we have some other exciting bets brewing. So not only is Tinder seeing momentum but we’ve got a whole host of other products across the globe that we leverage as well. We’re feeling pretty good about the upcoming year.

    We are seeing that now more people are using multiple apps at one time, between three and four apps when they’re dating. We want to be able to service all their needs. We also see that people use different dating apps based on their age and life stage, whether you’re a 50-year-old divorcee or a 21-year-old who is a college senior. We feel like across the board both domestically and internationally we’ve got an opportunity to serve a lot of people.

    What’s shocking is that over ten years ago three percent of relationships started online and now it’s 30 percent in this country. The world really has changed and this is the number one way that people meet. We think the numbers I just quoted are similar outside the US, but we think there’s going to be real growth opportunity.

    Tinder Likes View Feature is Driving Growth

    In terms of our business model, it’s simple. You can go on Tinder and you can get a great free experience, but we offer features that you don’t mind paying for. We had Plus, which was a subscription feature that enabled you to access a number of our premium features. Then about a year and a half ago, we introduced something called Gold, which essentially gives you the ability to see who’s liked you.

    If someone says to you, do you want to see all the women who’ve liked you or all the men you’ve liked you, it’s very hard to say no. We saw that the take rate on that Gold or that likes view feature was really high and that was priced at an even higher premium, another subscription tier. What we saw is that not only were people happy to pay more for this feature, but we just saw more people taking the feature, and that’s what’s really driven a lot of the growth.

    Facebook Helping Online Dating Become More Pervasive

    Over time I think we’ll see a much more adoption (of dating apps). In 2012 only 16 percent of people in their young twenty’s, 18 to 25, used dating apps. Tinder really changed that. It brought a whole new generation to the category. We believe that a lot of what’s actually keeping that number down, especially internationally, is stigma. A market like Japan, we’ve been in for a long time, but there’s been a real sort of cultural stigma around dating. That’s changing and that’s changing fast.

    Facebook entered the dating category and because of their reach, I’ve said there is a possibility that Facebook could open up in areas where they have real strong strength, where people who hadn’t thought about dating might try dating. We have not seen any impact since Facebook has launched in the three markets that they’ve tested in. I do think over time people are going to feel much more comfortable and that the normalization of dating and meeting strangers to go for a cup of coffee is going to really become much more pervasive everywhere.

    The Scale That Tinder Has is In a League of Its Own

    If you think about the Match Group products, the one that stands out is Tinder. The scale that Tinder has is in a league of its own. It went viral with very little marketing spend in 190 countries and millions of users across the globe. We haven’t seen anything quite like it. There have been competitors that have come in the market, a lot of them being local players, but really that has not driven market growth.

    What’s really driven market growth are things like the introduction of mobile. Also, a few years ago we saw when 50-plus audiences when they started getting much more comfortable using social and just socializing with people online, that category grew. The more people feel comfortable the higher propensity. We feel like we’re in a great position to be able to address needs for everyone.


  • SAP CEO: We Out-Innovated Everybody

    SAP CEO: We Out-Innovated Everybody

    SAP announced the completion of its $8 billion acquisition of Qualtrics which brings critical real-time customer experience data to its customers. SAP CEO Bill McDermott explains how the combination of Qualtrics’ Experience Management (XM) Platform with SAP’s enterprise software and cloud services is not only a game changer for companies, but solidifies SAP as the world’s business software leader:

    “Where did we leave them in the dust? We basically out innovated everybody in terms of how you run your business better. Now the idea is how you create an unbelievable human experience so you inspire your people to take care of your customer and create a loyalty effect that’s unlike any other company in the industry. That’s what we do.”

    Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP, talks about how the integration of Qualtrics into SAPs enterprise solutions will help businesses know their customers with real-time sentiment analysis, in an interview with Fox Business at Davos 2019:

    With Qualtrics Your Brand Will Become a Religion

    I think it’s really important that you focus on the business of your customer and stay obsessed with that and not get caught up in a lot of tech jargon. That’s why I’m glad we’re the business software market leader.

    There is a huge trust deficit in the economy. Customers aren’t necessarily getting what they paid for which is why there is a $1.6 trillion deficit from customers that defect from companies that are out there in the marketplace today. So how do you keep a loyal customer? Today’s systems create operating data. You know your customers, you know your people, you know your suppliers. But we need to know what are consumers saying in real time, in the moment? We need that sentiment analysis.

    Qualtrics is the number one experience management company in the world. From now on, your customers, if you are CEO, will love your products. In fact, they will be obsessed with them. Your brand will become a religion because every employee is an ambassador that’s connected inextricably to the customer experience. That’s Qualtrics.

    If you are a customer of SAP, now you have all the experience data. I call this X-data. This is data from all the consumers that are experiencing your product and your brand. You combine that with the O-data which is all the operational aspects of how you run your company, from your demand all the way through to your supply. You know everything. You take X plus O and you have the winning formula.

    The Enterprise Has Been Redefined by SAP

    We surveyed, with Qualtrics and SAP, along with the World Economic Forum here, we surveyed 10,000 individuals on a random sample in 29 different countries. Once of the questions was, “What are you really worried about out there?” Most humans said we are worried about being replaced by robots. We said, “Is tech for good or is tech for bad?” What’s happening in your world with the perception of technology? They said, “A little bit better than negative, but somewhat ambivalent.” That’s a concern.

    They said that they are basically trusting the people that run their companies, even more than the people that run government. There is a trust deficit out there. It’s really important that we close that trust deficit at the leadership level. It’s also important that companies get the human experience going with their own employees and their customers. That’s why I think that this experience management positioning for SAP is fundamentally going to be a moment in time where the enterprise has been redefined by SAP.

    Over 77 percent of the world’s transactions run through an SAP system. We manage everything from the customer relationship to how you manage your people to how you build great products and how you ship on time and deliver. Now we have experience management which is the ultimate touchpoint for customers, and we put it all in the cloud. So you can be nimble, you can be agile, and you can upgrade quickly. You don’t need a whole lot of resources to maintain these systems. We are moving faster than anyone in 25 industries and in 193 countries around the world.

    About the S/4HANA Upgrade

    S/4HANA is now the system from the demand signal of your consumer in any channel including ecommerce. We know your consumer. We align the product in the proper configuration, at the proper price based on the customers history and all the loyalty that they should earn in their business with you. We ship. We take care of the whole supply chain. You get what you want at the price you procured for anyplace in real-time in the world. That whole value chain is SAP.

    4HANA is now in a cloud. So you can run your entire company from end-to-end on top of SAP’s 4HANA platform in the cloud. Game change. Again, I go back to, that’s all the operational data and all the operational processes. Now, if you can add experiences to this with Qualtrics you’ve got an unbeatable competitive advantage.

    I’m signing up customers left and right on this idea in Davos because this has been the number one thing that businesses have forgotten. You have to have the experience under control with your consumer and it has to be real-time sentiment analysis. Just think, it’s five times more expensive to get a new customer than to keep the one you have. Don’t you want to know how they’re doing?

    No Signs That There is This Global Slowdown

    We have a very strong business. There are no signs in our business that there is this global slowdown. Because we serve the best run businesses in the world we are usually an early indicator of what’s going on out there. We see a very optimistic future. Our pipelines and our business model have not changed one iota. I think there is this disjoint between the consumer companies and the consumer world and the enterprise.

    SAP CEO Bill McDermott: “We out innovated everybody.”
    SAP Bill McDermott: “No signs that there is this global slowdown.”


  • Kevin David Reveals His Proven Method for Making Money With Facebook Ads

    Kevin David Reveals His Proven Method for Making Money With Facebook Ads

    One of the keys to making money with Facebook ads is to create and test 100 Facebook ad sets per day, says Kevin David who has become a successful entrepreneur by utilizing this strategy.

    David explains precisely how he increases spending on the profitable ad sets and shuts off the unprofitable ad sets using automation rules built right into Facebook. He says there is no need to use third-party tools, simply use the tools Facebook already has in place.

    Kevin David, who now trains others how to start a viral Amazon business selling everyday products, was recently interviewed by successful affiliate marketer Benjamin Yong at the Affiliate World Conference in Bangkok. Below is one strategy David revealed: (Video Interview Below)

    Create 100 Facebook Ad Sets Per Day

    Creating 100 Facebook ad sets per product for ecommerce is probably overkill. Realistically, $250 a day, which is 100 ad-sets times $2.50 per ad set a day is not that much money. So even if you’re spending $250 a day on ecommerce what’s that’s going to allow you to do is just get results faster. You could do ten ad sets a day but it’s gonna take you ten days. Or you can do 100 ad sets a day and it’s going to take you three days. You’re going to have your proven winners, so it’s just faster.

    If you can do it the lazy easy way, which is just images, by making some really sleek 3D-rendered beautiful images, you don’t even need to go crazy and create videos. Even if you do create videos, all you need is a basic video that has the ability to go viral, that appeals to emotion, is fun and funny, has one of those things. Then all you need is six images and one video.

    Use Facebook’s Automation Rules

    No third party tools are necessary. You can do all of this with Facebook’s automation rules. You don’t need to have external tools, you can use automation rules inside of Facebook. People just don’t know it exists. Everyone’s looking for that little hack but Facebook has it all available for you. People just don’t know how to do it.

    All you have to do is use the Create Multiple Ad Sets and then you just use automation rules to govern all of your different ad sets based on the criteria that you’ve set.

    Scale Ads With a Positive ROAS by 21% Every 3 Days

    The first rule is If an ad set has a positive ROAS, a positive return on ad spend of over one, I scale that ad by 21% every three days. With Facebook you can’t just scale something by 1000% because you just won’t spend the same, you’ll get penalized, you won’t have the same results. You won’t have profitable ad sets.

    What I’ve found through a lot of testing is the most you can scale is about 20% a day. I figured that the smartest people who’ve learned that are doing it by 20% and so I’m doing it by 21% to try and be one step ahead of them.

    When to Turn Unprofitable Ads Off

    The second rule is how I turn things off. Since I’m running $2.50 per ad set I set an automation rule that turns off all active ad sets if they meet two criteria. The first criteria is if they’ve spent more $7.50, which means they have been running for three days, three days of $2.50 a day. The second criteria are if they have less than one lead.

    It depends on what your business is. Maybe it’s less than one purchase or maybe it’s less than one lead, depending on how high ticket what you’re selling is. I know my funnel and I know that if I can get a lead for under $7.50 then it’s worth spending that money because I trust my funnel so well, but everyone has to know their own business. If it’s an ecommerce product, maybe you know it’s going to be different depending on how high ticket it is.

    https://youtu.be/I-VVV2JGY6o


  • Wyze Announces $20 Million in VC Funding via YouTube Docudrama

    Wyze Announces $20 Million in VC Funding via YouTube Docudrama

    Wyze has always been anything but boring. They have an affordable $20 security camera that makes Ring users wonder if they’ve wasted their money. One of their founders, Dave Crosby, has an adorable singing daughter Claire Crosby that has appeared on Ellen and has 1.5 million subscribers to her YouTube channel. Dave has also been a contestent on The Voice.

    Now Wyze has announced $20 million in Series A funding in dramatic fashion via a YouTube docudrama. It makes sense. Wyze considers their customers their community and being honest is part of the Wyze DNA. Letting customers in on the struggles of a startup via a documentary style video is a great way to reinforce that trust with their community.

    Wyze Announces $20 Million in VC Funding via YouTube Docudrama

    The funding round is led by Norwest Venture Partners and comes on the heels of Wyze’s massive success in selling over 1.5 million units of its first products, Wyze Cam and Wyze Cam Pan, since launching in October 2017. This funding is in addition to the previous seed funding investment from iSeed Ventures.

    “We’ve had a singular focus on making pragmatic hardware and software that actually improve people’s lives, and this new capital infusion will help us continue that mission,” said Yun Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO of Wyze. “Without our tremendous and wonderful community, we would never have been able to build a $100 million company in just one year. We’re looking forward to offering them more, and listening to the community’s feedback as we continue to expand into new areas of the home.”

    “This is the story about a lemon aid stand,” says Wyze founders and employees. “A story about a guy who put everything on the line. A story about 800,000 people that decided to give a no-name startup in Seattle a shot. A story about a brand that’s about to be a household name. At least that’s the plan. This is a story about you. This is a story about $20 million.”

    “Now thanks to you there are 800,000 people at our lemon aid stand,” Wyze says. “Because you gave us such great feedback on the forums and the different social media our product is just getting better and better. Over 80 percent of customers have shared Wyze Cam with a friend. That is amazing. Thank you. That kind of growth is hard to manage.”

    “Wyze proved that a smart home camera doesn’t have to be expensive to be great, which has driven adoption across a much broader base of consumers than ever before,” said Parker Barrile, Partner at Norwest Venture Partners. “I’m excited to partner with Yun and his team to build the next generation of smart home devices and services that everyone can afford.”

  • Ecommerce is a Lot More Than Just Amazon, Says UPS CEO

    Ecommerce is a Lot More Than Just Amazon, Says UPS CEO

    Ecommerce is a lot more than just Amazon, says UPS CEO David Abney at the Davos 2019 conference. Abney says that their focus is really on helping small and midsize businesses compete with the bigger players by enabling them to offer two-day shipping.

    UPS recently introduced a product called Ware2Go which matches businesses with warehouse space in the US and around the world which makes faster delivery possible.

    David Abney, CEO of UPS, discussed how UPS is focused on helping small and midsize business compete with big companies in an interview on Fox Business at Davos 2019:

    Ecommerce is a Lot More Than Just Amazon

    Amazon is a good customer of ours. We work closely together. But people kind of associate Amazon with ecommerce, but ecommerce is a lot more than just Amazon. You have the other big retailers. It’s really those hundreds of thousands of those small and midsize etailers that has allowed us to be the ecommerce vendor of choice. We will continue to do that through our portfolio and through our technology.

    This hub is really designed to expedite and to enable these small and midsize businesses to where with today’s technology they can really compete with markets all over the world. If you look back a little while they couldn’t do that. This hub is just part of the strategy. But it’s our focus on small and midsize businesses. It is providing alternatives to these customers to where they can compete with the large ones.

    UPS Focused on Helping Small Businesses Compete

    More and more of the competition is having to do with being able to deliver to their customers within two days. That’s much easier for larger customers who have distribution centers all over the US and throughout the world. It was almost impossible for small and midsize.

    We just introduced a product that’s called Ware2Go. We are a broker between people who have warehouse space all across the country and the world enabling these smaller companies that need to store inventory to compete. It has gotten off to a great start.

    Ecommerce is Going to Continue to Increase

    I believe ecommerce is going to continue to increase. It’s so convenient for many people using their mobile device to just order what they are interested in getting. That is why we are putting such an emphasis on it.

    When we talk about ecommerce let me give you a couple of stats. Of European small and midsize businesses, only five percent export. You would think it should be much higher than that.

    However, from the US only one percent of small and midsize businesses export. That’s why trade agreements are so important. They would benefit small and midsize businesses. It’s also why any technology that we can provide them would be helpful to increase their exports. I believe there is a big runway for these smaller retailers.

    Retail Up 5.6% – It Doesn’t Sound Like a Slowdown to Me

    I think we have to be very careful. I think sometimes people can start to build bad news on top of bad news. I will just give you an example of the peak season that we just finished through December. Retail is being estimated across the market to have increased 5.6 percent. That doesn’t really sound like a slowdown to me. All online retail increased 17 or 18 percent.

    So again, healthy numbers. We think the US economy has held up reasonably strong. Internationally there are headwinds of course on trade-related issues. But still when you hear news that there is a slowdown theirs talk of one or two-tenths of a percent. It’s really not the kind of news that some people are taking it much further.

  • When It’s Game Time for Retail New Relic is There, Says CEO

    When It’s Game Time for Retail New Relic is There, Says CEO

    New Relic provides deep performance analytics for every part of a business software environment. It enables companies to easily view and analyze massive amounts of data, and gain actionable insights in real-time. Whether it’s for a popular mobile app, an online video game with millions of users, or a huge ecommerce platform, they all rely on critical New Relic insights to keep revenue flowing.

    Lew Cirne, founder and CEO of New Relic, talks about how critical real-time insights from New Relic are to a companies revenue stream in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:

    When It’s Game Time for Retail New Relic is There

    For retail obviously, so much of their business, particularly their web business depends on a very small number of days; Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc. That’s game time. That’s the moment of truth. That’s when we’re working our hardest to make sure our software is there to make sure our customers can see what’s going on in real-time. Our customers were thrilled with the performance and availability that they delivered which turns into business results.

    If your site is slower or down on Cyber Monday, forget it, you’re going to miss your quarter. You may never recover from that because you also have a brand hit. So it’s so vital. This is not nice to have software. Anybody who is competing on their software needs New Relic’s platform in order to succeed.

    We’re a Massive Cloud Operation

    We’re a massive cloud operation. We’re collecting millions of data points every second from mobile applications and from cloud infrastructure every time somebody’s pressing a button to buy something and every time someone’s watching this video on the CNBC app. We’re measuring the health of that and we do that on a massive scale. That’s one of the things our customers love.

    When Fortnite said, “Hey we’ve got this huge app. It’s the biggest in the world and we want to monitor on New Relic.” We’re like great. Your biggest day is just another day for us. We collect so much data and we can do it for you.

    New Relic Monitors Fortnite to Keep it Running for Millions of People

    Epic Games is the company that created Fortnite and if you have kids or you’re into games this game has taken the world by storm. It’s the most popular game in the world. If that game is not working millions of people know about it and the company is affected.

    So they rely on the New Relic platform to see everything in real-time on how that game is performing. It’s a very complex piece of software that has to work flawlessly in real-time. We measure everything going on in that game so that the builders of Fortnite can keep it running for millions of people 24/7.

    There are different companies that do different things around observing what’s going on in this space but were the applications-centric company. What does that mean? It means that when you’re playing Fortnite what you’re doing is you’re using software.

    We’re measuring the software in real-time. We do it in a cloud platform that integrates what’s going on in the software with the infrastructure and with the end-user experience, like the mobile app. We see all that together and do it in one unified platform and our customers love us for that.

    New Relic Helps CNBC Scale Mobile App in Real-Time

    At CNBC, you just launched an incredible new revenue app in the fall and it’s amazing. I use it a lot and I love it and again this is an app that’s getting a lot of uptake. I was talking to the team and they said customers love what the app is doing for them and they want to use it more and more. That means they have to scale.

    When more and more people are using that app how are you able to handle the scale when people want to see the news in real time and want to see the stock quotes in real time? We provide them the visibility that gives them the confidence to move faster and scale to this amazing demand that the CNBC app is generating.

    New Relic Helps Companies Move Fast in a Multi-Cloud World

    This is so important to our customers. It’s clear that we’re entering a multi-cloud world. Obviously, Microsoft’s doing well and Amazon doing very well. We had a great show at re:INVENT. And there’s some hybrid cloud as well. What our customers are saying no matter where my software is running I want to see it all in one place. I’m sick of moving from one tool to another to see a complete picture. They turn to the New Relic platform to see it all in one place. That enables them to move fast with confidence.

    Anywhere there are systems that need to perform well and scale well, those are systems that need New Relic. What we say to our customers is building great software is not easy, but it is the foundation upon which companies can build great competitive advantage. We want to partner with our customers to deliver amazing software that delights our customers and grows their business.


  • Digitizing Unilever is One of My Top Priorities, Says CEO

    Digitizing Unilever is One of My Top Priorities, Says CEO

    “Digitizing Unilever is one of my top priorities,” says Unilever’s new CEO Alan Jope. “How we digitize marketing. How we digitize working with our customers. Digitizing our supply chain. Digitizing our people processes. You are going to see a strong digital emphasis in my agenda for Unilever.”

    Alan Jope, CEO of Unilever, discussed Unilever’s growth in Asian markets and his priority to digitize the company in an interview on Bloomberg Markets and Finance this morning:

    Digitizing Unilever is One of My Top Priorities

    In China, all of our ecommerce partners are very important to us. That’s where a lot of the growth is. That’s because that’s where consumers are choosing to shop. That integration between ecommerce, search, social, and other digital platforms is also happening in the west. Digitizing Unilever is one of my top priorities. How we digitize marketing. How we digitize working with our customers. Digitizing our supply chain. Digitizing our people processes.

    You are going to see a strong digital emphasis in my agenda for Unilever. We are hiring people with good digital skills like crazy at the moment. We are bringing in digital natives and at the same time reskilling the Unilever team.

    China Has Become a Stable Part of Our Business

    China is a special place for me, I lived there for five years quite recently. I’m delighted to share that China has become a stable part of our business actually. We are seeing good growth year in and year out. Consumers are engaging with the type of brands we are selling and increasingly we are developing products in China for the Chinese market. In amongst all that volatility, it seems like the consumer products segment is one of the stable parts of the Chinese economy.

    We have a tremendous global footprint. We are very globally diversified. We are used to dealing with geopolitical shocks and movements. At the moment that is certainly not a significant impact on our business. We are seeing overall Asia doing very well. In particular Central Asia. The markets in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are really doing extremely well. As I mentioned China has been a stable source of growth. Also, that important part of the world where people are really moving into the consumer products markets Southeast Asia. We are starting to see a recovery led by our big business in Indonesia.

    https://youtu.be/dw8K4PF70_s