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Sport Relief

(I should apologise for bringing you here by illicit categorisation and tagging, but I won’t. You might have wasted just 10 seconds. Hopefully you will make the choice to change someone’s world in less than a minute).

When is your next Grand Opening?

I was recently invited to Apple’s store opening in Milton Keynes.

It got me thinking. 
If you are a technology business professional there is no reason why you can’t put on a “Grand Opening” the next time there is a new office, or an “Open Day” when a new Service is launched, or a “Country Tour” when a new product is launched.

Invite your prospects.  Invite your customers.  Get them to mix together and bring their curiosity, experiences, enthusiasm and orientation – it can be the best thing you can associate yourselves with.

If you are a software, hardware or IT Services marketing professional setting up a place to test-drive, experience or catch a free workshop is a golden opportunity.  And add a sprinkle of peer group – more’s the better.

All that said though – I would definitely advise laying on qualified ‘concierge’ staff (in easily spotted attire, a branded polo shirt will do), to provide hints and tips and a guide to everything.

In an era of web 2.0 (and 3.0), of new marketing techniques and new thinking generally – ‘old’ thinking and ‘traditional’ techniques still bear fruit for the lead oriented marketer.

Geek Night 4

I went to an interesting event yesterday evening in Oxford – Oxford Geek Night 4. Oxford Geeks (and the event series) aim to pull together information and people from in and around Oxford, UK. The community is mainly aimed at geeks of computer science and/or Web development, but to be fair they’re a pretty diverse bunch…….Just as well, ‘cos I’m neither, but having worked at a fair few IT companies in my time, ‘Geek’ is a slightly inaccurate descriptive anyway.

In essence, last night’s event aimed to share ideas, techniques and technologies in areas such as web 2.0, the semantic web, online TV, social networking, web development tools and the best practices thereof.

The presentations were very varied. “Saving the World, One Perl Module at a Time” by Tom Steinberg, founder of mySociety showcased a great way that technology + ideas can positively change things. Next up James Gardner, showcased the web framework Pylons.

However, the informal ‘microslots’ of 5 minutes each were the most interesting part for me. These slots took the attendees on a whistle stop tour of the ‘Social Web and the Semantic Web’, Google Sightseeing (Google Earth Blog), Searunner (a new type of web framework founded by Ben Werdmeller), Web Security, and Myth TV (a homebrew PVR project).

Additionally Salmon consultant Rozario Chivers presented his own concepts and ideas on ‘Nanoformats’.

Being a marketer (albeit with a focus on high technology products, services and companies) can give you an instant negative reputation in circles like this, but what I liked most about the style of the event & the community in particular, was how unpretentious they all were, and it all was. This is a sharp contrast to the VC style events I have been to, and the other more formal networking events.

Two big takeaways for me were money might make the world go round, but (big) change is possible without money. And secondly (not that I needed reminding) that great marketing + great technology = the only way forward.

Presentations and Videos will be are available here soon I am sure.

If you are local to Oxford, with a good understanding of web development and web design, and a good level of understanding or interest in technology you might want to consider Geek Night 5, which one assumes will follow soon.

CMR – Customer Managed Relationships

I wrote about Customer Managed Relationships (CMR) here back in July.

The debate still goes on here and here. I find it interesting that web 2.0 technologies are very aligned to this ethos, and that in the context of B2B, web 2.0 may help organisations better understand their customers – and at least partially ‘deal with’ or ‘embrace’ the fact that customers (or consumers) are in control.

There has been much debate about the relevance of web 2.0 in the commercial sector. The news concerning Youtube, Google’s Open Social, Facebook & Microsoft has further fanned the flames as B2B marketing managers crave to identify the real value that web 2.0 will bring to the B2B space; over and above standard user generated content and viral video to name just two spheres of influence web 2.o has garnered.

And so I wonder if establishing a real monetary link between web 2.0 and CRM is what will really create the breakthrough in mindset that seems to be needed to tip the balance?

To me there are too many advertising agencies that are still looking to apply new technology against an old paradigm – where advertising and publishing rules.

That is clearly not the case. Customers manage relationships whether advertisers and brand managers like it or not. But perhaps it is time to prove it?