Power Marketing with Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee interviews Rick Watson, founding CEO of RMW Commerce Consulting, a New York-based strategic e-commerce firm. Rick has been active in e-commerce for more than 20 years and has been a featured speaker on news programs such as Bloomberg Surveillance and Bloomberg West, as well as retail-focused industry events, including NRF Shop.org, ECommerce Europe, ETail West, and others.

They discuss important issues facing e-commerce merchants these days, including the rise of AI. We discuss compound marketing, which Rick notes will not be effective when you have a “me too” product. As he notes, “everything goes back to the what is your brand promise? And what are your your set of hero SKUs? What are what is the promise of those items? And how is it merchandise in a way that can be disruptive? Are you the lowest price best performing product? And if not, there needs to be another niche.”

Rick is passionate about leveraging market research to discover as much as one can about one’s customer, including how they search and the kinds of problems that each is trying to solve. As he notes, “you need to conduct first-party primary research on people who don’t buy from you. And it needs to start with the problems that you’re trying to solve as a company, and what problems those consumers are trying to solve in your general universe.”

Rick and Kevin trade notes on recent moves in the marketplace, including Overstock.com’s acquisition of Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and about movers in e-commerce software. We close with his remarks on what has gotten him excited in e-commerce for 2023 and beyond.

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Kevin Lee interviews Dan Reich, a serial entrepreneur, investor, writer, and President and co-founder of DIBS Beauty, a makeup brand “that reimagines everyday beauty staples, making them easier, mood-boosting, and worthy of desert island status.” They discuss DIBs’ origin story, Dan’s investment philosophy, the increasingly important role of influencers in marketing, and the big, AI-driven changes rippling through e-commerce.

Along the way they cover how social media has changed the influencer landscape. As Dan observes, “years ago, there weren’t really influencers, the influencers were these big media companies and publications. They had eyeballs, they had attention through those eyeballs and attention, they would monetize that with advertising dollars. So brands would give them things for those media companies to tell the world about which in turn drove sales, awareness and so on. And I think and know as a result of social media, that paradigm shifted, and now we see people that we call sometimes influencers I think about the more like entrepreneurs, they have many of these people have more eyeballs and engagement and, quote, influence than those media companies did.”

Dan is excited about the possibilities that AI will unleash from both an investment thesis perspective and from a brand-owner perspective. He notes that “we’re in this bit of a hype cycle where there’s a ton of people ton of money rushing at the first incarnations of what these solutions can look like. It’s everyone’s got to hammer now in search of a nail. But I do think that give it 12 to 18 months, we’re gonna see some really incredible and we already are, but really, really incredibly different, unique and differentiated solutions for all sorts of things, whether it be accounting, tasks, health care, marketing, you name it.”

Dan also has some great advice for founders seeking to acquire companies. “Don’t break it,” he advises. “Keep it autonomous; help where you can help. Don’t be overbearing.”

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Kevin Lee interviews Manish Chowdhary, founder and CEO of Pulse Commerce, a leading mid-market order and inventory management system for brands and retailers in the omni channel space, and founder and CEO at Cahoot, which specializes in e-commerce optimization with a focus on delivery and logistics. discuss Pulse and Cahoot’s origin story, and how these companies’ services solve problems for e-commerce brands.

Along the way they touch on other important issues relevant to e-commerce, including the rise of 3rd party marketplaces. As Manish observes, “from the consumer standpoint, consumers trust marketplaces, because it’s a competitive environment, which allows which requires brands and retailers to compete in order to win the consumers business. And consumers feel that they have an independent third party, who’s going to keep both parties honest. Which means if there’s a problem with the merchant, the marketplace will arbitrate that. So we are, we’re seeing a massive adoption of marketplaces from a consumer standpoint, consumers love it, consumers want to be there. And also because it’s a competitive environment.”

Manish and Kevin chat about current marketplace trends and the crucial importance of understanding customer acquisition costs and LTV. They trade notes on big movements in the space, including Overstock.com’s acquisition of Bed, Bath & Beyond. They touch on the continuing relevance of SEO in e-commerce, and pivot to the rising importance of AI in marketplace operations. As Manish notes, “it’s one of those massive changes, you know, from web 1.0, to web 2.0, then to mobile. And now we’re entering the age of AI. So perhaps I would classify this as the biggest revolution since the launch of the iPhone, which revolutionized mobile.”

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Kevin Lee interviews Phillip Lomax, Executive Vice President at MediaScience, a leader in media and advertising innovation research. Kevin and Phillip discuss MediaScience’s origin story, what’s new and compelling in audience research, as well as chat about new ad formats, the value of short and long-form content, and, naturally, the role of AI in the audience response measurement space.

They converse about the power of short-form advertising of the type increasingly used on social media platforms such as TikTok. As Phillip notes, “MediaScience was the first to discover the impact of six second advertisements, which is very prevalent today. Very short, it’s 20%, of a 32nd ad. And what we discovered within our research is that we could achieve 60% of the impact in six seconds of a 32nd ad. So I can achieve 60% of the impact and just 20% of the amount of time.”

They delve into the power of storytelling in an advertising context and best practices for getting attention. As Phillip notes, “what we found is featuring the brand’s distinct assets, early in advertisements gives us a greater ability to create memory structures. And this doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to plaster a logo on the screen within the first three seconds, which is what a lot of research companies say we should be doing right, it means we should be looking very distinctly at the shapes and forms and distinctive assets that make up a brand and the associations that we have with these brands, and then trying to find clever ways of integrating those distinct assets early within our advertisements.”

Phillip and Kevin also talk about brand safety, which Phillip regards as one of the greatest problems currently facing publishers today, AI, and touch upon the fact that in-game advertising continues to fail to get its proper share of ad budgets.

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Kevin Lee interviews Martin Schneider, Head of Research and Chief Evangelist at Annuitas, a boutique management consultancy specializing in go-to-market transformation. As his website states, “currently, companies are stuck in a cycle of random acts of sales and marketing, trying to consistently produce high quality leads and opportunities, but failing. Leaders are facing the hard truth that they must transform their go-to-market motion – becoming more customer-centered and embracing a strategic demand state if they want to reach growth goals.”

Kevin and Martin discuss the benefits which a go-to-market transformation can convey to an organizations, particularly in regard to better aligning the efforts of product, sales, and marketing teams. Martin summarizes the presentation he made recently at the Ignite B2B conference in Chicago entitled “Transforming Your Go-To-Market Strategy Through a Converged Growth Lens.”

They explore the mistakes that marketing and sales teams make when KPIs don’t correctly estimate the true value of a given lead, the fact that many KPIs are arbitrary, and the roadblocks of group decision-making on the part of B2B buyers. They trade notes on how marketers and sales teams might change their game in a recessionary environment, and likely indicators for organizations that they might more fully embrace go-to-market strategies.

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Kevin Lee interviews Andy Batkin, CEO of Duration Media, whose Sequency™ product reduces carbon emissions while offering buying efficiencies and also increasing the time that ad units are in view.

Digital advertising has a nasty carbon footprint — according to a 2016 study, online advertising consumed between 20 and 282 terra-watt hours of energy per year (1 terra-watt hour is enough power to fully power 70,000 homes for a year) — and it’s likely that consumption is much higher now than it was seven years ago.

Kevin and Andy discuss the degree to which sustainability is now a value in the advertising business and get a deep-dive into how his system works to eliminate digital waste. They discuss other benefits of using Sequency™, particularly its ability to allow brands and publishers to better choreograph the delivery of storytelling ad units.

Andy has high hopes for 2023 and will be talking up Sequency™ at the forthcoming Cannes Lion 2023 Festival of Creativity, an event Kevin will also be attending. “Now, almost every agency has a global head of sustainability. The brands are really asking for it and so they’ve got to deliver. The big thing for us is that we’ve figured out how to actually reduce carbon, versus selling offsets. And the IAB European definition literally states that we have to focus on carbon reduction, and only use offsets when carbon reduction is not available.”

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In today’s increasingly collaborative digital workplace, where remote and office-bound workers routinely share files on a variety of different digital platforms, including Google Drive, Sharepoint, Box, DropBox, and others, it’s still too difficult for teams to find the files they need. The result is wasted time, file duplication, confusion over which file is the “final” version, and an elevated chance of error and file loss.

Jessica Storry is CEO and Co-Founder at Stockpress, a Boston-based technology company whose Digital Asset Management (DAM) software addresses this problem. Kevin and Jessica discuss Stockpress’ origin story, how the software works, and the features that distinguish it from other DAMs on the market, including the fact that all of its pricing tiers — even its free tier — provide for unlimited users.

They trade notes on file management best practices, how the WFH and hybrid office trends have accelerated the need to more easily track and access files, the degree to which DAMs can improve team productivity, and the different types of businesses currently using Stockpress.

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Kevin Lee interviews Dan Swift, CEO of Numentum (formerly Empire Selling) a consultancy advising sales teams on how to up their game. Numentum’s mission is to help sales teams better understand the actual buyer’s journey that B2B buyers go through. As Dan notes, few salespeople have actually made any corporate purchases, which hampers their performance. The good news is that with appropriate training, they can rapidly improve. Dan is candid about the fact that most salespeople fail to fully leverage social media, in particular, LinkedIn, and conveys some very useful tips about making better use of social media channels.

The conversation then turns to ABM, and the mistakes that many sales pros make when they focus too much on acquiring new “fresh meat” leads at the expense of cultivating relationships with those who’ve already successfully dealt with the enterprise. Kevin and Dan discuss the importance of salespeople using “micro moments” to stay top-of-mind, delve into the potential of AI to improve the selling experience, explore the “myth of the single decisionmaker” and chat about what salespeople should do should they discover that a “single disrupter” is opposing change that could benefit corporate well-being.

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I was greatly pleased to recently chat with David L. Deutsch about the challenges of writing compelling, effective copy. David is an Ogilvy & Mather alumnus who for the past several decades has been specializing in writing direct response copy. Today he’s an internationally-renowned copy coach, consultant, and the author of several books and courses teaching copywriters how to improve their craft. His frequently updated blog is a flowing fountain of ideas for anyone seeking to improve their copywriting or struggling to defeat writer’s block.

David and I touched on many issues in our talk that I hope are of interest to the eMarketing Association audience, including the particular challenge of writing effective B2B copy, the future of long form copywriting, the role of emotion in effective copywriting, and the continued relevance of direct mail and direct mail copywriting. We also discuss the particular creative qualities of screenwriters and standup comedians and the degree to which these qualities can be leveraged for copywriting.

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Sheryl Goldstein is Executive Vice President and Chief Industry Growth Officer at the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau), an organization whose original mission — to reduce friction between digital ad buyers and sellers by promulgating standards — has expanded on a number of important fronts. Today, the IAB conducts research, legislative outreach, fields a large number of working groups and topic-specific boards, and hosts an annual event called ALM (Annual Leadership Meeting) that brings together reps from brands, publishers, platforms, and adtech vendors to discuss pressing industry issues in order to find workable solutions.

Sheryl and I have known each other for a long time; in fact, we were friends even before the IAB was formed in 1996. Of course, the digital marketing ecosystem has changed massively in the past 28 years, and so has the IAB’s original mission, which has expanded to include a wide range of working groups and initiatives, including those concerning industry diversity and regulatory issues.

I wanted to catch up with Sheryl to get her POV on where the IAB — and the adtech industry — is going these days. She notes that the IAB is particularly focused on educating legislators in the U.S. about the inadequacies of today’s patchwork of state-by-state privacy regulations. With respect to encouraging more diversity in the digital ad space, she observes that both agencies and brands have recently accelerated their efforts but that much work needs to be done in this area. She also notes that while encouraging diversity and other requirements such as carbon-neutrality is important, there can be unintended negative consequences for small players who may not have the resources necessary to successfully meet the many new requirements now finding their way into RFIs.

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