The blog

With the increased importance of digital acceleration over the last years, companies have been reaching out for help. A few common challenges that we see are misalignment of management teams, no (shared) vision to the digitization and the increasing importance of improving up their digital capabilities and presence.   Find out how we tackled these challenges in 3 real-life cases:  Change management at a leading pharmaceutical company  Starting a digital revolution in the beverage industry  Digital acceleration for a kitchen appliances company 

THoMers Alexandra and Alexandra look back on their digital transformation project at the world's road transport organization IRU (International Road Transport Union), based in Geneva, Switzerland. Watch the video below to discover their learnings & insights, and which approach they took to implement IRU's new digital strategy. 

Last Wednesday I attended the Uplift Virtual Summit by Insider, a series of keynotes on personalized e-commerce experiences with speakers from NASA, Prezi, and Loewe. We took to the virtual stage ourselves as well: Dennis De Cat, Growth Marketing expert and Managing Director of our sister company Upthrust, presented together with one of our clients, Torfs. He and the e-commerce Manager of the shoe brand, Karl Bosmans, discussed the set-up and results of a scalable growth process. Another talk that particularly caught my eye was the one by Accenture’s Xavier Cardon, who talked about the current challenges in retail and e-commerce. He was asked about the recent questions they’ve received as a consulting firm. His answer? Customer experience, customer experience, and customer experience. Since my consultant colleagues and I fully recognize this demand amongst our own clients and the market in general, I’ll deep-dive further into this topic with a specific focus on customer retention and the retail industry.

Growth experts Oliver McAllister, Eva Dillen and Alicia Bandinelli share their view on and experience with Growth Marketing.  How do we do Growth Marketing? What is so unique about our team? Watch the video and tap into the world of rapid experimentation! 👇📽️

Multipharma is a premium distributor of pharmaceutical and para-pharmaceutical products in Belgium, with a strong focus on customer service and advice. The company’s historical backbone is a network of today over 270 pharmacies in the Belgian market. Recently, the online e-commerce channel has been added to the retail mix. Galvanized by the high sales ambitions for 2019 and low Q1 results, they contacted us to tackle several challenges: To increase the e-commerce revenue growth To install best-in-class customer acquisition funnels and boost conversion rates. To accelerate digital maturity in order to determine the key tactics for success and identify the opportunity gaps. To support the digital gap and to transfer knowledge to the current team for similar approaches in future.

Had you told your friends or family in 1997 that you were buying a car online, you would have got some strange looks or even been laughed at. But what’s the story today, 20 years down the road? Would they still be laughing? This is where we are right now: The growth of e-commerce has been unstoppable for many years now already. People of all ages love to shop online and can easily find anything on the web they want to buy immediately. And there is still a long way to go! With all the current technologies, this growth is expected to continue and even increase to unprecedented levels.

Today, disruption has impacted almost every aspect of business as a new relationship between companies and customers has taken center stage. The retail industry has been undergoing a radical shift over the past few years. Driven by reshaped customer expectations, the availability of data and the rise of new tools and technology, new business models or market dynamics have emerged. Just take automated stores, virtual showrooms or D2C (Direct to Consumer) models, for example, such as Dollar Shave Club (men’s beauty-care), Barkbox (pet utilities) or Casper (mattresses). The go-2-market has also been impacted, as the customer experience needs to be increasingly personalized: Consumers today are hooked on the real-time, customized world of digital landscape, while retailers have to reach them in new and exciting ways. On top of that, customers are demanding more sustainable businesses (shopping local, healthy food, cultural diversity)… raising new challenges for marketers in the retail industry. Enters corona… For some retailers it means filing for bankruptcy, for others it means coping with the growth by fixing internal processes,… for all it means showing resilience, creativity and courage to reinvent the way they work and adapt to this new reality. Corona has clearly accelerated some shifts in consumer behavior that retail marketers should take into account. We share 6 trends to get you started!

I’m Julie, Consulting Manager at the House of Marketing. I am 35, have been married for 10 years and am mother to a hyper-active 7-year old son. After more than 13 years of experience, mainly in the banking and fintech industries, I realized through my many interactions with consultants, friends and colleagues that consulting was maybe something for me. I was the perfect example of internal mobility in the 4 companies I worked for but something was missing… I love that no two days ever feel the same and being challenged to exceed my limits. I wanted to explore new sectors and industries but I need to feel valued, use my experience to continue to develop my career. I manage to work hard without sacrificing my family life. This was crucial for me to keep a work-life balance.  

I thought I was on the way to a VP position at a large multinational. I had spent several years after university working my way up the corporate ladder, eager to explore different opportunities at renowned companies such as Microsoft, Sony, Whirlpool and AB-InBev. More than once I had been able to switch roles to accommodate my never-ending need for new challenges. I was rewarded quite well for my performance and eagerness, yet I never felt truly at ease in any of the roles I was in.

Once upon a time, I was probably the most firmly rooted marketer you could find in Belgium. For the first 12 years of my career, I climbed the ladder from Junior Brand Manager for Fristi and Nutroma to Marketing Manager for the value brands portfolio and OOH with Friesland Campina, handling projects in different countries in Europe.