Aug 23, 2011 | Uncategorized
Potentially, quick response (QR) codes will revolutionise mobile marketing.
They offer the opportunity to open URL links easily from mobile devices, enabling content to be accessed easily on the move.
This link to the new marketing program for Central Park in New York says it all, and is a great example of the flexability and creativity that QR codes offer, on top of the simple, relatively everyday things like recieving a boarding pass on your phone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OCyfV_k2_g
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 18, 2011 | Marketing, Strategy
A common question every business asks itself regularly, and one with no answer without a detailed understanding of context.
Imagine you are in 1990, and someone asked you “how much would you pay for an internet search?” The only logical response is “a what?”
1990, there was no internet as we now know it, and little capacity to search the documents that were on the few networked computers of the time.
Fast forward to 2000, the same question would have brought an answer that gave the search value, as the net was around, but not everyone had access, or the know-how to search it effectively with the relatvively modest search engines of the time, so the quick assembly of the wide range of information that the few could gather had great value.
Fast forward again to 2010. Same question, different answer again, as almost everyone had the access and knowledge to do a comprehensive search, so the value is diminished because it is no longer a way of differentiating, delivering something unique.
This ebb and flow of value is common in almost any context you choose to examine, but we forget so easily that value is a relative term.
Aug 15, 2011 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Marketing
An ongoing frustration of innovation projects is the apparently always moving goalposts. How often have you heard “wish marketing would make up their minds what they want”
This desire to have the end point articulated at the commencement is natural, it enables good milestone and resource management, feedback and accountability systems, all beloved of the bean counters. However, if the requirements of a marketplace are evolving quicker than the projects can be brought to the market, leaving the goalposts untouched is the same as ensuring you bring a redundant project to completion, not much value there.
The challenge is to know if marketing is just a bunch of seat shiners who cannot make up their minds, or a group so intimately connected to the market that they see the evolution as it happens. Sometimes it is pretty hard to tell the difference. Therefore, the only way to ensure the development groups are connected to the market, via marketing or otherwise, is to and hold them to a level of personal and development group responsibility for the outcomes.
