E^HACKATHON Seattle | Amazon

For the ones who get growth done

Ecommerce is disrupting everything we know about commerce, and our brands, whether they realize it or not, depend on us to figure it out for long-term growth. But to succeed, we must learn at the pace of the change happening around us.

When it comes to learning, we choose to invest our precious time and money in attending industry events to be empowered – to return to work a better and wiser leader of change. But it’s not enough to only “talk growth,” for we’re the ones who actually “do growth.” We need (and deserve) the best learning possible.

• We believe in learning experiences designed by the very people that participate.
• We believe in thought leadership that earns your undivided attention and sells itself.
• We believe in actionability, in hacking ideas and challenges hands-on to truly learn something new and apply it the next business day.
• We believe in the power of community, in both belonging, as well as standing out.
• We believe in celebrating our shared moments of pride and pain along the journey.

Join our movement. You’re one of us. We’re the ones who get growth done.

At the E^HACKATHON Seattle on Sept 24, 2019, you and fellow leaders of change come together to learn hands-on what it takes to master ecommerce growth with Amazon, blasting beyond the basics to deep-dive case studies and hack sessions on the latest strategies, best practices and insights critical to win online.

This event is organized by Edge by Ascential™. The E^HACKATHON Seattle is not initiated or sponsored by, or associated with, Amazon.com, Inc.

"You must be this tall to ride..."

If you:

1. Work for a consumer brand
2. Lead (or support) your Amazon or overall ecommerce business
3. Desire actionable and interactive edutainment vs. "death by lecture" conferences too common in the industry
4. Want to learn and network without the stress of agency sharks and sales pitches
5. Believe you're part of a global movement that is greater than any one of us alone

Then you belong with us.

Designed for practitioners by practitioners

The E^HACKATHON Seattle is an Amazon-centric, deep-dive ecommerce learning experience for BRANDS ONLY where industry leaders work closely with insiders and experts on the latest best practices and strategies needed to master ecommerce growth with Amazon.

Day 1 is overflowing with amazing content including brand case studies, latest perspectives on Amazon and of course, the Hack sessions. The Hack sessions are assigned breakout topics led by ecommerce subject matter experts. Working in non-compete peer groups, you will leave these sessions with takeaways that can be applied to your business the very next day back at work.

Day 2 is called “T2T”, a full day of non-compete Hack sessions exclusively designed for senior ecommerce leaders (directors and above) focused on topics not covered anywhere else, including overall ecommerce org structure and design, internal change management and agility, brand protection and profitability and more. You and fellow directors are welcome to attend one or both days, but only senior leaders are invited to Day 2.

Note: Everyone can attend Day 1, but only senior leaders are invited to attend Day 2. If you're a Director or above interested in Day 2 only or both days, please register for the T2T ticket options.

Meet the thought leaders who volunteered as tribute

Latest Agenda for September 24 E^HACKATHON Seattle:

Latest Hack Sessions for September 24 E^HACKATHON Seattle:

Each attendee will have the opportunity to submit their preferences for 4 preferred Hack sessions to attend during the event.  We will do our best to schedule each attendee for as many of their preferred Hack sessions as possible based on session capacity and non-compete restrictions.

DEMAND GENERATION HACK SESSIONS

1. Advanced Amazon Content Optimization: It’s Time to Pull the “Trigger” led by Stephanie Leffler & Amanda Wolff (OneSpace)

The most successful brands are optimizing their ecommerce content on a recurring basis. In this advanced session, we will highlight the different triggers that brands should use to initiate or re-initiate their e-commerce content production process for content on Amazon. Whether these triggers come from internal changes like packaging or formulation updates, or they come from external changes to Amazon's unique retailer requirements, the consumer search landscape, competitive pressures, or seasonal trends.

2. Help, My Consumer Isn’t a Robot! Beyond SEO into Conversion Optimization led by Kurt Vogel (Edge by Ascential)

What does a shopper search for when they want a juicer? Juicer, that’s it. While SEO is creating content that can convince search algorithms to favor your products, companies also need to convince a consumer to favor your product. In this session, we evaluate how companies can stop keyword stuffing titles, bullets, images to win over search algorithms to start understanding what information consumers want to know about, but might not search for.

3. Day in the Life of Master AMS Marketer led by Nate Whitson & Sara Paolino (Flywheel Digital)

In this session, you will learn a) what steps you should take to ensure you spend through your budget and incorporate new targeting types and/or portfolios to hit your budget each flight, b) how to think about the indicators that matter in your AMS performance and what you can do to start influencing them, c) ways to grade changes in competition and tactics to consider to efficiently compete in competitive auctions and d) why your AMS ASIN assortment matters and how to effectively grade & adjust to better serve customer purchase behavior.

STRATEGY HACK SESSIONS

4. Top 10 Day-to-Day Sales Hacks led by Mike O'Donnell & Jason Taylor (Flywheel Digital)

Your Amazon sales still aren't reflecting your category share! What do other vendors know that you don't? This session focuses around the Top 10 Amazon retail hacks that will allow you to take back your fair share on top keywords, including how to maximize SEO, increase conversion and CTRs and unlock new opportunities.

5. How Challenger Brands Are Taking on the Incumbents in Direct To Consumer led by Nick Geoghegan (eatbigfish)

From razors to retirement plans, new challenger brands are shaking up existing categories through the use of D2C. But to say that these brands are winning due to their ability to cut out the middle man and reduce costs, is to miss out on some key lessons that these exciting new challengers can teach us. Here, we’ll show you the five ways in which Direct to Consumer thinking has allowed these courageous new brands to offer consumers more than they’ve ever been offered before, and to bring dramatic differences to categories that have been starved of new thinking.

6. Packaging 2.0: SIOC, FFP and Designing Your Operations for eCommerce led by Claudia Johnson (Flywheel Digital), Richard Palmer and Mark Wuellner (Nehemiah Manufacturing)

Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.” In this session, you will learn how packaging and logistics optimization can help you win in eCommerce today by a) complying to evolving retailer requirements (i.e. SIOC, FFP), b) reducing costs and c) delivering a benefit to the consumer.

7. Working with Your VM for 2020 Plan Success led by Nathan Allen & David Martin (Flywheel Digital) and Muni Sodhi (Edge by Ascential)

Working with Amazon can be an exercise in self-motivation as almost every task is pushed back on you, the Vendor. In this session, you will learn from former VMs how to grow a business when the only time you hear from your retail buyer is when they want something from you, gaining insight into what motivates the Amazon Vendor Manager, how best to work with Amazon and how to create a 2020 Vendor plan for mutual success.

JOINT VALUE CREATION HACK SESSIONS

8. Squeezed: Profitability Management & CRaP Prevention led by Brooke Ware (Flywheel Digital)

In this session, you will learn a) what drives profitability and how Amazon sets price, including the new era of channel management, b) how Amazon calculates profitability and what is and is not negotiable, how Amazon thinks about profitability vs. how manufacturers think about it and how they’re different and d) how to design products for eCommerce and cut costs.

9. The Brand Protection & Pricing Strategies Most Effective in the eCommerce Age led by Whitney Gibson & Daren Garcia (Vorys) and Chris Perry (Edge by Ascential)

In this session, you will learn – from Vorys’ eControl attorneys and a fellow practitioner who successfully countered channel conflict – the strategies, business policies and practices and enforcement techniques recommended to lawfully control your brands online by removing harmful sellers and poor quality products and preventing price, profitability and brand equity erosion, as well as insight into the problems that arise when companies fail to recognize the new paradigms at play and how they have disrupted traditional brand protection practices.

Latest Agenda for September 25 T2T Seattle (Directors & Above Only):

Latest Hack Sessions for September 25 T2T Seattle (Directors & Above Only):

Each attendee will have the opportunity to attend all 5 Hack sessions during the event.

ORGANIZATIONAL ACCELERATION HACK SESSIONS

1. Structuring for Scalable Success led by Hannah Donoghue (Edge by Ascential)

As organizations seek to scale their ecommerce businesses, having the underlying organizational structure to propel the growth is critical. Leaders will need to identify what are the emerging roles to resource, where they should be investing in talent development and what cross-functional engagement should be now and in the future. Brands will need to decipher how they will balance local vs. global responsibilities and omnichannel customer accountabilities to enable overall organizational acceleration. In this hack session, we will address these organizational decisions and share best practices in designing your ecommerce organization for the needed agility, pace and skillset of the future.

2. Winning Commerce as a Connected Organization led by Donna Sharp (MediaLink)

For many decades the CPG organizational lines between sales and marketing have been clear – enter ecommerce where the connection between demand generation and conversion has never been closer but yet people in these teams have fallen into many traps that prevent collaboration more than ever before (or even purposely circumvent it). This session will highlight some of the most common mistakes that CPG organizations make when it comes to Ecommerce, how to spot and diagnose them as well as some actionable ways to address friction that might exist with your Marketing counterparts today.

3. A Beautiful Constraint: Turning Constraints into Opportunities led by Nick Geoghegan (eatbigfish)

“We had no money so we were forced to think” – Ernest Rutherford Constraints are all around us. Many of us will know that while our ambitions for growth may be unbounded, we are constantly faced with constraints of resource, time, skill, budget and many others that hamper our best laid plans. Often, the difference between success and failure in reaching our ambitions is how we react to those constraints. Will we play the victim, and insist that nothing can be done? Or will we become the transformer and find a new way of doing things that turns that constraint into an advantage? This Masterclass is designed to help people to visualize the constraints they face, and to embrace them as the means by which they achieve their ambitions.

4. Make Your Amazon Dollar Go Farther: Internal Selling, Investing Smarter, and What is Truly Negotiable in eCommerce led by Mike O'Donnell, Claudia Johnson & Brooke Ware (Flywheel Digital)

Investing in ecommerce and Amazon is no longer a question, but a necessity; however, how much is too much? How do we invest toward a sustainable business? In this session, you will learn the a) differences in investment between Amazon and other retailers and why, b) how do you balance margin vs. Amazon profitability, c) the right areas to invest with Amazon (i.e. differentiated products, packaging, etc.), d) what you outsource vs. doing internally, e) what is negotiable with Amazon and what isn’t and f) how to communicate the Amazon message internally to brand teams

5. Advanced Brand Protection Strategies led by Whitney Gibson & Daren Garcia (Vorys)

We’ll begin this session with a short discussion regarding the fundamentals for how best to protect brand integrity in today’s market. This will include an overview of the strategies, policies and techniques being leveraged by brands to deal with unauthorized sellers, quality control within channels and the establishment of lawful controls over online sales. We will detail the problems that arise when companies fail to appropriately protect their brands today, including the proliferation of low-quality unauthorized sellers, free-riding, increased negative product reviews, significant channel conflict and overall harm to brand value.

The brands behind your brands

The cold, hard truth from E^HACKATHON NYC attendees

What venue could possibly contain our collective potential?

The Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle, Washington has promised to do its best :)

Still need more time to decide?

Take all the time you need, but we are humbled to share that every prior E^HACKATHON to date has sold out. So don't miss your chance to get seats for you and your team!

Please email me, Chris Perry, VP of Global Executive Education at chris.perry@ascentialedge.com with any and all questions and inquiries.