AO boss: ‘All roads lead to tech’

Online retailer AO is cancelling all TV advertising for the year ahead and hiring more than 100 new tech experts.

Speaking yesterday at Retail Week Live, Founder and CEO John Rogers, said: “As we do more and more analysis of it, we can see the return on investment is higher when telling stories. If your business doesn’t provide an amazing service, then social media isn’t for you – but we empower our teams to use social media and some of the programmes we’ve done have been phenomenally successful.”

“It’s not about selling stuff, it’s about engaging in interesting conversations – give something fun and useful first and then, as an output of that, you get a transaction. TV advertising shouts at people. It won’t work. Social media is a completely different discipline.”

When quizzed on AO’s recent announcement that it would hire 50 new tech experts, Rogers replied: “We actually agreed at our board meeting yesterday to double that. I’ve never seen the demand on IT as a graph go down. So, given how ambitious we are a business in our ecosystem, it’s something we need to invest in ahead of the curve. All roads lead to tech, so we should be investing in it with every pound we have, and one more.”