Letter about ASOS in NMA

NMA published a letter from me this week which understandably had to be edited down to fit the magazine so I thought I would also post my submission in full in case anyone is interested.

ASOS CEO Nick Robertson certainly created a stir with his comments and while the choice of insulting language was certainly a surprise the most surprising thing is still the fact that ASOS spent two years building relationships on a CPA basis and then turned their back on this and retreated back to offline channels.

Towards the end, the affiliate program was so badly managed with commissions slashed and dictatorial terms & conditions being implemented that it was no surprise the program was closed. Affiliates can and will develop an innovative range of ways to promote your company at their own risk but it’s a two way relationship. Work with your affiliates, build up trust and you will be rewarded. Try to dictate to affiliates exactly how and where they can operate and you will come unstuck as ASOS have.

This does not mean that affiliates are free to do what they like however; affiliate marketing is not different from any other marketing channel in that poor management will get poor results. To me it becomes more and more clear that ASOS took their eye off the ball and paid the price but instead of looking inwards and realising what went wrong they have lashed out at the very affiliates who built the business.

I found myself nodding as I read the recent NMA interview with Alex Bogusky. The consumers do own the brand and just as in the user generated content campaigns that Alex talked about you need to just slightly loosen your grip on your marketing to give affiliates the opportunity to show their true potential.

If you want to protect your brand in search engines then register your trademark with them. If you want to provide guidelines then work with your affiliate network to manage your affiliate program effectively but if you expect to control every mention of your brand then you will miss out on the very crux of the channel where affiliates engage with your customers.

There is talk in NMA of affiliate marketing having an image problem and I won’t deny that an affiliate association would be a step forward for all parties involved. Education of merchants to gain a genuine understanding of the model would move things forward as much as a code of conduct.

I find it hard to see a route back into affiliate marketing for ASOS amongst the marketers that I know and with several affiliate networks already publicly stating they don’t want to work with ASOS I think it will be an uphill struggle following these grubby comments

Fraser Edwards
Affiliateblog.co.uk

Thanks to Will Cooper for getting in touch with a genuine interest in finding out more about the affiliate point of view.

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