Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category

Interviews

Sarah Loyens Bazaarvoice has your hookup for SXSW

March 11th, 2010 by Sarah Loyens Events Manager

SXSW 2010You may have heard of this little, tiny event known as South by Southwest.

SXSW fever hits Austin this weekend, and Bazaarvoice will be out and about at many events during the week of the conference. We’ve even got some free passes to give away! (Available to brand and retail marketers only, please.)

Below are the details on where we’ll be. If you’re interested in meeting up at an official SXSW event, or attending any other events with us this week, email our events team at rsvp@bazaarvoice.com.

Bazaarvoice Kickoff Gong
March 15, 10:30am
Bazaarvoice Headquarters

Special guests Ze Frank, Ted Rubin (former CMO of e.l.f. cosmetics), and Eric Qualman (author of Socialnomics) will meet up for a gong event to kickoff the week. Join us at Bazaarvoice headquarters to network with guests from P&G and other client brands, and to check out our new digs.

Get Ready to Live: A Conversation Beyond the Buzz
March 15, 1:30pm to 6pm
AT&T Executive Education Center

Chris Brogan (President of New Marketing Labs and author of Trust Agents) and our own Sam Decker will be among the featured hosts at this panel event. Join us to discuss the increasingly interdependent relationship between social interaction and online technology that is changing business as we know it. Regular registration is $125, but we have 35 complimentary passes to give away! For more info, talk to our events team.

Plutopia: The Science of Music
March 15, 7pm to 12am
Mexican American Cultural Center

This official SXSWi after party event is billed as “an exciting convergence of technology, DIY, music, art, and academics.” This year the event will focus on “the role of technology, sound and digital media in changing the landscape and narrative of music in the information age.” The entertainment will feature Bruce Sterling and DJ Spooky, and we’ve got 4 VIP passes to meet the artists! Contact our events team for more info.

Austin Social Media Club
March 16, 6pm to 8pm
Bazaarvoice Headquarters

This month’s Austin SMC meeting will feature Damien Basile of SMC’s New York chapter. Registration is open to all, and you can sign up online here.

We hope to meet up with you at some of these events! If you have any questions, we’re happy to help.

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Interviews

Deborah de Freitas CNN features work-at-home moderators

February 25th, 2010 by Deborah de Freitas Director, Marketing Communications

Bazaarvoice CEO Brett Hurt on CNNIt was an exciting day on Tuesday at Bazaarvoice when CNN’s Tom Foreman came to visit. His series “Building up America” focuses on towns and companies that have proven “recession proof.” Bazaarvoice has been fortunate enough to be successful in these tough times, and part of that success comes from our stay-at-home workforce of content moderators.

Our moderation team has played a key role in protecting our clients’ brands. As Brett says in the video, moderators are not “editors”; instead, they read every single piece of user-generated content and ensure that it would meet a brand’s requirements for appropriateness. This lets brands be transparent – showing positive and negative feedback that stays on topic and is useful to shoppers. This unique team of pros sets us apart from all other providers’ moderation processes, and they’re a key part of the team.

We arrived in the office this morning to over 35 voicemails waiting from people around the country interested in moderator positions, and the phone won’t stop ringing. We’ve also seen a spike in our web traffic since the piece aired.

Check out the video!

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Culture, Interviews

Deborah de Freitas Brett Hurt opens up to shop.org about the importance of the customer voice and company culture

February 17th, 2010 by Deborah de Freitas Director, Marketing Communications

Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of BazaarvoiceOur founder and CEO Brett Hurt recently sat down with Ellen Davis, VP at NRF, to discuss his tips for starting a business, why he’s happy to be working in his hometown of Austin, and what he’d say to a CEO hesitant to use UGC – “You’re kidding yourself if you think all customers have great experiences… Why guess at what is happening when you can make it easy for consumers to communicate with you?”

The interview, available on Shop.org’s blog, also covers today’s hot topics in ecommerce: mobile, the economy, social media, and of course, customer ratings and reviews.

Brett also had the chance to touch on one of his favorite topics – building a great corporate culture – when asked about his upcoming book. “Corporate culture is a huge passion of mine, so I’m writing a book about building a great culture,” Brett told Shop.org. “The working title is How to Make Your Company Suck Less. It’s based on my experiences in founding five companies (Bazaarvoice, Coremetrics, and three other smaller endeavors), and I’ve reached out to other CEOs and experts to interview them, too.”

For more, including case studies of retailers that have used social commerce to create a better customer experience, read the whole interview on Shop.org’s blog.

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Customer Centricity, Interviews, Social Commerce Summit

Sam Decker Douglas Rushkoff: How New Media (Unlike Marketing) Forces You to be Competent Again

December 21st, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other’s values. He lectures around the world, and will keynote the 2010 Social Commerce Summit. He has a unique view of brands and how new media changes the game (or takes it back to its core) for brands.

At the Social Commerce Summit, you’ll be speaking to hundreds of manufacturers, retailers, and service providers who want to open themselves up to learning from their own customers. How does “thinking inside the box” relate to them? How have brands responded thus far to your message?rushkoffbiopicmed

Well, brands can’t actually respond to anything. Maybe that’s the whole point. Brands aren’t alive. They’re myths. The brand was invented in the earliest days of corporatism, as a way to recreate the experience of a human relationship with the person you used to buy from. You bought shoes from a cobbler, beer from the beermeister, and so on. You had relationships with those people.

The industrial age meant separating producers from consumers, so brands needed to be invented to bridge that gap. The Quaker on the box of oatmeal helped people feel as good about a long-distance, packaged product as they did about the one made by their friend. And mass media arose to broadcast those myths and images across the country, so that people would have relationships to brands before they ever even saw the products. (more…)

Culture, Interviews

Tara DeMarco Intern Blog Series | Manu Aggarwal, Business Development intern

December 18th, 2009 by Tara DeMarco Marketing Intern

ManuThis blog post is part of a series highlighting Bazaarvoice interns.

So, what’s it really like to work at Bazaarvoice? We’re asking interns for the real scoop. Manu Aggarwal joined Bazaarvoice three months ago as an intern in the Business Development department. He sat down with us to answer some questions about getting hired and making the most of an internship at Austin’s Best Place to Work.

How did you hear about Bazaarvoice? What made you want to work here?

I heard about Bazaarvoice through a professor and decided to do some more research.  The company impressed me because I believed in its value proposition both from a personal and professional perspective. Before I buy a product or service, I like to research online and see what others have to say about it. Bazaarvoice enables that kind of interaction. And being voted the best place to work in Austin definitely sparked my interest.

How did you apply for your position? What did you do to get hired?

(more…)

Interviews

Sam Decker Shop.org Annual Summit ‘09: “40+ Specific Things You Can Do to Make More Money Next Week”

September 1st, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Shop.org Annual Summit '09The Shop.org Annual Summit is September 21-23, and last year’s highest rated session is back with a vengeance!

Forget the grand strategy talks. Ignore the expensive, time-consuming software implementations. Discard the hard-to-measure long-term plans. This session is about specific, actionable tactics you can use to make money NOW.

The panel of experts – including Bazaarvoice’s own Heather Brunner, VP of Worldwide Client Services – is going to give you killer tips to improve your paid search, natural search, affiliate marketing, social marketing, email marketing, web 2.0, shopping feeds, technology issues, and site optimization.

Led by moderator Allan Dick, CMO and Chief Plumbing Evangelist for our client, Vintage Tub & Bath, this panel will move so fast session attendees will really need the provided handout with all the gory details. This is the session to attend if you’re looking to get your hands dirty and improve your bottom line. And the takeaways will help you convince your boss that you came to the Summit to make money – not just to party in Vegas.

Check out the website to find out who’s on the panel and what you can expect to learn. Want to connect at the Show? The Bazaarvoice team will be onsite in booth #706, ready to take your questions. Stop by or schedule a meeting with our executives.

Session Information

September 22, 2009
3:15 – 4:15pm
Track 4: Tactics

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Community, Interviews, Marketing Strategy, eCommerce

Heather Brunner Early social media adopter Golfsmith talks about what’s next

August 26th, 2009 by Heather Brunner Chief Operations Officer

golfsmith_logo-convertedThis blog was guest-written by Sherrie Nguyen, Bazaarvoice Community Manager.

Golfsmith, a leading manufacturer and provider of golf and tennis gear, was one of Bazaarvoice’s first clients, and started Tweeting (@golfsmithHQ) and set up a Facebook fan page in spring 2009. Like a lot of retailers, Golfsmith is new to social media, but they’re not new to listening to their customers – the company celebrated their 40th birthday in 2007.

Right now, they’re trying to measure the impact of Facebook and Twitter for their business, and it’s an experiment at this point. According to Eric Mahlstadt, Senior Online Store Manager, and Dillon Smith, Search & Marketing Analyst, they currently have more than 1,200 Twitter followers and almost 7,000 Facebook fans. They track click-throughs from these pages to their site, follow responses to posts and numbers of followers, and are pleased with their results thus far. And it’s part of their corporate strategy of listening to their customers.

“It’s very important to us to walk the line between being engaged and being obtrusive,” said Eric. “The value right now to us as a retailer is not as much about what kind of people these are, but what kinds of experiences they’re having. We’re interested in providing as many choices and platforms as possible for our customers to share thoughts and ideas and provide input. The struggle then becomes having enough engaged ears to hear all the feedback and to be nimble enough to act on that feedback.”

So, for Golfsmith, the next step involves tying these conversations to real commerce. As an early adopter of our new Social Network Accelerators, they’ll have the opportunity to use Twitter and Facebook to directly impact sales conversion on their site. It starts with increasing participation.

“With Social Network Accelerators, we expect to start seeing crossover/cross-pollination to and from customer reviews and Q&A and our Facebook and Twitter pages,” said Dillon. “This comes with using these accelerators to drive more participation with Golfsmith, no matter how our Guests want to reach out to us, then aggregating these reviews and answers to our product pages, to have a direct impact on sales. It’s important to Golfsmith to listen to our Guests, over any channel they choose to use to communicate with us, and interact with them as much as possible. The more we hear from our Guests, the better we can work to improve our customer experience.”

While Golfsmith is innovating with Social Network Accelerators to help drive participation, there’s even more to come. Working with Bazaarvoice can help Golfsmith continue to innovate to help them get the most from social profile information – showing Facebook friends on the Golfsmith site – and distribution – allowing consumers to submit content directly from their social networks.

“As we learn more and continue to strengthen our communication with our Guests, we plan to work to increase the ease of sharing information, opinions and media to and from our Guests,” said Dillon. “We aim to provide social commerce applications and social networking in the format that our Guests would most like to use.”

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Customer Centricity, Interviews

Sam Decker Shop.org Annual Summit ’09: Online Retail Boot Camp

August 20th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Register for the Online Retail Boot CampBazaarvoice & PETCO are teaming up to whip your ecommerce site into shape. The Shop.org Annual Summit ’09 kicks off September 21st with the all-day Online Retail Boot Camp, and first on the agenda is a discussion in social media featuring Brett Hurt, Bazaarvoice founder and CEO, and John Lazarchic, VP eCommerce for PETCO Animal Supplies, Inc.

Together Brett and John will share best practices to leverage social throughout your organization, impacting marketing, merchandising, and customer support. We hope you’ll join us as we detail firsthand how to transform your customer relationships, increase your sales, reduce your returns, and even make over your company culture with social media.

The intense tactical workshop continues with speakers from Estee Lauder, Coremetrics and others. You can register online on the Online Retail Boot Camp website.

If you can’t make it to the Boot Camp, we’d still love to connect at the show. The Bazaarvoice team will be onsite in booth #706, ready to take your questions. Stop by or click here to schedule a meeting with our executives.

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Customer Centricity, Interviews, Marketing Strategy, Ratings & Reviews, User-Generated Content, Word of Mouth

Sam Decker Brett Hurt interviewed at Forbes.com

June 26th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

forbescom-video-networkbretthurt1We recently went on a national press tour, and one of the highlights was Brett’s video interview with Taylor Buley at Forbes.com. Brett talks about how Oriental Trading Company uses customer reviews to transform their internal culture – internal teams work together to improve all aspects of their products and customer service. They’ve improved more than 700 products so far! You can read the full case study for all the details.

He also talks about how GEICO uses reviews to improve its products, too. Three years ago, who would have ever thought you’d use reviews to buy insurance?

Brett talks about how all types of companies are using reviews and other input to change all areas of the business – reducing return rates, improving service, etc. – and how online reviews create focus group-like information that helps companies determine exactly what they can improve. All without adding a huge new department in the company.

Brett also talks about how Twitter and Facebook will never have the impact of customer word of mouth on branded sites. Read the Forbes article in its (I love this) “Disruptions” section, “Where Social Networking Cashes In.”

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Culture, Interviews

Sam Decker Bazaarvoice CEO Brett Hurt interviewed on “The Businessmakers” radio show

May 18th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

businessmakers-logoListen in as Brett Hurt describes the original idea for Bazaarvoice, early customers, and how Bazaarvoice’s success continues to surprise him.

You’ll hear…

  • What Bazaarvoice does
  • A brief definition of Social Commerce
  • Why Brett founded Bazaarvoice and where our name came from
  • Dealing with the fear of customer reviews and how Bazaarvoice educated its original clients
  • Bazaarvoice branched out from retail to now serve financial services, manufacturers — and even facial tissues!
  • Bazaarvoice’s transparent feedback internally for managers
  • Challenges during our start-up
  • Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs

Tune in for Esther Steinfeld’s chat with Brett, originally broadcast on May 16, 2009 — listen here.

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