Gabi Troxler

Positioning gets you noticed. Narrative gets you chosen. That was the big insight from a Strategic Narrative Workshop I ran this year with the team at XPP. As Louisa von Heynitz put it: “Positioning is fantastic, but it’s ultimately just a short summary of your unique differentiators. You still need a narrative around that to actually communicate it out.” Once we built that narrative, everything shifted: 👊 Marketing, sales, and commercial teams aligned on one story. 📈 Their pitches gained traction. 💰 They closed a deal they’d been chasing for months. This is the difference between a list of differentiators and a living, breathing story your whole team believes in, and can tell with confidence. In a crowded market, positioning won’t win hearts. Your story will. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I’m Elliott Rayner, an expert in product storytelling and the neuroscience that makes stories stick. I help marketers sharpen their storytelling skills and product teams craft strategic narratives that stand out — and win. If those challenges hit home, let’s connect. 👋

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𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: 𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭-𝐮𝐩𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠! The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports on a study published by Speedinvest in collaboration with Bits & Pretzels on the topic of 𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠. This is an truly important aspect for a sustainable start-up ecosystem, as corporations are the most important partners on the market for most start-ups due to their large customer base, second only to venture capital firms. According to the study, German companies invested more than 90 billion euros in research and development (R&D) in 2023. However, at more than 85 percent, a significantly higher proportion of innovation spending remained within internal structures than was the case with the largest American R&D investors. Companies such as Google, Amazon and Meta, on the other hand, spent twice as much on external innovation, at around 30 percent of their R&D budgets. This includes, for example, investments in start-ups or even acquisitions. Venture clienting units can be an efficient approach for many companies to leverage the advantages of a start-up and are already increasingly replacing start-up accelerators in the corporate environment, since they are superior: - Direct business impact: Start-ups deliver immediately usable solutions to existing problems within the group – not just ‘learning’ or ‘innovation theatre’. - Market-driven validation: The group becomes a customer, not an investor or coach. The start-up must deliver real added value in order to win the contract. - No equity commitment: Unlike accelerators or CVCs, no investment is required. This reduces risk and increases speed. 𝐃𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐰. 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧!

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Here is a graphic I recently prepared together with Christian Scharmüller for his talk in front of 600+ audience members at DMEXCO. We wanted a simple way to explain the shift occurring in ecommerce thanks to AI-assisted purchases. In light of today's news that OpenAI has advanced their plans to add in-chat checkout features to ChatGPT, it seems appropriate to share. I first wrote about the potential for ecommerce disruption via ChatGPT on December 3rd, 2022 – four days after ChatGPT launched to the public. That's not because I'm so smart, but because the idea is so incredibly obvious. A year later I made my first significant purchase using AI as a shopping assistant. A smartphone as a Christmas gift. I would have loved built-in purchasing options if that were possible back then. The tricky thing is, ecommerce businesses might not be so thrilled. The existing model has been to capture web traffic through Google Search (and elsewhere) and then not only convert that traffic, but upsell it, measure it, first-party it, CRM it, email subscription it, SMS it, etc etc. Google has been the world's largest digital customer acquisition channel. But that's changing. Now, with AI shopping assistants, consumers don't ever need to visit an online store if they don't want to. Just like Best Buy became "Amazon's showroom" in 2015, brands and retailers now risk becoming ChatGPT's warehouse a decade later. This new category of purchases will deliver orders and revenue, but not necessarily customer relationships. The wealth of traffic and first-party data accrue to the AI platform, which becomes a distribution channel rather than an acquisition channel. For brands, this might not be so bad. They've already learned that DTC alone is insufficient. Most have embraced Amazon despite the warts. AI platforms will be like that too. But for multi-brand retailers and marketplaces, this hurts quite a lot. Let's not think about that Retail Media Network you invested millions in, shall we? Optimistically... we don't know what share of ecommerce AI shopping assistants will take. It won't be one hundred percent! And we don't know how long it will take. More than a few quarters though, I reckon. These are the parameters that will shape the chart below, and crucially, decide whether it's a learning curve or a brick wall. The only question I have is: how long till Google follows suit? (I predicted an AI-powered Buy On Google resurrection in June 2023, even before the program was shuttered in September of that year. I was a bit early on that lol)

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