Book Report: Do It Wrong Quickly – How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules

Mike Moran’s book ‘Do It Wrong Quickly’ is not just another book about Internet marketing. The title of the book might lead the reader to think initially this book is about mistakes that can be done in Internet marketing. However, the book describes how companies should not get caught up in having to do it right the first time. Rather than trying to do it right the first time and spending significant amounts of money on planning, Moran suggests doing small and quick experiments because doing something wrong quickly is far better than doing something right slowly.

Compared to other E-marketing books, Moran’s approach to Internet marketing is pioneering and simple at the same time. Instead of creating an annual marketing plan, Moran suggests to do quick experiments. In order to decide whether an experiment was successful or not, the company has to make sure that accurate measurement is set in place. If the metrics show that this approach was wrong, the book clarifies that this is not a disaster, as something new can be tested very quickly the next day. By experimenting on a daily basis, a company can gradually fine-tune its marketing to have the highest possible outcome. This approach might change the entire world of an E-marketer, who is used to plan ahead of time in order to make it right the first time. This implies a flexible and open company culture. If this is not the case, e-marketers might have to overcome obstacles to persuade their leaders to ‘do things wrong quickly’.

Do It Wrong Quickly: Applying The Three R's to a Fashion Retailer

Moran also introduces the notion of the Three R’s of online marketing in his book, as an extension of the traditional Four P’s. As customers are nowadays overwhelmed with marketing massages, companies have to make sure that they are relevant, real and responsive. Although the Three R’s are not really new to Internet marketing, Moran provides new a perspective on it by suggesting achieving the Three R’s with quick experiments. What does this mean for example for a medium-sized fashion retailer?

First of all, the company has to be relevant to the target customer. Because customers choose relevant web sites through search engines such as Google, a fashion retailer has to make sure that target customers find their web site. Therefore, the company should test how it can be found through search engines. If the company does not come up on the first page of Google when using relevant key words, the company should consider building in the right key words into their web site or alternatively using paid search. After changes have been implemented, the company has to measure if the traffic on the web site has increased. If not, the paid search did not pay off or the key words were incorrect, and the company has to adjust it accordingly.

In order to convince consumers to become your customer, the retailer needs to be real. This is particularly important as Web 2.0 customers are highly informed and will call the company on every little lie. By telling the truth, trust and long-term relationships can be built. When applying ‘being real’ to a fashion company this can also mean talking to your customers like to real people, so that they’ll talk back. Many fashion companies (i.e. http://www.aritzia.com/blog or http://www.vagabond.com/blog/) that write company blogs are using a more ‘spoken language’ rather than a facts driven language. Aritzia's blog for example sounds usually more conversational:


This makes the marketing message more personal, so that customers are more likely to answer to it, which leads us to the third R. Once a customer gives feedback, the company has to be prepared to be responsive no matter if the feedback is positive or negative. It is especially dangerous if customer complaints are not answered quickly, as these will spread online very fast. Consequently, a fashion retailer has to make sure that all comments on the blogs, especially if these are requests or even complaints, are dealt with immediately. If the retailer is able to get the three R’s right, the company will be able to develop long-term relationships with its customers.

Do It Wrong Quickly: Converting Consumers to Customers

The last point in Moran’s book that I want to elaborate on is conversion because this was one of the key takeaways for me from this book.

Why are companies doing Internet marketing at all? They want to convert potential customers into real, actual customers. As a result, Internet marketing is not only about increasing brand awareness, it is about getting new customers and retaining current customers to increase offline and/or online sales. This again shows how important result measurement is. Moran gives the reader a great framework for tying offline sales to the web. One way to track online conversion is to offer discount coupons on the web site asking customers to bring a printout to the store. H&M is using this method several times throughout the year in most of its markets. Here is one example:

Do It Wrong Quickly: Synopsis

Mike Moran's book "Do It Wrong Quickly" has drastically changed my view of Internet marketing. As most Internet marketing tools are new and marketers yet inexperienced, the initial solution often ends up being wrong no matter how long the company is analyzing the alternatives. The idea of using quick experiments to test the online marketing tool is a great way to fail your way up to success. Companies still need to do things right offline, but it is much easier to fix a mistake online compared to the old marketing world where companies for example committed to running a failing TV ad for a year.

The only concern that I have is that it might not be as easy as Moran describes to convince the executives to agree to online experiments. Although he provides some great guidelines for this issue such as persuading your fellow leaders who are more adaptable, I am still not entirely convinced that there are not some companies where this approach would not work. Especially large and bureaucratic companies might not be able to do quick experiments without going through a long approval process.

American Apparel - a social media pioneer?

Searching for innovative and pioneering fashion companies who are using social media to their advantage, I always end up finding American Apparel among them. The L.A. based company seems to have a good sense for fashion blogs and fashion-related social websites that are about to become ‘big’.

One example for American Apparel’s creativity in finding new ways to use social media was its partnership with Chictopia. Chictopia is a fashion community-based website that allows users to join the community and upload photos of their favourite outfits. The active community shares reviews and information about stores. American Apparel recognized this great concept at a time when Chictopia had only one fifth of the visitors it has today. The fashion retailer approached some of the fashionistas wearing American Apparel clothes on Chictopia and rewarded them with being a model for the company for a day.


In my view, American Apparel has done it right by integrating online with offline marketing. Also, the fashion retailer has done a great job in finding the influencers in the community, which wouldn't be different in offline marketing using the adaptation curve. This campaign is also a good example for the shift of marketing from one-sided communication to a (private) conversation between companies and consumers. This smart move has worked for American Apparel, although I am not sure if everything that the apparel retailer is doing in e-marketing is paying off. Also, this aggressive e-marketing approach might be not appropriate for smaller fashion companies who want to avoid mass marketing approaches.

Found via Mashable

Email that brought Hugo Boss 87% more Facebook friends in 1 day

Building on my last post, I wanted to share with you a good example on how a fashion company attracts customers to join their Facebook fan site. Hugo Boss used a direct marketing method and increased its fan base from around 2,300 fans to more than 4,300 fans within a day, which is an increase of more than 85%! I don't know how large Hugo Boss' email list was, but I think it is still a large jump within a day. And this is how it looked like:


In my view this was a great method as it was only sent out to people who have agreed to receive the Hugo Boss newsletter. Therefore, it was not considered as spam. It was very personal (“meet new Hugo Boss friends”) and well targeted. If I had received this email, I would have felt honored to receive a personal invitation from Hugo Boss. The company did a great job in creating a user-friendly email that is clearly showing the contact details as well as links to online store and store locator.
One could argue that Hugo Boss is only targeting already convinced customers. I think, however, that people might forward this email to their friends (using the link “tell a friend”), who have not been in Hugo Boss’ database. Overall, a good execution of combining direct marketing with social media.

Do fashion brands need Facebook?

Facebook being one of the social media sites with the highest traffic worldwide, I was curious to learn how strongly fashion companies are using the site within their online marketing strategies. According to Mediapost.com, fashion brands need Facebook, as it provides fashion companies a unique environment that is more powerful than traditional marketing. As also discussed by Mike Moran in his book ‘Do it wrong quickly’, Web marketing through social media allows customers to segment themselves based on their needs which he calls marketing personalization. And Facebook is a great example for this.

But to what extend do fashion companies need Facebook? I think fashion companies should not rely too heavily on sites such as Facebook, as it cannot replace traditional media. However, it is important to not underestimate the importance of having a facebook presence. Marketers need to consider this channel as a messaging opportunity next to other channels leveraging the fact that their customers have deliberately decided to become a fan of their favorite brand.

Pink, a Victoria's Secret Brand, is a great example how an apparel retailer can use Facebook effectively to reach a specific segment. Pink was able to attract almost 1.5 million fans by uploading for example fun videos about two guys travelling around USA. Some of them are really funny and definitely worth watching: