Jul 12, 2012 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Social Media
Her we go again, another paradigm shift (cliché warning) in media.
The basis of the advertising business has always been cost per impression. Doesn’t matter about the medium, that is how the costs have been calculated, however, there is a pretty clear recognition that beyond low cost commodity items, cost is not the way we make decisions, they are made on the basis of perceived value. Therefore there seems to be a disjoint between what we recognise as the foundation of selling, and the manner in which we make most purchase decisions.
The emergence of social media is all about the opportunity to build connections and relationships, with people, brands, locations, groups, you name it, all there, so why would a banner ad work in that environment?.
Sooner or later, Social Media platforms will realise that their future is in finding ways to monetarise the opportunity for a relationship provided by access to the interactions of their users.
Facebook, the great IPO failure of the year, is in a prime position, being the place everyone goes, so the current stock price may be cheap if they figure out how to sell the value of the opportunity to engage in a conversation, rather than the charge for the opportunity to interrupt it.
Jul 10, 2012 | Uncategorized
How far can you stretch a brand without diluting the power of the core?
The answer it seems is “it depends”. The stronger and more defined the brand, the more it stands for something specific, the less adaptable it is, and the converse is also true, the less defined a brand, the more able it is to be stretched, but on the other hand, why would you bother?
Should Coke launch a lemon variety?
Should Harley Davidson build a scooter?
Should Louis Vuiton sell a 69.99 suitcase?
Extending a brand is a sport of choice amongst marketers, the arguments are strong, mostly around leveraging the brand building investment that has already gone in, but it fails to understand that consumers build brands, not marketers.
Jul 9, 2012 | Uncategorized
3-D printing has been around for a while, extraordinary technology evolving rapidly offering many “Oohh, Arrhh” moments, as we saw various items like wrenches, and skeletal joints being “printed” as working models. The technology is now going further, watch here for a look at an exhibition in Paris that is simply fantastic, and an interview with one of the brains driving the development.
7 years ago I watched astonishing designs being done using “Solidworks” software by an SME client in the plastics industry. The software offered 3-D design and animation functionality that was beyond anything I had seen to that time, and seemed to take the product development process of physical products, in this case complicated closures, by the scruff of the neck. It completely changed the drivers of the product design and development model that had been in place.
Now attaching this stuff to 3-D printing enables working models to be built in prototype as they are being designed, at a cost that is almost to the point of being irrelevant.
The pace of change is still accelerating, what are you doing to consider how to stay ahead of the pack?
Jul 5, 2012 | Lean, Management, Marketing, Social Media
It has always been so.
The father of the modern manufacturing revolution, W. Edwards Deeming probably said it first in a management setting, that led to lean, the TPS, 6 sigma, and a host of management articles, cliches, and learned papers, but it has been said before, in many ways. It is also a core component of the Balanced Scorecard.
Measuring advertising has always presented a challenge, throw an ad schedule on the box, and hope it works, has been the dominant method for many years.
Now we have the net , and a whole new set of measurement possibilities across websites and social media platforms. Like anything, simplicity is the gold standard, finding a few measures that get to the heart of the performance is a real challenge for management, as differing measures for differing platforms, differing markets, and platform/market/interest dynamics are always required, there is no pro forma to be used here.
Avinash Kaushik‘s great blog Occum’s Razor concentrates on measurement of digital performance, this entry on the measurement of social media, which should engage the minds of all marketers.
Jul 4, 2012 | Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
Contrary to much common usage, these two concepts are not synonyms, they are very different.
Creativity is the process of dreaming up something new, while Innovation is the process of making use of the new stuff.
How often has Van Gogh, or Beethoven been accused of being innovative? Just sometimes, when the discussion is about the way an artist wields his palette knife, or the structure of a symphony. Usually they are described as creative, because what they created opened a door that had not been opened before, made connections in a new way.
Make no mistake, creative and innovative need each other, one does the art, the other brings in the benefit. Van Gogh after all died mad and broke, must have been creative without innovative, but his brother recognised the value of his work, and made a buck. He was innovative.
Most artists create something for the intrinsic value, it sounds great, looks good, or feels right, whilst the innovator finds a role for the art to add some monetary or exchange value.
To be creative, you need, according to John Cleese who knows a bit about this stuff, Space, Time, Time, Confidence, and Humour. Yes, I know “Time” got two mentions, to understand why, you will have to listen to Cleese’s presentation, which should not be a problem, in fact to my mind, should be compulsory.
