“Do not spend a dime on advertising until you have spent many dollars and hours building page content. I won’t even touch your ad money until then.”
—Amazon.com senior buyer
The year was 2009, and Raj Rao and Loran Gutt, two of the leaders tasked with running 3M’s eTransformation team, faced a serious problem. The 110-year-old company, historically the category captain in old-school brick-and-mortar departments such as office supplies, home improvement, and kitchen cleaning, had done little to digitize its products and get them ready for e-commerce. Now they faced a daunting task: how, with ...
