Search results matching tag 'marketing'

ONLINE JOBS TO EARN FROM HOME WITHOUT INVESTMENT

2606247 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:33:50 GMT

PART TIME ONLINE JOBS AVAILABLE EARN $90000 Do You have Computer with internet Connection? Do You have desire to Earn money online? No Selling No Cold calls Great guide to start work from home We are guide everyone to earn money online upto $90000USD per month without any investment For more details visit http://www.clickinternetjobs.com

Will there be a day when the Marketing and HR departments in big organisations become one?

2458347 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:07:39 GMT

We're used to seeing job titles like Head of Marketing, Head of HR, Personnel director, Marketing Director, Head of Brand, HR director etc

Will we see it become common in major organisations for job titles and board positions like Director of People and Marketing or Global Head of HR and Marketing, or Director of Brand and People?

What about Global Brand Tribe Director ? or Director of Organisational belief?

New Brand Tribalism has emerged. www.newbrandtribalism.com

Brokers Done to a T

1271576 — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:22:00 GMT

Shock, horror...someone has been selling mobile contract data, allegedly owned by T Mobile, onto other network providers. Brokers, those despicable middle-men working in the dark shadows of the marketing world, are implicated in the scandal. Poor T Mobile customers have been 'cold-called' (a phrase spoken with unmitigated disdain by the news reporter I listened too) around the time that their contracts came up for renewal.

The implied 'crime' was that this data is private, and that the people cold-called did not give their permission for marketing calls. This is of course possibly true, but I doubt it. If T Mobile have not covered themselves in the small print somewhere, I would be most surprised, because data is an asset, and everyone should give themselves the scope to leverage that asset if they feel the need. I would imagine the brokers concerned, whoever they may be, would have made some sort of check, because otherwise they are cretins of the first order.

Every broker I have ever worked with, when faced with data such as this, would have asked several questions.

1) Who owns the data?

2) Is it opt-in data or opt-out?

3) What restrictions are imposed on selling it?

The third question is probably the interesting one. If this data belongs to T Mobile, why would they want to sell it to their competitors? Either they are so desperate for cash that they have to give customers away to get it, or the person offering the data is pulling a fast one. In my experience, when data like this becomes available, the data owner is very careful to make sure their competitors don't get it. They want to sweat their data asset a bit, to complimentary businesses, but they are not looking to shoot themselves in the foot.

An unscrupulous broker may not have questioned the golden egg falling in his lap. Make no mistake about it, this sort of data is like winning the lottery. Call centres are desperate for warm data. Big money would have changed hands for this data. I have not seen any comments from T Mobile yet, so we cannot know whether this was an officially sanctioned data sale, or a CD walking out the door in someone's pocket, but my concern is that, yet again, the data industry looks like a bunch of cowboys.

When this story hit the fan, I would have hoped for a response from the data owner pointing out that they had every right to sell it, because they did the opt-in/opt-out process properly, taking the wind out of the press furore over unsolicited calling. They might have had some uncomfortable questions to answer about why yhey sold their own customer database, but it would have been chip paper tomorrow...sorry, recycling.

This is a good chance for the DMA to make the case for using professional brokers. I suspect such a person was not involved in this instance. I certainly hope not.

Nine Top Digital Trends for 2010

2672735 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:50:00 GMT

1: Facebook replaces personal email Question: Google has it, Hoover has it (in the UK anyway), TiVo had it, lost it and has somewhat got it back. Xerox had it, but nobody really cares anymore. So what is it? It’s when a brand name becomes the verb associated with its use. So rather than searching, you Google, or TiVo when digital recording a television show.

Arguably an even more powerful synonym is when a brand becomes a noun, such as Polaroid, for instant developed photograph, although that didn’t end so well. The newest one would seem to Facebook, although it has too meanings. ‘I Facebooked you’ could mean that you the person has added you as a Facebook friend or they sent you a private message though Facebook. The latter would seem to be of more interest as no-one has really owned this type of communication before. No brand ever became synonymous with email. To Hotmail or Gmail someone just never happened.

So the interesting and overlooked disruption of Facebook is its displacement of personal email as a communication tool. Completely permission based, no SPAM (yet), and no address book required - your friends are already on Facebook.

2: Open source software starts making proper money, thanks to the cloud There’s something starting to happen within the open source software world. Projects that were typically for the purview of programmers, or at least technophiles, are now available to the masses. An example is Beanstalk www.beanstalkapp.com a fully hosted, version controlled code repository that uses the Subversion open source project. The big deal is that to set up and maintain a Subversion repository can be a pain - plus you need a server if you want to give access to anyone. Beanstalk has created a subscription based service that, for a small fee, removes the hassle.

Services like this can only really exist with cloud computing infrastructure - so companies such as Beanstalk don’t have the huge upfront capital outlay for servers, they only pay for what their customers use. With the right skills any open source project can be commercialized in this manner.

3: Mobile Commerce - the promise that has never delivered, yet. As annoyingly tantalizing yet esoteric as the word ‘convergence’ has been over the last 10 years, mobile commerce has promised much but never delivered.

Mobile phones have delivered real benefits to societies world wide and in developing nations are used commonplace as devices for the transfer of money. However, until only very recently in the nations that invented and first adopted mobile technologies, has use of your most precious device been extended to payment for goods and services.

With the advanced browsers of iPhone and the Android platforms one could pay for goods through full e-commerce sites, but who really wants to fiddle around with a phone in one hand and a credit card in another? The game changer is the iPhone / iTunes platform. In-app purchases on the iPhone can tempt users to buy small items, upgrades, updates, etc, while iTunes holds their precious credit card information.

All, of course, is done in seamless fashion, enough to promote impulse purchases. Would seem like an easy task for this to be extended to other platforms with PayPal or Google Checkout. But we have been here before haven’t we?

4: Fewer registrations - one sign-in fits all I use a great application on the Mac platform that securely holds my login details for upwards of 50 different sites. It means that I don’t have to use the same password for each site and that I don’t have to search around for post-it notes (my 1998 method) to log into the site I joined a week ago. However, I’m starting to resent having to register for anything ever again. I don’t see why, to leave a particularly pithy comment on a blog or news site, I have to register all over again. I’m sure I’m not the only one and that’s why services like Facebook Connect and OpenID are particularly useful and will continue to be adopted at great speed through 2010.

Who knows where these might go? Perhaps next year I’ll be able to pay for something using my Facebook login.

5: Disruption vs. Continuity - Alternatives to the “Big Idea” As the significance of social networks continues to grow, businesses are investing more in community building as a marketing driver. According to the recent Tribalization of Business study released by Deloitte, 94% of businesses will continue or increase their investment in online communities and social media and, for the majority of these companies, their marketing function will drive this investment.

At the same time, as evidenced by Google’s recent release of “free floating” social tools, such as Google Waves and Sidewiki, there is an increasing shift towards online identity and social activity being an integrated part of the network as a whole, rather than concentrated within discrete platforms such as Facebook.

With the increasing emphasis on marketing and advertising through social networks and the increasing pervasiveness of social tools, marketing objectives come into conflict with advertising techniques.

While advertising has often sought to distinguish itself and stop the consumer in their tracks with a disruptive “big idea,” the emphasis is shifting toward persuasion through fitting organically into the consumer’s social sphere. It will always be the objective of marketing to provide creativity and novelty, but the way in will increasingly be one of persistence and continuity.

6: Self-Sufficiency – The Continuing Evolution of Web-Driven,Open Source DIY Culture Much has been said about the power and potential of collective intelligence. From solving complex problems through crowd-sourcing, to reconfiguring industries to be leaner and more innovative by harnessing the expertise of a network of independent suppliers, many of the breakthrough solutions of tomorrow appear to lie in more effectively pooling the resources and intelligence of our increasingly networked world.

On the other side of the equation, the power of pooled intelligence and networked resources have empowered individuals to take on more and more complex undertakings themselves. From drawing on the collective intelligence of blogs and university open courseware to educate themselves, to services like ponoko, spoonflower and cafe press that facilitate small-scale production, to offline resource pooling like pop-up retail and collective office spaces, individuals are discovering that it has never been easier to try doing it themselves.

While we find new ways to thrive in a still struggling economy, expect to see lasting changes coming from empowering individuals to work together to become more ever more self-sufficient.

7: Info-Art Where we once had pop-psychologists and pop-philosophers, we now appear to have pop-statisticians and pop-economists. The growing wealth of data and the access to rich and diverse data sources that are significant byproducts of information networks have made the art of data analysis a defining skill of our time. By the same token, the skill of elegantly visualizing that data has become a defining art of our time. The art of the infographic is becoming increasingly pervasive as people look more and more to the growing amount of data at our disposal for insight, and more refined as the interactions of that data becomes more complex.

With an ever increasing need for real-time analysis of a growing torrent of raw data, expect to see greater innovation spurred by more elegant ways of capturing and visualizing information by a growing number of info-artists.

8: Crowd Sourcing Across many industries and organizations, crowd sourcing will become a growing tool as part of elance outsourcing strategies. Organizations will mobilize the passionate special interest groups to not only carry a message but, even more importantly perhaps, to lead and take part in activities on their behalf.

Predictions for 2010 are not as rosy as we all hoped and budgets for just about everything continue to be cut, encouraging ‘creative’ thinking regarding getting things done and done well. From political canvassing to software development, from people journalism to environmental activism, we will see huge growth in crowd sourcing models provoked and led, largely, by digital social media strategies.

9: More Flash, Not Less Outside of the obvious brand sites, micro-sites and media sites (video, games, etc.) Flash has often been looked down upon if not completely discounted by techies and search engine optimizers alike. It seemed to face an uncertain future as a viable tool for serious websites and applications such as eCommerce tools and corporate websites.

As it is, Adobe’s rich media tool has enjoyed the grit and determination of its advocates and external development community. Several tricks, authoring tools and server side scripting workarounds have meant that Flash built websites no longer serve up a single, impenetrable page. They offer deep, searchable, indexable sites that will allow acute, detailed traffic and behavioral analytics and search engine optimization. As websites continue to increase in their importance as a company’s storefront, the demand for rich, brand-extending experiences will also increase. Further proliferation of (lightning speed) broadband will reduce download issues while the adoption of Flash on mobile devices will dramatically increase and fuel reach and the desire/need for highly usable, brand transporting, conversion oriented experiences

Real People

2116546 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:33:00 GMT

I often wonder how many 'virals' have been viewed by real people.

I'm not talking about those figures that may have been faked by bots and all that underhandedness, but people outside of the industry we all have the privilege of working in. Ok, I know we are real people that consume so our viewing figures do count but if I had a quid for the amount of friends I've mentioned 'famous' viral campaigns to and they've never heard of them I'd probably have about £20.

Part of our job is viewing work being produced by our competitors so sometimes (well, most of the time) I'd love to be able to reclaim a YouTube view so as not to add to the clip's figures, or at least mark myself as "work in the industry, just checking out the promotion, not actually interested in the product".

Who needs Ad Agencies

2116546 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:10:00 GMT

After spending a couple of days digesting this news I'm still not entirely sure what I think about it so excuse the brain dump.

I do think it fits into the viral subject however as Ideas Bounty is surely a viral exercise in itself but can this really work as a sustainable model across a brand's advertising. I'm not a huge fan of over-inflated ad agency models myself but there's more to creative than just shitting out a one-off idea. Isn't the Peperami brief (which is a tactical element of the overall 'Animal' creative concept) essentially another lazy UGC campaign in the same vein as Doriotos, Confused.com and quite a few others? It's great news if a client is taking more responsibility for the creative output of their brand, but it's not like Creative Agencies have been doing absolutely nothing for the past 50 years; is it?

Ok, I'll eat my face (on face)

2116546 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:32:00 GMT

As I've previously mentioned I'm not a big fan of face-on-face. This is perhaps just me, I don't get it, why would I bother. I don't like things not making much sense within their own world - however much fantasy is involved; I also still doubt how many people have direct to camera images of themselves.

However, if you get a chance to sniper a friend and the technology is the best implementation yet seen I can be proved wrong so check it out here.

Oh, and here's a kind of face-in-video that Ralph have just produced (www.jigsawsgame.com), but that's only one small part of the entire experience so I think we got away with it!

I'm wrong aren't I; people love seeing their own picture in anything?

Love the new Paul Whitehouse hairdresser ad?

2664107 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:16:39 GMT

Wasn't sure about Aviva's ad series with Paul Whitehouse as a goth and the one as a silver surfer. But loving the new one as a hairdresser. What do others think?

The best things in life are free

2516287 — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:03:00 GMT

The way to a techie's heart is through his stomach. And his pockets.

Marketing trade shows and partner conferences are a great place to learn about the latest technology, marketing products and generally trying to see what the industry is up to. It's a good opportunity to mingle with new suppliers, learn about potential new strategic partners, and even casually sniffing out the competition.

But at the end of the day, they're here to do one thing: sell.

So what do I look for when recommending a supplier or strategic partner? Is it guaranteed Return-On-Investment? Is it robust, cutting edge technology with unparalleled developer support? Is it unrivalled sales opportunities?

Nope. It's free stuff.

Okay, okay. Maybe it's not the only factor and I guess the ROI/support/opportunity stuff is important too. But we'd all have to be guilty of casually slinking up to a stand and wax faux lyrical with the rep, just so you can check out the giveaway shiny-shiny on the table.

However, it does get you thinking about the product and depending on what you get, makes a good show 'n' tell discussion point back at the office. It also shows the ingenuity, thought and pride which hopefully reflects their product.

What have I scored over the years? I'm no end-client power-CTO so no special treatment other than what us oiks get. But here are some of the received gratis faire off the cuff:

Pens, note pads, stationery - Good for taking notes at a seminar. Otherwise, if it doesn't have a button or can't be plugged into anything, pick up your game, please.
Mints, sweets, other edibles - Handy for breath-freshening at networking meetings. But make them sugar-free - I'm on low GI.
Key chains - My keys barely fit my pocket so why should I add to the clutter?
Bottle openers - Handy. Good for opening the bottle also on offer.
Deck of playing cards - Original, and appropriate from a gambling company. Useful for lengthy sales seminars.
USB memory sticks - Now we're talking. But make them big enough to be useful. Making them only big enough to barely fit your marketing PDFs is just cheap.
Portable speakers - Makes a nice present for a goodies-waiting significant other. Could come with an iPod.
MP3 players - Good for listening to podcasts when you can't be bothered reading. Again the same advice for the USB sticks apply.

Business meals and food spreads can be expensive for suppliers, but replenish delegates' low blood sugar levels and therefore score big brownie points. It also allows people to talk to each other to see what they really think about the product. But don't promise a posh dinner at a celebrity chef's restaurant and take it away at the last minute, leaving me stranded in town all dressed up with nowhere to go. Stonewalled.

My best freebie?

A pool thermometer.

Completely random, and I don't have a pool. And from a content management system company in Sweden, I can't imagine they're big on pools either. But original, completely memorable and goes to show you don't have to splash the cash to make an impression. And for that, a well deserved pip in their PageRank score.

I'd love to hear about any cool stuff you've received, so please leave a comment. Naturally, if anyone's got any clever merch, my door is wide open...

#worldview - deconstructing the silo mentality

2544553 — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:38:00 GMT

Even with the perceived turnaround in the global economy, we are all aware that the global recession has caused, and continues to cause, seismic shifts in the advertising and marketing industry, precipitating the need for rapid change. One area being impacted by the combined forces of recessionary pressures and technological progression is organisational structure.

One of the macro trends that we are starting to see is the deconstruction of the silo mentality that has been the status quo within client organisations, and which is mirrored by agencies in the major holding groups.

Discipline-specific fiefdoms exist around silos, with individuals and agencies behaving territorially to protect their specific areas of competence, guarding revenue streams or marketing budgets fiercely, and having accountability solely for delivery in the channel for which they have been responsible.

“My hope is that the recession will have been a huge wake-up call to clients with regard to that siloed mentality,” explained Bob Jeffrey, Chairman and Worldwide CEO, JWT. “It’s not only inefficient from a cost-savings perspective, but the more you collapse the silos, the more integration you drive, ultimately leading to a more effective environment in which to deliver better ideas and stronger creative output.”

Bob Jeffrey

Chris Colborn, Executive Vice President & Chief Experience Officer, R/GA, sees the silo mentality as a fundamental problem in developing effective creative work: “Many clients operate traditional structures where leads sit within verticals, each in charge of a discipline-specific agency and responsible for maximising effectiveness in a single channel. This model creates an artificial disincentive for collaboration, and therefore doesn’t engender an approach in which holistic synergies naturally form.”

Chris Colborn

“It’s a huge challenge for clients to evolve that model,” says Colborn, “to be leaner, more dynamic, cut costs and develop a more holistic structure, whilst still getting the best out of their agencies.”

The siloed organisational structure not only proves detrimental in terms of developing exceptional creative work, but actually creates natural disharmony and tension within the holding group verticals.

“I’m constantly saying that agencies need to work smarter,” Jeffrey continues. “They need to know when to compete and when to collaborate. Agencies are inherently territorial, tribal and competitive, but it’s critical to take an agnostic, less ego-centric approach to collaboration, and to have a bigger view of the world and the direction in which the world is heading if agencies are to achieve the ultimate goal of making their clients successful.”

Jeffrey understands that, “absolutely each agency needs to develop their own brand and build a reputation for creative excellence, but if client organisations start to evolve to be structured less around verticals, then agencies will be able to collaborate more effectively to deliver better work.”

The recessionary pressures on revenues and costs are forcing every client to analyse in fine detail how effective their marketing department is, and whether they are operating the most efficient ROI structure in a fast-changing environment.

As digital, mobile and social media platforms become more prevalent across all consumer segments, the discipline-specific silo mentality seems increasingly outdated and ineffective.

With CEO’s and CMO’s the world over looking to cut costs and increase the value of their spend, the time for significant and radical structural change is upon us. This will not only impact the client organisations themselves, but by definition the relationships with roster agencies across all disciplines.

Bob Greenberg, the Founder, Chairman, CEO & CCO, R/GA, believes that, “if you’re organised with a client around the consumer, then you’ll be much less affected by the storm than if you’re part of a siloed organisation. If you’re organised in verticals then the impact will be felt much more keenly, as cuts across each silo will need to be made. Nike are a client that have reorganised their internal organisational structure to revolve around the consumer, which is a model that I believe is much more efficient and effective.”

Bob Greenberg

If we look at some of the work that Nike are delivering, through R/GA as well as a number of other roster agencies, it is clearly evident that the reformulation of their organisational structure is paying dividends.

Ideas such as Nike+, the Ballers Network, NikeID, and HEAD2HEAD demonstrate that the company has truly put the consumer at the heart of all its thinking, delivering multi-platform solutions that are implemented more effectively by running a streamlined, de-siloed structure.

Chris Colborn summed up the dilemma facing many clients by describing why digital agencies are increasingly being perceived to offer greater value for money than the traditional agencies: “Initially digital agencies were one of the siloed verticals, but it quickly became apparent that every other silo needed a digital equivalent, in some form or another.”

“If you combine the breadth of experience, therefore, that digital needs to deliver, along with the relatively low spend in comparison to other channels, you can see why digital agencies are able to think more holistically in their approach to marketing, and also to deliver solutions that improve ROI levels.”

Although Colborn and Greenberg are approaching the topic from a different angle to Jeffrey, they are all in agreement that the concept of the traditional silo structure is fundamentally flawed.

The deconstruction of this model, reformulating around a more consumer-centric structure that has engagement and participation through digital platforms at its heart, is one of the major shifts that the recession has precipitated.

As with many of the changes this recession has brought, and will continue to bring, it is not that the shift wouldn’t have happened eventually; it’s just that the economic downturn has forced dramatic change to happen much more quickly.

The problem is that a rapid, fundamental structural revolution within the advertising industry has caused, and will keep causing, a great deal of pain while it happens.