February 01, 2010 at 02:58 PM in Advertising, Business, Co-Creation, Community, Finance, Games, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Technology, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Alan Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian : "BookArmy – though it avoids saying so – is an offshoot of Harper
Collins. The two enterprises point in completely different directions.
As it was explained to me, the point of BookArmy is to get as many avid
book readers engaged as possible and learn as much as possible about
their likes and dislikes. At some point in the future (the theory goes)
publishers will no longer need to spend a fortune on marketing Max
Hastings’ next book by lavishing money on Waterstones or in print. They
will go to BookArmy and say, 'We know you have a database of the 80,000
people in the country who read books of military history. We’ll give
you our targeted marketing spend instead.' BookArmy is a telling illustration of two aspects of the
January 26, 2010 at 12:16 PM in Advertising, Business, Business Blogs, Community, Finance, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Modern Marketing, Open Source Marketing, P2P, PR, Social Software, software | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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January 13, 2010 at 02:33 PM in Advertising, Business, Community, Entertainment, Finance, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Modern Marketing, Open Source Marketing, P2P, PR, Social Software, software, Technology, Television, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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At the end of last year my Independent Financial Adviser rang and suggested I moved my pension plan. Why? Because I was now ‘eligible’ for a new scheme at a fancy-pants City stockbroker – Brewin Dolphin. Now I sort of trust this IFA guy. I do think he knows what he’s talking about. But, you know, I don’t always think he’s putting my interests at the very top of his daily to-do list. Also, I’ve had a terrible experience with pension plans. Let’s just say, ‘Equitable Life’ - and leave it at that. So I went to see said fancy-pants brokers at their mega-offices in London’s Spitalfields and listened to the offer. It was what I expected. Highly credible? Oh yes. Largely unintelligible? Absolutely. What to do? Well of course, some research. After all, the outcome of my pension is pretty important. If possible, I’d like to avoid the ‘food or power’ choice in the cruel winter of 2040. Into Google went the Brewin Dolphin name. What came back was just pages and pages of corporate information. Mostly unhelpful verbiage such as: ‘We recognise that building a strong working relationship with you is key to providing an excellent service. This personal approach is mirrored in the way we will approach investing on your client’s behalf. Our focus is on providing investment management that is as unique as each client’s needs. We have worked for generations, providing tailored solutions that help your clients to create and preserve wealth.’ Mmmm, no real insights there. I then typed in ‘Brewin Dolphin’ plus ‘customer review’. And the top result that came back was this. A review written last Summer that begins : ‘I have to write a review on Brewin Dolphin as a result of my experience with them. My overall impression of using them for over 10 years (not out of choice, will explain as I go on) is VERY BAD.’ Briefly, the review is a story of how Brewin Dolphin turned 80k into 38k over a ten year period. And here’s the part that caught my eye: ‘It is breath taking that these bankers can steal in daylight, whereas if I went into their branch in Manchester and took each of their Rolex watches, they car keys for their high performance cars and their make grooming products, I would get arrested and locked up.’ Mmmm, interesting. What next? I decided that...
January 08, 2010 at 01:47 PM in Advertising, Business, Finance, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Modern Marketing, PR | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: advertising, brewindolphin, business, finance, innovation, investment, management, marketing, media, PR, strategy, trends, web
A while back I suggested that the web was NICE - New Infrastructure, Culture and Economics. Well we’ve had a revolution in the first area with the arrival of broadband and superfast groovyware and in the second with the rise of the share-and-compare economy. This year I think we'll see changes in the economic aspect of my NICE notion. The problem with the desktop internet was that it didn’t come with a swipe card machine. In the early days of e-commerce, paying online felt like handing your keys to a stranger in the street and asking him to park your car. However, the world has changed. Facebook delivers shopping tips from our friends, the pocket browser is becoming the norm, your phone is developing a sense of direction and we all want one-click commerce. In short, the conditions for economic innovation look ripe. And, of course, this year money is in short supply so commercial ventures need to be, err, commercial. I have no idea what shape this economic change will come in. Other than that it may appear quite strange. For example, how do you fancy sharing your credit card purchases on Twitter? A step too far? Not according to Philip ‘AdBrite’ Kaplan, whose service Blippy, lets you share actual purchases with your social network. Kaplan makes it sound like the obvious next step, not an open invitation to the world’s cyber-villains: “It’s just another way of saying, 'Here’s what I’m doing,' or 'Here’s where I am,' or 'Here’s a band that I’m really into' — obviously, because I just bought five of their albums." Or how would you feel about letting your phone choose your lunch spot on the basis of who’s offering the best local deal? The raft of mobile coupon start-ups aim to turn internet traffic into retail footfall. Kerching! Then there’s Jack ‘Twitter’ Dorsey’s Square service, which turns your phone into a credit card swipe machine, meaning anyone can retail. Or check out mobile payment services GoPayForIt and Zong, the latter of which hopes to mobilise the FaceBook Credits service. Both aim to make micropayments a cinch. As ever, these Shiny New Things are only where the story begins. The end game maybe odd-sounding new virtual currencies, such as China's QQ economy, where bits can be turned into regular cash and used to buy (or steal) everyday items. Or can even be taxed!
The share-and-compare economy is booming and traded opinion is increasingly the key to purchase decisions. The maturing of digital economics may turn this opinion data into the new ‘rivers of gold’ that the media industry so desperately seeks. Or maybe it will generate more Etsy-style traders whose business is based not on people hitting a ‘Like’ button on Facebook but a ‘Buy’ button on their smartphone.
January 04, 2010 at 03:23 PM in Advertising, Business, Community, Finance, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Modern Marketing, Social Software, software, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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I enjoyed this Economist review of Ken Auletta's book, 'Googled: The End of the World as We Know It'. It highlights one particularly memorable line that sums up that world view where companies choose to ignore the implications of change in their marketplace and hold on tightly to creaking business models. Unfortunately, such determination to retain the cosy 'magic' of the status quo can open the door to a disruptive player like Google or Apple. "Sometimes it seems as if Google has never come across an industry it doesn’t want to disrupt. Best known for its hugely popular search engine, the internet giant has spread its tentacles into an ever-growing array of businesses, including advertising, telecoms and, most recently, digital-navigation software. The company’s habit of selling services cheaply or giving them away for free has endeared it to consumers. But its tactics have enraged competitors, who complain their new rival is out to destroy the economics of entire industries. Such griping has been loudest in the worlds of publishing and entertainment. Although media companies are hooked on the money they mint via adverts that run on Google and its YouTube video-streaming business, many of them also accuse the search firm of commoditising their content and of undermining their profits by making it easy for marketers to track the effectiveness of online ad spend. 'You’re fucking with the magic,' says the boss of one big media company to Google’s founders in a memorable scene recounted at the start of Ken Auletta’s new book."
December 29, 2009 at 12:17 PM in Advertising, Business, Finance, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, PR, Social Software, software, Technology, Television, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
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I really liked Matt McAlister's take on the nuances in development of the semantic web, open data and Sir Tim Berner-Lee's new mission: "The semantic web folks, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, have been
saying for years that the Internet could become significantly more
compelling by cooking more intelligence into the way things link around
the network. The movement is getting some legs to it these days, but the solution
doesn’t look quite like what the visionaries expected it to look like.
It’s starting to look more human. The more obvious journey toward a linked data world starts with releasing data publicly on the Internet. Many startups have proven that opening data creates opportunity. And now the trend has turned into a movement within government in the US, the UK and many other countries. Sir Tim Berners-Lee drove home this message at his 2009 TED talk where he got the audience to shout “Raw data now!”: “Before you make a beautiful web site, first give us the
unadulterated data. You have no idea the number excuses people come up
with to hang on to their data and not give it to you even though you’ve
paid for it as a taxpayer.” Openness makes you more relevant. It creates opportunity. It’s a way
into people’s hearts and minds. It’s empowering. It’s not hard to do.
And once it starts happening it becomes apparent that it mustn’t and
often can’t stop happening. The forward-thinking investors and politicians even understand that openness is fuel for new economies in the future...'.
November 26, 2009 at 12:11 PM in Advertising, Business, Finance, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Modern Marketing, PR, Social Software, software, Technology, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: advertising, data, finance, innovation, management, marketing, media, opendata, pr, semantic, socialweb, strategy, TBL, timbernerslee, trends
Japan can be a kind of a glimpse into the future to see what we’ll will be doing in about five years time. And this is certainly the case with regards to the mobile industry. Some go as far as calling Japan, ‘the Galapagos Islands of the cell phone world.' A reference to the Pacific islands where many unique species have developed in the benign isolated conditions. Take for instance i-mode, the open mobile service that was launched, complete with developers’ platform, in 1999 whilst we were all scratching our heads at WAP – and a full nine years before Apple’s App Store. Today, the service has about fifty million users who pay for a whole range of different content including games, fortune telling, ringtones, wallpapers and other virtual goods. Initially, NTT Docomo, i-mode’s parent, didn’t believe that anyone would pay for such mobile trinkets, and that voice was their only purpose. However, data now provides more than one third of the industry’s vast revenues. As a result, when the iPhone arrived in Japan people didn’t quite know what to make of it. It seemed to lack so many features that Japanese consumers were used to, including mobile TV. However, sales have since taken off with i-mode’s creator himself, Takeshi Natsuno, summing up the product’s popularity from a Japanese perspective: 'The iPhone is not a good phone. It’s terrible, but it’s a great internet computer'. He also believes that Steve Jobs’ baby and other smart phones will take over from his own creation due to their use of the TCP/IP global web standard. One key aspect of i-mode, and the copycat platforms that followed, was the baked-in, easy-to-use micropayment systems that allowed people to snack on virtual goods and gifts. All without the bother of subscription services, whilst also letting content producers easily pick up a fee for their work. And it is this habit of paying for mobile content that has created the...
Continue reading "The Mobile Industry’s ‘Galapagos’ & Murdoch’s Big Bet" »
November 23, 2009 at 02:52 PM in Advertising, Business, Finance, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Modern Marketing, PR, software, Technology, Television | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: advertising, analysis, android, digital, i-mode, innovation, iphone, management, marketing, marymeeker, media, micropayment, mobile, pr, strategy, trends, virtualgoods
November 18, 2009 at 11:21 AM in Advertising, Business, Cherkoff, Community, Finance, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Modern Marketing, Open Source Marketing, PR, Social Software, software, Technology, Television, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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David Weinberger captures the complexity of networked markets: "Traditional markets consist of demographic slices, i.e., “social
groups” of people who have never met one another. We choose particular
demographics because we think they are susceptible to the same message.
Thus, traditional markets are not real things to which we send
messages. Rather, messages make markets. Now, markets are networks…networks of people who converse and
interact, spread out across the Internet. For example, at any one
moment there are some number of parents with sick children who are on
the Net talking and posting, on blogs, discussion boards, social
networking sites, Twitter, etc. etc. etc. But that networked market is
substantially different in 12 hours because their kids are getting
better. And of course 12 hours is an extremely long periodicity for
these networked markets. They change constantly. Think of how ideas
ripple through Twitter. Furthermore, not everyone in the market of
parents with sick kids are in it the same way. The illnesses vary, the
seriousness of the illnesses vary, the relationships vary. Think about
the gay network in this regard: I’m sometimes in this network because I
blog about gay marriage. But if you, as marketer, fail to recognize the
complexity of the interests in this group, then you’ll be sending gay
dating solicitations to people who don’t want them, including some who
are in this network because they’re posting homophobic comments.
Networked markets are rippling, ever-changing, hugely complex,
inherently unstable, and thus thoroughly unlike traditional markets. In short: You can’t step into the same market twice."
November 16, 2009 at 10:55 AM in Advertising, Business, Co-Creation, Community, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Modern Marketing, Open Source Marketing, PR, software, Technology, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Technorati Tags: advertising, community, innovation, marketing, media, networks, online, planning, PR, strategy, trends
November 11, 2009 at 02:40 PM in Advertising, Business, Co-Creation, Community, Finance, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Modern Marketing, Open Source Marketing, P2P, PR, Social Software, software, Technology, Television, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
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The $500bn global marketing industry is driven by metrics. TVRs, GRs, OTS, TGI, ABC, BARB, CPC, CPA, PI, CPM, frequency, benchmarking, response, reach, hits – the range of measurement systems has exploded as the complexity of marketing continues to increase. Which has led to a gaming mentality among some parts of the industry, where almost any activity can be shown to be successful. If it looks like a campaign isn’t working it doesn’t mean it’s ineffective. It means you're standing in the wrong spot. However, in the share-and-compare world of personal media, social networks and communities, it’s simply not possible to game the system. If you’ve created a Facebook page, or an online forum, or an all singing-and-dancing app fest with mobile bells and whistles simply begging to be API’d and distributed around the widget world, no level of metric analysis will demonstrate success if no one joins in the fun. Any figures you try and flaunt to justify the activity will be drowned out by the sound of silence as the wind whistles through your Twitter feed, swinging the doors on the hinges of your silent social experience. No level of metrics will disguise the fact that No One Is In There. And should you try and lay a little Astroturf or sock up a few puppets, you are likely to discover that your conversational marketing takes on all the allure of a bowl of plastic fruit. Now whether this is of any significance depends upon your viewpoint of where the marketing world is headed. I chaired a little social gathering down at the IPA a couple of weeks ago where Mark Earls put the case for a connected, networked world being a sea change for every part of the communications industry. While others declared social to be a welcome new ingredient to the already murky marketing soup – but no more than that. Just DM and WOM for a new era. So if you’re with the Herdmeister then the fact that the game is up...
October 19, 2009 at 02:22 PM in Advertising, Business, Co-Creation, Community, Finance, Innovation, Interactive Marketing, Management, Marketing, Media, Modern Marketing, Open Source Marketing, P2P, PR, Technology, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)
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