Podcast

Episode: 279 |
Frank Kochenash:
Thriving on Amazon:
Episode
279

HOW TO THRIVE AS AN
INDEPENDENT PROFESSIONAL

Frank Kochenash

Thriving on Amazon

Show Notes

Frank Kochenash is President of Wunderman Thompson Commerce North America – a global eCommerce consultancy within the agency.

In this episode Frank provides an overview of the agency world, explaining along the way why the term “digital agency” is now considered obsolete, as every aspect of marketing now has a digital component.

We dive into the intricacies of what it takes for a brand to thrive on Amazon, and Frank also discusses how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting the world of eCommerce.

To learn more, visit: https://www.wundermanthompson.com/service/commerce

One weekly email with bonus materials and summaries of each new episode:

Will Bachman 00:01
Hello and welcome to Unleashed the show that explores how to thrive as an independent professional Unleashed is produced by Umbrex, which connects you with the world’s top independent management consultants. I’m your host, Will Bachman. And I’m so excited to be here today with Frank cuccia. Nash, who is the president of wonderment Thomson commerce, North America. Frank, welcome to the show. Thanks. Well, thanks for having me. You’re welcome. So Frank, today, I’d love to do two things. One is just have you educate me a bit on what a digital agency is? I know, that’s kind of a naive question. And then second half of the show that we could talk about what is going on in the world of e commerce how the Coronavirus is affecting e commerce and retail. So maybe start what is a digital agency? And what’s the range of services that wunderman Thompson offers?

Frank Kochenash 00:58
Sure. I’ll start with, you know, even given some background, because I’m not sure that that is that naive of a question. And it’s, it’s a bit of a moving target. The as you know, well, my background is, is a bit similar to yours that it started as a submarine officer in the Navy and then went through as a consultant at McKinsey. And then I left at McKinsey and worked at Amazon and wanted to do kind of merge digital strategy with digital capabilities. So some of the McKinsey Consulting and strategy capabilities with the digital and e commerce and internet technology capabilities that I learned at Amazon and my first foray into the agency world was with Razorfish. That was back in 2007. And pretty much unabashedly, they were what they called a digital agency, which is basically a services firm that provides a full set of services focused on digital. I’d say over the last 10 years, I’ve kind of done a couple of things in and out. Since then, the the the adjective, the modifier, digital has pretty much been removed or has become redundant. The CEO wunderman Thompson is an agency within the WP holding company, our head, CEO of the whole company, Mark read. I don’t know if this is apocryphal or not. But it’s suppose that he’s kind of outlawed the word digital like we don’t, we’re no longer a digital agency, our work, the work that we do, or that that an agency does, is no more limited to digital, for the reason that in 2020, everything is to some extent, digital. And to give you a little bit kind of landscape, that’s 14 years ago, in 2007, or the mid 2000s, the idea of a digital strategy or a digital media plan, or digital advertising was still somewhat different in terms of how you would manage those type of things, who would implement them within your organization, how they would be funded. But in 2020, pretty much every, you know, every business function, including marketing, advertising, and Commerce has strong digital components to that. So that’s a bit of a kind of background of how I would define what a digital agency is and how it has evolved. So that, you know, and with regard to wunderman Thompson, I think there’s an wunderman there, certainly digital legacy and that it within the genes of the company. But at this point, you know, I think we would describe ourselves more as a full service agency. And so what you also asked what kind of cert what services are included in that What do what does an agency like wunderman Thompson provide? Well, it’s, I look at it, there’s a couple ways to look at it. But I think it’s, it’s, we you know, we look at ourselves as a creative transformation company, a business transformation partner. We do lots of things that are, you know, like, yeah, tend to be or historically have been focused around marketing, and advertising. So that’s consultancy and strategy. Go to market planning, brand strategy, brand development, ad creative, which is like making the ads, media planning and media management and execution. That’s the buying the ads or placing them on the outlets, though, you know, what are called the publishers and that could be TV, radio networks, internet networks, internet properties, etc. And, and technology implementation as well as strategy and design. The company, you know, specific to wunderman Thompson has continually NW PP, which is the only Holding Company of WP of wonderment Thompson has brought in to the, you know, the way we, you know, our or our services are brought up that we actually view ourselves as broadly, you know, professional services firm that combines consultancy and strategy with creative and, and technology and data. So our pillars are around creativity, communications in terms of like Mass Communications or brand communications, commerce, enabling commerce and transactions digitally or in store and, and data, technology and data build out.

Will Bachman 06:05
So it sounds like if we think of a Venn diagram of services, if we if we think of an agency like wonders, and Thompson wunderman Thompson, there would be no versus the consultancies and McKinsey, Bain BCG, there’s some overlap, but there it’s not 100%. So, like I McKinsey wouldn’t go and offer to do the creative for a client, right, you know, make the ads, what are the areas where, you know, a firm like wunderman Thompson might be pitching for the same project as McKinsey.

Frank Kochenash 06:40
Well, yeah, that’s an that’s an interesting question. And I’m not, I think there’s, there the overlap is, is increasing. Certainly, the the areas of overlap that I would say, probably most likely, would be in things that would be like marketing, strategy, technology, strategy, technology planning, and road mapping, those types of things. So kind of those projects, we’re calling my McKinsey years, where you would, where there would be a strong presence from the, I’m not sure what their, you know, the how to organize your group, like the marketing practice, or the technology practice would be involved in the, you know, that kind of specialist service would overlap quite a bit, I’d say, with what a, you know, a, you know, marketing agency for lack of just to draw the comparison to what that wunderman Thompson say, what would bring because certainly, the technology build. And before you build, you have to design that you have to roadmap that your commerce strategy or marketing strategy, it’s more than making the ads or making the pages or producing the content that goes into flyers and websites, there’s a whole strategy and roadmap, those those areas are probably strong one, you know, areas that I think are quite a bit of overlap. Where there’s less overlap is, say where there’s corporate strategy, or kind of m&a type of stuff. financial modeling is probably still more the, the realm of the year McKinsey, Bain BCG and kind of management consultants. Whereas on the other, you know, on along another dimension production, you know, that’s an, you know, increasingly major brands are going toward globalized production models where you know, where we content, for example, that goes on to a brand website or into their advertising is produced and then trans created translated localized across different markets. But that’s probably, like you said, that’s probably stuff that, like a McKinsey won’t do. At the same time, I think the you know, it’s it’s, it’s, it’s changing, I am aware, I don’t know the details, but I saw where McKinsey had like acquired a couple different companies and has, you know, McKinsey Digital, acquired a design firm. Those are very, you know, those are those are services that I think most people don’t yet think about McKinsey for but that I think do overlap and on the other hand, there’s you know, marketing strategy, go to market strategy, technology. strategy, I think that you might think some people may not think of wunderman Thompson or WP p or what used to be known as an ad agency, that that we do as well. So I think they You know, the lines are blurring. We refer to Accenture, Deloitte with Accenture interactive and Deloitte digital even IBM interactive services or IBM Global Services. We include all you know, though, and definitely in our, you know, competitive set and in fact Accenture last year require Drogo. Five, which is a leading brand creative agency, which kind of acts accentuated the overlap and kind of convergence that, you know, that is that is occurring within the professional services. space.

Will Bachman 10:40
Everyone’s pushing into everyone else’s sandbox. What, let’s like an event, let’s talk a little bit about your group, the e commerce consulting, could you tell us about the services that your group offers?

Frank Kochenash 10:52
Yeah, so within e commerce, you know, we take a position that a most brands like that all brands need to consider and embrace a balanced strategy to meet the needs of today’s consumers. And by balanced we mean across those channels of commerce, which is an owner owned and operated commerce channel, b2b or b2c, where you’re going direct to your customers, a retailer channel through your major your retailers that a brand is selling through Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, you know, depending on the category, and marketplaces type of strategy, which channel which is dominated right now by by Amazon in the west by Team all Alibaba team, all Taobao in China. Walmart plays in that space as well. And of course, there’s a little bit of overlap in those Amazon, obviously, is a retailer as well. But it’s Amazon is a bit of a unique situation. So the services we provide, our clients are generally in my group, our brands. But so we provide the services that help them help brands succeed and build their commerce in those owned and operated channels, and a retailer channels and then there, and then Amazon, and those involve strategy, planning roadmapping, technology build out content and creative development, and media and marketing activation, to drive. So everything from building the site maintaining and operating the site. And by sight I can mean their own, due to see sight, but also their presence on Amazon, which requires a lot of particular upkeep. And in driving traffic to it, my you know, my direct team is is mostly focused on the marketplaces, the Amazon types of that activation.

Will Bachman 13:05
Tell me a little bit about that about what it takes to have a presence on Amazon. And the types of upkeep that accompany that a brand has to do.

Frank Kochenash 13:15
Yeah, it’s I mean, it’s it’s an it’s an ongoing in a day to day exercise of, of solving problems. There’s the Amazon is very, in the grand scheme of things, very robust and resilient platform. But there’s a ton of competition that is happening there. And it’s also a very complex platform. So you know, the type of services that you know, and the types of activities that you need to do. You know, we follow this framework of starts with availability and profitability. are the products that you want to sell the right ones on Amazon, are they priced the right way? Are they getting in stock? And are they getting in stock and listing profitably? Those are all? Not simple questions. To answer. There’s an Amazon is very, you know, has its has its ways about how it measures that process, especially the inbound supply chain, and creates chargebacks and deductions for any flaws in the process. But as well, even once your product is there, having it listed in the right category with the right metadata product data that’s uploaded so that it is showing up where it should show and where consumers expect it to show. That’s a task that we do it’s a task that needs to be revisited every so frequently, with regard to content constantly with regard to the supply chain. That’s step up of the of the framework is content. So you know, that is your, your product pages, your brand store that any promotional creative or ad creative that you’re doing there. You know job number one, once you’re in one job number one is getting in stock job number two I should say is ranking high organically and having a high converting page, you know, the best way to make everything more efficient is to have your pages and your products convert well. And that’s what our content practice does in terms of creating that content. And optimizing that. And optimizing it can involve like the artistry of communicating reasons to buy and visuals that, you know, can persuade a customer that your product that a brand’s product is the right one, as well as some of the technical aspects of having to select which keywords and how do you insert those? And where do you insert those? How do you construct your page, which types of modules Do you use, that we know through practice, but can verify through testing lead to high performance. And then the next framework is the traffic acquisition. So you know, your your product on Amazon, or a marketplace is almost like a store in itself, your portfolio of products on Amazon, to give us a store and yourself and what Amazon has been distinctive, about or at least in the van of changing is creating opportunities for brands to do their own traffic acquisition on Amazon. In effect, what they’ve done is that they’ve forced and forced brands who are used to doing brand advertising to be to become performance marketers and do performance advertising. So it’s not how many grps do you get and your reach and frequency across a target audience? But rather, it’s how many traffic? How much traffic? Are you getting? What’s your cost for that traffic on a click basis? Or, or otherwise basis? How well is it converting? And what’s the average order value? What’s the sales, paid search a lot of that on Amazon, that we do display, as well. So that’s, that’s a, you know, day to day, hour hour type of task. And then the last thing is analytics and innovation. It’s, you know, I’m sure it’s not a surprise to us, it’s a very competitive environment, a very competitive marketplace. So you know, whoever can, I like to say squeeze the dollars from the data, whoever can analyze the data and better understand what the situation is and find opportunities to seize opportunities to innovate, you know, will will win and marginally gain share from their competitors. And innovation there as well is like to say that Amazon many ways as a creative Canvas in its own right, there’s a lot that you can do on Amazon Beyond the Essentials, which I just described. And you know, trying those exact experimenting and trialing things can, can be very impactful for brands.

Will Bachman 18:16
That’s amazing. So a lot of this is happening kind of behind the scenes, we’re not, you know, you don’t really notice it so much as a consumer. But it sounds like just when you get to that product page, what the visuals are, sometimes you’ll see a video, sometimes you’ll see this nice 360 view or, you know, really high quality pictures, sometimes not so much the write ups. It sounds like there’s a lot of science and experimentation going on to help convince us to, you know, click by now.

Frank Kochenash 18:47
Yeah, there’s been a ton of it. And I’m only speaking to the parts of that page and parts of that experience that a brand, you know, in a brand would be like, you know, like, you know, Procter and Gamble or Procter and Gamble brand or something like that, that is selling product to Amazon, that Amazon, then retails, Amazon, for its part is doing tons of that, you know, like another order of magnitude of testing and optimization. But just to kind of emphasize what one of the things that is different on that Amazon, like when, from an outsider like that. Amazon, like, I’d say, other retailers, does a ton of testing and optimization about the efficiency and effectiveness of its site. You can argue about whether they do more or less, I don’t know. But what Amazon has enabled more so than other retailers is the ability for brands to impact that, you know, directly upload content, make content, test content, do things like paid search on site to drive traffic and advertising. Those are some of the ways that Amazon’s leading that And creating opportunities for brands that want to do that. From Amazon’s point of view, it’s a win win, because it also offloads some work to, you know, their, their suppliers, from their point of view to their brands. Because they get, you know, from Amazon’s point of view, they get the brands to also participate in making the site basically more efficient.

Will Bachman 20:24
Let’s talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in the last few weeks with the coronavirus pandemic, at least you know, from outside as a consumer and reading the news, you see that, you know, so much is shifting to e commerce as people, you know, both groceries instacart, restaurants doing delivery, people probably, you know, Amazon, you hear their only essential products are being shipped, at least, you know, for part of the time there love to hear kind of your impressions and some of the trends that you’re seeing?

Frank Kochenash 21:01
Well, you know, our, what we’ve observed, or what I’ve observed, is, you know, karate checks with what you just described will, you know, the in thing has started really around early March, and then certainly accelerated in mid March to the beginning of April, was massive spikes and like, flee, fleeing to ecommerce as like, Oh, so and that, and not only words that, did ecommerce become a perceived, and I think a real but it’s certainly a you know, a channel that was that is kind of compliant with the needs of social distancing, and shelter in place orders and stuff. But it also coincided with like a lot of stockpiling and kind of hoarding type of buying activity. So massive spikes, certainly in the categories that are being somewhat described as essential. So we, you know, we saw that very strongly, then the data also suggests that, that, you know, once of stockpiling has has run, it has run its course, you know, that the we settle into a kind of a more normal rate, but still elevated rate, you know, across our client base, we certainly saw the acceleration of sales that just described as well. Excuse me, the uptake in Amazon ordering product from, from from brands, we saw as well, the in you mentioned, like, stop shipping on essentials? That’s I think, not, you know, we didn’t what, what what what Amazon did is they started throttling. Labels describing pointed this out on their earnings call as well, like, they typically Amazon can scale very well, and we see it, you know, twice a year at Prime Day and holiday how they do that. On the other hand, they have weeks and months of preparation for those types of scaling events. In this case, they add almost none, nor did any other retailer, but they’ve you know, so and what they faced here were two challenges like several, a rapid increase in demand, a different type of demand, meaning more of these kind of essential types of products, then, you know, what their, their merchandise mix usually is. And thirdly, the needs to fulfill and operate their supply chain and their fulfillment centers and shipping in ways that are, you know, safe, compliant with social distancing and, and the process changes that they put in place to help employees and customers be safe. So while that revenue, we saw that in their earnings to like, their revenue was up very strongly year over year. But it came at a cost, there was other things, you know, the cost of the fulfillment centers tend to be kind of have a lower average unit price and lower margin than some of their other general merchandise that they sell. So the margins weren’t as attractive. They, you know, they did as you pointed out in the, our experience was they did not completely stop sourcing in non essential products. There was we tracked very closely, the inventory, the sellable inventory on hand that our clients in those categories had and our officer my general observation is Amazon managed that quite closely. And then did issue purchase orders though, you know, I’d say they did delay them, then think around the beginning. of April, it was or beginning of April, mid April and Amazon started opening up their inbound shipments for for, for vendors and for third party sellers to more of those non essential types of categories. So, you know, things still aren’t back to normal, I’d say, you know, the, the, everybody is still adjusting operationally to this. And, you know, our perspective is that this is not something that, like will be over, I think, you know, regarding our clients that this is, you know, months of a new type of operating, and we’re still even figuring out what that new operation will be. But I do think it’s, you know, it, you know, months meaning, like, my view, 12 months, plus or minus, depending how quickly, you know, this thing, the COVID-19 virus is addressed with a vaccine or, or, or treatment or those types of things. So I think there’s, like a long change, an adaptation, so we’re guiding our clients to prepare for that. And yet we like, and start making those changes. Because that type of timeline introduces options that you that are not credible options, if you think this is only a one or two or three months type of thing. The other thing that seems, you know, pretty, that I feel pretty confident about is that e commerce, in part because of that timeline, will continue to be a, you know, a channel of, of preference for consumers. Because, you know, if social distancing is in some facha, some part will be with us for, you know, four months, I think consumer behavior is marginally shifted to value safety, health, infection avoidance, more, I think those type of things benefit ecommerce. So we’re expecting that ecommerce as a share of total retail sales, will will remain more than it was pre pre COVID.

Will Bachman 27:20
You mentioned that 12 months timeline opens up different options. Could you see a little bit more about that? And any any sort of structural changes that you think brands might be taking that they could then, you know, stay stay permanent to some degree?

Frank Kochenash 27:37
Yeah, I think they’re, there’s two I’ll talk about like resilience or robustness of a supply chain, and of a distribution, distribution method and then products. So on the first there, one of the one of my takeaways from what COVID-19 has caused as it’s caused the need for social distancing it and it’s, you know, it has demonstrated the, the fragility of certain aspects of our, of our, of our commerce systems supply chain, and distribution, and the the Amazon stuff with that situation at which time is is an example of that. If a brand is, you know, or a seller is dependent on Amazon’s fulfillment network, generally, that’s, that’s, you know, has been fine. Amazon’s one of the best pillars, if not the desk, operationally, very excellent type of company. But we just went through a situation where, you know, even their network was strained to the point of throttling customer demand for certain categories, which raise the value of an Amazon speed, merchant fulfillment, being able to feel failure, even if they’re sold on Amazon, the unit sold on Amazon being able to fulfill it yourself, or an alternative path, path to fulfillment through a third party logistics provider. Factories even further, upstream, some of the I don’t, I can’t, I don’t know how much but some of the delay and out of stock obviously is due not just to Amazon or Walmart or Target or Kroger’s ability to stock and fulfill it, some of it is due to whether or not there was even product to get in. So the you know, the fragility of how many factories Do you have, where are they and what do you how do you address those. So one of the changes that I think like when this is a 12 months or longer or you know, certain Good timeframe is, I think the cost of improving robustness in your supply chain is, you know, has a better kind of financial analysis over that timeframe than if you think that this is a, you know, an acute issue that came and was resolved in a month or two, in general, I think that COVID-19 has, will, will raise the value that business owners put on robustness as a pair, as, you know, in balance with efficiency, we’ve gotten very good at being efficient, just in time doing things, you know, and kind of getting, like very tight operating envelopes. But here, we found a case where if something like this happens, and a factory closes, or a distribution center closes or or your channel to or to retailer gets throttled. How to you know, you want to be robust, which is you want your business to be able to kind of flex and adapt to that. So building that in, I think, is one thing. Another I would would think is, and I don’t have specific examples here, but as products, you know, like product development, and in product renovation, on those kind of low end packaging on genuine, you know, new new bundles or new products to create, as I said, I think one of the things were that I’m expecting, this is a consumer preferences, marginally shift, shifting toward valuing safety, cleanliness, health, those type of things, and, you know, over a 12 month, kind of a longer time frame, again, the economics of renovating some some products or developing new products that appeal to those those changes in consumer behavior could be worthwhile investments. Yeah.

Will Bachman 32:05
What do you see in terms of outside of just the marketplaces? Do you see brands, you know, to along those lines of robustness of working to, you know, invest more in their own their own websites, you know, direct to consumer perhaps, or on their omni channel efforts for for fixed retail stores? You know, that putting in place things like curbside pickup, or other kinds of e commerce capabilities? Yeah, what are the what are those sorts of changes do you expect to see?

Frank Kochenash 32:40
Yeah, I think, as I said, you know, ecommerce, in general has been, has been a as a channel, seeing more traffic and sales. That’s true for delivery, as well as pickup. Walmart has benefited as its benefited as the right word from this, and it’s probably not, but again, I think, you know, what I mean, is that there’s been a lot of incremental traffic to, to, to Walmart and e commerce in general. I think, you know, brands and retailers should be, you know, certainly looking at and developing, where, you know, where the economics makes sense, their direct channels, alternative channels. And, and, and, you know, modes like curbside pickup or pickup at store, as I said, most of my work is done with with brands. So, like one step removed from the fulfillment model. But, you know, I, what I, what I do think brands should consider is how do you help your retailer customers? do those things, this has been very evident in in Amazon for some time. How do you, you know, create your products, and modify the packaging, so that it’s ecommerce friendly, so it is compliant, for example, with the Amazon frust, frustration free packaging, or shipping on container, I would imagine that there’s things that there’s ways to do that, that make it easier for stores to do pick up. If you know, if a store is going to be a fulfillment center, it’s really a completely different type of operation. So how retailers and there’s quite a bit of talk about how you know stores are going to become many fulfillment centers for e commerce delivery or e commerce pickup. But really for those to work at maximum efficiency. There, it’s a different type of operation you want, you know, products to be easy to find and easy and easy to differentiate. Easy to pick you Want, you know the pickers path? If it’s not automated? Do you want some type of automation, but you want that to be efficient, you want the most commonly selected products to be in the front of the store, not in the back, because you know, you’re paying it, you don’t, you want to be efficient in that type of the operation. Easy to distinguish one year product for from another. So I think there’s a role for brands to, to play for that as well as retailers. But I think there would be a lot of kind of development and changes on that. You also asked about direct to consumer direct to consumer channels. In general, we’ve seen ecommerce, as I said benefit and that’s included DTC. My point of view on DTC is always that it’s a it’s a business model, primarily not just a channel. So whether or not DTC or DTC makes sense for for a brand depends on a whole whole host of things, which include the brand and the brand promise itself, the product, the average price point, the ship ability of it, you know, things that are liquids and, or heavy, have a much higher burden, things that people like to try on or touch or smell, have a higher burden of success in e commerce than things that don’t require those things. So, you know, with regard to DSC, I think, you know, you have to consider that that what the business implications are of that, not not just as a channel,

Will Bachman 36:43
you talked about how one of the services that you provide with with the whole e commerce on Amazon, is the content piece? Do you see brands thinking about changing the content and the way they present their products as a result of the pandemic? Are they trying to emphasize, like more cleanliness, or health or wellness type aspects of products?

Frank Kochenash 37:06
Yes, I think that’s that is happening and will happen. Of course, every brand needs to be, you know, need to need to, they need to stay on beyond brand and need to stick to, you know, who they are, and what they’re about, and their products have to, you know, any claims need to be, you know, in work we do, like any claims are scrutinized and validated. But to your point, you know, if you can make a, you know, a claim about cleanliness, and you weren’t before, that’s probably the type of thing that you would, you know, it would be probably valuable to to add, you know, as well as, you know, if your production facility, is if you’ve installed a new kind of infection control processes, you know, in some of your description, description, descriptive content on your, on a brand site or on, you know, like, below the fold on on an e commerce page and Amazon page or something that may be valuable. to, to, to provide. So I think we will see brands, tweaking how they merchandise, their stuff, like probably in the in the, in the immediate term, that’s, you know, what, what existing claims, can they kind of move to the top versus that, or maybe further down, down the list. But in the long term, that’s where I was, you know, go back to my comment about comments about product development, like maybe that, you know, that, like, it may bear out to develop different types of products, processing, and then advertising campaigns to mean, we’ve seen how brands, their their messages have changed over the last several weeks, and I think grill, you know, we’re very good at staying in tune with the culture and the time. So I think we’ll see, you know, you know, the the messaging evolve to through this.

Will Bachman 39:27
What, you know, we’d love to hear your perspective on it sounds incredibly complicated more than I had realized, to, you know, just to be able to sell products on Amazon. Is there a whole kind of ecosystem of bowtique consulting firms, different shops of different sizes of maybe Amazon, former Amazon employees who are all offering to, you know, provide some different type of service around the analytics around this content creation around, you know how to do tests. And so forth is, is there a whole ecosystem emerging? just focused on on this marketplace?

Frank Kochenash 40:07
Yeah, I answer yes to that. And it’s been, you know, I think it’s, on the one hand, it’s relatively easy and straightforward to sell products on, on Amazon, you know, you can go and do it and have it be selling something and by literally within an hour, but to be doing that, well, and profitably, and at scale is, as you say, quite difficult. You know, to do all those things at the same time. And over the last, I’d say, really, like 10 years or so that ecosystem of, of providers and knowledge has, has grown quite a bit where, you know, you can think of paid search, Google really created that business early 2000s. About and that kind of spawned SEO, and sem paid search agencies, and with different types of services. Same with Facebook, when it introduced social, circa 2007 or so then for the last 10 years, like the accelerated growth of Amazon, I think, has done the same, same thing. And so, yeah, there’s the you know, there’s it exists in the, the software and tools space, as well as in the service providers. You know, one of the the group I’m working with wheat is largely built off of the company, marketplace ignition that we have acquired in 2017. The founder there Keller started the business in I believe, 2011, and was one of the forerunners of kind of the specialist. You know, even as they said, like, we’re even, you know, we’re, we’re broadening to, like, the extent that Amazon kind of defines is the catalyst for change is the, you know, is the, is often in the band many changes. But we know that, that there’s, there’s fast followers, and it’s a very competitive space. So what’s, you know, we’re increasing how much work we do with other retailers and marketplaces like, like Walmart, like Kroger, like instacart, for example.

Will Bachman 42:36
Wow. Well, it’s it’s been fascinating hearing about it from you, Frank of this space that as a consumer, you don’t really notice it so much. But hearing what’s what’s going on with takes behind the scenes to make it successful. I want to thank you for being on the show, where for people wanting to learn more about wunderman Thompson, where would you suggest they go?

Frank Kochenash 42:59
Well, two things go to wunderman thompson.com. website. Or if you look me up on LinkedIn, and send me a note there, I’d be happy to connect with you and point you in the right direction or help you myself.

Will Bachman 43:14
Fantastic. And I’ll include your your LinkedIn URL in the show notes. Frank, thank you so much for joining. This has been really informative. Yeah, thank you. Well, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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