In December '09 I gave a presentation at the AIMIA Future of Digital summit, on the topic of the Future of Online Retail.


A copy of the presentation is available below - it covers the following topics;

1. The Global Threat to Australian retailers
2. Social Shopping; Facebook eCommerce
3. Mobile Commerce; Barriers, Payment gateways, Opportunities
4. Product Visualisation; Rich Media content, Augmented Reality
5. Retail environments; Multi-touch displays
6. Personalised Experiences; Software-as-a-service and cloud computing
7. Multi-channel Retailing

The presentation doesn't include my notes. But if you are an Australian retailer considering eCommerce, I would be more than happy to talk through the presentation with you. Please contact us and request a call.

Well nobody can complain about it being a boring year!

We started the year with the depths of the GFC knocking at our door, and have finished with record sales, amazing new site launches and a near-perfect success rate with new clients. All signs are pointing to a stellar 2010 with some exciting new clients onboard and some great initiatives with our awesome existing ones.

Below are some of the highlights of 2009, combined from our Melbourne, London and Sydney offices;

We kicked off the new year in style, winning the pitch to redesign British Airways’ inflight entertainment system. The design work is now complete, and it looks fantastic. Another good reason to fly BA from 2011 onwards!

In March we launched the new eCommerce site for Jeanswest, a triumph of user-interface design and integration that also continues to sell a lot of jeans!




May saw, amongst others, the launch of Vodafone’s Make the Most of Now site, which went on to critical acclaim, and much social media mischief.




In July we were listed as one of the top 6 interactive agencies in Australia by Forrester Research. The entire list sparked some interesting debate on Mumbrella! The best part of this was being marked top for our strategic vision. And even better, this vision is already coming to fruition with our approach being supported by new client wins such as Tony Bianco (plus some we can’t discuss just yet).

In November we were honored to win the BIMA Award for Best Social Media Application, for General Pants ‘the bubble’. Our London crew picked up the award on behalf of the Sydney team.

We also launched the high profile Government site DonateLife. Is this the best looking Government site in Australia? We think so.




December saw a wealth of new launches, including General Pants and Surf Dive ‘n’ Ski eCommerce. It also saw the addition of two new senior staff, our Strategy Director Stephen Foxworthy and Melbourne General Manager Simon Julian.





So how can we top this in 2010?! We’ve already got some exciting launches planned for January, and some great extensions of work for current clients. Plus, a raft of new amazing clients that have selected Reactive in the past month. We’ll likely be recruiting again early in the New Year, so please get in touch with those CV’s!

Thank you to all our clients, our staff, partners and the wider Reactive family for your support in 2009, and we look forward to an amazing 2010.

Tim O’Neill, Joint MD

We have just had our article "Using Facebook to "Connect" with your customers online" published on the Digital Ministry Web site.

Follow the link now and have a read, please feel free to comment.

Here is a short extract:

"Facebook has been around for a long while now as a social networking site, but how can companies make it work for them as a tangible marketing tool? Isn't it just the forum for connecting with old and new friends, family and colleagues? Facebook is now really coming into its own. But it's important that you don't just introduce a social media initiative because you think you should have one, you need to make sure it has an objective and is appropriate for your customers."

Tim O'Neill, Joint MD

Labels: Facebook, Social media

Often the methods available to us of ‘helping’ those in the developing world is limited to donating to charities, often large organisations where it is difficult to feel that our contributions are making a difference at a grass roots level.

But there are organisations out there who are harnessing the power of social media, social networking, and crowd sourcing to make a real difference to people’s lives in the developing world, while enabling us in the developed world to really see the difference we can make by ‘giving’ in a non-traditional sense.

Give Now
A new iphone app was released this morning which allows users to help refugees get paid for completing small pieces of work.

The app has been developed by Samasource, an organisation which aims to empower people in developing nations by providing access to paid (often digital-based) work, and CrowdFlower, which connects companies to a crowd sourced workforce. The system benefits workers who are paid for completing small ad hoc tasks, and organisations who can outsource tasks to an unlimited workforce as needs arise.

The Give Work app works on the principle that a few minutes of your time, and a few minutes of time spent by a refugee in a camp in Dadaab, Kenya, means that the refugee is paid for that work. The Give Work app supports these refugees by asking you to complete some short on-screen tasks on the iPhone, which refugees in Kenya are also being trained to complete. This ensures quality assurance for the companies paying for the tasks to be completed, and thus payment for the workers in Kenya. Although the payment amount is small to the western world, to refugees who receive the payment it is a vital source of income.

The app is available to download from the iTunes store right now –it would be great if after you read this you go and get the app and let us know what you think. Its free and wont take more than a few minutes, so do it!

Kiva
Kiva is effectively a crowd sourced micro-financed organisation that supports entrepreneurs in the developing world – lenders are individuals who provide a small loan of about $25 US which you can choose to lend to a goat farmer in Turkmenistan or a fruit-seller in Peru.

The amount of money an entrepreneur needs to borrow is gradually provided by a number of lenders, and the loan is always repaid, and the lender then has the choice of withdrawing the loan or re-investing in another entrepreneur.

Most lenders choose to re-invest the loan, so the initial gift just keeps on giving!

Jolkona
Jolkona aims to address the need for individuals to feel connected to those that their donations will be helping – it allows donors to select small projects individually, and to track the impact their donation is having by directly connecting them to organisations on the ground who make use of the donation.

For example, $100 US can rescue a young girl in Nepal from slavery – Jolkona has partnered with a grass roots organisation in Nepal who use the donation to rescue a child, and then send the donor a picture of the child who has been rescued so the donor feels the direct impact of their action. It is hugely motivating for many people to see the huge impact on real lives of even small amounts of donated money.

It is amazing that small actions taken by individuals can have such a large impact on those who most need the support. And when the power of digital and social media is used by innovators who see the potential to do great things with the technology, amazing things can happen!

If there are any other such initiatives that you know of, we’d love to hear your comments below.

Related links:
http://mashable.com/2009/10/13/give-work-iphone/
http://www.samasource.org/iphone/
http://crowdflower.com/
http://www.kiva.org/
http://www.jolkona.org/

Su Debnath, Account Director

Labels: iPhone, Social media