WallCann

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 Australian Advocate marketing and Social Commerce is in its infancy. Prosumer Advocacy, as distinct from the term “affiliate” marketing is not fully understood or effectively leveraged.

Well before the internet, USA specialist affiliate marketing companies were commonly found, selling for an exclusive brand. Most affiliate companies were “hub” based, with manufacturers maintaining affiliates groups with exclusive territories.

Each geographically based affiliate organisation serviced their hub with non-competing and complementary brands. This approach proved viable in the huge N American market.

The closest Australia has to the N. American affiliate sales services are the vendor refill service providers. These sales agents provide a retail point of sale shelf stacking and merchandising service for manufacturers. Vendor refill does not provide the high sales and marketing essential to brand building.  The opportunity to develop a Prosumer Advocacy program for Australia is outstanding.

With the rise of the internet, N American manufacturers progressed to offering affiliate programs online. The affiliate would use direct marketing, call centres, SEO, PPC and email techniques to build traffic. When WallCann entered into this space in USA in late 2001, our competion was mostly computer whizz kids, often referred to as geeks. These "geeks" were making big money, using search engine marketing techniques to drive eye balls to retail or manufacturers" websites.

WallCann was one of the first online affiliates (if not the first in some markets) to widely incorporate independent comparison information. WallCann compared multiple competing programs and brands. WallCann pioneered the concept of Advocacy to match the growth of the Prosumers and their marketing needs.  WallCann nutured the concept of the savvy pro-active consumer (prosumer) by adding detailed research, product application information, together with the unique ‘Story” around manufacturer. This change away from exclusive affiliate marketing, required significant negotiation with manufacturers and program managers. USA program managers were used to affiliates who focussed on single exclusive company brands.

WallCann quickly became super affiliates, as our multi-brand, multi program comparison approach had high conversion rates and therefore made more sales and money.  By 2004 many USA affiliates had switched to the comparison approach, many under our 2nd tier apprenticeship.  The top programs found that they actually sold more product via WallCann’s affiliate model than the exclusive advertiser brand approach. The knowledge age prosumers shunned advertising and appreciated independent “advocacy”.

In addition WallCann was in an ideal position to help advise our better program managers on what they needed to do to lift their performance and their “star” ratings by category, to achieve a better position on our websites. In return we negotiated higher sales tiered commissions, which are still in place.

The distinction WallCann makes is that an advocate is a self-starter, with research, marketing and content writing capability. The good advocate can develop unique content which can be disseminated via verbal, print, blogs, forums, tweets and all forms of social media such as Tertiary education, Schools, Linkedin or facebook, clubs, sport associations, NGO’s, charities etc.

An affiliate focuses on the use of technology to push advertise. Advocates use some advertising, but they mostly evince a sale by telling the story. I.e. affiliates  predominantly advertise with push strategies while advocates focus on value add and pull strategies.This is a most important distinction and it is the starting point that enables WallCann to help organisations move from donation reliance to self sufficiency as advocates.

This has opened opportunities for educators like TAFE to draw student enrolments via  involvement into practical high worth programs. IE Solar Spirit Car World Challenge and thereby increasing enrolment for their courses.

It is the rapid learning curve in the world’s most advanced online market that placed WallCann well ahead of Australian online advocacy platforms. A position WallCann has maintained by investing in writing programs and building an integrated multi supplier, multi-channel distribution and marketing service platform. (70% of our revenue over the past 5 years was reinvested into WallCann's R&D marketing logistics platform. At present the WCR profit centres (online shops) are the only visible part of WallCann.

Over the past decade a seismic market shift has occurred. The new prosumer is emerging. Manufacturers and distributors aware of the significance are adapting from advertising to the consumer, to providing the ‘experiential” marketing for the prosumer.  People are no longer content as passive buyers of mass produced goods. The advanced economies are rapidly shifting to mass customisation with savvy prosumers leading the charge. Few of the old affiliate programs with the old retail approach can survive without change.

In 2005 WallCann launched the massively successful Australian home Loan Club online, with advocates extolling the virtues and comparing the service and value of home loan brokers versus the banks. Over 10,000 written enquiry applications were obtained online over a 2 year period. In addition the thousands of telephone enquiries generated by the online marketing, which we never accurately recorded. Enquiries were converted by brokers into loan settlements with many of these new customers becoming advocates of the fast convenient high quality service.

In 2006 WallCann launched into electronic and medical product sales in Australia. Mid 2008 WallCann created 2 new brands 8Zed and JinniMD from concept to launch. Both brands have taken off in very competitive markets. Recently, WallCann has acquired significant manufacturing clients and is using the unique marketing and logistics platform to build brands such as Redarc, Blackwoods, 8zed, NationwideFinace Australia, SelfServe USA, Jinni Taiwan, ZBE China and YuXin China.

The future world of social commerce will feature Prosumers demanding unbiased research, gathered from comparison feedback from Advocates. This will palce a question mark over the prevalence of advertising. Call centres and push selling will b replaced by call service centres, providing information rather than a sales pitch. Experiential marketing via trusted advocacy will dominate.