Sep 27, 2011 | Change, Marketing, Personal Rant
Am I the only one, or are others getting as sick as I am of the shallow, cliché ridden utterances of both sides of this “debate”?
The government is pushing their carbon tax, which will become law on July 1 next year, making the fundamental mistake of calling it a “Tax”, thereby ensuring they have a marketing problem, while the Opposition is opposing, anything, everything, while quietly using a nonsense 5% reduction in emissions to be derived from “Direct Action” whatever that is.
Irrespective of the position you choose to take on the question of what we should do about global warming, if anything, it would be nice to have some facts as a basis for the debate.
It is pretty clear that the planet is warming, the facts show that over the last years, whether you want that definition to cover 20, 50, or a 100 years, the globe is warming.
Now we have a fact to use as the basis of the debate, lets be a bit sensible about how much emotionalism we employ to push any particular barrow, and straying from the facts should be greeted with howls of outrage by the taxpayers who will ultimately bear the costs of the implementation.
Oh, and this condemnation of the quality of the political debate, not just in this country, but in many countries is much wider than the question of climate change, just look at how effectively our elected leaders are grappling with the economic meltdown of the US and Europe. As Charles De Gaulle is reported to have said, ” I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians”.
Sep 23, 2011 | Communication, Customers, Innovation, Small business, Social Media
Ask a SME manager in packaged goods, “would you like a phone call from Woolworths ordering stock of your new product for every store in the country?” and you will most likely get a tear with the nodded head.
Enter the “Orabrush” story, they got the call from Walmart without any of the usual begging.
There are many hurdles for SME’s in the packaged goods industry to jump before distribution in the major retailers can be obtained, and then the problems really start, because SME’s lack the resources to move the product off shelf before the trial period runs out.
Social media has helped over the past couple of years, you now have the opportunity to reach highly targeted groups of consumers, and deliver them a message, but generally it has not helped much to get the product on shelf in the first place.
Orabrush really broke the mass market model with a product I still find odd, but great creativity and lateral thinking combined with social media has turned the product into a hit, and can now be found in Walmart stores around the world
Have a look at the Youtube ads in the link, gems.
Sep 21, 2011 | Communication, Management, Social Media
What a great term, coined by Euan Semple, to describe the phenomenon of older (largely) male senior executives pretending they have “got” social media.
Like many others, I spend a lot of time trying to persuade people of the value that can be generated by intelligent use of social media, most of those people run enterprises, and usually reluctantly can be persuaded to put a modest amount of resources into SM, often I think because their golf partner was telling them on the 19th last week that he has been able to cut the advertising budget by 50% by using SM.
Anyway, they become superficially engaged, in their hearts thinking this social media stuff is just their almost adult children behaving badly and then for some inexplicable reason, posting the footage on face book.
The term “Dad Dancing,” perfectly invokes a picture of the gyrations and uncoordinated usually frenetic and short term activity that emerges from such a conversion.
Sep 15, 2011 | Branding, Marketing
Rubbish you say, marketing always matters.
Well, the next time you try and get some sense out of Optus or Telstra when you have anything that does not fit into an easily packaged Q&A form for someone in Bangalore who does not know Sydney from Senegal , try and tell yourself marketing does matter to them, and fall about laughing.
If it did, your issue would be treated as important to them, there would be someone who could fix the problem in easy reach, you would not have to wait hours being told your call was important to them, and then never get a return call.
Clearly in the current telco environment, demand is greater than supply, so marketing does not really matter, or so they think, customer churn is a part of the game, and annoying a few is a small price to pay in the chase for short term margin maximisation.
Marketing does not matter to them, at least for now!
However, the worm usually turns. Remember when you could not get a spot on prime time television without selling your grandmother, or a preferred position in the Herald Saturday classifieds, and had to wait weeks and sometimes months for the local bookstore to get in an obscure title you wanted?
Now, response can be virtually instantaneous, and we have become very used to instantaneous, and when we do not get it, we can pile buckets on the perpetrator via social media, just as we can promote their great service on the odd occasion it happens.
Marketing always matters, because without a customer, you have nothing.
Sep 14, 2011 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
About the most commonly asked question on the net is how to make money,” how do I monetarise this great idea”?.
To my mind, it is the wrong question. The right one is “How do I deepen the relationship of those who are attracted by the great idea”?. When you have made the relationship worth having for the other party, it will become evident how to make money from it.
It is analogous to asking “Have you “monetarised” your telephone”? Answer: Probably not, because at least on the surface, you do not make money from it, the phone is a tool to communicate, but remove the phone system in your business for an hour, and reconsider if it is monetarised or not.
Social media is no different, it simply a means of communication, so why the never-ending question about how to monetarise Social media? Answer: Because most have not thought about it as a communication tool, a means of connection, engagement, so they default to SM as a cash register.
Sep 12, 2011 | Collaboration, Communication, Social Media
Sharing “content” is the lifeblood of social media, as well as the older disciplines of collaboration, successful negotiation, leadership, even blue collar engagement on the factory floor. With a bit of tweaking the ideas contained in this post from Social Media Examiner work well in all the situations I can think of.
Humans are social animals, that is the way we function, so it should come as no surprise that sharing is an effective strategy to do everything from engaging strangers to become friends, to success in the workplace, and our cutting edge intellectual pursuits.
