Introducing Clear Digital...

WELCOME TO CLEAR DIGITAL
Hi and welcome to the Clear Digital blog, my freshly minted space to talk, discuss, review and speculate about the worlds of digital marketing, ecommerce and media.  Now that’s a fairly well populated field of course, with a wealth of great information, blogs and publications already out there.  Therefore, I’ll be focusing on a few key areas based on my personal main areas of interest plus my past experience of over 10 years working in and living the digital space, during which time my experiences have included heading up a large multi-channel retailer’s digital marketing team, evangelising and educating about new digital channels for a global health and insurance brand and most recently running a company transitioning from being a traditional retailer into a pure ecommerce brand.  This means you can expect to see the following sorts of themes covered (well, this is the plan for now at least!):

• Digital technology and market trends: with personal views, trying to cut through all the hype to pull out the truly exciting and significant developments
• Retail ecommerce trends and mini case-studies
• Reports and round-ups from industry conferences and events
• Digital media and changing consumption, especially around music and TV/film

​I’ll also be curating regular digests of recent great articles, videos, blogs and other content from around the web.  Why not follow our new Twitter feed @clrdigital too to ensure you’re up to date with all our latest updates, plus other great news from around the industry, as well as letting us know what you think.  Of course, I’d love to hear comments and thoughts below too...

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THE DIFFERENCE IS CLEAR (DIGITAL) ​
​So, if there are so many ecommerce and digital blogs out there, why start a new one and more to the point, what’s different about Clear Digital? 
The background to all this stems from the fact that with previous jobs, I’ve written quite a few internal blogs and whitepapers as well as run various workshops and training sessions all designed to help educate and demystify the digital and ecommerce space; to cut through the clutter and say “so what and what does this mean for our organisation?”  Ultimately, these have all aimed to provide a concise and clear understanding on a range of topics and disciplines (and how they are generally connected, or at least should be) in easy to digest form, and I want to keep on down that road with this blog. 

Blast from the past for this classic 80s advert:  "7Up: The Difference Is Clear..."

So far so good, but what else?  Well, one observation is that a lot of great insight out there can get lost through a haze of PR puff plus the perceived need to be first with latest opinions on everything all the time, a trend creeping into all media.  Clear Digital plans to provide a more considered, curated read following a “less is more” approach (think a considered Sunday supplement rather than Mail Online), but not to say that there won’t be timely thoughts on key fast moving trends.
One more point to make is that I’ll be looking at everything from the perspective of a practitioner who’s been there and done it – whether that’s launching new channels, setting out next year’s budgets and strategy, developing new functionality, websites or apps, building internal teams, selecting new partners, planning Christmas trading or just getting ready for a weekend’s hectic selling.  “So what and what does this mean?” is the mantra to try to ensure everything we discuss is clear and to the point, along with the need to always always think customer first, not technology first, which can be so tempting with so many new and shiny exciting “toys” to play with.

Finally, I will also be mixing up the purer ecommerce/marketing articles with more around my passions and interest for the changing world of media and how people consume it.  My interest in this dates all the way back to my University days where my Marketing degree dissertation was entitled “Selling music in the 1990's: the niche of the independent retailer” – and I’ll be alluding this to in my first main blog post which I’m also publishing today:  “The Record Shop Renaissance: Customers, Coffee and Changing Trends”
(For a related good read, I can also heartily recommend this Pitchfork article on “What your music format says about you”).  ​

CLEAR DIGITAL CONSULTING
Related to this is the opportunity to also directly help with making things happen and give additional unbiased views, advice and support.  To this end, I can also often help on a freelance and consulting basis, helping to utilise my past experience but also a wider network of contacts out there, specialising in a wide range of ecommerce and digital marketing disciplines.   You can find out more by visiting my Consulting section, and I’d love to hear from you and catch up over a coffee for a quick chat to see if there’s anything we can help you with or even just share and exchange some thoughts.
 
GET IN TOUCH
So, that’s all for this for intro blog, but I would love to hear any thoughts on this or “The Record Shop Renaissance” so please get in touch via the usual channels, whether that’s comments below, on Twitter via @clrdigital, email jim@cleardigitaluk.com or connect on LinkedIn.  

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