What’s Next In Marketing And Advertising (2009)

Here is an updated look at What’s Next In Marketing and Advertising based on the presentation by the same title that Paul Isakson gave last year at Marketing 2.0.

The greatest takeaway from this outstanding presentation (outstanding in so many ways:- message, typeface, imagery) from my perspective is, “It’s not what you say that matters, its what you do.“

Living by that statement alone will make me a better marketer, and the companies that I work for more many times more effective.

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, Business, Ideas and Riffs, Strategy, ideas, marketing , Advertising, marketing, marketing 2.0, Paul Isakson, slideshare

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time has been on sale for over three weeks now.  I haven’t read it yet (or bought a copy) but it sounds very good.

The 100 books covered covered are listed here.

Filed under: Books, Branding, Business, Entrepreneur, Ideas and Riffs, Media, Planning, Strategy, ideas, marketing , 100 Best Business Books, 800ceoread, Jack Covert, Todd Sattersten

Another Echo Chamber: The real-time web

One of the big things about the web as a platform imho is that it places ‘people’ not ‘corporates’ at the centre.  With people come opinions, ideas, thoughts and conversations.  And lets face it: People work and move faster than bloated, process based corporates.

But there are issues.

Whilst the work from venerable web firms like Twitter, Google Docs, Acrobat Connect, Meebo and Octopz are certainly a step in the right direction towards a Real Time Web (and technologies like XMPP, SIP, HTTP extensions (Comet), and RTMP are helping too), I can’t help thinking that as the Real Time Web becomes a popular term and trend, it will be marred by negativity around real time syndication or overuse of various RSS feeds and APIs.

Take a look at an example below (click image to enlarge)

Now I am a fan of e-Consultancy.com – but is there any value for me (the customer) seeing multiple tweets on the same subject?  I don’t think so.  It really makes me feel like I am sat in the middle of an echo chamber.

I am sure there is a big difference between genuine Real Time Web Applications, and Real Time syndication.  But it is sure annoying to seeing more and more web properties displaying ‘real time content’ in this way.

Real Time web without de-duplication?  No thanks.

Filed under: 2.0, Ideas and Riffs, RSS, Semantic Web, Twitter, Web, Web2.0, digital, ideas, marketing, technology, web 2.0

Seth Godin speaking in the UK – “The London session”

In a rare UK presentation Seth Godin will present on how marketers must go beyond attracting eyeballs to tightening the interconnection and deepening commitment with their clients and staff alike. You can read more about it here and buy tickets here.

In addition to his presentation, as usual Seth will lead a dynamic Q and A session giving audience members the opportunity to ask direct questions relevant to their own situations and receive answers from the leading marketing mind of today.

If you have not heard him speak before, here are a few tidbits.

Filed under: Business, Entrepreneur, Events, Ideas and Riffs, Strategy, ideas, marketing

The rumours of the death of the blogosphere are … perhaps greatly exaggerated

Nicholas Carr states that;

Technorati has identified 133 million blogs since it started indexing them in 2002. But at least 94 percent of them have gone dormant, the company reports in its most recent “state of the blogosphere” study. Only 7.4 million blogs had any postings in the last 120 days, and only 1.5 million had any postings in the last seven days.

Wow.  I’m amazed.  1.5 million blogs (not bloggers), globally.

A sizeable crowd are saying blogging is mainstream.  And dead.  And yet there are only 1.5 million regularly updated blogs. Strikes me that the problem is not ‘blogging being mainstream’, but finding the good stuff between the professional blogs and the drivel.

26/11/08 Update: This is a good perspective too.

Filed under: Blogging, Business, Ideas and Riffs, Measurement, Media, Web, blogs, ideas, technology , Blogging, mainstream, nicholas carr, state of the blogosphere, Technorati

10 reasons why online advertising spend will dip in the UK recession

10 reasons why online advertising will dip in the UK recession:

1. There is a very small (but growing) percentage of conscientious people who don’t want to waste the advertiser’s money on a bad PPC click-through.  And so, as times get tougher, and because everything is tracked, some statistical trends will show a downward shift.
2. There is a percentage of people who do want to waste the advertiser’s money on a bad click-through.  And because everything is tracked, stats are up on poor quality click through’s.
3. Online advertisements are still too impersonal.  And this will become even more apparent in a ressesion.  If you read a magazine with an advert, or if you see an advert in a store, you can be mad at the shop assistant or the publisher.  If you click on a bad web ad, you have only yourself to blame — and by default that is never fun.  And rarely repeated.
4. Online PPC ads like “iPod Touch, just £20″ work.  But an ad like “SAAS.  Bespoke BPM Development testing professional” doesn’t.  The largest volume of investment in PPC advertising is in the long tail, and the adverts down in the long tail are broken.  Badly.  Ineffective advertisers with be the first to cut the budgets or shut down their experiments.
5. When up against it in a recession, human beings often ’stretch’ the truth.  The problem is, misleading and aversive adverts don’t perform well, especially online and especially during difficult times – when consumers become more defensive, critical and wary.
6. There’s no way “ad supported” ventures can pay for as many things as they were supposed to pay for any more.  Now this is being realised, there is going to be a pileup of ventures hitting the wall- taking their ad budgets with them.
7. When online ad revenues fall, there is major potential for a media driven ‘death spiral’.  A well communicated idea, story or worldview behind the short term argument “online advertising is dying” will easily transcend more relevant medium or long term spend trends.
8. Online advertising is horribly inefficient (becoming less so) but cheap (becoming less so).  And cutting spend is easy-peasy.  Your mum could do it.  Human beings are programmed to make these easy decisions quickly and painlessly.
9. ‘The End of Online Advertising as we know it’ will be auto-translated into ‘The End of Online Advertising’ in the consciousness of unknowing or immature advertising buyers.  The product of this will be FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) in the consciousness of a big proportion of online advertising buyers in the long tail.
10. Behavioural targeting will be trumpeted as a saviour in an era when existing online advertising will be promoted as ‘in transistion’.  The result will be a drop in spending whilst behavioural advertising is researched and evaluated.

Filed under: Advertising, Business, Computing, Conversion, Ideas and Riffs, Media, Strategy, Web, digital, ideas, marketing, technology , budgets, marketing, Online Advertising, recession

The Powerpoint Pitch: Wake me up in ten minutes

I like Apple’s marketing.  It’s great.

(Do I still have your attention? Bear with me on this)

But their runaway success has a down side (not for Apple).

The (very) big downside is the Powerpoint slide that looks a bit like this:

You’ve seen it before right?  Wrong.  I knocked this out 30 seconds ago.  But one’s like this are used in nearly every presentation given by creative agencies and design teams trying to make a point.

OMG!  Wake me up ten minutes into the pitch or presentation when you’ve got to the bit when you demonstrate your own creative thinking you me-to-wannabe-good-for-nothing-look-a-like-creative-agency-of-little-distinction.

Arrrgggghhhhh.

Do people fall for this?

Filed under: Apple, Branding, Business, Design, Fun, Ideas and Riffs, Media, Strategy, ideas, marketing, technology , Apple, Ctreative Pitch, Powerpoint

Google looks to measure ‘influence’ and the ‘influencers’

Dirk van Graver at “Record | Preserve | Share” has commented on a business week article that asks us to imagine one number that sums up how influential we are.  It is a subject I discussed some time ago, when I was craving a golden ratio in relation to social networking.

Back then I said;

It is pretty obvious Trust would be a great dimension for social networks to embrace. So would Influence or Buzz (or both). And when elements like this are developed I believe Social Networks will be onto something very significant indeed.

If you didn’t follow the link, according to the Business Week piece, Google has a patent pending “for ranking the most influential people on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.”

It is a great idea.  Clearly if this works, it would finally make adverts on social networks relevant and potentially profitable.

It would seem (if the report is to be believed) that Google is applying the same approach to social networks that it has used to dominate the online search business (it would be like a page rank).  Apparently the Google approach would take into account all manner of aspects of influence, from ‘how many’ people you know, to ‘how frequently’ you talk with them, to ‘how strongly’ they value your opinion.  So your ’score’ could be compared with that of pretty much anyone in the world.  A personal Google ‘influence score’ if you like.

Hear are my hopes and fears:

FEAR #1: I worry that if an influence score is used to justify, or generate a monitization strategy for social networking sites, the emphasis on what constitutes ‘influence’ must start on a sound footing.  This is an area that I really don’t want to see messed up – as I’m not sure many social networking sites can withstand high profile failures at monitization.

FEAR # 2:  If influence is measured by Google, (or anyone else) surely everyone will be able to find their (or their companies, or their competitors) biggest advocates or doomsayers?  Yes?  Well I cannot see that happening accurately.  I would be very surprised if your biggest influencers are known by you (i.e connected to you) and so how do Google propose to measure or track that?  And in fact, surely influencers by definition are 3rd parties (i.e. are unconnected to you) in the first place?

Hey, maybe I missed something and that is the whole reason why Google is exploring this.

Which brings me on to my great hope.

Hope #1: I hope how ‘many’ people you know (‘follow’, ‘connect’ with, ‘add’ as a friend) is not closely related to your degree of influence.  Those fools who have adopted a strategy of following ‘en-masse’ in Twitter (in the hope that a high percentage will return the favour) must not be seen by advertising buyers and sellers as ‘influencial’.  They are not.  Bob with 1000 friends is not necessarily more influential than Susan with just 85.

Equally seniority isn’t the be-all either.  John the 46 year old bachelor & CEO is not necessarily more influential than Raphael the 28 year old IT Manager, who is a father of two.  And postcode xyz, doesn’t bear higher influencers than postcode 123, in the same way that an OxBridge student shouldn’t be seen as more influencial that a 2:2 student from a ‘lesser’ ranked university.  My hope is that an influence algorithm doesn’t arbitrarily look at volumes and a set of pre-determined values and rules.

Influence is, I believe, far more multi dimensional and complex than that.

If this becomes a reality what are your hopes and fears for ‘Influencer’ tracking?  I’d love to here your views.

Filed under: Business, Buzz, Facebook, Google, Ideas and Riffs, Influence, Measurement, Online, Social Graphs, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, Web2.0, ideas, marketing, technology, trust, web 2.0 , Branding, Business Week, Google, Influence, Personal Brand, ranking, Social Networking, Twitter

20 free eBooks about social media

Chris Brogan points us at 20 Free eBooks about Social Media

(Don’t ignore the extras in the comments)

Filed under: 2.0, Books, Business, Ideas and Riffs, Influence, Media, Planning, Public Relations, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, Twitter, User Generated Content, Web, Web2.0, digital, ideas, marketing, technology, trust, web 2.0, word of mouth , Chris Brogan, ebooks, freee, Media, social, Social Media

the little things that matter

Adam Kmiec is an Interactive Marketer at Colle+McVoy.  His presentation on Slideshare about micro interactions is well worth looking at.

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, Branding, Business, Conversational marketing, Customer service, Design, Facebook, Ideas and Riffs, Media, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, Twitter, User Generated Content, WOM, Web, Web2.0, digital, ideas, marketing, technology, trust, web 2.0, word of mouth , 2.0, interactions, interactive, marketing, Media, micro, new, social, Twitter, Web

The future of marketing communications….

….or “How to think in a world gone digital.” by Jan Leth, Ogilvy & Mather.

Filed under: 2.0, Advertising, Branding, Business, Buzz, Data, Design, Ideas and Riffs, Media, Planning, Social Media, Social Networking, Strategy, User Generated Content, Web2.0, digital, ideas, marketing, ogilvy, technology, web 2.0, word of mouth , 2.0, Advertising, alpha, beta, conversations, dada, Data, digital planning, future, Jan Leth, ogilvy, Web

Definitions of marketing

There is a lot of debate and commentary about Seth Godin’s recent post about a definition of ‘marketing’.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) would have you think the definition is this. Ouch.

Is Seth’s definition any better? Does its brevity raise more questions than it actually answers? Do the four words focus the mind (an achievement in itself)?

I really think marketers need to make their own personal definition of marketing – in every role, and in every project. But I do think a little more Seth and a little less (CIM) would help focus the mind. Ofcourse the real message here is that if you under promise you are invisible. And over delivering needs to be a defacto response in your company. Why?

Consistent ‘over delivery’ = Reliability

Over delivery = ‘Delight’

Trust = Reliability + Delight

As for under promising? R.I.P.

Filed under: Business, Ideas and Riffs, Strategy, ideas, marketing, trust , Chartered Institute of Marketing, CIM, definition, delight, marketing, reliability, seth godin

A story about unfair advantage

I read a great story recently – and whilst it has nothing to do with b2b marketing I like it so much I thought I’d share it anyway. What it teaches you I don’t know, but let me know.

The story stems from a discussion Martina Hingis was having with journalists after a game she lost – in her opinion due to excessive grunting.

Whilst the argument was tailing off – Martina settled the matter in a way that you and I couldn’t, because we haven’t played in a grand slam final.

When one player grunts, she said, the other player can’t hear the racket hit the ball, and is thus deprived of a vital item of information about how the ball will behave next. In other words, the grunter is taking an unfair advantage. Cheating.

When it was put to her that some people might not be able to help grunting, Martina pointed out that if Federer didn’t have to grunt, then nobody did.

And indeed Federer doesn’t grunt. And if Federer doesn’t grunt, nobody needs to. The case is closed.

Filed under: Ideas and Riffs, ideas , Business, cheating

Find your brand spam

I had an interesting email exchange with Seth Godin a few days ago – in response to this post.

During this brief exchange Seth wrote, “I hate email.”

It turns out one of my email replies went straight into his spam folder. And he felt awful a couple of days later, because having retrieved the item and having read my message, he knew he would have replied sooner – given the chance.

But Seth ‘hates email.’

Of course, in reality he might not. Seth hates ‘Spam’ and the effect it has had on his email use. And his reputation. So much so, that it might have made him say (and think) the wrong thing.

For B2b brands there is a lesson here. Someone somewhere might well be ‘hating’ your product or service due to something that you have no control of. The best B2b marketers will try their darn’dest to find the unrelated ‘Spam’ that messes or cloggs up their brand – and look to fix it.

As for email? It turns out the real Killer App (for productivity and collaboration) is actually Spam. What a shame. I am sure innovation pays a price.

Filed under: Direct Email, Direct Mail, Email, Ideas and Riffs, ideas, marketing, technology , innovation, seth godin, Spam, Email, BBC, Killer App, Productivity, collaboration

Great ideas

Great Ideas need landing gear as well as wings. C.D. Jackson

Filed under: Business, Fun, Ideas and Riffs, Planning, Quotes, Strategy, ideas , C.D. Jackson, great ideas, inspiration, Quotes