Digital Digest

April 8, 2017

REA Group has promoted its digital and personal experience design chief, Val Brown, to executive general manager of consumer experience, earning her an executive leadership seat.
Brown has spent the past two years leading the property portal’s digital and mobile apps development. She’s been with the group for more than eight years, also holding positions across consumer and customer product and product strategy, and has more than 14 years’ experience in digital.
Brown’s new role reports directly to REA Group CEO, Tracey Fellows.

The increased pressure on B2B organisations was a key finding in the 2017 Green Hat/ADMA B2B Marketing Report. B2B marketers surveyed raised customer experience as their major challenge, with optimisation rated one of the top three objectives.
While speed of supply is critical, Chris Knowles, APAC sales and marketing manager for McLanahan Corporation, says the key consideration now is around certainty. To this end, McLanahan’s recent investments have been in supply chain, data systems and integration strategies that allow it to better guarantee performance.
The longer-term focus for Knowles is the current trend to manufactured goods-as-a-service. He gives an example of a goods train, which is paid for based on tonnes of goods transported or kilometres travelled, rather than as an up-front purchase. “This has been going on since the first Nokia was sold in B2C, but is somewhat new in many B2B applications,” Knowles says.

LinkedIn has released its annual list of the most-viewed marketing professionals on the platform, with employees from M&C Saatchi and National Australia Bank topping the list.
Matt Tindale, managing director and head of enterprise APAC for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, attributes these power profiles’ success to “great, great articles”.
Speaking to Mumbrella, he said of the top contributors: “They get engaged. They actively use the platform, a lot of them are writing and sharing great content.

Month-on-month online sales growth slowed to 0.7 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms in June, on par with month-on-month sales growth seen in bricks-and-mortar retail.
In year-on year-terms, online sales were up 7.6 per cent in June 2017 compared to June 2016, much slower than the growth recorded when the index was established. In June 2011 for example, year-on-year growth was around 34 per cent.
Some categories of online retail are doing better than others, Richard Coath, NAB’s general manager of consumer, health, agri & TMI global institutional banking said.

Once thought of as the future of food shopping, meal kits are in a state of flux, as the changing fortunes of US-based meal kit leader Blue Apron show.
Valued at US$2.2 billion in its latest round of private fundraising two years ago, Blue Apron ultimately listed on 29 June with a market cap of US$1.9 billion, after Amazon’s surprise grocery move.
Major Australian meal kit companies are watching the Blue Apron developments with interest.