Digital Transformation

My Digital Transformation Keynote Session at the SOCAP Conference

October 28, 2017 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

I usually attend and speak at Marketing, Digital Marketing, and Ecommerce Conferences, at Retail events, or at general leadership sessions. So a few months back when I was asked to speak at SOCAP, my first reaction was ‘what’s that?’ Well, I quickly learned that SOCAP International (The Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Business) is the organization for Customer Care professionals. SOCAP was established in 1973 to help shape the business community’s response to changing consumer needs and expectations.

So why did a Customer Care organization want to hear from a marketer like me? Well, I’ll get to that in a moment. But Lisa Oswald, Senior Vice President, Global Customer Care at TravelZoo, who also happens to sit on the Board of Director at SOCAP, heard me speak at the ForeSee Summit in April 2016. Soon after, she connected me with Marjorie Bynum, who is SOCAP’s Vice President if Strategic Learning, Leadership, and Communications.

When Marjorie and I spoke for the first time, we instantly hit it off, as we shared a passion to help our respective industries learn and improve. She then asked if I would be interested in keynoting the afternoon session on Day 1 of the SOCAP Conference. I was thrilled to do so.

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Customer-First Retail – a Whitepaper by DAC Group

July 20, 2017 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

In April 2017, DAC Group, a prominent global Marketing agency, asked if I would like to give my thoughts on their upcoming Whitepaper. The topic: what is customer-first retail, and how do you even try and achieve that while staying relevant and driving business results in today’s ever-evolving retail landscape? Great topic and I was also impressed with the other people I would be giving opinions with. Here is a list of the people that were interviewed for this Retail Whitepaper:

Diane Brisebois, President & CEO at Retail Council of Canada

Indar Chanicka, Director of eCommerce at The Body Shop

Pat Duncan, SVP Marketing & Chief Digital Officer at Party City

Tom Giacalone, Digital, eCommerce, Omnichannel Retail and Operations, CRM Executive at Vera Bradley

Johnny Russo, Associate Vice-President, eCommerce and Digital Marketing at Mark’s (that would be moi)

Jennifer Spencer, VP Marketing and Corporate Responsibility at The Body Shop

Jan Steck, Chief Marketing and Digital Officer at Helzberg Diamonds

Diane’s name attaches immense respect and retail authority, and she is someone I follow very closely. Thanks to DAC Group for putting out this Whitepaper, and for asking me to be a part of it. I love being a part of advancing retail and helping Digital Transformation journeys.

The whitepaper explores how retailers can reinvigorate their approach to digital in order to overcome immense challenges, unlock opportunities, and drive measurable ROI in a competitive space. The main topics include:

The necessity of shifting to a customer-centric approach
The paramount importance of the personalized customer experience
Omni-Channel strategies driving brand success
Mobile and Ecommerce continuing to grow exponentially
The “Amazon Effect” heavily influencing consumer expectations

“It’s evident that people think the retail apocalypse is happening. However, it’s equally apparent that some brands are responding to changing consumer demands, and those that do will ‘win’ at the end of the day,” says Lynn Duffy, DAC Group’s Senior Manager, Strategic Insights. “It seems like such a basic concept, but keeping the consumer at the forefront in all decisions that impact how brands interact with the consumer will pay off in the end.”

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Digital and Cultural Transformation at Mark’s

July 15, 2017 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

Hilton Barbour and I connected on Linked about a year ago (the power of Social Media wins again). We’ve gone back and forth talking about Digital and Cultural Transformation, sharing and commenting on blogs and articles dealing with that fascinating subject in this fascinating period of digital disruption.

Back in April 2017, Hilton asked if he could interview me and talk about some of the exciting things we were doing at Mark’s and L’equipeur to transform the business and culture to a digital state. He especially was interested how we were doing this at a previously very traditional retailer. So in June, we chatted at length.

Below is the interview in its entirety as it appeared on Hilton’s blog. And here is the post on Hilton’s blog.

Mark’s is a Canadian apparel retail giant that has been in operation since 1977. In 2002 the organization became part of Canada’s iconic Canadian Tire retail operation. Subsequently Canadian Tire has also acquired the Forzani Group, a sporting goods and apparel operation, and their popular brand Sport Chek. In 2012, Mark’s Work Wearhouse, as it was formerly known, went through a rebranding and became Mark’s. This rebrand signaled a strategic move to broaden their offering and to move into casual apparel, and not just industrial and work wear which is where the company had started. Mark’s has also been bolstering its Digital offering and eCommerce operation as well as their traditional bricks-and-mortar stores to drive growth.

I spoke with Johnny Russo, Associate Vice-President Ecommerce and Digital Marketing, to understand where the organization was headed and what role Digital Transformation was playing.

Hilton Barbour: Johnny, thanks for chatting to me today from Montreal. Before we talk about Mark’s, can you give me some personal background and explain your current role?

Johnny Russo: Absolutely. My path to Mark’s, known as L’Équipeur in Quebec, wasn’t exactly a straight line. I graduated from Concordia University in Montreal and with a passion for Journalism and Sports and I was keen to pursue a career in that field. After writing for the Montreal Canadiens website – but being a huge New Jersey Devils fan, go figure – for a period, I then moved to Ottawa. My first job in Ottawa was not in Journalism, but in Marketing. After 2 years I returned to Montreal and had a couple of roles in manufacturing organizations, and stumbled into Digital Marketing. It was really at Pattison Sign Group that I got bitten by the digital bug and started to develop a real interest in the impact digital was playing in businesses at the time.

After a few years in Manufacturing, I spent some time with two start up companies. And that’s where my love of Digital Marketing and my love for tech collided. But I also loved fashion.

That digital and fashion interest led me to a number of digital-centric roles in the wildly fun and challenging industry of Retail – first at Buffalo Jeans, then at former global powerhouse Mexx, and then at Bentley – where eCommerce was obviously growing at break-neck speed.

I was sold. Digital Marketing meets technology meets eCommerce in Retail. I had found my calling.

eCommerce has gone through extreme growth in the past decade and I’ve been lucky to have been in the center of that. Almost two years ago I got into a conversation with Mark’s about their digital ambitions and how I could contribute to that. In January 2015, I packed my bags and headed out to Calgary to join Mark’s. It has been a wild ride and I’m enjoying every minute of it.

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Align the Core – My Presentation at Etail Canada 2017

July 15, 2017 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

Etail Canada 2017 took place from May 16-18 in Toronto at the Hyatt on King Street. The yearly event brings together top retailers in Canada, as well as some of the brightest Digital Marketing and Ecommerce minds in the field. It was the 6^th edition of the Etail Canada event, part of the WBR events series, and was one of the best. (Disclosure: I am on the Etail Canada Board of Advisors).

For the 4^th year in a row, I got to speak to the Etail Canada attendees. The name of my talk was Align the Core: How a day in July Turned Vendors Into Partners and the talk detailed some steps Mark’s and L’equipeur have taken on our Digital Transformation journey. (It was a similar presentation I gave at the ForeSee Summit in Phoenix a month prior, though I altered it for the Canadian audience)

A few months before the ForeSee Summit, our former Account Executive, Jennifer Macintosh, asked me if I’d be interested in speaking at ForeSee. I said absolutely! And then she said she had the perfect topic. In July of 2016, Mark’s had organized a Digital Partner Summit, and ForeSee was invited as one of our core partners. Many partners in that room said it was the first of its kind that they had been a part of. It was an amazing day, and I felt our partners and internal team were more aligned than ever. It was also intricate, as some of these partners were indeed competing for a share of our budgets. However, we have fantastic partners, and the day went perfectly.

Anyhow, back to the Connect Conference. As I got to outlining the topic and preparing my slides, I started noticing something: the Digital Partner Summit we held at Mark’s was only a part – albeit a big one – of what we were accomplishing. Mark’s was on a Digital Transformation journey.

From company-wide education sessions, to using ForeSee and analytics data to tell our story, which netted us more budget and resources (i.e. we doubled our budget and our team), these were pieces of the transformational framework coming into place. As we started putting more and more pieces together, we were realizing these pieces were part of our Digital Transformation.

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Best Paid Search Program Awarded to Mark’s at Etail Canada 2017

July 10, 2017 by Johnny Russo Leave a Comment

Etail Canada 2017 took place from May 16-18 in Toronto at the Hyatt on King Street. The yearly event brings together top retailers in Canada, as well as some of the brightest Digital Marketing and Ecommerce minds in the field. It was the 6^th edition of the Etail Canada event, part of the WBR events series, and was one of the best. (Disclosure: I am on the Etail Canada Board of Advisors).

Etail Canada introduced an awards program this year. Mark’s submitted for Best Paid Search Program (of 2016). I was honoured to accept the award right after my Etail Canada Presentation. Event Director Megan Kessler came on stage and announced that Mark’s had won, and presented us the fabulous award. That was a nice touch by Megan.

Some Highlights of Mark’s 2016 Paid Search Program:

Mark’s in-store strategy continued to progress throughout 2016 by pulling insights from our brick and mortar visits from Google Adwords.
Product Listing Ads (PLAs) or Google shopping ads, became a much more important piece of Mark’s paid search in 2016. In 2016, Mark’s worked with a new Ecommerce product feed provider who helped build out a best-in-class product feed for paid search. Getting a best-in-class feed was only the beginning as late in 2016 Mark’s worked on adding GTINs and local inventory to the program.
A mobile search strategy was implemented to make the most efficient use of dollars and capture the most valuable searching customers. Bid modifiers were put in place to increase the bid for customers who searched within a specific radius of a Mark’s store.
In February 2016, Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) launched as a beta with the Google team. This allowed Mark’s website to gain crawler capabilities, which allowed Mark’s to promote more relevant ads to potential customers. Mark’s also took advantage of Enhanced Text Ads (ETAs).
Mark’s implemented event tracking and increased remarketing list search ad bids to make sure we captured customers who had previously shopped or visited our website. Mark’s also used remarketing within paid search to increase bidding when a searcher had seen or interacted with a display or video campaign.
For Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Mark’s created a bidding structure to ensure dollars were correlated with the strategies outlined for the program. A real-time spreadsheet was created that monitored performance and budget, enabling immediate adjustments to be made to ensure relevant search share-of-voice was not missed, or taken by a competitor. The real-time spreadsheet made optimizing more nimble during the busiest time in the retail year.

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My Digital Transformation Keynote Session at the SOCAP Conference

Align the Core – My Presentation at Etail Canada 2017

Best Paid Search Program Awarded to Mark’s at Etail Canada 2017

Some Highlights of Mark’s 2016 Paid Search Program:

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