Feb 19, 2012 | Communication, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media
Just a few months ago, QR codes seemed to me to be the answer to a marketers prayer, a simple way for products and services to connect with anyone with a mobile device, and an interest.
However, Aussies, often quick adapters of technology seemed not to be interested. At a recent wine symposium of a major wine region to which I was lucky enough to score an invitation to, I saw only one brand using QR codes, and yesterday in a major retail outlet, I scoured to the place to find, none. (great excuse eh, just looking for a QR code darling!). This lack of take-up by Australian wineries was a surprise to me, then Joan Muschamp posted on the Social media examiner site, and all became clear.
I thought wineries would rush to QR codes, perhaps the explanation in this article talking about the next big thing, leading to the early death of QR codes, Mobile Visual Search, that we humans are visual animals, and a big bar code does not do it for us, has something in it.
Soon we will be able to point our phone at a building, label, poster, product, whatever, and get immediate feedback on the object. Currently the technology is pretty early stage, Google have started marketing it as “Google Goggles” and Apple has their version as well.
Point is, the pace of innovation is still accelerating, and the opportunities are for the early adopters, the marketers who get on top of a consumer friendly technology early, and leverage it for the brand, by connecting to their content, and telling their stories.
Feb 16, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Social Media
The world is full of paradoxes.
Apple, the ultimate closed system is now again, the worlds most valuable company, but was started by two blokes, one of whom was, and remains an advocate of open systems, Steve Wozniak, and the other, Steve Jobs, a passionate and demanding driver of closed systems, with commercial windows. It will be enlightening to hear the analysis of market share and profitability as Googles open Android enabled devices pull away from Apple’s closed version in mobile devices
IBM almost went broke trying to hold everything inside its business model, then opened up, completely revised their business model, and emerged from its near death as a much stronger business. Wikipedia 1.0 was tried as a closed system, but succeeded only when Jimmy Wales relinquished enormous amounts of power to the crowd. Similarly, Linux was started on the bulletin boards of the early web, by a small group led by Linux Thorvaldsen who simply wanted to get away from the control, then exerted by that early, and still, proponent of closed systems, Microsoft.
So what are the lessons in all this?
- Simply that there is no one cookie cutter model that can be applied, that differing models suit different circumstances, and times.
- Nothing lasts forever, the next iteration will call into question all the assumptions of the previous model
- The model is evolving all the time, trying to lock it in is a bit like Canute’s efforts with the tide.
Feb 10, 2012 | Communication, Social Media
The risks, as well as the benefits of social media Social media are now slowly becoming recognised, particularly as the list of companies who “should know better” gets longer.
Given the potential for social media to trash a brand built over decades almost overnight, any responsible due diligence and risk assessment process now takes in social media as a key component of an enterprises value.
An often used first step is to encourage the evolution of a “code of conduct” to guide behavior. Many large companies are now doing this, including Coca Cola. Their code is on the net for all to see, and sensibly, they are allowing it to evolve as behavior in social media evolves. The Coke code is a great place for others to start thinking about how they want their employees and other stakeholders to interact in Social media. An alternative is to go back to first principals, and ask what you as a consumer of SM expect from a site, the list would be a bit different to the Coke one, more like this, on Social Media Examiner.
However you go about it, fact is that you need a robust policy to keep out the robots & trashers that is transparent, and rigorously executed, whilst enabling the evolution necessary in an ecology changing every day.
Feb 2, 2012 | Customers, Marketing, Social Media
I purchased a set of Sidchrome tools as a 20 year old working on my first car, simply because a mate doing an apprenticeship told me they were the best tools, and 40 years later, I still think Sidchrome are worth the money, despite not putting a spanner on a cylinder head for 30 years.
The power of word of mouth referral for a brand.
The world has changed, and we all now go looking for product reviews on line, and as the volume of those searches has sky-rocketed, so has the incentive for marketers to game the system. Use a pseudonym, or pay for someone to tell the world how great your product is, nothing stopping you. The line between advertising and endorsement by a trusted figure blurred beyond recognition? Perhaps not, so long as negative reviews are able to get equal time.
Social media is a great leveler, both positive and negative reviews get oxygen, reviewers can build a bank of credibility by being even-handed. EBay’s rating system of the performance of buyers and sellers is a great example of the way it can works, as is Amazons book review system.
Planting reviews that are advertising cowering as reviews is dodgy, but ultimately OK, so long as the product delivers on the promise. False reviews are immoral, wrong, and dangerous, as the power of social networks will find you out, and shoot your lousy product dead. This infographic from Hubspot makes for interesting reading.
Feb 1, 2012 | Customers, Marketing, Social Media
I’m 60, an early adopter of marketing analytics in the 70’s. Demographics, U&A, and product positioning research all hooked into mass marketing media, the foundation of our mass market, consumer led social revolution.
Now all that is irrelevant, or almost.
Marketing now is about engaging with an individual, and groups of individuals with a common mind-set, weather they be social butterflies from the eastern suburbs of Sydney, or driving a truck in the Kimberley’s.
Their demographics do not matter any more, what matters is their mind set, and increasingly we can communicate to a mind set with the tools of the web 2.0.
This just makes marketing harder and more accountable, as creativity and innovative thinking now trumps budget dollars, and mass reach every time, and you can measure the return from every dollar spent.
It also makes it more rewarding for those who embrace the challenge.
Jan 31, 2012 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Social Media
Traditional paper publishing is going down the slot, we all know that, but it still has a place, particularly the magazines, and most particularly the lower volume, niche end, high fashion and exotic cars for example.
So what happens to websites included in a print ad when a magazine releases an App for a tablet? There are a bunch of new dimensions here:
- Does the advertiser pay more for the website to be activated on the tablet?, or
- Does the cost of the ad to the advertiser include the cost of activating the website?,
- Is an activation fee a one -off, or per site activation fee?
- Should an advertiser pay an additional fee as a tablet subscriber clicks on an activated link?
- Should the subscriber to the print edition have free access to the web edition?, or do they need to pay again for what they have bought already?
- What is the cost relativity between the tablet version and the print? Does the tablet subscriber get a discount on the paper edition to put on her table?
This is making my head hurt, but I am pretty sure that there will be a huge amount of experimentation going on, and in 10 years we will be wondering what all the fuss was about, as the answer will be obvious.
