We are big believers in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) segment. We firmly believe this will be a big trend, not only in marketing, but also in the wider economy over the next ten years. The rise of media platforms, like Facebook and Google, commerce platforms (Amazon, Alibaba, Shopify, et al), data-driven buying, and a fundamental change in consumer behaviour, have provided the perfect opportunity to spin up agile direct-to-consumer companies. Some are calling this the ‘democratisation of capitalism’, where transnational startups can compete [...]

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Direct-to-consumer is one of the most evolving, talked-about, and exciting trends in business at the moment, spanning sectors from fashion and apparel, to insurance and finance. In this Q&A, Julian Stiefel, co-CEO & founder, Tourlane, a leading online travel agency, explains how his business is differentiating from traditional brands, the company’s acquisition strategy, and how they are building loyalty. Tell us how your product differs from more traditional legacy brands in your sector? The difference to other pure booking platforms is [...]

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What key trends will play out in the Asia-Pacific retail tech landscape this year? And should brands go direct or tap aggregated e-commerce sites to engage consumers? RetailTechNews spoke with these industry experts and players for their insights and predictions: – Jet Jing, Alibaba’s president of Tmall – Satish Meena, Forrester’s senior forecast analyst – Alban Villani, Criteo’s Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan managing director – Jennifer Arnold, SAP’s Asia-Pacific Japan and Greater China vice president of marketing for customer experience RetailTechNews: What key [...]

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DTC brands are usually digital-first in their nature and have ambitious growth targets – this means they need to acquire customers at speed and the best way to do this is through marketing, writes Lloyd Greenfield (pictured below), client partner at The Programmatic Advisory, in this piece exclusive to ExchangeWire. Given the importance of marketing for their growth, DTC brands typically start with running paid search and paid social marketing activity in-house from an early stage. These platforms offer them [...]

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WireCorp currently operates three publications (ExchangeWire, RetailTechNews, and TheGamingEconomy), covering the digital advertising, retail technology, and gaming sectors. The stand-out trend of 2018 across all these news sites was the rise of the direct-to-consumer (challenger) brand. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) is the biggest trend in marketing right now. Owning the relationship with customers has become the go-to strategy for next-generation brands, like Dollar Shave Club, Casper, Warby Parker, Monzo, and Airbnb. This has impacted the broader marketing ecosystem, as DTC brands forgo traditional [...]

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I have read some utterly depressing outlooks for the year ahead. It would seem most think it will be an epic struggle for the advertising industry in 2019 – but then when was it ever easy for anyone? There’s always an existential crisis out there, if you look hard enough for one. It has become too easy to blame the duopoly for everything (I, too, get caught up in the ‘GooBook’ bashing). Ever the contrarians, we at ExchangeWire have an unashamedly [...]

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ExchangeWire have invited hundreds of thought leaders to share their thoughts on what next year will hold, across a range of topics. By now, if you haven’t heard the term ‘DTC’ at every corner, you should probably try to work out why. Whether challenger brands, DNVBs (digitally native vertical brands), or heritage brands looking to diversify, ‘Direct-to-consumer’ will be one of the biggest trends to look out for in 2019, and our industry experts are certainly bullish on its prospects. DTC brands use [...]

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When Uber launched a new subscription service earlier this month, it joined a long list of digital brands that have sought to drive long-term loyalty using a subscription model. Whilst ‘Uber Ride Pass‘ is currently only being trialled in five U.S. cities and won’t be reaching UK shores anytime soon, Alex Hamilton (pictured below), head of innovation, Isobar, feels that it’s a telling glimpse into a future where brands own a particular category or sub-category and lock customers in through [...]

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The direct-to-consumer (DTC) business model is something on most retailers’ minds at the moment. Here, we talk with Liam Brennan, global director of innovation, MediaCom, to discuss how seriously traditional brands should be taking the DTC revolution, how best to incorporate it into their business, and in what ways traditional retail still trumps DTC.  RetailTechNews: Can you explain where BLINK sits within Mediacom, and how your role interacts with traditional and DTC retailers? Liam Brennan: MediaCom BLINK enables clients to embrace innovation linked [...]

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The representative team from Beeswax EMEA attended ATS Berlin on 6 November, 2018 – a gathering of around 200 programmatic media professionals from across Germany. They were ready to learn from some amazing speakers – and weren’t disappointed, hearing from companies such as eBay, Wooga Games, Gameloft, Omnicom, GroupM, and many more besides. In an effort to keep the conversation going and recap their favourite moments, they have shared their top five takeaways. Only consultants have won from GDPR Firstly, the topic that [...]

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