The blog

Let’s go back 4 years. It’s 2016. Donald Trump is about to become the US president, Brexit is a thing and we’re all catching pokémons on our smartphones. 2016, however, was also the year of ‘digital transformation’. As technological developments drove significant changes in customer behaviour, we were forced to rethink ways to drive growth by ‘going digital’. What that meant was different for every company, but strategic plans were drawn up and we were all going to be at the digital forefront within 4 years.   In 2020 – 4 years and  many underestimated complexities, delays and descoping rounds later - 84% of companies believe their digital transformation has NOT successfully improved performance or equipped them to sustain changes in the long term*. From our experience, the building blocks are there but due to budget cuts and loss of focus, results are often disappointing, leaving ‘Digital transformation’ with a bad reputation. Investing in digital technologies, however, has never been more important. Covid-19 is forcing us to step up our digital game to the next level, making it a strategic necessity instead of a nice to have. No less than 80% of companies now see digital acceleration as a strategic priority, whereas at the beginning of the year this was only 60%*. High time to take this up again and invest in ‘Digital acceleration’. Rethinking the strategic goals, increasing focus and fixing the basics  will be key to tackle those specific barriers that prevent you from achieving concrete business goals.

Looking back at the past few months, there’s no doubt that Covid-19 has only intensified the need and desire to go digital, also in the pharmaceutical industry. Meeting physically has become more difficult, if not impossible. This has prompted a dramatic increase in the number of pharma companies reaching out to the same target group, via the same digital channels, to create a personal, but now digital dialogue. This raises 2 relevant questions: Are you, and are your colleagues around you, as ready as your customers for this new digital situation? How do you stand out in that customer experience battle to effectively reach your target physicians?

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! 👇📽️

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.

My career path is original to say the least, most people cannot really follow me when I explain: I am French, but, one way or another, I have worked in France for only 6 months. I have built most of my career in The Netherlands, with a French company though – one of the biggest multi-nationals in the food industry.