What Marketing Executives Need to Know

Read an article from Jeremiah and things became crystal clear:

Web Marketing no longer is limited to your corporate site.

Let go of the concept of ‘driving traffic to your website’ as a sole measurement of success. The web, its message, and your battles are now fought on the open and distributed web.

Trusted decisions between prospects and customers are made on these social communities and networks, so the savvy executives need to go there.

I see 2 lines of communication. On the X axis is traditional; Y is peer-to-peer. The more communication a brand places on the Y axis, the more control that brand puts into the consumers’ hands.

Such a simple formula, yet most marketers don’t get this. I failed math. Twice. Yet to me, this is so crystal clear.

Innovation and Design Thinking

Slideshow by Idris Mootee.

There are some great insights in here on design thinking being applied to business.

From: imootee, 4 days ago

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Experience. Good. TV.

OK, I saw it on YouTube, but I’m still happy to know there are brands that can deliver this kind of experience.

Amazing video interpretation of what it’s like experiencing a ZUNE.

Some folks at Beyond Madison Avenue were saying that the ad took 45 seconds to display product, which is bad for product recall. Fair point. But what about experiencing what it would be like to be inside a ZUNE looking for a file, be it a song or video or whatever a ZUNE does?

That’s what this spot does. And does well.

It let’s our imagination sore, as if being in a Stanley Kubrick movie. It sells the experience – not the product – through interpretation, how we would use it, what it would feel like, etc. I know when I’m searching for a certain song, I get all tingly inside knowing what will happen when I find it. How I will tap my fingers or wiggle my pelvis. Yea, I wiggle sometimes. Music does that to me.

I’m never going to buy a ZUNE but this ad makes me realize its potential and the experience derived from handling a ZUNE. That I have to respect.

Thankful Experiences

Yesterday, in light of the American Thanksgiving celebrations, David Armano asked his community what they were thankful for.

It was an attempt to change the format on his company’s blog (not to be confused with his personal blog)… shifting it from essay-style to something more conversational.

It was heartlifting to write what I was thankful for, but when I read all 60 responses, I was flabbergasted.

Yesterday I was thankful for the experience I had in Budapest. Today I’m thankful for how human David made the internet feel.

The End of Really Bad Advertising

There are 2 trends that I predict will help shape our future in advertising.

The first is web 3.0.
Web 2.0 was all about providing platforms and forums for users to create UGC, blogs, viral stuff, etc. We gave the consumer a voice. And when consumers have that kind of power we end up seeing a lot of “really bad” content. Web 3.0 will change that. Content will be the next killer app.

Take the latest Guinness ad, for example. They spent $21 million producing that 90-second ad. Why? Because it’s entertainment value. OK, they stole the idea from Honda but it’s still entertaining.

And then there’s Firebrand. A site where you subscribe to watch your favourite ads.

Facebook and their social shopping experience is putting the power into their members’ hands. The brands that I choose to become a fan of are brands that have entertained me / given me value in the past. As soon as those experiences become lost, I’m no longer a fan. And all it takes is one click.

The second is EXPERIENCE
Most ad agencies are too busy executing rather than planning experiences… running around writing bullshit briefs, always being a YES man, hardly ever taking into account what the experience should be as opposed to what we can afford it to be so our margins are good and in some cases, meet monthly revenue targets set by corporate.

The successful “experience agency” will pay heed to this quote from an IBM report:

Two thirds of the advertising experts IBM polled
expect 20 percent of advertising revenue
to shift from impression-based to impact based
formats within three years.

The good news is we’ve been been preaching this for some time now. However, we have work to do. We need to shift our thinking from Ad Agency to Experience Agency. To do this, we need to bring “design thinking” to “strategy thinking”.

This will achieve better results because consumers are more engaged with the whatever message we’re delivering. In some cases, and it’s happening more often, design will become a part of product design, thus giving a consumer greater engagement and a better experience.

Leon’s Customer Experience

A couple of weeks ago I bought my son’s first mattress.

I wound up at Leon’s after a few attempts at other mattress shops. I was reluctant to go because I bought some kitchen appliances from them 8 years ago. Leon’s was great, don’t get me wrong. The appliances, however, not so much. As a result, it left a bad taste in my mouth about them as a brand, even though they had nothing to do with the sub-par quality of the appliances they sold me.

When I arrived the place was buzzing. I found my guy, Tony. Within minutes, Tony had my order in the system and at the check out counter to settle my bill. It happened so fast. Next thing I know a kid from shipping is tying Jack’s mattress onto the roof of my car. He read my mind. So much so that I had to tip him. You know the feeling…

Yesterday, I was reminded about my amazing experience at Leon’s – I received a hand-written Thank You card from Tony. Hand-written. For a $300 mattress. Nice.

Ferrari unveiled its supercar ‘612 Scaglietti’

The new Ferrari has an uncanny resemblance to the old Nissan 350 Z.

Twittering from the Capital C offsite

The other day, as we sat in the Guvernment on those extremely uncomfortable chairs, little did anyone know that the rest of world was listening in. OK, not the entire world. But anyone who cared about what I had to say on Twitter got highlights of that amazing day.

As I sat in my chair, feeling the numbness creep into my behind, I began Twittering from my cellphone; I felt so empowered. Like a reporter from CNN.

My first post (a.k.a. “Tweet”) was about Doug and the purpose of the day’s event. See the bottom of the list in the image below:

Later on, I Tweeted about Geoff Craig, asking Twitterland: “What’s On Your Highlight Reel?”

There were a few responses from people that follow me or my “Followers”, which you can see I have 28 of. Some of them are fellow Cap C’ers. Others are friends, family and industry experts.

Regardless of who’s following me, the idea is my followers get my Tweets. Some on cellphones; others on a desktop widget like Twitterific. Or on the site www.twitter.com. Some get them on all 3. It depends.

To put this into context, think about our colleagues that could not make it to the offsite that day. Had they been following joeszabo on Twitter, they would have received the updates throughout the day. Heck, some of them could have Tweeted back, egging Tony on about his GO TEAM sign.

On a more serious note, the Los Angeles Fire Department is using Twitter to send updates as fire ravages through Southern California. Even people who have lost their internet connection as a result of losing their home or damage to the city’s infrastructure, they can still be kept up to date: they just have to follow LAFD on Twitter.

Truly amazing times.

Twittering (a.k.a. Micro Blogging) is beginning to take a stronghold. Google recently acquired Twitter’s competition, so if Google is keen (their stock went over the $700 USD mark today) then pretty much the rest of the world will be.

Just give it time.