I have to say I’ve been disappointed with the way the Republican presidential candidates have been handling the YouTube/CNN debate. When I first heard that only Ron Paul and John McCain were committed to appearing and how Romney wasn’t gonna answer no questions from no damn snowman, I immediately thought of Henry Jenkins.
Archive for the ‘web 2.0’ Category
An Humanizing Technology
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007There’s a there there.
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007So I was waiting for this massive file copy to complete (I’m actually still waiting) and for the hell of it, I google “marketing blog”. Which, well, I just laughed in spite of myself (I’m actually still laughing). (I’ve now stoped laughing.) The first result is this: Shotgun Marketing BLOG.
Now let me just say that there are other bloggers I enjoy whom hail from generally the same geography as the author of Shotgun Marketing, Chris Houchens and so I was curious. Standard blogger template blog. Smattering of comments here and there.
But pow, the second post from the top struck me as perfect. Granted, this is no representative sample he’s talking about (18 people) but there is definitely a rat race of memetic novelty that happens among the wired crowd.
I doesn’t surprise me in the least that it takes a Kentucky blog to point that out. Good on you, Chris. I’m starting to think there needs to be a media vehicle dedicated to marketing from the midwestern/southen perspective. Just to hijack the point of his post and expand it, I think it’s interesting that those who presume to speak for what the futures should look like are largely from the coasts, and those for whom such futures are intended are everywhere. Hell, I’m even being (consiously) US-centric in this post.
Perceiving The Whole From The Parts
Thursday, July 26th, 2007John Hagel is giving rhetorical form to what I think are the most important issues at the confluence of business, economics, marketing and even epistemology. His “Unanswered Questions at Supernova 2007” post from a month ago is still consuming my thoughts even when I’m trying to do other things, like eat and sleep.
McKinsey Web 2.0 Survey
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007Here’s a recent McKinsey report on Web 2.0 in business. The highlight for me was that 42% of respondents said that they, “Invested at the right time but should have more in our companies internal capabilites,” and 24% said that they, “Should have invested sooner in technology that in the meantime had a significant impact on our industry.”
It’s the Humanity, Stupid!
Sunday, April 15th, 2007
I don’t know why I haven’t posted something about this before. I find myself talking about this all the time. Here’s the gist:
Marketing is dead. You can be humans again.
No, really. Not the practice of taking things to market; I mean “marketing, the paradigm”. Marketing, of necessity, has been about dealing with customers at arm’s length. This is a byproduct of the industrial revolution. In order to pass the value of economies of scale to customers, companies had to be big. They had to talk to a lot of people. Since Gutenberg, the only tools available for—indeed the only ways to even think about—talking to a lot of people have been unidirectional. These univalent tools are the currency of marketing. They offer really no meaningful dialogue.
Obama Been Bloggin
Saturday, February 24th, 2007Taking a HEEEEEYYYYAAAAARGH from Howard Dean, the Barak Obamaniacs have woven themselves a tapestry of MyBarakObama microsites to motivate, connect, and empower a formidable cluster of web-savvy politiquitos. While every viable candidate in the slim pickin pile is using blogs, Flickr, and YouTube to some degree, Obama’s advisors force the question: can they harness enough online energy to offset the disadvantage of a political underdog (whoever that may be)? Will online word-of-mouth supplant the legacy of ever-mounting political contributions?
Regardless of political leanings, it’s worth investigating the emergence of online social networking as the new political networking.
It’s too early yet to get my vote, but they’ve definitely earned a link.
So the hacker said to the economist…
Monday, February 19th, 2007Ahhhh, the wager is on. Can web 2.0 make money for companies? Will people continue to work for free?
If you believe Nicholas Carr, people will NOT work for free forever. The economy simply hasn’t figured out how to charge for the model yet.
If you side with Yochai Benkler and the gift economy, people will contribute for free for as long as they are appreciated and moving toward the perceived greater good. Or, in his exact words, the key is:
“managing the marriage of money and nonmoney without making nonmoney feel like a sucker”
I like him.
Continue, Change or Bail
Tuesday, January 9th, 2007I was disappointed to hear the lackluster results of an ad campaign I found to be clever, on target and different than other competitors. The ad was for a drug called Rozerem, a sleep aid by drug manufacturer Takada. The drug, despite $100 million ad spend ranks 6th in its category; far behind category leaders Ambien and Lunesta and even trailing two generic brands. Check out Brandweek’s full article for more details.
So now you have to ask the following: “Was the concept wrong? Was the message wrong? Is the product inferior to its competitors? Was its late entry into the category too big of an obstacle to overcome?” I can come up with a bunch more.
Without knowing all the details I have to speculate. I think the ads are well concepted and executed as previously stated. But perhaps the product is to blame. The article references that although the drug helps those with sleeping disorders fall asleep faster, they often wake up in the middle of the night. Perhaps they succeeded in capturing first time users but due to this shortcoming, those users didn’t refill their prescriptions and requested another brand. This combined with their late entry into the market could prove to be too big of an obstacle to overcome. And if this is true, and users aren’t repeating, the drug will die out in the next couple years. It would be nice to know what percentage of first time users refilled thier prescriptions and how that compares to industry standards.
This is where some consumer generated feedback, through a forum or blog would be very advantageous. Instead of speculating, they can gather ongoing feedback, both from consumes and perhaps even physicians. If what they learn is that the product is inferior, then guess what – cut your losses now and go back to the lab and improve the product. Put the money in R&D and save the money marketing the product as is. In my opinion, these kinds of web based tools need to be part of every campaign in some shape or form. The days of a well planned out campaign that would run for a couple years are over. You have to learn and adjust as you go.
Ah, the rules of marketing keep changing. Let’s see what happens to Rozerem over the next 24 months.
Authentic Advertising
Friday, December 1st, 2006Great example of authentic branding. Nice job of Dove’s ad firm using YouTube to reinforce Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign which is an awesome concept. I actually pitched a similar concept to the CEO of large prestige cosmetics company about 4 years ago. This idea came from the fact that this particular brand, wasn’t acknowledging the fact that their customers tended to be middle aged women – not young beauties and that they should embrace that position and market to them. No dice though – they refuse to admit who their core customers were and kept trying to appeal to younger women and continuously losing that battle to other brands more aligned with that age group. Why doesn’t anyone in prestige cosmetics want to embrace the mature woman – aren’t they the ones with the deepest pockets and strongest desire to maintain their beauty?
Nice job Dove.
I did a brief search to and find out who is behind the campaign but came up empty. Anybody know?
The Nature of Marketing Revolution
Monday, November 27th, 2006An inevitable debate is taking place around the nature of the marketing. John Moore, at his excellent blog, Brand Autopsy, has been a recent party to the discussion. He offers this edited footage of David Jones, global CEO of Euro RSCG speaking at a recent AdAge clambake.