We are living in exponential times

Filed under: 2.0, Business, Media, Web, Web2.0, technology, web 2.0 , Did you know?, Jeff Brenman, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod

Direct Mail Resource

The Royal Mail (the national postal service of the United Kingdom) has to be part privatised by 2010, and in the run up to this date there is no doubt in my mind that the company is trying to raise its game. (Royal Mail Holdings plc owns Royal Mail Group Limited, which in turns operates the brands Royal Mail (UK letters), Parcelforce Worldwide (UK parcels) and General Logistics Systems. The Post Office Ltd., which provides counter services, is a wholly owned subsidiary).

One innovation I have spotted (and like) is the MMC – The Mail Media Centre.  The Royal Mail’s vision is to be “demonstrably the best and most trusted postal services company in the world” and in this regard they seem to be on a big ‘win the hearts and minds’ mission.

And the MMC is a big step in the right direction.  Its a cool resource for all direct marketers to immerse themselves in. By showcasing compelling creative and offering expert advice, it is clear they want to inspire excellence in direct mail.

Key contributors include Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK, London, Patrick Collister, editor of Xtreme Directory and Amanda Phillips.  They also feature expert content from Chris Arnold, strategic & creative director of Symple, Darren Burnett, head of data planning, Elvis, Mike Colling, managing director of Mike Colling & Company, Steven Day, director of UK Changes, Tim Dunn, head of marketing services at Mobile Interactive Group (MIG), Caroline Kimber, head of data planning at Stephens Francis Whitson, Jane Pritchard, head of strategic planning at Tullo Marshall Warren, Clare Taylor of Clare Taylor Consulting UK, coupon company Valassis, and Chris Whitson, planning director of Stephen Francis Whitson. Plus, they have made available selected content from an award-winning Redwood Publishing title - Contact magazine.

That’s some team sheet!

Yes the devoted online marketer will no doubt shout me down (“if you’re not with me, you’re my enemy” lol), and yes there is lots going on in online media that is down right impressive; but when used appropriately traditional direct mail still has a role to play in the marketing mix.

Don’t discount traditional direct mail just yet.  It can still be very innovative and very effective when used well.

If you are going to take a peek at the MMC, if I were you I’d head straight to the Creative Showreel.   Then take a look at their Knowledge Centre, Case Studies, Research, Facts & Figures, and the other Useful Tools.

Enjoy!

Filed under: Business, Design, Direct Mail, Media, Planning, Research, Strategy, ideas, marketing , Best practice, case studies, Direct Marketing, DM, Facts, Figures, MMC, Research, The Royal Mail

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

The disconnect between between Brands and Agencies

Futurelab is a marketing strategy consultancy with a focus on customer-centricity and innovation.   They help:

• Marketers to generate the highest possible return on their investments.
• Innovators to create meaning for the customer and the bottom line
• CEO’s to connect their strategy to what customers really want.

Now I have never worked with Futurelab, nor can I say with any authority whatsoever, that they are good at what they do.  But I was delighted when they emailed me with a nice report offer.

As a result of Futurelabs belief that something is “seriously broken in the land of marketing”, they have decided to encourage debate and thinking by producing and distributing two reports.

The reports analyse the disconnect that currently exists between brands and the agencies that service them – with the aim to encourage a global conversation on the renaissance of marketing as a profession that drives profit, innovation and customer-centricity.

Here is what they cover;

• In Reconsidering the Advertising Industry they take the agency perspective, and compare the internal workings of agencies to what their clients need.  They offer tactical suggestions and structural recommendations that allow agency executives to better equip their organisation for a challenging future.
• In Bridging the Brand Divide they look at the same data from a client perspective; reviewing what brands are looking for and what they feel agencies are not delivering.

For each disconnect (between Brands and Agencies) they offer suggestions and tips brand leaders can apply to get their agencies to better deliver what they need.

Great stuff.

Filed under: Advertising, Branding, Business, Media, Planning, Strategy, ideas, marketing, technology , agencies, Branding, brands, Bridging the Brand Divide, customer, disconnect, Futurelab, innovation, investment, marketing, profit, Reconsidering the Advertising Industry

Digital Britain: Preliminary Report

On 17 October 2008, Lord Carter, the minister for communications, technology and broadcasting, began work on a report dubbed “Digital Britain”. The idea was to create an action plan that would secure the UK’s place ‘at the head’ of the new media age.  There is more about this action plan here and here.

Released today, the interim report outlines 22 specific actions, and in so doing commits the government too.  These are based on a range of topics including: Universal Connectivity, Original UK Content, Digital Content, Digital Radio, Digital TV, Mobile Wireless, and Next Generation Networks.

The Culture Secretary, Andy Burnham, outlines the report’s interim findings here (why are the parlimentary benches so empty?) and the BBC editorial team reports on some of the key points taken from the report here.

It seems feedback is mixed with the announcement of Broadband ‘in every home by 2012′ being called a ‘damp squib’ no less.  Potentially a tad party political perhaps, but IT industry analyst firm Ovum said the report was well-intended but “severely lacking in the detail.”  Ouch.

As the final version is due in June, one can only assume this will be even meatier – but for the keenest digerati the complete interim report is here (open’s 2MB .pdf) in its 81 page glory.  Enjoy.

Filed under: Business, Computing, Media, Online, WIFI, digital, technology, wi-fi , BBC, Broadband Britain, Digital Britain, Interim Report, Ovum

The Media and the shape of things to come

Digital guru Clay Shirky gives Guardian writer Tom Teodorczuk his media forecast for 2009 – taking in the role of newspapers, books and magazines and TV.

Some Soundbites

Newspapers: “The 500-year-old accident of economics occasioned by the printing press – high upfront cost and filtering happening at the source of publication – is over.”

Books and Magazines: “I think the big revolution is going to be print on demand.”

TV: “The idea that the old geographical segmenting of terrestrial broadcasts is recreatable is a fantasy and a waste of time.”

Filed under: 2.0, Media, Web2.0, digital, technology, web 2.0 , 2009, Books, Clay Shirky, Guardian, Magazines, Media, newspaper, predictions, TV

Superb internet marketing community & FREE industry reports (no catch!)

I wanted to draw you attention to a FREE resource for those of you who want to benefit from a community of the world’s digital marketing and ecommerce professionals. Econsultancy exists to help its members “sharpen their strategy, source suppliers, get quick answers, compare notes, help each other out and discover how to do everything better online.” I have to say that it is a great source of independent advice and insight on digital marketing and ecommerce.

imho there’s no shortage of marketing opinion online, but being ten years and with 71,000 marketers Econsultancy is pretty special.  Bronze membership is FREE and there is more info here.

These are complimentary reports you get for free upon joining (there’s another 20+ too!).  Great, er, value!

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Online PR Industry Benchmarking Report

By Michelle Goodall and Aliya Zaidi, December 2008

Overview Authors: Michelle Goodall and Aliya Zaidi Pages: 35 Features: Survey-based research about the Online PR Industry, with expert input from respected industry commentators.

Digital Outsourcing Survey Report

By Econsultancy, December 2008

This report, produced in association with Lemon Digital Production, is aimed at agencies who are interested in the business case and challenges associated with outsourcing digital work.

SEO Supplier Showcase November 2008

November 2008

Online Customer Engagement Report 2009

By Econsultancy, November 2008

The third annual Online Customer Engagement Report has been produced in partnership with cScape. This research is based on a survey of 1,300 respondents carried out in September and October 2008.

Email Marketing Briefing – November 2008

By Econsultancy, November 2008

This free, 12-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Email Marketing held in autumn 2008.

Comparison Shopping Engines Survey Report 2008

By Econsultancy, October 2008

This DoubleClick-sponsored research is based on a survey of retailers and agencies carried out in August and September 2008, with the aim of understanding more about the use of comparison shopping.

Paid Search Marketing Supplier Showcase October 2008

October 2008

Paid Search Briefing – October 2008

By Econsultancy, October 2008

This free, 12-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Paid Search.

Affiliate Marketing Briefing – October 2008

By Econsultancy, October 2008

This free, 11-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Affiliate Marketing.

Measurement, Analytics and Optimisation Briefing – October 2008

By Econsultancy, September 2008

This free, 12-page briefing contains a write-up of an E-consultancy roundtable on Measurement, Analytics and Optimisation.

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The Services Econsultancy Provide:

Reports: Econsultancy is an award-winning online publisher of reports covering best practice, user experience benchmarking, market data, supplier selection, template files, trends and innovation aimed at internet professionals who want practical advice on all aspects of e-business.

Training, Learning & Development: Econsultancy operates a highly popular training division, used by the world’s leading brands for staff education, both in-house and via public courses. We provide training across all areas of digital marketing and ecommerce and at all levels from accredited one day courses to formal qualifications including diplomas and a Masters in Digital Marketing.

Events: Econsultancy hosts over 100 events a year, including conferences such as the Online Marketing Masterclasses, Future of Digital Marketing and Digital Cream as well as regular Supplier Showcases, Roundtables, the annual Innovation Awards and a range of social events.

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Free memberships of marketing clubs, and online resources are ten a penny.  You just have to surf, or browse LinkedIn groups to see that.  But Econsultancy is very different.  I’d highly recommend you join if you are an internet professional who wants practical advice on all aspects of e-business.

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Analyst, Analytics, Blogging, Branding, Business, Buzz, CRM, Customer Experience, Design, Direct Mail, Email, Events, Media, Mobile, Online, Planning, Research, SEO, SEO / SEM, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media, Strategy, Usability, User Generated Content, Viral, Web, Web2.0, digital, marketing, technology, web 2.0 , development, ecommerce, Econsultancy, Events, Free, learning, reports, Strategy, training

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

HiPPO – Highest Paid Person’s Opinion

What have I been doing? It turns out there is a phrase for it, and it’s been around a while.

“HiPPO’s rule the world when it comes to creating customer experiences. And that’s a bad thing. No matter what you think the optimal customer experience should be on the website it is quite likely that you walk into a meeting room, or office, and regardless of your competence the HiPPO decides what goes on the site.” Courtesy Avinash Kaushik

HiPPO stands for: the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

Thankfully there is some great technology making HiPPO’s extinct. Multi-variable testing tools & platforms like Interwoven’s Optimost will continue to make a big difference in the remainder of 2008 and in 2009.

Filed under: Analytics, Business, Conversion, Design, IT, Measurement, Media, Software, Strategy, Testing, Usability, digital, marketing, technology , Customer Experience, HIPPO, marketing, multi-variable testing, optimisation, Optimost, technology, web design

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

Bad design can be beneficial

Craig Stout a creative director at Interbrand NY, together with his colleague Scott Milano, have authored an interesting byline that has appeared in Interbrand’s www.brandchannel.com online newsletter this morning.

In it, they outline why some of the world’s most successful websites are so ugly and adored: Google, eBay, Craigstlist and Wikipedia, I am sure you have read pieces like this before.

And whilst they raise a number of very important arguments – I think they missed one key point that Seth Godin raised in May 2006.  That being, “bad” design (that is to say, slightly bad design), can facilitate engagement and might actually be a good thing!

Slightly bad design isn’t familiar. It’s off. It demands attention. (Very bad design demands the ‘back’ button, of course). One of the reasons that experienced power tool users–like table saws–can still lose a finger is that they don’t pay attention… it’s too easy to turn the thing on and just use it.

A phrase I have always enjoyed is “you can break the rules, when you know all the rules” and I think this applies here. There is hope for us all it would appear, but there are many rules to learn on the path to web design enlightenment.

Filed under: Business, Design, Media, Strategy, Web, marketing, technology , attention, bad web design, Brand Channel, Craig Stout, Craigslist, ebay, Google, Interbrand, Scott Milano, seth godin, wikipedia

NMA Podcasts: Top Interactive Agencies 2008

This month sees New Media Page publish its Top 100 Interactive Agencies Guide for 2008.  The piece finds the sector “guardedly optimistic” about the future, following a second consecutive year of double digit growth. The NMA team and digital agency heads discuss how prepared the industry is for an economic downturn, and what the future holds for the sector.

Filed under: Business, Media, Planning, Research, Strategy, digital, marketing, technology , podcast, best interactive agencies 2008, NMA

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