I’ve had the awesome privilege of working with Directbrands.com, (parent company of bookscene.ca) in the last couple of years, introducing them to a medium that would help supplement their acquisition and retention efforts. While it started with educating them in social media, they were one client that came to quickly embrace it and realize the inherent benefits as it related to ROI. Along the way, social media became a strong channel to quickly gauge customer service satisfaction, test promotions, and alert the business to new insights about their most valuable customers.
This experience has opened their eyes to the possibility of launching a service, leveraging grass roots as a way to help build the business from the ground up – while maintaining and nurturing those key customer relationships along the way.  Rob Weatherall, of Directbrands, has been a true maverick for the brands he manages and has been open to developing and carving out a new channel to help drive marketing efforts.

For bookscene.ca, social media would prove to be somewhat of a challenge–bookscene.ca had a few barriers to contend:

• For a new brand, it had little to no brand awareness
• bookscene.ca had to brace itself against the mighty Amazon.com and Indigo/Chapters in order to hope to create some visibility within the Canadian book category
• The advent of e-books and e-reader technology would be difficult to overcome given bookscene.ca’s core proposition: traditional hard and soft cover books

But bookscene has overcome these obstacles and has found a way to play in this category by differentiating its offering and its appeal to consumers. Through social media, bookscene has been able to really define itself in the Canadian marketplace and will continue to do so. The relationship began with a conversation, and it’s this enduring dialogue that will keep bookscene.ca appealing to consumers in a way that will build loyalty for their business.
Please read the full article on whatsyourtech.com. Bookscene.ca is officially launching September 29, 2010 at the Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto (link). Please RSVP to attend this event.