Affiliates defined: Grubby little people in grubby studios

That’s not my definition of course; that is how the CEO of ASOS, Nick Robertson, chose to describe affiliates. More about the quote here, which he reportedly made in an interview with New Media Age magazine. I’ve not read the full interview to understand the context in which that obnoxious statement was made, but as expected it’s got the affiliate community up in arms. The CEO seems to be a highly optimistic individual who expects to “reintroduce affiliate marketing as it should be.”

Nick is not the first person to have such “high” opinion of affiliates; yet this gentleman has crossed the limits of generalization/ stereotyping. Does Nick know of one area of business that doesn’t have rotten apples? If he meant to say that ASOS is going to weed out bad affiliates and focus on a new program with quality affiliates, he probably needs a lesson or two in business communication.

He talks about “affiliates growing income at our expense”: if that is the spirit with which he approaches affiliate marketing, I think the company may be in for some rough times, because the above statement is a reflection of what he may be thinking about all other partners/ stakeholders. The company’s vendors/suppliers grow income at their expense; for all you know, he may be carrying a similar lowly view about the company’s customers…

Affiliates (as a class) contribute serious revenues (about 8-10% of total revenues as per the latest MarketingSherpa report, and up to 20% for some merchants whose programs do exceptionally well); I don’t know how much ASOS generated via this channel, but if they didn’t generate much, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. Now we all know why.

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