Content investment by big retailers: what are you doing

Local retailers need to sit down and take note. Two major retailers - Amazon and Waitrose - yesterday acquired media businesses.

Close to home,Waitrose bought the 63 year old Good Food Guide from Which? to build on its presence as a "food expert across a number of communications channels."

"We aim to be the go-to shop for food lovers and this guide will develop our brand as an authority on good food," said Rupert Thomas, marketing director.

More dramatically, Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon bought the Washington Post for $250m.

He said: "Journalism plays a critical role in a free society and the Washington Post as the hometown paper of the capital city of the United States is especially important."

Media moguls used to buy papers for political influence. Can big retailers be any different?

However, for local retailers this underlines the need for you to have a social media strategy. You need to communicate with your shoppers and build their trust in your offer. See Retail Newsagent for more ideas on how to do this.

Read more, see www.betterretailing.com.

Comments

Digital disruption in the UK wholesale space

“Twenty years ago I was driving boxes to the post office in my Chevy Blazer and dreaming of a forklift,” says Jeff Bezos in his most recent letter to shareholders. A blink later and he points out that the company has grown from 30,000 employees in 2010 to 230,000 now. But his ambition is the same. “We want to be a large company that’s also an invention machine. We want to combine the extraordinary customer-serving capabilities that are enabled by size with the speed of movement, nimbleness and risk-acceptance mentality that is normally associated with entrepreneurial start-ups.” Amazon is great at disruption because of its customers focus and the fact that the internet means it needs none (or very few) people between its warehouses and the shopper. The threat of Prime, its membership service, is the biggest challenge facing the UK retail market and the wholesale market by extension. It is both a direct threat and an indirect threat in that is inspiring countless numbers of othe...

Five things to learn from Waitrose

Interim results from Waitrose this week confirm the industry figures that show the upmarket supermarkets and convenience stores are leading the market (albeit from a 4.2% share according to Kantar Worldpanel). Charlie Mayfield, the chairman, highlights many reasons for its success and here are five that local retailers should consider. Marketing works. Waitrose claims that more than 370,000 extra customer transactions resulted from its spring tie-up with Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal in the first eight weeks. This autumn, it launches a cookery school. Engaged shoppers are more profitable shoppers! You need a value offering. 17 per cent of Waitrose sales are from its value range, called essentials. Momentum works. Its strategy is to bring Waitrose to more people in more places. It invested in 75,000 square feet of extra selling space in the first half of this year, including three convenience stores. In the second half of the year, it is adding eight convenience stores. Str...

The secrets of persuasion: No short cuts.

The best moment in my interview with Terri Sjodin, who teaches many of the world’s top corporations how to sell persuasively, is when she smiles at me and asks to hear my “elevator speech". My mind literally goes blank. The author of Small Message, Big Impact , her new book on how to craft powerful messages that persuade people to listen to you, has thrown the gauntlet at me. There was nowhere to hide. I had just told her how I had used her book to write out my three minute speech to open the Local Shop Summit. She listened patiently to my pitch, thought for a moment, and said: “I bet you had an illustration in your mind of an independent who really capitalised on your ideas and has taken them to the bank.” I could swear she was reading my mind. I blushed and nodded. “So you should open with this story,” she said. “Start out by saying: ‘Let me open the conference by telling you a great story with a happy ending.’ So the audience will say to themselves: ‘He is goi...

nickshanagher

Search This Blog