Digital Integrated Marketing

As part of the training sessions we had with him last week Mark Ritson led us through a case study about Walmart. Opinion is pretty divided about the values of Walmart but one of the things that they do undeniably well is information systems.

There was an example of how customer data allowed them to discover that when a hurricane warnings increased sales of strawberry Poptarts dramatically. Their systems are so good that not only could they identify this trend, they were able to respond to it and ship more Poptarts to the appropriate locations. I have a cousin who used to run the supply chain for Green & Black's chocolate and he had a similar anecdote about Tesco's here in the UK. He loved doing business with them as a result.

E-businesses have known for a long time that there is invaluable data in analytics and adserving spreadsheets. As online advertising grows and increases in importance, companies that have had little direct contact with their end-users have the opportunity to take advantage of new 'touchpoints'.

There is so much data in online advertising that it's easy to get swamped by it and I've yet to come across an over-resourced web team. One of the things that I'm most looking forward to in my new job is unearthing the hidden insights that this data holds.