ASOS MD Rebuttal
Source e-consultancy
ASOS CEO Nick
Robertson was at the centre of a firestorm six weeks ago when he labelled
affiliates ‘grubby’.
In this interview, his first since ‘Grubbygate’, Nick explains
the reasons behind his decision to close down the ASOS affiliate programme. The
etailer certainly doesn’t seem to have been hampered by its decision…
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Can you throw some light on the issues you were having with your affiliate
programme when you ditched it, and clarify what you meant by your comments in NMA?
The problems we were having were that we were paying commissions on sales we
would have generated ourselves.
About a year and a half to two years ago, we
took a view – and it was a very harsh view – that by culling our affiliate
programme and paying no commissions on sales, we might dent our top line
slightly but we would be considerably more profitable. We would re-invest that
profit into brand marketing to drive top line sales, on which we would not be
paying commission.
Let me put it into perspective. We had an affiliate
programme and we had an affiliate manager that the affiliates loved. I’m hardly
surprised, because we made those affiliates a bloody fortune. We had a 60 day
cookie period and 12-15% commissions.When you get bigger, you find
that. your customers are travelling around the web and are picking up these
cookies left, right and centre. We found we were paying commissions on sales to
customers that would have come to us anyway. They might not have come straight
away but they were familiar with ASOS, they knew ASOS, but
they just had to click on some other sites and we would have to pay commissions
on themWe have been proved absolutely right – more than right. It
hasn’t dented our top line sales at all. Look at the figures. Look at the top
line growth ofFigleaves, Firebox, Iwantoneofthose or NET-A-PORTER. These are sites that spend considerable amounts of money on affiliate
marketing and we are outstripping the growth of all of them.
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Why didn’t you just reduce the cookie period?
Because we were still
paying commissions. We did end up reducing it from 60 days to 30 days to one
week, I think.
To be honest, what was happening was that it was taking so
long to police it. You’d have affiliates who would ask to be involved in the
programme and register one site, and then, funnily enough, just use the codes to
open up a completely different site.We would run a discount promotion
with a magazine like Grazia, a tactical marketing initiative, and that discount
would be widely used all over the internet. These were affiliates who we had
told not to generate traffic on the back of discount codes.It got to
the point where it was a full time policing job just to stop the unethical and
against-the-rules practices that these affiliates were employing. What happened
was the bad affiliates tarnished the good affiliates and we just culled the lot.
And we haven’t looked back. I’m not in any hurry to introduce a new affiliate
programme.
Personally, I think there is a lot missing and I could sit here forever pulling this to bits, but… I would rather focus on merchants that get it, then waste anymore time. I do wonder, if I had a time machine and could go back and advise ASOS in the very early years to kill their affiliate program back then, I wonder, where would they be todayIt’s clear we have differing opinions and affiliate marketing and ASOS, it just conflicts with each other today.
“I’m not in any hurry to introduce a new affiliate programme.” We wont lose too much sleep waiting.
I did speak to Nick yesterday, it was a really good chat and he made some valid points but the upshot is, we agreed to disagree and I think we will both leave it at that!
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