make 2009 a very merry Xmas

Online has demonstrated non-stop growth every Christmas in the retail sector and never has this been more important than in the current economic climate. Luckily for you, it can be even more cost effective…

We’ve teamed up with SheerLuxe to offer our clients a massive discount of the full day conference… and now we’ve managed to negotiate coverage for all followers of Neoco. The full agenda is below, including how to get your discount but the important thing to remember is that if you are planning on any selling this Christmas, this is a must-attend event. Neoco will be down there too to help out with any additional questions you may have.

A highly esteemed array of industry experts are presenting, including:
• Nick Robertson – founder of ASOS
• Nick Wheeler – founder of Charles Tyrwhitt & other half of The White Company founder Chrissie Rucker
• Emilie Carson – More2 & the founders of Isabella Oliver Vanessa Knox-Brien & Baukjen de Swaan Arons
• Vicky Lovell – Head of Operations at Astley Clarke, previously x7 yrs at John Lewis Direct
• Paul Sheehy – Chillifish & Peter Levenspiel – Chillifish & Ex Net-A-Porter e-commerce manager
• Andrew Wilson – The Catalogue Consultancy

Topics to be covered include planning your Christmas Strategy / Budget / Timings, your Christmas PPC campaign, viral marketing to grow your database cost effectively whilst driving sales, Christmas online merchandising, PR & standing out from the crowd, as well as the invaluable opportunity to network with likeminded businesses in your sector.

Wednesday 8th July, 2009 9am – 5pm Fulham, London SW6

9.30 – 10.10 Ecommerce Lessons from an Entrepreneur
Nick Wheeler (founder of Charles Tyrwhitt)

10.10 – 10.50 Your Christmas PPC Campaign
Piri Ramazanoglu (founder of MinuteSteak)
- When to start
- Allocating your PPC budget
- Finding the right key words in this competitive period
- Writing the right copy
- Bidding on Christmas competitors

10.50 – 11.20 COFFEE

11.20 – 12.05 Strategy / Timings / Budget this Christmas
Anne Stagg(more2)
- When to start planning your Christmas activity
- How to allocate your budget between existing and prospective clients
- Incentives and choices beyond discounting
- Co promotions and joint marketing
- Can you recruit through a sale?

12.05 – 12.45 Viral Marketing to Grow Your Database
Paul Sheehy (Chillifish) & Peter Levenspiel (Chillifish & Ex Net-A-Porter e-commerce manager)
- What is Viral Marketing and why does it work?
- Looking at ways to grow your database in the run up to Christmas to ensure you are communicating to a larger audience during this crucial trading time.
- Pssst, pass it on: a look at successful viral campaigns

12.45 – 13.45 LUNCH

13.45 – 14.35 Online Merchandising
Andrew Wilson (The Catalogue Consultancy)

In this fast paced session Andrew will cover how you can get the most of your merchandising this Christmas to increase your sales and profits with no extra expenditure.
- “Long Tail” or “Paradox of Choice” which applies to your range?
- How to use analytics to inform your merchandising
- Creating the correct price hierarchy for your site
- Getting the correct relationship between navigation and merchandising
- The small changes that can make a huge difference to your profits

14.35 – 15.15 PR, Marketing, Standing Out From the Crowd
Emilie Carson (more2) & Founders of Isabella Oliver
- Recognition: Who are your target markets & how to find them
- Repetition: Getting maximum impact from your campaigns / creative approaches to pr and media
- Reputation: How to influence what people think of your brand / tips to bringing your brand to life
- Recommendation: How to encourage customers to become brand advocates

15.15 – 15.45 COFFEE

15.45 – 16.25 Planning & Executing Successful Christmas Trading:
The rules are the same whether you are large or small
Vicky Lovell (Astley Clarke, Ops Director & previously John Lewis Direct, Head of Customer Service)
- Stock, Delivery, Customer Communications: What should you be thinking about – now
- Which strategy best fits your business?
- A unified approach
- Pulling it off!

16.25 – 17.00 Q&A Session
Nick Robertson (founder of ASOS)

17.00 – 19.00 DRINKS @ Chateau 6

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Interested in your discounted entry:

Simply email georgiecoleridgecole@sheerluxe.com quoting NEOCO to book at the early bird rate ( only £155 for independents).

Don’t say we never give you anything!

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Want more insight like this? Neoco send out a regular email with a collection of great facts and insight like this, combined with a series of workshops for that enable you to maximise that knowledge. Just get in touch with Benn for more info.

monty python you tube channel banner

“We’re letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there! But we want something in return. None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.”

And you know what? It seems to be working. Monty Python’s DVDs climbed to No. 2 on Amazon’s Movies & TV bestsellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent!

Great marketing ploy to get one last silly walk from the dead parrot.
Enjoy.

The husband ponders the wife's shopping bill

An utterly fantastic video from 1966 that speculates on what life will be like in 1999… so I thought I’d upload it to celebrate 2009! Unlike most videos from the past that speculated on flying cars and robots doing all our chores, this one went for the ‘home shopping’ angle, bank account unification and a way to send letters electronically all over the world… It is so funny the way they talk about ‘the wife’ and her shopping with ‘the husband’ picking up the bill. Aw, nuclear families.

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EC5sbdvnvQM]

It looks like all those acquisitions in the past year paid off. European professional social network Xing is reporting 5 million registered members worldwide, and significant growth in paid subscribers. The strongest growth, in fact, over the entire history of the company. With revenues reaching $28.74 million for the 2007 fiscal year, Xing is skipping all the way to the bank.

So what are these grand numbers being attributed to? Aside from snatching up business-oriented social networks across Europe, Xing has also spent a good portion of 2007 expanding its eCommerce and Advertising segments, which have enabled Xing to layer in two additional streams of revenue. As networks like News Corp. begin to launch their own centralized advertising networks, it’s clear that having a comprehensive ad network of one’s own is an option that is being readily explored in hopes of retaining as much of that profit as possible.

eCommerce is another segment that makes sense for the demographic that Xing reaches out to, and layers in nicely with the other action-oriented aspects of the network that Xing has been improving in the past year as well. Providing more tools for the self-promotion of oneself has seemingly been central to Xing’s improvement to-do list, so incorporating more ways in which to have a farther reach is evident in such changes mandated by Xing, including the network’s participation in Open Social.

This is what I love about the internet as you could never do that with a brochure.

Not quite as slick as the IKEA sequence from the movie Fight Club but it shows we’re getting there. Overlay.tv is a new start-up with a great infomercial viral movie (see below), that enables users to overlay content on top of video. This content can be just for fun and games or it can actually link to other pages – ideal for one-click purchase of some shoes in the new Sex and the City film!

OK, so it’s a few steps from movies as currently it only enables video streams from popular video sharing sites like YouTube, MySpace TV, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, and College Humor but that’s pretty impressive to start with (although similar to Ooyala).

Nice, but what about the retailers? Well, they’ve already signed up over 600 including Amazon, iTunes and Wal-Mart. Add in the fact it works in both IE and FireFox (sorry no Safari, Apple peeps) and that users can even turn off overlays means this is one exciting piece of tech. If only it was running on the M&S site that we mentioned a few days ago…

This website mistake by Marks and Spencer made a few of us laugh in the office.

Note how the lovely Tribeca boasts “modern curves, soft-look styling and durable hardwood feet” which make her suitable for any “contemporary living room”. Fancy cuddling up to her? Well, her “cushions” are lovingly crafted from “shape-retaining foam” and her frame “exceeds the British Standards set for heavy domestic use”… let’s not even think about the domestic use this model would receive in the wrong hands! But if you do fancy giving Tribeca some heavy domestic use, rest assured that “detailed care instructions are included”

It has since been taken off their site – I wonder if my order for four of them will get lost in the post?