Leaders of Change: Danny Silverman

DANNY SILVERMAN is Chief Marketing Officer at Edge by Ascential? (formerly Brand View, Clavis Insight, One Click Retail and PlanetRetail RNG) delivering some of the industry’s most accurate and actionable sales-driving data, insights and advisory solutions for global brands and retailers looking to win in today’s ecommerce-driven world.

He is an established product manufacturing industry thought leader in the areas of Global eCommerce strategy, marketing and sales with over 14 years of experience helping brands enhance equity and drive sales online and in-store. He spent eight of those years at Johnson & Johnson where he built and led their eCommerce strategy and global Amazon partnership.

He is also General Manager of Mandylicious Challah, a residential kitchen-based business owned and run by his wife, Mandy. Most of the business revenue runs through Square Marketplace, giving Danny a unique point of view into eCommerce as both manufacturer and seller.

Why did you choose to pursue eCommerce in your career? Immediate gratification…and the realization that eCommerce was a massive milestone in the evolution of all commerce (yes, they’re related).

I clearly remember the day in 2006 when an account rep called and asked me what to make of a request from an online bookseller called Amazon.com to ship them one case of every item in the J&J catalog. We had a good laugh...what does a bookseller want with baby shampoo? But we shipped them! We also set up one of the first-ever brand stores on drugstore.com for J&J and did an in-market test on a product from the UK that one of the Business Units wanted to try out (it failed). Cycle times from idea to in-market on drugstore.com and Amazon became days, even hours in some cases where we were working tightly with the vendor managers. Immediate. Gratification. We could test fast, fail fast, learn faster. It was awesome!

What is your biggest strength, and how have you used it for your success in eCommerce? Being able to not just "connect the dots" but follow the dots to where they’re headed long term. There is a powerful draw to the immediate, right-now need in eCommerce (see "immediate gratification" above). Fix an out of stock. Upload an image. Add a keyword to a title. Launch a campaign. But eCommerce is a long game – it’s evolving too fast to be myopically focused on the short term. Staying focused on underlying trends and human behaviors has helped me be able to see, more or less, where eCommerce is headed and how to get there "ahead of the puck" (Wayne Gretzky). When I work with clients, I always encourage them to build three-year (at least) plans, outlining the organization they want to be three years out, not next quarter.

What is the weirdest skill or talent to come in handy in your eCommerce experience? My career in eCommerce has become a skill in and of itself, which was instrumental in helping my wife set up her business. In turn, I’ve learned a great deal about the power of product images, titles, descriptions and pricing as a result of being both manufacturer and direct seller, which I’ve translated back into my career and my work with our clients.

On the weirder side, growing up I spent vacations and summers working in my parents’ factory. I would sometimes help with packaging and shipping, and learned the fine art of how to tape up boxes "hospital corner" style. If you are a power Amazon shopper, you need to be adept at repackaging stuff you want to return! 

How have you most successfully influenced change within your organization (or with your clients)? When it comes to eCommerce, so often there are key players in the manufacturer organizations who do not understand eCommerce and/or are not full time on eCommerce. To influence them, it’s critical to translate eCommerce into what it means for them (WIIFM). There is a compelling story about the influence of online on offline transactions, but there is no quantifiable, scaled means to measure the attribution consistently. So the argument quickly collapses. One thing we’ve done at Clavis is develop a framework we call 6Ps eCommerce Intelligence?. We have found that executives and non-practitioners can quickly wrap their heads around this framework because it’s built on the very familiar 4Ps framework. As a result, they feel educated and empowered to talk intelligently about eCommerce. And that, we have seen, goes much further than more transactional cases for change.

At the more "human" level, empathy is paramount in all interactions, be it personal or professional. If you want to influence change, you must understand what motivates those you wish to influence and focus on the intersection of your objectives and their motivation. 

What was your most “valuable” career failure, and why? My first six months at J&J were nearly a disaster. I made several, very "public" data reporting errors as a result of my inexperience with Excel, as well as the type of analytics and forecasting we were working on. I learned early the value of developing multiple checks, as well as the value of clean, consistent formatting in presentations. The best presentation/data/insights in the world will go unnoticed if the formatting looks unprofessional.

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life? I turned off email pop-up notifications on my phone and desktop. It has allowed me to "be present" more often and in control of when I decide it’s time to look for new emails. Around the same time, I also set a policy to not look at emails in the morning until I had made the transition from home to work, allowing me to get out of bed without the stress of what was waiting for me in my inbox.

What are you learning right now? The intricacies of acquisitions and company integrations. 

What are the 1-3 songs that would make up your career soundtrack today?

• The Final Countdown by Europe: It may always be Day 1 in the world of eCommerce (or at least Bezos’ version of it), but I also always have my eyes on the prize, whatever that may be personally or professionally. There’s also always a horizon I’m pursuing. My advice: set a goal and a date and start the countdown clock. Even if it has to be reset from time to time, it drives meaning and purpose in day-to-day activities.
• Come Together by The Beatles: The lyrics might not all be spot on, but as Clavis and One Click Retail join forces as sister companies under Ascential plc, this song seems relevant!

What are the 1-3 books you’ve gifted the most or that have greatly influenced your life, and why? 

• The Everything Store by Brad Stone: Still the go-to guide to understanding the Amazon culture and Bezos mindset from his literal Day One to now. Mandatory for anyone calling on Amazon.
• Inspired: How To Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Kagan: This book taught me a great deal about the fundamentals of software product creation, but there are also broader learnings for products in any vertical. I wrote up an article on LinkedIn regarding the chapter: “Managing Up”
• Alibaba's World by Porter Erisman: Similar to the Everything Store, if you don’t understand Alibaba and the mind of Jack Ma, you will have a hard time keeping up with the evolution of the eCommerce space.
• Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance: A true visionary – whether he proves to be one of the greatest minds of our times, or one of the biggest failures of all time, following his progression from childhood to Tesla and SpaceX is exciting and invigorating. His dream to land a person on Mars has driven him since childhood, until today. 
• Peanut Butter Dogs by Greg Murray: Pictures of dogs in various states of loving peanut butter! This is the best coffee table book ever created – it makes my heart so happy every time I open it, and I’ve bought several copies to share the smiles with family and friends. 

If you could have a gigantic billboard for the world to see with anything on it, what would it say, and why? (It could be your own words of inspiration or a famous quote) Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. There is some debate about who actually said this first. But I love this quote because it’s a constant reminder that as great as you may think your battles are, those around you think the same about theirs – remember to always consider the motivations and needs of those around you! I also like it because it’s a more relatable version of the Golden Rule.

What are the worst recommendations or advice you have heard related to eCommerce? “Treat eCommerce as just another sales channel, like Club or Dollar.” ACK! No! Treat it as the most disruptive force affecting manufacturers and retailers alike, as we collectively scramble to catch up to shopper expectations. It is a form of media representing a critical, but not definitive, step in the path to purchase. Be agnostic to whether conversion happens online or off, and focus instead on winning the shopper.

What advice would you give to a future leader of change about to enter business, or specifically the eCommerce field? eCommerce is so dynamic, and evolving at such a rapid pace, that the winners of today could very well lose tomorrow. Don’t try to "catch up" on terms and rules set by your competitors. Figure out the best ways to delight your shoppers and work backwards from there.

Also, have fun! eCommerce is the leading edge of all commerce in the world and the most exciting space in the retail world today!

What specific, industry-related change do you believe will happen that few others seem to see? There is increasing dialogue about building out Direct-to-Consumer capabilities, but I don’t think most of the industry fully understands the imperative here. If for nothing else, it creates the capability to list as a 3rd party seller on the Amazon platform (and other marketplaces), which can be a hedge against products that get a CRAP status and delisted from Amazon, and numerous other business cases for selling direct (such as being able to set price).

It also creates a hedge against Amazon’s increasing push into house brands. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to imagine a world where Amazon evolves to only house brands sold via 1P and all manufacturers pushed to the 3P marketplace. Note that most of their house brands are not Amazon branded as is the case with most private label lines. They’ve been watching thousands of eCommerce native brands pop up online only and win significant sales and share away from the incumbent/legacy brands. The first page in Amazon’s playbook is watch, learn and recreate the winners in-house. I see this happening before our eyes in the product manufacturer space. 

What is the last thing you bought online, and why? Snow gloves and snow pants, because #bombcylcone

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Leaders of Change is a weekly interview series featuring select industry pioneers who are driving the evolution of commerce, the consumer and everything in between. If you would like to recommend a Leader of Change for consideration, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.