Can Someone Please Wake Up The Networks?
As many of us affiliates know, today was the Official unveiling of the Top Christmas Toy Predictions for 2009. The announcements, made by British Toy & Hobby Association and Toy Retailers Association every year, are eagerly awaited by many as they form the basis of many marketing plans. Sadly someone forgot to tell the networks, agencies and merchants… Imagine if Santa was late?
I reminded a number of networks of this and even tried to help them further, by pointing them in the direction of the official website, suggesting they may want to prepare for it. As many affiliates have seasonal websites, it would have been both extremely useful, and beneficial to networks and affiliates alike, had someone taken this opportunity to shine. If a network had spared a few people, 2 hours each, an email could have been sent to a huge audience with deep-links to all the top ten toys.
I appreciate it’s not always the networks role, if for example, the merchant is “managed” by an agency… cough cough… But it just seems crazy that such a big annual event still goes almost unmarked, yet all other forms of media (news, print, TV) pickup on it, and report it.
During my own trawling of merchants whilst creating deep-links for all 72 Christmas presents, I was disappointed to see that 95% of merchants still have no Christmas banners in place. In some cases, I’ve had to revert to using some from Christmas 2008 and even bank holiday banners just to get something in place!
Come on networks, agencies and merchants. Christmas is the same every year – get a bit more organised… please!?!?
If you still haven’t got your affiliate pages in place, you may want to take a look at Easy Content Units which takes the hard work of creating your own deep-links. Also available is the Official Press Release and my final observation… Take a look at John Lewis, who this year seem to be VERY competitively priced.
Not a single Argos link was required! Happy Days! 
10 Comments
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” if for example, the merchant is “managed” by an agency… cough cough…”
Don’t really understand what the implication is here pal??
Must give Julie Wood, Affiliate Window, a ‘hat tip’ she was on the ball and did send me a great selection of deep links to the Dream Dozen.
And John Lewis has been very competitive for the last few years, and I hate to say it – Amazon still has the best prices, so why would anyone promote Argos, Tesco or Toysrus – beats me!!!
Matt
Some agencies are great and manage programmes proactively, others are somewhat questionable. Lets not have our blinkers on here old chap. Some people even ask the worthiness of an agency but thats a different story
Elaine
Maybe the email went to select affiliates? Never realised JL had been so good previous years – this year they are great. Only reason I’ve spread my links around is because they either didn’t stock the product, or their stock levels were low at the time I browesed their page. Just don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket… PS Happy Birthday (I think!).
The fact is, yesterday was ths starting pistol for Christmas which a lot of people seem to have missed, and think its OK to drip feed creatives, links etc as and when in the run up to Christmas – sometimes in December. I just think too many miss this great opportunity, and have done many years on the run now.
Hi Chris,
Julie Wood was at the show yesterday morning when it opened at 7am and had created all the necessary Affiliate Window deeplinks by lunchtime to send to affiliates.
If you drop her an email she’ll forward on all the links she has.
Thanks,
Kevin
Hello,
Please see the following post on the forum for Woolworths Top Toys:
http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/buy/128348-woolworths-top-toys-vouchercode.html
Thanks
Bex
Hi Chris
You’ve upset Julie this morning! She was up at 5am yesterday at the Dream Toys event and by 11am she had sent out personalised emails to affiliates with all the deeplinks. She assures me you were on the list. Maybe it went into your junk mail?
Nevertheless, all the links will uploaded to AWinter Wonderland (http://christmas.affiliatewindow.com) this morning.
Adam
Adam
Junk mail? From Julie? NEVER! She knows I make a point of clearing her emails always
A lot of us affiliate were up at 5am too creating links manually (ECU will vouch for this). Sadly no grand launch event for us – just coffee and a darkened computer room 
I’m simply highlighting that yesterday was a huge day, yet it went pretty much unnoticed in the grand scheme of things.
What Awin & Julie did was great and is expected nowadays, as it happens year in year out. However this industry is bigger than “Awin” alone, and I felt that many others have missed out on a great annual opportunity.
Hello Chris
A flurry of AWin comments on your blog this morning
I believe you now have the email from Julie with lots of links to Dream Toys. For everyone else they can go directly to this page on our AWinter Wonderland. http://christmas.affiliatewindow.com/?p=630
Best, David
Networks are hopeless anyway! Always slow to react and sometimes averse to reacting if it means they have to do some work!
Add to the mix the fact that there are “too many cooks” and you have the situation where 20 people are dealing with you and none of them know the full story!
Hey don’t forget Kitbag.com for Xmas gifts – dads, sons, brothers, fathers, male friends etc all need Xmas gifts too !
Christmas banners live now (our Kitbag Xmas store went live today) – see http://www.affiliateblog.kitbag.com/2009/11/kitbag-christmas-store-now-open.html.
Right, now to hunt down Julie for not thinking of Kitbag in her Xmas thoughts ……
Cheers
John F
P.S. Just seen http://christmas.affiliatewindow.com/?p=1080 from Sam so maybe I’ll let Julie off ….