#032 : In this Chill episode, Overdose’s Brisbane MD, Elliot Schoemaker, chats with Adobe’s illustrious Head of Customer Strategy, Kevin Wordon, discussing growth, challenges, successes, marketing channels, marketing automation, and key strategies for 2021.

We all know about Adobe’s genius when it comes to software in the creative space–its flagship suites Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign have reigned supreme in desktop-publishing for some 40 years—but recently it’s boosted into the digital marketing management software arena. In 2018, Adobe acquired ecommerce services provider Magento Commerce; later the same year it acquired Marketo, a marketing automation software company; and in late 2020, it acquired Workfront, a provider of marketing collaboration software.

These were major acquisitions which bolstered Adobe’s offerings to provide businesses with their digital foundations—customer journey management systems, market automation, commerce engines, content management systems, asset management, personalisation, and analytics, to name a few.

Now, armed with a wide gamut of ecommerce solutions, Adobe is a key player in the world of digital marketing.

Kevin Wordon lives and works at his Queensland ‘acreage’—a mini-farm where there are chickens to feed and llamas to entertain. It wasn’t Covid that drove him to his bucolic hideaway; he chose this lifestyle for his young family and because of his love of animals.

Adobe has long supported its remote workforce—well before the pandemic began closing office doors—and you can easily get a sense of the benefits of work-life balance as we chat with Kevin (in between his trots down to the hen house); he’s a super-chill guy.

As Adobe’s Head of Customer Strategy for the APAC (Asia-Pacific) region, Kevin explains his role is about helping customers on their digital transformational journey. This involves things like addressing customers’ pain-points objectives and navigating their marketing automation landscape or commerce landscape.

Kevin explains to us how Adobe’s customer strategy is journey-based, beginning with prospective customers in the pre-sales stage and travelling right through to after-sales: “The journey doesn’t stop once you purchase technology, it’s ongoing, especially as you start to expand your tech stack and look at new use cases.”

A big focus is placed on ensuring customers are achieving optimal success with their new software, starting with smooth integration into the business’s other systems, and, once established, working towards full utilisation. Platforms like Marketo or Magento offer a broad set of functionality, however, many of the features are under-utilised, often forgotten once habits set in, and only a subset is used.

To find out levels of utilisation, Adobe monitors and scores customers’ usage of a platform. Kevin explains: “If, say, a business is only using 70% of what they purchased, we can look into why—it may be a people or a process issue getting in the way of adopting the technology, and may be a strategy or roadmap discussion we then need to have.”

“Typically,” Kevin says, “it’s the way the business operates which gets in the way of adoption.”

And so it’s all part of the service—Adobe helping its customers achieve the best success while using its products.

Adobe uses the utilisation scoring system as a benchmarking tool for its customer strategy, “There’s no better way than looking at your peers within your industry,” says Kevin.

Pitching like-for-like businesses against one another can lead to the cross-pollination of strategies between businesses, and not only within a particular industry but also inter-industry. “The likes of manufacturing, for example, are catching up on the digital transformation, and they could learn from automotive, for example,” explains Kevin.

The rise and refinement of the digital experience has come a long way since Kevin began his ecommerce career. “In the early days, customer digital experience was industry-specific—the success stories honed in on an individual industry, but that doesn’t matter anymore. I think we can all learn from other customers and what they’re doing, and how they’re engaging.”

Another transformation affecting the world of SaaS (software as a service), is the convergence of B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing channels. Where once the two customer types generally required separate engagements, it’s now not necessarily the case—often marketers seek to engage with B2B customers in a B2C manner.

“B2B doesn’t have to be boring,” Kevin points out. “Why does the digital experience have to be boring if it could look and feel like a fun and interactive website?”

In one of his previous roles at Flight Centre, Kevin was tasked with developing a B2B website for the business travel arm of the organisation. He was ticked off for making it look too much like the retail website. “I didn’t take that as a bad thing,” he says, “I thought, for me, that’s a job done.”

At the end of the day, they’re still just people on the other end making purchasing decisions.

“With B2C,” explains Kevin, “there’s the personal motivation, whereas in B2B, you’ve got to get the personal motivation plus the business motivation. If you can nail it on the business level, and the personal level of the individual, that’s where I really think you can win engagement in the B2B sense.”

Whether it’s B2B or B2C, the digital experience is the journey of the customer. While it may be initially created en masse, it’s still the individual going on the journey. Their behaviour may change along the way, such as the way they browse on a website, so behaviour needs to be constantly monitored and managed.

Effective customer journey management involves listening to customer behaviours and figuring out what is the best next action—which course of action to send the customer down.

Kevin gives an example: “You may looking online at TAFE Queensland to choose from a variety of courses, and your certain life stage might be a mum or dad returning to work, or you might be looking for post-graduate, or still in school, or you could have just graduated school. So TAFE have to tailor the customer journey based on certain life stages.”

In customer strategy, the marketer must figure out how to adapt the engagement strategy­, and often there is a complex environment to consider.

Elliot shares his experience of when he was working for a software vendor in the charity space: “In not-for-profit, you have very different journeys and potential journeys for customers. Every time you do a new activation or a new event, you’ve got a different thing that you have to design for that customer—there are donors, there are fundraisers, and there people supporting fundraisers. All of these different personas need different forms of engagements and that can be quite a complex thing, especially when you consider many charities that are smaller and don’t have huge marketing teams.”

The challenge in building the most effective engagement strategy is mapping it out and considering all the different possibilities and personas.

Identifying and developing strategies for the different personas becomes a central task for the marketer. When options seem endless, where do you start?

Kevin’s advice is to not get bogged down trying to cover all personas and every detail of everyone: “It’s best to look at, say, the top three personas we want to go after,  and start building programs around them. Just start somewhere. Don’t wait for every single persona in the business to be drafted, just go after the top two or three and build content for them.”

He suggests starting broadly then working your way down. “In a B2B situation, for example, start with, say, the decision-maker and build content for them, then, as you get into it, you may realise the decision-maker is more in the operational space of the organisation, so it may be better to target the sales team.”

It’s about learning as you go. Start somewhere, and learn and refine as you go.

Learning is definitely a daily affair in the rapidly evolving ecommerce space.

Having both started their digital careers around the same time, Elliot and Kevin remember the early years when there were very few sophisticated platforms around, and businesses were sceptical when it came to early adoption of new technologies. Back then, one of their biggest challenges was having to push hard for certain technologies—they had to build a strong case to get their respective businesses to deploy a particular technology.

One of the difficulties people have in presenting these business cases is being able to project what the potential value will be. Helping their retail customers through this challenge is where a software provider like Adobe, and a digital agency like Overdose, can really step up.

In fact, helping put forward a business case for new technology was how Kevin’s role at Marketo came about. “I was a customer of Adobe’s for around seven years, then I joined Marketo prior to the Adobe acquisition and there my role was as a strategic advisor to help businesses craft their business case.”

From his experience in that role, he found a big disconnect between the business objectives and leadership priorities—and the challenge was to translate those top priorities into a solution that met the objectives as well: ‘I want to invest in market automation’… ‘Why? What’s it going to help you with?’… ‘Is it going to help you be more efficient?’… ‘Is it going to help you with the acquisition?’… ‘Ok, but have you thought about customer retention as well?’. These are some of the questions that get bandied around the office.

Kevin found that often there’s simply an education issue and leadership just needs to understand the value of the platform. “Be prepared to educate your leadership. Rather than just saying ‘Hey, we want to purchase Magento, we want to purchase Marketo’, let them understand what it does.”

Adobe’s purchase of Marketo was a major acquisition where effectively two large, well-established organisations merged. Were there any difficulties, particularly from a cultural perspective, with the integration?

Kevin had been at Marketo only four months when the acquisition took place. “It couldn’t have gone better,” he says. “Adobe does acquisitions really well, and it was a seamless transition into the organisation. We were all pretty surprised—we were all thinking Marketo is a fairly big business and Adobe is a big, big business, so how will that actually work? And certainly, we felt like there were open arms.”

For Marketo’s clients as well, the acquisition was well-received. Adobe already had a strong presence in many organisations, particularly in document productivity, and the merging of creative tools into the Marketo platform has represented a new level of value and ease-of-use for marketers in their tech stacks.

Adobe is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning, particularly new technologies aimed to make the life of a marketer more efficient. For example, if you are planning a webinar event, behind-the-scenes intelligence can recommend people from the database to send an invite to, rather than you having to spend time navigating the database.

Adobe is also focusing on the seamless integration of Workfront—its latest acquisition—a platform aimed at streamlining the organisation and workflow of a marketer. Enhancements are planned as well, such as integrating creative and market automation functions into the program.

Kevin points to the rise of first-party data. “We’ll begin to see a cookie-less future where it’s more than ever about the data you have and how you use it to engage with your customers,” he explains. “In the past, we’ve been getting inaccurate third-party data, hoping and praying that we’re reaching the right customers. There will be a shift into more second-party and first-party data.”

Adobe, and Overdose too, both agree when it comes to data capture. There’s a lot to navigate in terms of consumer privacy protection, and both firms acknowledge their role in helping guide their customers through changing data privacy laws such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

In a cookie-less world, gone will be the days when businesses can see when people are looking at their site on Safari or when they’ve clicked a link.

“Retailers,” says Overdose’s Elliot, “who currently rely on third-party SaaS platforms to deliver cohort data to them, to assist their understanding of how to market appropriately to their customers, will face a lot of technical challenges­­—it’s going to be a large upheaval for them, especially for smaller businesses.”

“Yes,” Kevin agrees. “And that makes your first-party data even more important. And now, trying to create that single customer view becomes more important too. The change for the retailer might be: ‘How can I bring my physical touch-point data and my CRM data together, and then use those for the customer profile to do that next best action, rather than relying on the third-party?’ It’s designed for more privacy and protection of general consumers, so I think it’s a good thing, and we have to adapt.”

Elliot agrees it’s a good thing. “I think the message for businesses is to reach out and talk to their SaaS providers and ask, ‘What are we doing to resolving this?’ You need to start having conversations. Make sure you’re ahead of the game.”

Kevin suggests thinking of your technology partners as your business partners. “As a technology provider,” he says, “we’ve thought about this, and we’ve been thinking about this for a very long time. So whether it’s your partner like Overdose or Adobe, if you’re a customer, or if you’re not—that’s fine as well, just talk and reach out and we can help you navigate it.”

Collaborative solutions seem to play a big role in Adobe’s customer strategy and after chatting to Kevin, we get a sense that as big as they may be, the strategy is simple—at the end of the day it all comes down to people helping people.

#032 : In this Chill episode, Overdose’s Brisbane MD, Elliot Schoemaker, chats with Adobe’s illustrious Head of Customer Strategy, Kevin Wordon, discussing growth, challenges, successes, marketing channels, marketing automation, and key strategies for 2021.

Overdose Americas MD Gary Benerofe chills and chats with Vineyard Vines’ Vice President of Creative Strategy, Jory Benerofe (yes, same name—they are cousins), to discuss the brand’s strategy, and its successes and challenges along the way. 

Jory joined Vineyard Vines in the early days when it was merely four to five guys in a two-bedroom pseudo-office—the modest beginnings of a big dream. Jory had fortuitously met one of the founders who hired him on the spot because he knew a bit about Photoshop. 

Fast-forward two decades and Jory has transitioned from tie designer to overseeing a team of 28 including designers, copywriters, content creators, photographers, videographers, social media content developers, print editors, and digital editors—the full spectrum as everything is done in-house. 

Although much of the brand’s creative success can be accredited to Jory and his team, he humbly suggests it boils down to the authenticity of the founders’ story and the fact the company has always stayed true to their beliefs.

The story was simply two guys quitting their jobs to start a tie company, making a product that reminded them of growing up spending summers in Martha’s Vineyard—fishing, boating, swimming, and enjoying the good life.

“In the early days,” Jory reflects, “We didn’t have money to advertise; we had to pitch our story to magazines and other outlets that were interested in it as a human-interest story…you know, just two guys chucking in their jobs to follow their dream. We ended up getting editorials, and it was far better than paid advertising.”

The ‘accidental advertising’ helped grow the brand better than in any other way—the authentic ‘following the dream’ story really resonated with people.

Another example of this authenticity-factor occurred next “when we shifted from just ties to making apparel,” Jory explains. “We couldn’t afford models, so we used employees. We would shoot the product on ourselves or on our friends, and that really created a foundational element of highlighting and profiling real people.”

It was this ‘celebrating real people’ that became a core pillar of the brand, and it worked seamlessly with the founders’ story.

Vineyard Vines found their sweet spot; lifestyle-centric clothing was the focus and business began to prosper. They became renowned for their classic lines, everyday wear, work clothes that are functional and comfortable, and weekend wear in which to unwind and have fun. In other words, clothes to feel good in.

The brand’s tagline, ‘every day should feel this good,’ was born. 

“We call it our ‘state of mind’,” Jory explains. “We make product for ‘every day should feel this good’ moments. The hope is, when you put on our clothing or interact with the brand in some way, you make a connection between those great moments in your life and our product.”

The brand’s ability to connect with people has created a powerful Vineyard Vines community. A community that is all-encompassing; no matter what you do, what you’re into, it doesn’t matter—it’s the feeling you get from doing it that’s important. This makes the brand widely relevant, open, and welcoming for people to take it and interpret what it means to them.

Early on, this community was doing ‘social media’—well before social media (as we now know it) was even a thing. People were taking photos of themselves or their friends wearing Vineyard Vines while doing something they love and mailing them in. As the pictures funnelled into the Vineyard Vines’ HQ, the marketing department would pop them into catalogues, add a caption, and in turn share them back out. This sharing of their customers’ lives became a marketing cornerstone and showed the community how important they were to the brand and vice-versa.

1. Offering value through their price point. When Vineyard Vines started, they were the little guy, in the shadows, up against some of the greatest American apparel brands. They opened up to a whole new customer base by offering a more affordable luxury product.
2. The brand is built on an emotional connection. The brothers began by selling a lifestyle—a frame of mind, an emotion, an aspirational mindset. Consumers connected with that mindset. They aspired to live the ‘good life.’ The products connect to memories, nostalgia, family road trips, and summertime at the beach.  It’s more about the experience than about the clothing; it’s about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to feel in that clothing.
3. Having a broad customer base. Vineyard Vines has a wide appeal range—men, women, children, grandparents. It’s always been inclusive, open, and welcoming to everyone, and it’s become intergenerational.
4. Never failing to deliver. It’s always been a mindset within the company that no matter the challenges, they will always deliver to the customer, and when problems arise, everyone in the business has to come together to figure out how to get the job done. 
5. They’ve always gone out of their way to make people’s lives better. If they’ve messed up with a customer, they’ve not rested until they’ve won them back.
6. Vineyard Vines have always stayed true to the brand. In their dealings with potential new partners, suppliers, and vendors, everything must feel authentic to the brand. They won’t engage if it doesn’t feel right. 

Having a can-do attitude ingrained in the business culture has helped with absorbing the speed bumps along the way. It’s an attitude that gives the confidence they can always make it work, even in unpredictable territories like global recessions or pandemics.

As for most businesses, the panic button was hit when Covid came to town. In the early days of the unknown, worried consumers were conservative about their spending. 

After initially being reactive and just dealing with it day-to-day, Vineyard Vines then went into hyperdrive with their sales channels. Priority was given to the website—they already had a robust omnichannel retail site with buy-online and pick-up in-store, so they were well-placed to function in the new retail landscape.  New initiatives were rolled out, such as Curbside Pick-up; Virtual Assistant (an online appointment with a sales assistant); and Smart Gift (like a gift card, but the giftee chooses the size and colour, and it gets delivered to them directly).

The company’s strong emphasis on health and safety meant they were recognised as one of the top ten safest retailers in the country. 

It’s not surprising Vineyard Vines has carried on through, finding a way to keep connecting with their customer, and always believing their customer should feel good, no matter what.  Living the good life is, and always will be, the fabric of the brand.

#032 : In this Chill episode, Overdose’s Brisbane MD, Elliot Schoemaker, chats with Adobe’s illustrious Head of Customer Strategy, Kevin Wordon, discussing growth, challenges, successes, marketing channels, marketing automation, and key strategies for 2021.

Eat My Lunch began its operations in the home of founder Lisa King in 2015, making lunches for individual orders, and has since moved to bespoke professional kitchens that are necessary to facilitate increasing corporate catering demand and to ensure the highest health and hygiene standards are continuously met.  As a Social Enterprise, it is not eligible for charity funding and therefore uses part of its profit to fund all the lunches it gives to kids in need. 

The enterprise relies heavily on volunteer labor to minimize its overheads and has maximized this by partnering with corporates that – on one hand – need catering for meetings and events and – on the other hand – want to expand their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities. Eat My Lunch benefits greatly by hosting corporate volunteer days where employees can give something back by helping to make school lunches. 

This creates a win/win scenario for all parties involved and means that revenue can be dedicated to the substantial compliance and governance costs that are associated with the food industry.  The original business model was determined not to be reliant on funding in order to sustain Eat My Lunch’s mission, and the team has found that a combination of education, providing a great product, and building strong partnerships continues to attract interest in their cause.

Kellie admits that change has always been her friend, and although she misses the support of an Executive Assistant, she loves the autonomy that comes with her current position and the speed with which decisions can be made in comparison to the corporate world.  She is obviously passionate about her role, and it is no surprise to learn that she is willing to work alongside her team to do what needs to be done, for as long as that takes, every day. 

This leadership style proved to be particularly beneficial during the first Covid-19 lockdown when suddenly kids weren’t going to school, but still needed support, and employees working from home had no requirement for corporate catering.  Overnight, the team went from producing 1,200 lunches per day to zero!  They had no alternative product and no other source of revenue.  Kellie was worried about feeding those same kids, albeit at their individual homes, about her suppliers, and about keeping her team employed.

The answer lay in public funding via a large shareholder donation and individual donations invited via the “Give a Little” campaign.    The $240,000 raised allowed Eat My Lunch to feed over 2,000 kids at home for 6 weeks by pivoting its processes to accommodate new logistical challenges and to meet Covid restrictions with regards to food preparation and social distancing.  Alongside this, the team was also able to introduce free, fresh, and nutritional grocery boxes that were distributed to families in need, which in turn contributed to supporting long-standing local suppliers and keeping the team in employment.  In retrospect, Kellie remembers this period as “crazy but rewarding,” and she is “super proud” of her team’s ability to make it happen.

Once lockdown was over, it became obvious that many businesses were scaling back and that the demand for corporate catering was somewhat reduced. So the team has turned its focus to supporting its largest customer (Air New Zealand) and to sourcing new customers so that they can continue to achieve their goals.  Once again, they have been successful in their mission, and Kellie is pleased to report that 60% of recent revenue has come from new customers.

Recognizing that these uncertain and challenging times may well continue for some time to come, Kellie and her team are working closely with companies to find new ways to remain relevant in their new corporate world. Looking to Christmas, in the absence of large corporate events, they have launched “A Gift that Gives” (in partnership with Richie & Co.), which will be available for delivery nationwide.

Improving Eat My Lunch’s digital presence is also a new focus for the team. They launched a new website recently on Shopify (with the help of Overdose Digital) with the aim of increasing B2B customer engagement via both desktop and mobile. Kellie is confident that they are now better equipped to be flexible and she is looking forward to sharing the stories of the kids who receive lunches via a website blog, which will further increase awareness of the positive impact this amazing enterprise continues to make.

#032 : In this Chill episode, Overdose’s Brisbane MD, Elliot Schoemaker, chats with Adobe’s illustrious Head of Customer Strategy, Kevin Wordon, discussing growth, challenges, successes, marketing channels, marketing automation, and key strategies for 2021.

In the next of our live Instagram Overdose & Chill interviews, our CEO Todd Welling talks with Dan Fertig, Head of Partnerships at BigCommerce, about his background, the BigCommerce journey to IPO, and what the future of SaaS Commerce looks like from the platform side.

Launching as a public company on the stock market is not a decision to be taken lightly and BigCommerce prudently delayed its event until the initial effects of Covid-19 on the ecommerce market could be established.  It transpired that while retailers were definitely struggling with maintaining their brick-and-mortar stores, there was a realisation that Covid wasn’t going away anytime soon. BigCommerce realised the opportunity that came along with exponential growth in the use of e-commerce during the lockdown, which no doubt contributed to its very successful launch.

The BigCommerce philosophy is to be different from others, to do better, and to be better. Aware that it now needs to meet its shareholders’ expectations, BigCommerce plans to further invest in three key areas:

• Product – it wants to enable its merchants to able to sell to customers anywhere in the world, on any device and any screen.
• People – it plans to continue investing in the best people to carry out its research and development.
• Partners – it plans to increase its technology and delivery partners, who are an essential part of its business model.

When it comes to testing the feasibility of entering new marketplaces, Dan outlines the main criteria used by the company as:

• Market size and opportunity – what does it look like?
• Product fit – are we product ready and if not, what do we need to do to get there?
• Partners – is the right mix of technology & delivery partners available locally?
• Marketing – who is our target market and how can we localize our message?

Following on from its success in the United Kingdom and with increasing traction in northern Europe, the wider European marketplace may well be where BigCommerce plans its next expansion. BigCommerce is “super deliberate” in everything it does, ensuring that it retains its established customer base supported by the right partners before opening an office in any location. 

There is no doubt that the IPO has increased the company’s profile in the software marketplace. With increased global awareness of the brand and its free product trial period, more potential customers will now be able to try before they buy which is certainly an innovative USP for this industry. It is also a very powerful organic market research tool that can be utilized to identify where market demand sits at any given point in time.

Dan predicts continued growth for B2B commerce, particularly for: millennials, headless solutions that can provide connective retail experiences by using voice commerce (Imagine ordering a new filter for your machine via the product hardware itself!), social influence & transaction software that is seamless and lower in cost, and “smart” brands that emphasie real-time customer support at the front end. 

#032 : In this Chill episode, Overdose’s Brisbane MD, Elliot Schoemaker, chats with Adobe’s illustrious Head of Customer Strategy, Kevin Wordon, discussing growth, challenges, successes, marketing channels, marketing automation, and key strategies for 2021.

Today on Chill, we talk to Victor Castro, soon to be Vice President of Growth & Digital Product at Bonafide Health, about the brand’s journey, the “big” conversation, and how they manage to maintain traction.

The Beginning

Bonafide’s parent company began as an organic food company, started by farm executives who were interested in improving the health of the population. It has since grown to include a range of women’s natural health products that have an emphasis on science, the quality of ingredients, and evidence of success.    

The Present

Unlike many other natural health providers, Bonafide deliberately works with medical professionals to include them in the conversation and to educate them about hormone-free alternatives available to their female patients. Moreover, if potential consumers are unsure about using Bonafide products, they are recommended to refer to their medical advisor for reassurance.

The Future

With its focus fixed firmly on expanding its North American reach and further developing the women’s health conversation in general, it may be some time before the company considers global expansion.

Victor doesn’t think it likely that Bonafide will be taken over by a Big Pharma company, simply due to the fact that its volume of hormone-free products is too small to threaten all the existing hormone-based products currently used as successful medical treatments worldwide.

However, it is possible that some interest may be shown by multinationals who have already dabbled in natural skincare and cosmetics. While certainly introducing a risk of over-commercialization, this would have the benefit of providing more women across the globe with an opportunity to ditch hormone-based products and to benefit from the company’s pioneering work.

Unusually, Bonafide does not seek out modern-day influencers or celebrities to promote its products. The acquisition process is generated mainly via verbal marketing tools such as radio, podcasts, and real medical doctors discussing the benefits of the products on media such as “Doctor Radio.” While they do have an Affiliate Programme, membership is granted only to genuine users of their products.

Also unusually, most clients are retained from the very first transaction! The Bonafide consumer is well educated before putting any items in their digital basket; they know that each product may not work 100% successfully for everyone; they accept that these products need consistent use over a period of time in order to increase their chance of success, and, therefore, they don’t resist buying via the subscription service in place. Promotions are used to encourage longevity and to cement the company’s vested interest in improving the health of its customers.

While products are available via Amazon, which is now the first place that most people search for a myriad of products, the best deals and bespoke consumer service are available directly from the company’s website www.hellobonafide.com.

#032 : In this Chill episode, Overdose’s Brisbane MD, Elliot Schoemaker, chats with Adobe’s illustrious Head of Customer Strategy, Kevin Wordon, discussing growth, challenges, successes, marketing channels, marketing automation, and key strategies for 2021.

In the latest of our live Overdose & Chill Instagram interviews, our Group CEO, Todd Welling, chats with Daniel about the central European eCommerce market, its differences, challenges, and opportunities.

Daniel Höhnke

Daniel has spent 15 years working in German ecommerce and has run his own Agency for the past 9 years. He is pleased to be joining the OD team to spearhead its introduction to the German, Austrian, and Swiss (DACH) digital marketplace.

The German ecommerce Market

When asked if there is any appetite in Germany for international brands, Daniel describes it as a “typical Amazon economy,” with at least 50% of trade going through big online retailers. In fact, the top online stores are currently Amazon, Otto, and Zalando, which presents quite a challenge for any new brand wanting to break into this central European marketplace. 

Using big commerce stores as a route to market can certainly make “fast money” in the short term; however, it is important to recognize that these consumers are more loyal to the platform brand than the product brand, so an enterprise will still need to initiate direct customer engagement and build trust via its own website and social media platforms if it is to have any chance of securing brand longevity.

Like all Europeans, Germans are heavily influenced by the American market and love to use Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, with the younger generation also embracing Snapchat and Tiktok.

Daniel shares that German ecommerce usually progresses a few years behind its American or British counterparts. For instance, where most of the western world has been using cloud-based solutions like Shopify for some considerable time, this has not been the case in Germany. Both men agree that new platforms find it exceedingly difficult and almost prohibitively expensive to break into and become established in a new marketplace. Yet, with the arrival of Shopify Plus, which is designed for larger enterprises, something in the mindset has shifted, and 2020 could well be the year that the cloud system will be fully embraced by the German market.

It transpires that Systems Architects in New Zealand still prefer to buy platforms that include a front end. They shy away from headless solutions for various reasons, including an increase in failure points and the additional costs and build time required for two separate systems.

On the other hand, German System Architects love the freedom to create bespoke front ends that can be tailored to improving user experience. Savings can now be made if a managed PWA such as Frontastic is used, which accelerates the build process and reduces systems maintenance costs to backend only.

Daniel explains that while the German marketplace is certainly open to new products, care needs to be taken by marketing teams to ensure that consumers are spoken to in their own language.  He recommends using local influencers to market everything from fashion to garden furniture. 

Post lockdown, the German economy is showing signs of recovery and Daniel looks forward to taking up his new role with Overdose Digital in Berlin where he will be focusing on growing strong relationships with carefully selected merchants supporting digital growth initiatives, alongside several major Overdose brands including Stihl, Scotch & Soda, Patagonia, Wilson, Heidi Klum, Samsung, Birkenstock, AriZona, Formlabs, Nespresso, and Marc Fisher Footwear.

#032 : In this Chill episode, Overdose’s Brisbane MD, Elliot Schoemaker, chats with Adobe’s illustrious Head of Customer Strategy, Kevin Wordon, discussing growth, challenges, successes, marketing channels, marketing automation, and key strategies for 2021.

The ‘Live’ Machine

Ideal for fashion shoots, this machine is designed to create instantly edited videos and stills in minutes. Advanced robotics and AI technology let the Live machine handle all the technical duties usually performed by a camera crew such as lighting, file coding, editing, and shot set-up, which improves the quality, speed, and efficiency of production for ecommerce, social media, and digital signage imagery. 

The best way to maximise the use of this machine is to ensure hair, makeup, and wardrobe processes are as smooth and efficient as possible.

The ‘Vertical’ Machine

Designed for mannequin photography, Vertical creates instant product shots for ecommerce with automatic background removal. It clear cuts ghost images in 15 seconds, enabling fast production of all the images needed for social media channels, lookbooks, website, marketing, visual merchandising, and media.

Vertical can be used to create high-quality front, side, back, and detail shots of garments in a consistent style. Or users can get creative and use hangers or props to create an engaging series of images to align with any brand guidelines. Its intuitive user interface allows users to manage detail and contrast by easily adjusting brightness and zoom.

The ‘Horizontal’ Machine

Designed for flat-lay product photography, Horizontal’s ergonomically positioned machine and advanced software save a lot of valuable time by automatically detecting and removing the background so that almost no post-production work is necessary. Live view allows the user to style their product, and brightness and zoom controls allow detail and contrast to be maximised at a push of a button. 

This type of photography is especially useful for capturing styling ideas or for suggesting accessories that could complement a pending purchase.

The “Eclipse” Machine

Designed to showcase every angle of small products, Eclipse is a fully self-contained system enabling users to build still-life sets and play with light, backdrops, and reflections. They can choose to shoot against either an infinity cove or a flat background, and then spice up their content to stand out with interchangeable backdrops in any color.

Eclipse includes hardware that produces multi-angled, high-quality videos and stills, and software that exports auto-edited video and stills that are ready for ecommerce, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, and signage, all within minutes!

Overdose and Asset Factory regularly collaborate on projects for shared clients and share a vested interest in delivering ecommerce success and excellence for brands. Asset Factory is one of our preferred ecommerce content creation partners whom we confidently recommend to various businesses from start-ups to multi-national corporations.

Businesses who would like to arrange a free consultation can contact Asset Factory via this link.

#032 : In this Chill episode, Overdose’s Brisbane MD, Elliot Schoemaker, chats with Adobe’s illustrious Head of Customer Strategy, Kevin Wordon, discussing growth, challenges, successes, marketing channels, marketing automation, and key strategies for 2021.

The friends decided that they wanted to create a quality gin that “embodied modern Australia,” which Matt considers to be “the best tasting country on earth!” Seeking to integrate Mediterranean citrus and Asian spice with traditional botanicals, the team sourced Tasmanian pepperberry leaf, Australian lemon myrtle, and native citrus fruits to combine with the very best juniper from Macedonia and Kosovo.

The packaging was deliberately designed to ensure that each product exuded class, quality, and attention to detail; from the shape of the bottle to the label, and (of course), to the gin within.  This initial investment has allowed the Four Pillars classic design to become recognisable in its own right and to stand the test of time.

Since the launch and award-winning success of that first product, Four Pillars has continued to develop different gins, and its portfolio now includes barrel-aged gins, navy strength gins, a Christmas gin, and the ever-popular Bloody Shiraz Gin, which tastes great on its own or with lemon tonic water.

The Four Pillar Team decided at an early stage to place their gin at a premium price point.  They believed people were “looking to drink well at home,” and thankfully, they were right.  It seems they managed to break a significant psychological barrier, as it is now not unusual for gin connoisseurs to pay $70 – $100 for a quality craft product that can be savored and enjoyed in the comfort of their own home, or alternatively, to pay a premium price for the same product from a cocktail bar menu.

The brand sells its full product range directly from its laboratory retail shops and an online store. The team has learned over time some of their more niche products – such as their barrel-aged gins – are less suitable for the mainstream market, so their best selling gins only are available via other international outlets.

The Four Pillars partners had the wisdom and business experience to realise the importance of nurturing customer relationships right from the beginning and made those very first crowd-funding customers members of the “Batch No 1 Club.”  To this day, those same customers are given first access to new products.

Since then, the company has increased its relationship-building by introducing gin-making and gin-tasting experiences at their distillery in the Yarra Valley and most recently at their new “Four Pillars Laboratory” in Surry Hills, Sydney.

The brand’s passion for innovation and the experiences of its consumers will provide valuable and consistent sources of compelling storytelling for its digital platforms, which are designed to allow its diverse target market to easily discover, learn about, and engage with the brand, ensuring they know exactly what they want before they add a Four Pillar product to their basket.

When asked if tempted to move away from the craft concept to concentrate on increasing the volume of successful products,  Matt emphasized “craft is not defined by scale,” and the team has great clarity around their brand success strategy.  He believes Four Pillars will continue to blend the philosophy of “quality first” with the exploration of new frontiers, and he is keen to take the original products to new customers and become the biggest craft gin provider in Australia.

Four Pillars aims to be the best by “doing more and better.” The accolade of International Gin Producer of the Year 2019, awarded by the International Wine and Spirits Competition (IWSC), has inspired Matt, Stu, and Cameron to continue their “crazy ride” for some time to come.

Four Pillars Gin partnered with Overdose to design and build a bespoke, ‘headless commerce’ system utilizing a BigCommerce backend and a WordPress frontend. We were tasked with integrating with their retail POS systems and overcoming the unique challenge of using distillery-specific software to manage their accounts.

Four Pillars requires a rich, content-led experience for its users, with customizable, content-heavy product pages. These features allow Four Pillars to continue to enhance the user experience by offering relevant content including recipes, stories, videos, and botanical information throughout different pages to keep the experience fresh for their loyal gin fans.