With brand after brand (including start-ups) recognising that the opportunity within marketplaces and social networks allowed them go where the consumers are already at was a game changer.
These two key consumer innovations allowed others to do most of the 'direct home shopping' tactics almost for free.
Some laggards in the space simply transferred the 'advertise and promote' mentality.
Others realised it was a place to 'build' trusted relationships.
This has meant that far too many of the home shopping companies that should be dominating the online space have now fallen behind those socially savvy upstarts.
Look at 'GymShark' who have a recent valuation of over £1bn and are taking on the stalwarts in the fitness apparel sector.
They recognised that the traditional retail distribution model brands like Nike, Reebok, and others had relied on for so long wasn't fit for today's millennial consumer - so they changed it.
The way it was.
Definition - Multichannel marketing
Offering customers more than one way to discover a brand and purchase something - for example, from a Web site or a catalogue as well as in retail stores.
Many still think this way despite 60% of people around the world on social networks.
For manufacturers, multichannel marketing also includes the use of partners, sometimes known as channels, who market directly to the customer as consultants, resellers, distributors, repackagers, or retailers.
Most of these are now able to go 'Direct to Consumer' via social networks.
Direct Home Shopping - means that the company has a direct relationship with the end customer, they know who they are, where they live, what they have bought and in many cases what propensity they have to purchase other related and non- related items, products/services.
They relied (still do) on the database.
That was how it was, then came ubiquity of the mobile phone, the explosion of free to use, free to access 'social media' and the socially savvy entrepreneur.
For retailers, advocates claim that, in addition to offering the customer more options, multichannel marketing allows a business more opportunities to interact with customers - each channel can help promote the other channels.
For many this was interpreted as a way to 'protect' our core channel to market
Since the Web site and phone-in mail orders collected information about the customer that a retail sale may not, these channels made it possible to develop mailing lists for future promotions and branding campaigns.
By analysing the science that sits around database marketing direct home shopping companies had the basis to leverage other channels to market very quickly.
Then came GDPR.
The biggest single cost associated with any business is related to the acquisition of new customers.
During the heady days of the 'Dot.com' boom and bust period many great ideas simply withered on the vine due to the inability to recruit sufficient new customers at an affordable and sustainable level of cost to achieve critical mass.
But it doesn't stop with the recruitment of new customers, whilst this is a cornerstone in the ongoing strategy for the company if you 'recruit and forget' it can prove to be a very costly business.
All of the above was, and still is for many an 'inside out' way of thinking.
'Getting the customer to you' was/is the strategy.
Go where the customer is already playing is the new world order if you want to build relationships that don't rely on intrusive advertising that is.
Given the importance of emotion, a brand strategy needs to define exactly which specific emotion it should evoke. There must be zero uncertainty about how the brand inspires. In many brand audits, this is a major weak point we identify over and over.
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