BRAND: A couple years ago, I was interviewing for a job as digital design director at a (well-known) branding agency. After the usual pleasantries, we landed on the details of what the role would entail. To my dismay, the agency's interpretation of "digital" was simply putting a new logo onto website mockups at the tail end of an extensive guidelines document. It was clear that digital was very much an afterthought in their branding process and that the position was not for me. This lack of understanding about the role of digital was disappointing, but unfortunately it was not surprising. Most friends of mine working at branding agencies use the same top-down, siloed process. Read more ⇢

ECOMMERCE: That echoes a point Pinterest has recently been pushing:  Its platform influences consumers’ buying decisions both online and offline. The numbers bear that out. 55% of Pinterest users shop or find products on the social network, according to the recently released “Internet Trends 2016,” Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ Mary Meeker’s presentation on the state of the internet. That far outpaces its closest competitors Facebook (12%), Instagram (12%) and Twitter (9%). Pinterest’s internal data suggests that when a consumer sees a product on Pinterest she’s twice as likely to buy it in a store. Read more ⇢

ECOMMERCE: Wal-Mart, No. 4 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide, announced today it will offer free 30-day trial memberships to its ShippingPass pilot program, which launched last month. The program is similar to Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Prime membership in that shoppers pay an annual fee – in Wal-Mart’s case, $49 compared to $99 for Amazon Prime – to receive free shipping and returns on online orders for select items including clothing, health and beauty products, and electronics. A logo next to the product will show shoppers which products are eligible for the ShippingPass service. Read more ⇢

BRAND: Adidas AG has deepened its ties with singer Kanye West, carving out a separate brand encompassing an expanded line of products and retail stores in a move that could provide a further boost to the shoemaker’s resurgence. West, whose “Yeezy”-branded casual sneakers have helped Adidas gain some fashion credentials since they were introduced last year, will lend his name to athletic shoes, clothes and accessories plus a line of stores, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Adidas will also have a dedicated team led from Portland, Oregon to manage West’s line of products. Read more ⇢

MEDIA: Turns out people don’t want top-down information, they’d rather hear from their friends. Not only about what they’re doing in their life, but what music they’re listening to. And sure, they do this on Facebook, and sure, you can link your Facebook account to Spotify, you can see what your friends are listening to, but that’s way too complicated, and not emphasized, and all the community in music revolves around the hit acts, when the truth is you go to gigs with friends, you want to know what they are listening to. Read more ⇢ 

DATA: Now, Compass is asking e-commerce companies to continue providing it such feeds (and more) to create a massive e-commerce database that can help the companies learn from each other and, in the process, compete with giants like Amazon, which may have more visibility into buying decisions than any other company on the planet. “Every small and mid-size company lacks the breadth of data and expertise” to compete, says Compass cofounder and CEO Bjoern Herrmann, who says that Compass’s new automated interface — which gives merchants a single view of all their data. Read more ⇢

ECOMMERCE: We're Econsultancy. By arming a global community of marketers and ecommerce professionals with a wide range of research, data, analysis, training, consulting, events and online resources we enable organisations and individual professionals to succeed online.The new Oasis ecommerce website has lots of novel features that are worth noticing. Read more ⇢

ECOMMERCE: There are literally dozens if not hundreds of ways of generating leads for your ecommerce business. As long as you’re upholding your company’s reputation and ethics, you needn't worry about "right" and "wrong"  ways of generating leads. But it is safe to say that some methods will have further-reaching long-term impact than others. Read more ⇢