The Forrester from the Trees…

Talk about setting your self apart from all the rest, the Forrester Consumer Forum hosted by Carrie Johnson, Vice President, Research Director, and Christine Overby, Principal Analyst, two weeks past in Chicago did just that. Having attended and or spoken at dozens of these type conferences, I can honestly say that this event was one of the best. In addition to the outstanding keynote speakers including Christy Hefner, Chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises, and Christina Norman, President of MTV Networks, the content throughout both days was current, rich and informative beyond expectations. Now I usually would not attend this type of conference, but in this case, I had a myriad of reasons as I will explain below.

PowerReviews wins a Forrester Groundswell Award

I was quite honored to accept on behalf of PowerReviews and NetShops, the inaugural “Energizing” Groundswell award which was given to the vendor/client team that worked in tandem to electrify the online shopping experience. Through the use of our reviews and ratings solution, NetShops was able to generate a 26% increase in product sales. It was incredibly gratifying to how a prestigious third-party such as Forrester acknowledges the incredible gains we have made in this field. Here is further information about the Groundswell awards as well as the NetShops Case Study that served as the foundation for our award. Finally, don’t forget to keep your eye out for the book that these awards are named after which is due out next year as the collaborative effort of two outstanding Forrester folks; Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.

Social Tagging Panel

Besides attending the conference to pick-up a little bling, the primary reason I attended was participate in the much anticipated Social Tagging Panel. Hosted by Sarah Rotman Epps and officially named “Using Social Technologies to Boost Sales” this panel was packed with relevant, tactical best practices for leveraging reviews on retail sites in a tag-based format. Joining me on the panel was Brian Rosenblat of Endeca, who imparted much insights to the group as well as walked us through the functionality that Endeca brings to the table that powers the entire Social Navigation experience- with them providing the navigation and PowerReviews providing the social aspect.

Forrester’s Social Tagging Report

Lastly, for those who want to learn more about Social Tagging, please see the recently released report of Sarah’s.

Off to eTail Mid-Market

That’s it for now as I am heading down to San Jose to serve as Chairman for the first day of this much anticipated conference for mid-market retailers as well as deliver the opening keynote address. I’ll have details when I get back to the office!

Shopping 3.0

In the Beginning…

As my new friend Joe Chung, CEO of Allurent (hey Joe, I am your new biggest fan) stated so eloquently in his recently published Shopping 3.0 white paper… in the beginning there was Shopping 1.0 – the non-catalog shopping experience when users actually went into stores and interacted directly with the product and salesperson.

And although we certainly have much to celebrate in terms of the enormous progress we have made since then in the overall online shopping experience, until just recently I have always thought that for the past 10 years or so, shopping online was a manufacturer’s paradise, with them controlling the entire one-way shopping experience in terms of communication and message – message that was mostly limited to and never more inspired than the claims they make on their packaging. In fact, many of you have heard me compare that experience to a trip to the Shopping Mall where there would be this big sign at the entrance stating “Welcome. Come on in. But please don’t talk to any shoppers or store clerks either and don’t ask anyone their opinions. But do feel free to buy everything, in fact lots of everything. Thanks for coming!”

So in my humble opinion, Shopping 3.0 is a highly welcomed and anticipated evolutionary and revolutionary shift in the online customer shopping experience. I’ll let you read and learn more about what Joe has to say but wanted to make sure that I gave big props to his efforts!

Money, Money, Money

So much has happened these past weeks that I almost forgot to mention our new Series B funding of $15 million! Given the amount of funds that we raised, these new dollars are more than just the normal infusion of cash during this stage of a dot.com development, they are a clear endorsement from the investment community that not only is our business model interesting and unique, but it is an incredibly viable approach to provide highly desirable services to both retail clients and their shoppers in a way that is beneficial to all parties. Click here for more details.

New Math? It Just Doesn’t Add Up

I get bragging, in fact I like a bit of bragging from time to time as a healthy outlet. What I despise, then, is the outrageous exaggerations and intentionally misleading and/or untrue statements that vendors make against others in their space. So to make themselves appear as winners they falsely declare others as losers instead of offering up for review and comparison the unique features and benefit their services bring to market. And while I might have to sit by and idly watch it happen to others, I will not sit quietly and allow it to happen to us.

So here it is, folks, penalty called and flag on the play. During the announcement of their latest funding, the following claim was publicly made during a venturebeat interview:

This strategy is apparently giving the company an edge. Bazaarvoice’s founder, Brett Hurt, claims that when his company and PowerReviews go head to head with a major retailer, Bazaarvoice is winning 90 percent of the deals. He also says that the company has been profitable since March of this year. He raised the round to …

Since joining PowerReviews this past April, I am hard pressed to think of even a single instance where our sales folks we were not “head to head” with Baazarvoice. Asking around and I discovered that it has always been this way; we have always competed directly with them on all our sales efforts. So for all you non-math fans out there let me help you with this calculation.

Currently PowerReviews has well over 100 launched clients (and even more signed but not yet launched) and if Bazaarvoice claims they are “winning 90 percent of the deals” then Bazaarvoice should be boasting well over 1,000 clients. And given their self-described robust marketing/sales department (which is nearly as large as the entire PowerReviews organization) if they really did have more than 1,000 clients, we would have all heard about it by now.

And for those that want to use the wordsmith based “escape clause” with the fine print that reads “major retailer” (reread quote above) then I say to all those Bazaarvoice non-major retail clients “GIVE ME A CALL” because to us, all our clients are major players in their markets. And to slight them for the purpose of publicity is, well, you get the idea… Personal Foul, Unnecessary Roughness. Penalty called.

Next Stop Chicago

Well, I am off to Chicago in a few days to participate in the Forrester Consumer Forum as a panelist for one of the hottest topics in today’s industry – Social Tagging. That’s all the tease I am going to say at this time, but check out this page for more.