May 9, 2010 | Communication, Innovation, Social Media
I suspect neither Coke or Mentos planned for the tsunami of videos on Utube and others demonstrating the effect of a Mentos in a bottle of coke. Nevertheless, it happens, and it remains to be seen if the popularity of coke-bombs impacts the brands in any way.
Blend-it has made a business by demonstrating the blending power of their appliances by blending all sorts of things, latest is an Ipad, but this by contrast is a deliberate marketing strategy that has delivered a huge brand position for little cost.
The point is that the power of the web can be harnessed, and used to your benefit, but it is a demanding, unpredictable mistress, and just as prone to turn around and bite your bum, as it is to do you a favour.
Believing you can manage the web content that impacts on your products is the first mistake, best you can do is participate, contribute, comment, and if you do it well, as Blendtec has, you can leverage the power, never control it.
May 5, 2010 | Change, Communication, Innovation, Social Media
What happens next?
Mega platforms for social networking have overtaken many of our lives, from email, facebook, twitter, and the rest. All have the common trait of being “mass” platforms, designed to be used by anyone, with very modest generally available customisation allowed at the fringes.
For most people, in most situations, this is enough.
However, every time something has been invented, that reaches a wide audience, and satisfies a generic proposition, someone starts playing with the tailoring. This applies throughout history, to all widely used devices from armor to iphone apps.
Bespoke social networking at the edges is about to evolve into a fragmented range of networks where there are substantial barriers to entry, and therefore attract a highly focused group, with a deep connection of some sort, who can network amongst a select group of peers.
Imagine a social network of PhD qualified nuclear physicians from a selected group of institutions, which excludes the University of West Bumcrack and its brothers. This tiny, exclusive group of geeks, would love a social networking platform, an app that enables them to interact with the couple of dozen others around the place who understand them, but to date it has not been offered because it does not “scale” and the established rules for success of these networks is “scalability” which means it is capable of being monetarised. In addition, it would work differently, much more like a series of human interactions as would occur in the university common room, rather than being reduced to a series of quantitative options as is the case in a mass app.
The corollary is that if you are not in the “frame” for the bespoke app, you will probably never even know about it.
Apr 29, 2010 | Alliance management, Communication, Demand chains, Social Media, Strategy
Democratising knowledge, isn’t this a lovely term! I have heard it used on a number of occasions recently, and it came up again in an extraordinary TED presentation by Stephen Wolfram .
In just two words it nails the complex changes happening in numerous ways in our lives. Knowledge used to be power, now it is freely available, it is simply a tool, and the ones who use it best will win, rather than in the past, where the holder of the knowledge had a huge advantage.
Amongst all the other things that have changed, is the potential to turn simple supply chains that pump product into a channel driven only by capacity, into demand chains that respond backwards to demand signals from the customer.
This opportunity for change driven by a combination of the communication tools on the net, and the ability to assemble and analyse the drivers of demand in your particular market offers huge potential for innovation, efficiency, and differentiation based on the capabilities of those in the chain.
Apr 28, 2010 | Communication, Management, Social Media
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorised that the maximum number of people any individual could maintain a relationship with was 150, which has become known as Dunbar’s number. It reflects the cognitive maximum for someone to know everyone in a group, and to be aware of the relationships between them all.
Social media has led to people into having many “friends” sometimes thousands, but in the human sense, they do not have a relationship, it is something different, for which I suspect we need a new term.
Human beings are social animals, and no matter how valuable our digital networks are to us, they are no substitute for the human interactions that define us, but are limited to around 150 individuals at any one time.
Apr 18, 2010 | Communication, Demand chains, Innovation, Social Media
Can you imagine the changes that would have occurred in the behavior of the tobacco industry in the 70’s and 80’s had there been the “net-enabled” communication tools available then, when the big tobacco companies were conducting a rear guard action against those who sought to have the lethal effects of tobacco on health made public.
Simply, they would not have got away with 20 years of denial, the ridicule circulating via blogs, twitter, Digg and all the rest would have been overwhelming.
When you think about it, the negative reaction that would have occurred may have been better than all the public advertising that has gone on since the 80’s, sanctimonious adults telling youngsters what to do (again) whilst still taking the taxes.
Apr 5, 2010 | Branding, Communication, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media
As you wander through the blogosphere, the pre-launch hype about the ipad is astonishing.
There are many reviews, but as very few have seen one, they are all just speculation, or Apple insiders doing their bit towards the marketing blitzkrieg.
Now it is launched, and there are reports of 700,000 being sold in the first 24 hours, perhaps there may be some realism emerging, but most of those early buyers will see nothing but the “greatness” they ascribe to the Apple brand, the shortcomings will not be noticed.
Those of us who build brands are in awe of the branding skills of Apple, but should remember their overnight branding success came after 30 years, and included some pretty ordinary stuff amongst the brilliance. Now their innovation machine is almost as well oiled as their marketing machine, but how are they going to hype away the advantage Kindle holds over access to books and magazines, or will they just accept that ipad will need to connect to Amazon to be competitive, and move on.
I suspect not, rather the other functionality will be the focus of attention, and shortcomings will be managed away.
