Foreword to the ERA Europe News, Spring Edition 2016

We started the year with our Lisbon Annual Membership Meeting. Over two days the board reviewed the association’s work of 2015. After another very successful financial year, the association is now close to the targeted reserves of 50% with regard to the planned outgoings and investments for the next financial year. With that in mind, the board discussed the strategy going forward and proposed the projects for 2016 to the general assembly. You can read our detailed report in this newsletter.

A very tangible change for 2016 is the increased investment we will make in government affairs. The new EU Commission has been constituted and has started its hearings in many fields to create a common digital market. To ensure that we identify the key priorities for our own industry, our association urgently requires support staff to help review the overwhelming amount of information from the EU Commission. Teresa Hackner, a Munich based law student, will take on that role. You can find out more about Teresa in our Public Affairs Bulletin.

Today everybody who is in the b2c business claims to have understood the changing media behaviour of the customer and is therefore positioned somewhere between omni- and multi-channel. We had a very intense discussion in Lisbon on the future of ERA Europe and our positioning.

DR and teleshopping’s DNA incorporates everything that most businesses still seek to apply with the multi device digital media business. We on the other hand have always been interactive, we understand customer as well as product data and apply them in our marketing strategies. We have always felt and continue to feel at home with any media usage device, such as in-store video, TV, catalogue, online or mobile. What makes us special and unique is the ability to tell the story within a video or moving picture to sell a specific product – we are able to create that buying impulse. We can rightfully say, that we are the multi-channel home shopping industry.

This approach is also reflected in our communication at the 2016 €lectronic Home Shopping Conference. In 2015, we introduced our MCMS (Multi-Channel Money Streams) conference, held during our annual conference. You can find out more about the 2016 MCMS conference in this newsletter. As a European media industry, we strongly believe that hosting our own industry awards for outstanding achievements is long overdue. We will therefore celebrate the EMMAs for the first time, (the ERA Europe Multi-Channel Multi-Screen Awards).

Last but not least you will have noticed, that we have changed the marketing of our conference. Representing the multi-channel industry in Europe, it was time to implement video content into our communication and you will all have received our Business Talk of the Week emails by now. We hope that the interviews already sent gave you some inspiration and that you are now eagerly awaiting upcoming Business Talk of the Week interviews.

So please enjoy the latest edition of this newsletter. We are convinced that you will find interesting articles and even more inspiration. We would like to gratefully thank all our contributors to this newsletter.

Best regards, 

Isabelle Fournier and Julian Oberndörfer