Leaders of Change: Eric Heller

ERIC HELLER joined Amazon in 1999, and now leads one of the largest strategy consultancies for brands and sellers working with online marketplaces. His company, Marketplace Ignition, has helped more than 400 brands manage their Amazon/Marketplace presence and is part of Wunderman Commerce, a WPP Company.

Why did you choose to pursue eCommerce in your career? Pure serendipity – I’m an entrepreneur at heart ever since starting a successful amusement park ride business in college (really!). After college, I started out at Andersen Consulting but a) didn’t want to travel anymore and b) really wanted to move to Seattle. I had to decide between two offers: Washington Mutual or Amazon.com. I rolled the dice, took Amazon, and never looked back. The passion for disintermediation and of always getting to invent something new keeps it fresh and exciting every single day.

What is your biggest strength, and how have you used it for your success in eCommerce? A passion for the science of marketing. Early on at Amazon, Steve Kessel, who is now in charge of the Whole Foods integration, was mentoring me on next steps in my career and told me that there are two types of marketers: The first is a subject matter lover, who opens a baseball card store because he loves baseball. The other one simply loves the science. For them, everything is a widget and it is about cracking the code for each of those widgets. I quickly realized that I was the second type of marketer: I love the puzzle and challenge and it doesn’t matter which category or topic as long as it’s eCommerce. It has been a huge help in my career.

What is the weirdest skill or talent to come in handy in your eCommerce experience?There’s a great scene in the 2011 movie Limitless where the main character, played by Bradley Cooper, takes this pill that allows him to tap in to this massive unused potential in his brain. Disparate data points light up in gold from across the page and he sees how they all connect and turns that into a new idea that gives him the answer he is looking for. In eCommerce, we have the same problem the character in the movie had: We’re lousy with data, we just don’t often have a map for using it. Connecting data from multiple areas and pulling it together to build a narrative and direction is a strength that I feel has helped me work with clients in an environment where the situation (and the data) are often changing.  

How have you most successfully influenced change within your organization (or with your clients)? One of the most fascinating things about marketplaces like Amazon is brands are connected directly to their consumers. Can you imagine what it would be worth to find out at the end of every day what everyone shopping for your product at every mall in America asked for when they walked in the door? On Amazon, we can see that dialogue plain as day if we know where to look. I’m really proud of the work we’ve done with clients to help them understand who is buying their products, why and what they might also like to buy. A great story I like to think of here is a client we worked with who manufactured maid carts like those used in hotels. They initially told us not to spend much time on those products on Amazon because consumer sites weren’t a focus. We happened to pull sentiment on those as well, and the results were striking. The most common thread of conversation was basically, “So amazing you’ll want one on each floor of your house!” Here we were looking at B2B products and realized it was actually a prosumer product – a totally new market. We’ve seen this time and time again and the way it changes how teams and brands think about their own brands and messaging is always inspiring.

What was your most “valuable” career failure, and why? When I left Amazon, I went to Redfin, where I had the honor of being the first Director of Marketing. It was an amazing experience at a VC-backed startup that I totally overcommitted to. While I loved the role, I made the mistake of taking it on with a one year old at home and a wife pregnant with twins on bed rest. I tried to make it work but, in the end, both suffered. After a year, I left and realized the importance of work-life balance. I definitely try to bring that every day wherever I can to my team. 

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life? Woody Allen was right: 80% of life is showing up. It is easy to think of eCommerce as a digital world where we can all dial or WebEx in but, in reality, I am utterly convinced that being in the room makes a difference. I constantly work to overcome the inertia of just setting up a conference call if we can find a way to partner in person. While it doesn’t make sense all the time, for key meetings it can be a game changer.

What are you learning right now? How global agencies work and how they partner with clients. I spent eight years building Marketplace Ignition into a leader in a dedicated category. We win for our clients and teams by being incredibly focused on a critical, but narrow channel. Being part of the largest agency group in the world has exposed us to amazing teams, and I have realized how much I still have to learn. Our friends at partner agency Geometry, for example, recently asked me to join them at their annual global strategy conference. I was blown away by the sophistication they bring to training Account Directors and frontline teams, even going as far as to have a continuous "ADU" learning program. I want to bring that to our group as well and find a way to always help the team be learning from the amazing intelligence within the broader group.

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

• This one is a challenge, but I would have to say something energetic, dynamic and always changing. Maybe a really great jazz club that you’re the first to find and now is packed to the gills – it’s where everything is happening and you can’t believe how crazy and energetic the music is and that they’re inventing it right there.  

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

• Hard Landing by Thomas Petzinger Jr: This is a rare one, but it is full of incredible insights about the creation of the airline industry as we know it. My boss, Rob Greyber, at Expedia recommended it at one point and it turned out to be totally prescient about how dynamic pricing would become commonplace throughout the world. Really a great read.
• The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss: This one was incredibly influential and so is included, not because this is the life I lead but because it was formational in how I started Marketplace Ignition and then realized I couldn’t follow it. I’m the type of person the finds a way to productively run something in four hours and then hunts for how to grow it by using the other 56 hours. 
• Does It Work? by Shane Atchison: This one is easy to cite. From the beginning, we’ve challenged new team members to always ensure that they know how to measure the work they do and recommend. When we were considering acquisition offers, the fact that the leaders at Possible had written a book about this was foundational. (Authors are no longer with Possible so definitely an unbiased recommendation).
• BONUS ROUND: Punch Escrow by Tai Klein: This is a new fiction book this year that is incredibly thought-provoking about the future of AI and the role of corporations in society. Plus, it’s a fun read.

If you could have a gigantic billboard for the world to see with anything on it, what would it say, and why? This might seem mundane and I mentioned above but, Woody Allen was right: “80% of life is showing up.” In eCommerce, we often think everything can be done remote virtual like something out of The Four Hour Work Week. In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. Face-to-Face is as important as it ever was, if not more so. If no one else is willing to get on a plane to do the meeting, your doing it can make all the difference.

What are the worst recommendations or advice you have heard related to eCommerce? I recently had a leader from a well-known brand tell me that our reports weren’t all that valuable. When I asked why, they told me that it was because we insisted on showing brands that they didn’t really compete against. What was important was to prioritize brick and mortar brands because that’s the majority of commerce and would translate into the best strategies across the brand. We of course know that we don’t get to dictate who our competitors are and the prevalence and disintermediation represented by the shortening supply chain and path to purchase is changing everything. As we’ve seen from eCommerce giants like Anker, eCommerce competitors are real competitors and it’s important that we learn from them. The true win is to take their tactics and the nimbleness of a startup but combine it with the power of a known brand. 

What advice would you give to a future leader of change about to enter business, or specifically the eCommerce field? I have personally been involved in eCommerce since 1999. In that time, I have seen incredible change, but, most amazingly, it really still feels like we’re just getting started. Just last year, we’ve seen the rise of the two-minute delivery, clerkless checkout, advanced click and collect, incorporated allowances for kids, voice commerce and even voice for business. It really is still Day One and the majority of changes in this industry are truly still yet to come.

What specific, industry-related change do you believe will happen that few others seem to see? I firmly believe that the eCommerce industry is on the cusp of the Amazon Agency of Record. When I started Marketplace Ignition, we were basically first. I did it because it was what I loved when I worked at Amazon - partnering with incredibly sharp Jeff Berman at J&R Electronics to make them the fastest growing seller on Amazon. Now, as Amazon has grown, the demands and importance of the channel have grown with it. Now, as part of WPP, I can absolutely see that there is a place to manage Amazon via a dedicated specialist group that is part of the overall advertising/media program. Amazon is really the Consumer Reports? of this decade and is too intertwined in and important to your overall message to manage in isolation. #WhosYourAmazonAOR (https://WhosYourAmazonAgency.com)

What is the last thing you bought online, and why? Two mattresses for my kids’ rooms! I love that online has made the experience of buying this essential item virtually painless. I challenge anyone to prove that they have enjoyed buying those things in person, pretending to sleep in a lit sales room. Online is a real game changer for that industry.

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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.