This week, I spoke to Jessy van Eden, brand and strategic partnerships manager at OneDayOnly, about how the brand gets fear of missing out (FOMO) right.
OneDayOnly is an e-commerce platform known for its daily rotating deals, with discounts that reset every 24 hours. This model introduces an element of surprise into online shopping and leverages consumers’ FOMO to drive engagement.
Jessy van Eden is the brand and strategic partnerships manager. Source: Supplied.
What do you do in a day at OneDayOnly?
It starts before the office, my mornings start with a coffee run with my daughter, fresh air, moving the bod and watching the city wake up. By 9am, I'm in it - unpacking previous days performance, understanding how campaigns are tracking, what needs to pivot and ensuring the engine is humming.
Team lunches are a happy moment to connect beyond the fast-paced hustle of working in a 24-hour deal machine. Afternoons are a blend of creating and managing our bigger strategic brand plays and building with partners. It's all fast, full, and tangible, I love it.
OneDayOnly leans into FOMO. Where do you draw the line between excitement and pressure for consumers?
The difference between FOMO done well and FOMO done wrong is the emotional aftertaste. Good urgency feels like a gift, being in on the good-stuff. Bad urgency on the other hand feels like a trap.
We're in the business of the former - our customers should always feel like they've got the inside scoop and like they're in on something before the rest of the world catches on. The nature of our business means our comms team are always leaning into the good FOMO.
The brand runs on urgency every day—how do you personally avoid burning out in that environment?
Personally, I'd like to think I'm pretty good with my own boundaries; working in adland taught me to strengthen them. My mornings set me up for the day to give me clear perspective and this isn't OneDayOnly's first rodeo either, we're 16 years old, independently owned and run and the company is people centric.
We work together brilliantly as a team, fill in gaps for one another, and build together quite smoothly. Having such a close-knit team all steering in the same direction helps with balance.
If OneDayOnly were a person at a party, who are they and what are they doing?
They'd be the host and it would be a karaoke dress up with the theme of Business in the front, Brakpan in the back. While everyone was practicing Cher Do you believe in love he'd firmly stick to his beloved Tequila Song by The Champs.
What’s one trend in e-commerce or branding that you think is overhyped right now?
Uncensored AI creative. And I say this as someone who believes AI has a place in our industry, I'm not anti the technology but there's a version of it that's become a race to replace the creator entirely and I'm firmly in the camp that says: power to the artist. South African storytelling is having an absolute moment right now being raw, specific, culturally loaded, beautiful and the idea that we'd trade that for a prompt feels like a step backwards disguised as innovation. So AI as a tool in a creative's hands? Incredible. AI as a replacement for human creative thinking? Not for me.
If you could bring back one deal for 24 hours just for yourself, what would it be? (think Chicken Licken cost in 1996)
A 5-star beach holiday with the highest staff discount.
What’s influencing your thinking right now? (Could be movies, a clothing brand, a physical space, a person etc)
A few things pulling in different directions. The creative work coming out of South African adland is just lovely. The rise of local narratives in brand storytelling is something I'm watching closely and finding really inspiring.
I'm also spending time with some smart people exploring culture in a more structured way, which is shifting how I think about brand relevance.
And then I've also gone deep on reading to understand how toddler minds work, which sounds niche but turns out to be revelatory for anyone who thinks about human behaviour for a living.
