Aug 25, 2011 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
“Old” marketing is all about a business sending its messages out to their markets, it is what we are all used to, and it is the way much of our marketing ecosystem has evolved, outbound marketing.
The “new” marketing ecosystem is all about attracting your customers, potential customers, and brand building targets to you, inbound marketing.
But is it “new”?
Not really, trade shows which have been with us forever, are largely about inbound marketing, and marketers have always been aware of the power of word of mouth, and have sought ways to harness it.
Inbound marketing is pretty powerful, as by the time a customer has come to you, the first couple of hurdles of awareness, and empathy that need to be cleared by outbound marketing before there is a chance of a sale, have been cleared by the customer before they meet you. They are willing to be engaged in the next stage of building a brand, or making a sale.
Social media, blogs, and all the exploding electronic opportunities to communicate constitute the means to embrace outbound marketing. Increasingly we are seeing research that supports the power of these “new” marketing mediums, and whilst some remain wedded to the old ways, the future is with those who innovate in the ways they communicate.
Aug 22, 2011 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Social Media
Media is now “free”, you can make a commercial and put it up on youtube and work/hope to attract an audience, a significant difference to buying time on TV, where you are paying for the delivery of an audience to your advertisement, assuming not too many of them can time-shift to avoid it.
Most ads on youtube and other free media fail to generate viewers beyond the immediate family of those who made it. Some however, generate a significant audience, and a very few deliver a huge audience, one that chooses to watch, and have therefore the potential to delver a brand proposition with enormous authenticity.
This commercial for Dove achieves this rare double, powerful positioning, and a wide audience, almost 13.5 million views to date, although a few, like me, are hardly in the target market, but it is one of the very rare few where they got far more than they paid for.
Aug 19, 2011 | Collaboration, Innovation, Leadership, Social Media
The astonishing explosion of creativity that occurred in Florence in the 1500’s was precipitated when the Medici family brought together creative people from a range of disciplines, painters, sculptors, writers, philosophers, mathematicians, architects, engineers, and sparked the renaissance by creating and facilitating the connections and cross fertilisation between these creators.
The common denominator amongst all these creative people the Medici’s brought together was curiosity, a willingness to see solutions to their problems, and ideas they can use in the work of others, and a willingness to experiment, question, learn, and collaborate.
To a considerable degree, the Medici effect also impacted the UK midlands after the steam engine was utilised in cotton and woollen mills, and it is happening again now in the manner in which the internet is being used to connect people, and transform just about everything in our daily lives.
Perhaps the only thing not being altered is the same thing that remained unaltered in previous incarnations of the Medici’s impact, the necessity for people to trust, and engage with each other on a personal level, and the role of genuine leadership in determining how resources will be assembled and allocated.
Aug 12, 2011 | Communication, Social Media
Yesterday I was surprised when I posted the entry having a shot at the crap service Optus offers customers with a problem of their making, and a screen came up telling me it was my 600th post.
Amazing to me, what started as a creative outlet, a way of expressing my views, and perhaps connecting with a few who shared those, and could contribute to their evolution, would extend to 600 posts.
Often I am asked “where they come from” , and I honestly do not know, experience, what I see around me, other posts and articles I see that trigger a train of thought, all over the place.
So, thanks to all those who have contributed, hopefully I have contributed something back to you, and we are both better off as a result.
Regards
Allen Roberts.
Aug 5, 2011 | Branding, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Tesco is the leader in the field of retail social media marketing, as noted in the past, but have really outdone themselves with this experiment with a virtual store in railway stations in South Korea.
The speed at which innovations are being tested, and if implemented is increasing, but usually we would expect a smaller business to be sufficiently agile to try some of this stuff, but Tesco is building a really impressive track record.
Australian supermarket retailers are in the dark ages by comparison, although some of the smaller food service retailers are starting to move with location and coupon promotions, but I would expect Coles particularly, now managed by a veritable cricket team of ex-Tesco Poms to make the running amongst the big boys.
Aug 1, 2011 | Change, Communication, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media
There is a powerful new analytical tool on the block, “social network cartography” for lack of a better term. The masses of data now becoming available are able to be analysed with respect to the networks that exist amongst people. If your friends are obese, the your chances of being obese are greater, if your friends smoke, there is a greater chance you will. This can all be mapped.
Much of the pioneering work has been done by Nicholas Christakis and colleagues from Harvard Medical school over a 30 year period, starting with data generated by the Framington Heart Study, which is being reported increasingly widely, such as this piece on smoking in the Boston area, reported in Kelso’s Corner blog, as a tool for change.
Christakis presents his ideas in this TED presentation, along with more examples. This data cartography is a tool that is evolving rapidly, but appears to me to have an amazing capacity to create graphics that will demonstrate all sorts of complex arguments, and as you know, a picture tells a thousand words.
