In 1999 I got my first real education into online commerce when the marketing lead and the technology lead of the company I was running let me know, as a side-hustle, they’d been experimenting with selling wine online. At the time, I thought it sounded like an interesting idea that would make them earn a little extra cash and would help us all to learn more about the mysteries of online commerce. The business grew rapidly, became a significant player in the industry, generated millions of dollars for its owners, and is still operating successfully 22 years later.
Why is that story relevant to Digital Brand Romance? Because in 1999 I can remember the most significant learning from my colleagues’ wine business was that the key to success was not the technology, and it wasn’t the wine quality—the key to success was their consumer base and the extent to which they understood and exceeded their needs.
Reading Digital Brand Romance brought that learning back to me as I reflected on how many of us, including me, make the mistake of seeing digital commerce as something so dynamic and magical that we simply can’t keep up. In this book, Anna Harrison brings us back to the reality that through looking at the data available, applying a systematic process, and making simple improvements to our digital approach we can remove the mystery and deliver an experience that exceeds our customer expectations and helps our companies succeed.
Unsurprisingly, given the COVID pandemic, we’ve been living through I first met Anna via Zoom while I was in lockdown in Auckland. Anna had recently started working as one of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s (NZTE) private-sector advisors and was specifically working with our customer companies to help them improve their digital commerce capability. Even over Zoom, it was easy to be infected by Anna’s enthusiasm for the work she was doing and not long after that call I started hearing how much our customers were appreciating Anna’s enthusiasm and her advice. Soon after that I was hearing of game-changing turnarounds in our customers’ results. What was going on?
It turns out that Anna had a bunch of ideas and frameworks she was working through with our customers. These were a distillation of Anna’s extensive research of time-honored literature on topics like buyer behavior, contemporary reading on the impact of technology, and then combined with real-life experiments and execution with companies of all sizes and in many sectors. In this book, Anna brings this knowledge and experience together to present a way for any company to improve their digital connection to their customers.
The vast majority of companies we work with at NZTE are tiny on the world stage. They don’t have teams of marketing people and only a few of them would have dedicated digital marketing expertise so they need advice and processes they can implement quickly. In the development of the ADORE processTM outlined in this book, Anna delivers exactly that: a practical, systematic, guide for analyzing performance and then addressing each part of your digital commerce approach.
I’m thrilled that Anna continues to support our customers and I’m thrilled that many more companies can now access the ADORE processTM
and tools through reading and applying the learning Anna shares in Digital Brand Romance.
—Glen Murphy
Regional Director, Australia Pacific
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise
August 2021