Speaking to Marketing at The Marketing Society’s annual conference, McBride said he believed in the "exponential improvement" of technology, and that the convergence of mobile connectivity and social media remains key to reaching a young audience.
McBride, formerly Amazon's UK managing director, said he had "lived through Moore’s Law" – the observation that computers will double in processing power every two years, effectively meaning major technology innovation will speed up over time.
He said: "Microprocessors and bandwidth will all get faster and faster. The phones won’t get any smaller because our fingers aren’t getting smaller, but they will be able to do a lot more, a lot faster than they do today."
"Running along with that is the whole use of social media, especially mobile social media – they are just as important because that’s how you’ll connect to your customer – through social media and through mobile."
McBride particularly highlighted Pinterest and Instagram as useful visual social media sites, along with shopping app Wanelo and WhatsApp.
He said: "I don’t think mobile will ever be 100% of the way people access companies like ASOS, but the younger audience have shown us that’s how they want to do things.
"It's how they get their news, social media, it’s how they want to watch stuff, so you ignore that at your peril."
McBride added that he had "played around" with an Oculus Rift headset, but said the technology was not "ready for the prime time".
He said: "We’re watching it, but it’s not going to influence or affect what we do in the next couple of years."
According to a new study this week from Searchmetrics, Asos is the top UK retailer on Pinterest for the second Christmas running, beating Amazon, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer. The company generates the highest average number of shares, or "pins" per week at 7,202. That compares with just 1,620 pins for Amazon and 1,096 pins for John Lewis.
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