Harvey Norman to drive online marketing with new role
Harvey Norman is looking to appoint an online marketer as part of its drive to bolster spend in the online medium.
The retailer, historically a big spender in TV advertising, is now hunting an online marketing manager to join its senior management team.
The successful applicant will help formulate new and existing marketing campaigns into “effective online selling propositions”. The marketer will be responsible for identifying new markets and developing new business cases.
The marketing manager’s core accountabilities will be to integrate offline and online marketing initiatives for internal and external advertisements; implement a cross-channel media buying and placement strategy and tactical plan; provide customer and market information to feed into the overall marketing mix; and be the driving force for opening new online and digital advertising channels.
The retailer recently launched its new website. Last year, it was widely tipped that Harvey Norman would cut its ad buget by as much as 20 per cent.
As one of the TV industry’s biggest supporters, the company’s chairman Gerry Harvey, in August fronted a Free TV campaign discussing his company’s successes with TV advertising.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Smells like heavy duty weekly reporting meetings
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Go online GO!
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They could just create an online shop, a task which alone would increase sales significantly.
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Will probably get the flick…Gerry Harvey is not a fan of the internet and online shopping…he wants people to visit his stores and not buy online….he has had so many internet/web managers over the years
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The point here is that there are now so many eyeballs online, retailers cannot afford to ignore them anymore. This is not going to be a temporary appointment – but a change point for how HN allocates advertising dollars into the future.
Papers are in decline and at some point even HN needs to transition advertising investment towards growing online eyeballs.
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I seriously think Australia needs to get their online shopping sorted. If I want to buy a toaster or even a washing machine I would much rather do it online and have it delivered than having to trail my cute ass to a depressing shopping village.
Bring Argos to Australia – that’s what I say – haha!
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Main issue is that we are not the US…they have had a mail order culture for over 100 years so they are used to buying goods without visiting a store…here in Australia most people favour visting a store still…
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But CK how do you know if you don’t have the option? In the UK 10 years ago there was the same argument that online shopping would never work as people want to see and touch the product. It is now a huge and very successful business. I think we need both and let people choose which method they prefer.
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I’m not disputing it..I’m just saying that the major retailers have to either come on board or companies like big brown box..etc will start to chip into that market, but they don’t normally have the buying power that major retailers have….
The majors have vested interest in their stores and properties and will always want people to come into their stores over mail order..
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But in the UK Dixons and Currys are the 2 major electrical retailers and they have a huge online presence as well as having many successful stores. I agree that the majors need to step up to the plate or they will lose business to online retailers like Big Brown Box who have much lower operating costs.
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Whoever it is will need to be a real champion to have any success. HN won’t be able to effectively sell anything online without sorting out the franchise system – e.g. if a product on HN’s website is cheaper than one of the franchisees is selling it for, the phone will ring off the hook until it’s sorted. Either they fix that or this online marketing manager they appoint will find themselves marketing a glorified store locator. I can’t see many high caliber online retail marketing people rushing to that.
With the online retial market in Australia – it is growing a fair bit. It’s started the same way here as it did in the UK; with the discounters – dealsdirect etc – and consumer electronics (dell, bigbrownbox). Shopping comparison sites are also growing now – getprice, shopping.com and the like. There’s even recently a few businesses now getting into the more mid-range products (furnish.com.au, buyster.com.au etc) and eventually we’ll end up where we always do – 3-4 years behind the UK.
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Online retail, particularly in white goods, will overtake the store based business and eventually crush it.
Dixons stores in the UK have mainly be re-branded and mostly now only sell ink cartridges for printers and look very forlorn indeed. Online is everything there now. Will be here soon.
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