Nathan Bush: Before we get into today's chat, I want to share a little resource that we've just released. As you might know, in our checkout episodes, I ask our e commerce guests, do you have a book or a podcast that you recommend our listeners get into? Well, I've taken all of those book recommendations and there's over a hundred of them, plus the stories that go behind them and put them into their own book called the Book Recommendations of E Commerce Experts. Yeah, I know, it's totally original. You will never ever run out of reading ideas again. You can download that one now for free over on addtocart.com
[Voiceover]: welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features Big Red Group CEO CEO David Anderson. David and the Big Red Group are the largest experience marketplace in Australia and partner with over 3,000 experienced providers through their brands Red Balloon adrenaline and experience OZ. So far they facilitated over 5 billion experiences since 2017. David, welcome to the checkout. We have heard all about the amazing
Nathan Bush: things that you're doing at Big Red Group. You know, delivering one great experience every 18 seconds. On track for one experience every second. We're here to learn a little bit more about you. I've got five quick questions.
David Anderson: Cool.
Nathan Bush: Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
David Anderson: I once bought a David Bowie Ziggy Stardust one piece suit.
Nathan Bush: Impressive.
David Anderson: I guess that's probably the fancy dress competition. I can imagine. I can't think of anything else. It's been really out of pocket.
Nathan Bush: Did you win the competition?
David Anderson: It was excruciatingly tight and, and probably spent half the time in a jacket to be honest with you. So well done.
Nathan Bush: You've got the accent for it though.
David Anderson: Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, who is your favorite retailer?
David Anderson: Lululemon is the gentleman's sports retailer of choice. Particularly like their shorts.
Nathan Bush: You can step in a boxing ring in Lululemon shorts.
David Anderson: I do from time to time. And if you, if you don't like it, you can fight me for them.
Nathan Bush: All right. I'm not going to take you up on that. You can have your shorts. Number three, which e Commerce practice do you wish was history?
David Anderson: It's not practice, it's behavior. I wish that there was an end to competitive brand bidding. I spent a lot of time and money Building brand in market. And nothing frustrates me more then come Christmas week, everybody else decides they're going to just bid on Red Balloon.
Nathan Bush: And are they the usual suspects every time?
David Anderson: Yes. He should remain nameless. Yeah, it's. Look, it's a very. I mean, I'm sure everybody else has seen the same thing.
Nathan Bush: How do you work that with.
Nathan Bush: Because you've got 3,000 partners who you represent their experiences. How do you do that balance for them? If they are considering going out and spending money on targeted search and you're
David Anderson: in that market, I'm super happy for them to go. So we under our msa, our effectively our agreement that we have with our suppliers, you know, we're very clear about. We don't bid on their brands, they don't bid on ours. Yeah, it's a pretty, you know, it's a gentleman's agreement you should have to write down anyway.
Nathan Bush: But yeah, leave the brand alone.
David Anderson: Yeah, that's right.
Nathan Bush: Okay. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into through the transformation work
David Anderson: we've been doing recently? And given the level of invention that we're having to take on in parallel, I thought Team of Teens, I thought of Stanley McChrystal. I think it's all about small groups having freedom to experiment, but being, you know, but committed to sharing that for collective momentum or collective outcome. So Team of Teams, I thought, was a really great book. Take a lot out of it.
Nathan Bush: Is there anything that you change straight away after reading it?
David Anderson: Yes, in as much as we want to try and seek a little bit more siloed behavior as opposed to everyone touching everything.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Makes total sense, especially when you're the size of business that you are operating as well as transforming at the same time.
David Anderson: That's right.
Nathan Bush: All right, last one I have for you. Finish this sentence.
David Anderson: The future of retail is about consumer relevance and trust.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. And we talked a lot about that in our main episode, especially around the efforts that you're putting into understanding your customers and passing that information on to others.
David Anderson: Yeah. And look, just to touch that for a second more, you know, there's obviously a paradox right now in terms of customers not wanting to share data, but wanting a highly personalized experience. And so data shared on the basis of trust. And that can change over time. How you invest in your brand to build that trust for the job that you're doing is really important. And we're really focused about making sure that we build brand trust around its job, not trying to be all things to all men. And then secondly, clearly the cost to acquire for AdWords is not going down. I think we've seen a double digit increase in CAC through performance and so building earned and owned audiences is incredibly important. So getting a subscriber proposition right, so you can earn their trust and then you can have them as an owned audience that they want to hear from you. You're not going to sell them a sale, send them a sell EDM five times a week. You're going to build out a content strategy about that whole piece, make sure you're serving up stuff that's relevant to them and then when they get to the site that the personalized experience is actually relevant to them. That is the future as far as we're concerned.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. And you demonstrated that in our chat. What I loved about our chat before was how you were able to say how the customer was different for experience. Oz versus Adrenaline versus Red Balloon. All totally different customers buying similar products, but very different journeys and understanding that is key.
David Anderson: Thanks David.
Nathan Bush: Thanks David.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from David, jump back into episode 311 where David shares his video vision for Big Red Group, including how he started the group with Naomi Simpson. We go into detail around what a $16 million transformation program looks like and understand how he's established a workplace which now sits in the top 25% of engaged workplaces. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep adding to cart.
