Jun 4, 2013 | Branding, Collaboration, Communication, Leadership, Social Media
Hugh MacLeod
There are many people I would like to meet, but a special group of them are the thinkers in the “new media” space.
Brian Solis is one of them, along with Clay Shirky, Hugh McLeod, Mitch Joel, and Seth Godin. These are all people who are shaping the manner in which we perceive the explosion of connectability that is driving our lives, enterprises, and the world we live in.
A current report of the Altimeter group of which Brian is a principal is called “The evolution of Social Business: Six stages of business transformation”. The report, and embedded slideshare presentation puts a framework around the bumbling most organisations are experiencing as they grapple with the opportunities, complications and costs of social, and socialised media.
Two last guests. First, someone who does a fantastic job of curating the content and thinking that is going on, is generous enough to share it all, and who knows all of the above blokes in person as a result of that generosity, Mike Stelzner. Second, an Aussie bird, for a bit of balance to the testosterone, and an alternative way of looking at things, Bernadette Jiwa.
What a truly great dinner group, the conversation would redefine “out of the box”, what pity I suck as a cook.
May 29, 2013 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
This afternoon I saw the best example of marketing I have seen in ages, a metaphor for what it takes to be successful in this crowded, commoditised world.
Two youngsters, dressed in jeans and the T-Shirt of the Cancer Council were stopping people in the street and trying to have a chat with a view to extracting a donation. Both were working hard, were well presented, earnest, spoke well, and had big welcoming grins on their faces. However, one was far more successful than the other in both successfully stopping people, engaging in a conversation, and then extracting a donation.
The less successful was approaching people with the grin, and welcoming patter, only to have most people just brush by. The second did one more very simple thing, he offered his hand, and in almost every case, it was taken, the person stopped, and a conversation started.
The automatic reaction to the simple generosity of offering a hand in welcome was almost irresistible, even to total strangers, in a situation where they knew the “bite” was coming.
Amazing.
Think about your marketing, traditional or social, do you offer the metaphoric hand? Is the follow up “conversation” sufficiently interesting that it has the chance of engaging a potential customer to the point where they will give you their business?
I think offering a hand is the original Social Media, and it still works better than anything else.
May 27, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, Social Media
While writing the future proofing of marketing post recently , it also occurred to me that we have a generation of kids now becoming serious adults who have grown up immersed in the web 2.0. They are a different breed, even different to their almost generational siblings born in the late 70’s and 80’s who were around in the development days, these kids leaving school now did not know a world without an i in front of it.
iadults?
The sale of 6 year old Tumblr, created by a young high-school dropout David Karp for $1.1 billion, to Yahoo this week just highlights the point. Whilst there are not many smart enough, motivated enough, and commercially capable enough to create a startup that turns into a billion dollar baby, we are not teaching our kids anything like the creativity, agility of mind, and determination necessary to do so.
It scares the daylights out of me, as we are spending billions trying to educate our kids into the mould that made us.
Wrong.
Ken Robinson is clearly right, the traditional, industrial age education is failing our kids, we are not giving them the tools to be successful and happy in a world we cannot forecast. How can a cariculum designed in the nineties be relevent to the intellectual tools and practises necessary on the 2020’s and beyond?
All we talk about is the money it costs, not what we get out the other end, education is not an expense, it is an investment, and we better figure out how to be better at it.
May 21, 2013 | Branding, Category, Marketing, retail, Sales, Small business
I am old enough to remember doing warehouse withdrawals by hand. Heavens.
Then we had early data managers automate the process, an evolution that pottered on for 25 years, through to category management based on scan data, some of which can dive remarkably deep.
However, we ain’t seen nothing yet!.
The combination of retail data, personal card data, social media and the proximity capabilities of mobile applications will set off another revolution promotional and sales strategies.
Some of the technology is becoming pretty standard, the components of so called Big Data, and there is plenty around to tell you what to do, like this McKinsey article.
However, it takes resources and deep capabilities to effectively leverage the emerging possibilities, so how do SME’s compete?
It seems there are a few strategies that will become mandatory for those who actually want to survive:
- Develop scale. This does not just mean individual enterprises, which is by definition not possible for SME’s, but I see the emergence of “data co-operatives” groups of category marketers (some may even be competitors) who contribute to resourcing the necessary data science.
- Develop deep domain knowledge. This is like suggesting breathing is good for health, but the transitory and superficial culture surrounding product and brand management counters deep knowledge. This is a challenge of leadership, and personnel management, difficult topics for most businesses up to a substantial size. It is however, an opportunity to absorb the skills of the baby boomer marketers that are around, whose Intellectual Capital is becoming available for hire, as a contractor, consultant or often as a Director.
- Do extensive “Environmental Research“, and learn from what is happening elsewhere. For 30 years I have pretty well predicted what will happen in the Australian market by deeply engaging with 2 sources. Firstly the trends originating in the UK, which almost inevitably translate to the Australian scene at some point, and secondly being wrapped in social research, the stuff that details the behavior and attitudes of Australians. The original and still the best is the McKay Report. Hugh McKay has an enormous ability to articulate the complication of peoples lives and break them down into things you can use.
- Recognise and act on the simple truth that marketing is now fully accountable. No longer can marketers argue that the impact of their decisions are too hard to tie back to specific activities and costs. The ROI on marketing activity is now almost as transparent as that on capital expenditure, you just have to understand how to go about it, and get the right tools and capabilities in place.
- Differentiate. Notwithstanding the point above, you still need to stand out from the crowd, and the only way to do that is to be noticeably different, to engage with and serve consumers better than anyone else. The genuine creativity needed to do this will attract a premium, simply because it is so rare, and now the impact can be quantified, albeit after the fact.
Need help thinking about all that, give me a call, I have been there before.
May 7, 2013 | Branding, Communication, Small business, Social Media
You choose
Lets talk about social media for a moment, it is on the mind of most running SME’s. and it is the object of lots of “hype” by snake-oil salesmen.
There is a huge amount of very useful verbiage, and mountains of plain crap out there, as well as the “idiots guide” type stuff, but it at its core is really simple.
Remember what it was like as a kid in a new playground, you didn’t know anybody, it was lonely amongst a horde of other kids.
Slowly, one short sentence at a time, you got to know some, some you liked, others you did not want to get to know better.
The “liking” evolves over a series of small, at first disconnected interactions, slowly, the interactions become connected, and slowly, the network widens, as you start the interactgion process with others.
At some point, you ask another kid to come home and play, great if he can, but sometimes they can’t, you ask again, if they cannot a second time, with no apparent reason, you probably will not ask again, This is the “law of reciprocracy” at work. Relationships of any type are reciprocal, otherwise they are not relationship.
Just the same in social media, you need to give something before yuy can expect anything back, but get something back, and you reciproicate again, and you have the beginning of something, maybe. It takes work. You need to spend time at the other persons house, want to spend more time with them, be comfortable with what they do, think, and say.
No different in social media. All are different, are able to deliver you an outcome that varies from each other, you just need to understand clearly what you want, otherwise you will spend your limited time poorly. None of nthem, despite the hype are all things to all people. You choose who you like.
Apr 30, 2013 | Branding, Communication, Social Media
You can no longer win by shouting, there is always someone who can should louder, longer, and more effectively.
You win today by being genuinely useful.
Those on the receiving end will tell others, who will tell others, and so it goes.
My kids call it social media marketing, I call it common sense marketing.
