Just published: “Age of Conversation 3 - It’s time to get busy!”
May 18th, 2010In 2007, Gavin Heaton and Drew Mclellan kicked off the idea to tap their network of fellow marketers around the world and write a collaborative book on the challenges and opportunities of marketing in a highly connected world. I contributed a chapter to the first two books, and now we’re proud to launch “Age of Conversation 3 - It’s time to get busy!”
Here is a little from the Amazon editor’s review:
Following the success of the first two editions, Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy! again kick-starts the discussion about how the global marketing landscape is changing. With over 170 of the world’s leading marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators contributing chapters, this collaborative work investigates the roles that community, conversation, experimentation, engagement, and collaboration play in shaping the 21st century’s economy of ideas.
As with the first and second edition, what makes this book valuable is that you get a great mix of viewpoints from across the globe on set topics. Some of the contributors are already recognised authors, some may well in the future and some are simply smart people. One thing most if not all have in common is that they are all practitioners; people who are doing stuff.
my chapter is called “Influencing people in B2B Marketing”; buy one copy for yourself, and one for a friend. All the money goes to the Make a Wish foundation.
Here is a list of all the contributors. Check out their blogs; you’re certain to find some great ideas and experiences.
We’re all drowning, and all you do is raise the water level…
April 18th, 2010I started this blog in 2005, with a pretty clear purpose; share my ideas at no cost to a global audience, profile myself as a marketer and participate in a community that was vibrant, creating fantastic professional connections. Connection based on a shared interest in Marketing. Along the way, I found out where people lived and sometimes we exchanged emails of a more social nature.
We’ve built relationships, and I’ve learned more from you, (complete strangers mostly at the other end of the world) than I could have hoped to have learned in ANY other way.
Now here is the thing that bothers me….I’ve stopped participating the way I used to. I don’t read the blogs I used to read. I don’t really comment on blogs anymore. My attention switched to Twitter and Facebook rather than an RSS reader; after all, everyone in my network would use these places to promote what they had to say anyway. That was the theory.
I think I’m going back to me RSS reader and here is why. Twitter and Facebook have polluted the stream of information I actually value from the people I follow. Most blog posts are on-topic. Mostly, no more than one a day. Most Twitter post are off-topic and posted many times a day…How am I going to keep up? And why do you make it so hard for me to find the stuff I want to read?
Facebook is even more difficult. Perfect for my personal life, but I don’t really want to share my personal life with my blogging friends or work mates. It’s not what binds us. It’s what binds me to my family and personal friends. I don’t really want to read what my colleagues do on their holidays either, or that they rode their bikes this morning… not because I don’t care about them, but because it is not what binds us.
Maybe it is because I don’t get it. Or maybe our fundamental social make up hasn’t changed and we are still made up of different personas; private and public. I’m a father, son and brother. I’m a manager at a company. I’m a participant in a global marketing discussion. I’m (very infrequently) a musician.
But I don’t talk to my mother or music buddies about marketing, because it doesn’t interest them. I don’t talk to my boss about my private life (in any detail) because he’s not interested in the detail and possibly likes to have a little distance. We are selective who we share information with, because (among other things) it makes us more interesting and relevant to the people we share the information with.
Relationships are built on the things we have in common, the things that bind us. I can’t have personal relationships with the everyone I know. There is no time, for one. Of course work friends can become close friends or even family. (and I should know).
The challenge for all of us was (and is) that there is only so much you can read and create and still do your day job. It’s just too much, and I don’t think I’m alone.
Bing vs Google - side by side
February 19th, 2010Here is a great idea: someone created a site that let’s you search one term and brings up Google and Bing side by side. The moment I saw this I realised why I liked Google so much. First, have a look that this:
The information provided by Google on the term Aconex is a summary of the most relevant pages right on the top. In contrast, Bing gives me a list of seemingly unstructured information.
Add to that the “show options” link right above the result and I can’t for the life of me think what would make me change from google to Bing…
Anyone have other ideas? Am I missing someting?
Short and sweet
November 19th, 2009
This product will help you increase your ROI and decrease your TCO = I have no freaking clue what the REAL business benefits of my product are, and I’m too lazy to figure it out. Source: Cranky Product Manager
Can you control the message in social media?
November 6th, 2009Trevor Cook is someone I’ve been following for some time, because of his insights in media and PR. He wrote this (altogether good) article. There was just one quote that got me thinking:
Business needs to keep perspective on social media – Corporate Engagement
The Obama campaign is the current gold standard of this approach – they controlled message but they allowed people a great deal of lattitude in the way they helped promote that message
I’ve read it a few times now, and I’m not sure.
Did the Obama campaign control message? They certainly created it, but did they really “control” it allowing people “lattitude” in the way they helped promote it?
I don’t think so. I think the reason it is the “gold standard” is because they created the kind of messages people wanted to share and promote, and then created highly targeted tools and activities to enable these messages to be spread.
In fact, had they made any attempt to control the message (apart from correcting people when they misrepresented the message), the whole thing would have failed.
What do you think? Did I miss something here?
Feeling overwhelmed? Just talk to someone.
October 13th, 2009David Armano tweeted (twitered?)this article…at the very bottom, this pearl of wisdom….
The End of the Email Era - WSJ.com
“People were very dependent on email. They overused it,” he says. “Now, people can use the right tool for the right task.”Perhaps. But there’s another way to think about all this. You can argue that because we have more ways to send more messages, we spend more time doing it. That may make us more productive, but it may not. We get lured into wasting time, telling our bosses we are looking into something, instead of just doing it, for example. And we will no doubt waste time communicating stuff that isn’t meaningful, maybe at the expense of more meaningful communication. Such as, say, talking to somebody in person.
“My 6 year old son could have done that”
October 5th, 2009Anyone in marketing dealing with branding has heard that one before. About a logo design. About a tag line.
Most of the time, it is very hard to argue the point. When you look at the final product of a logo design, or when you read a final tag line, it is probably really simple. Doesn’t look hard to do. But that’s measuring the wrong thing. It’s not about how hard it is to create something, but how strong it communicates the desired brand positioning.
For example. Kraft thought it was a fun idea to engage their customers in naming a new product. They put little jars with Vegemite flavoured cheese spread and decided to crowd source the name for the new product. “Name Me” the little jars of spread shouted off the shelves. So that was the brief. “Name Me”.
The result was that thousands sent in their ideas, and the good people at Kraft, (custodians of one of the most iconic brands in Australia, Vegemite) chose one that sounded like something their target audience might like. iSpread 2.0. I won’t go into all the reasons why this was a terrible choice, there is plenty of commentary from all sorts of media (social and otherwise) on that. In fact, the Wall Street Journal even reported the fact that the company has decided to pull the name and think of a new one.
What I am more interested in is how they got there. The reason you don’t let your 6 year old son design a logo (or a product name) is that he is not likely to be clear on what you’re trying to communicate, how you are trying to position the product. That is the difficulty in design and good branding; how to communicate an idea in the simplest, most powerful way.
The sort of thoughts you expect to go through someones mind naming a product (especially for an iconic brand) are:
Without that, how could either the people creating the name, or the people choosing the name know if it was good, bad or indifferent?
It is the difference between advertising thinking and brand positioning, and I think Al Ries should have a field day with this one, in one of his contributions on Branding Strategy Insider.
Get your customers involved is fun, but don’t think that you can take a short cut to the hard work of positioning a product.
11 ways to make your life easier
September 12th, 2009Over the years, I’ve used (and abandoned) literally dozens if not hundreds of online and offline software applications to help me deal with information overload, get things done, or simply play. Here is a list of the ones that are helping me get on. Yes, I am a bit of a closet nerd, but if you spend a bit of time behind your computer, you might find one or two of these tools handy.
Dealing with information overload (and sharing around)
- Hootsuite - the most elegant way to manage twitter in a clean, easy to use interface.
- Delicious - one place to bookmark everything I find of interest and want to share with: 1. Everyone, 2. A select group of people.
- Feedly - a really nice little plugin for Firefox that grabs your RSS feeds from Google Reader and makes it easy to digest, share and manage what you read.
- Yahoo Pipes - a bit more techie, this is a very clever tool to combine and filter information from the web.
Getting things done
- Firefox 3.0 - The best web browser, simply because it allows you to customise with all sorts of handy tools, such as the one I am using now to write this blog post offline, but in a browser (Scribefire) or the Delicious plugin that lets me quickly manage bookmarks (without leaving the page). If you’re still on Internet Explorer, you should really have a look.
- Xmind - a “mind mapping” tool that helps me organise thoughts and plans rapidly and communicate them with others in a simple, visual way
- Dropbox - so simple. Why store files on your PC? Store them in an online folder by dragging them into a your “dropbox” folder. Access from anywhere, synchronized copies on all your PC’s if you install the little app.
- Logmein - Lets you remotely access and control someone else’s computer (with their permission of course). I’m talking helpdesk to your Mum, or accessing one of your computers at home from work.
- Jing - a simple screen recording tool that allows you to either grab a screen image, or record a little flash movie (for US$9.95 pa you can get the pro version, which has MP4 recording and no Jing branding at the end of your movie)
- Google, of course…..In particular Gmail, Google Maps and iGoogle if you want to personalise your news and get some RSS feeds (look in the right top hand corner of the Google page) as well as the “forms” function in Google Docs (spreadsheets) that allows you to run simple, free little questionnaires online. Lots, and lots more but these are the ones i use mostly, or see the greatest application for.
- Audacity - a free audio recording and editing tool that’s so powerful and easy to use it is almost ridiculous.
So what do you use? Have I missed any great apps you are using? Share!
Brand Australia - trying to be all things to all people
August 26th, 2009
$20 Million. That’s what’s up for grabs to design the next “branding” campaign for Australia. The trade minister, Simon Crean told us that it needs to position us as a place to live, a place to invest, a place to study, a place that is more than just natural beauty. (pic by Ernieski)
First this:SIMON CREAN: Building brand Australia has an unashamedly commercial focus which will help promote Australia as a great place to live, a great country in which to do business, a great place to invest. Building brand Australia is also about Australia reaching out to the world; it’s another sign that we’re not turning inwards, going down the path of mandatory buy Australia campaigns.
Than this: “Australian trade minister Simon Crean announced a $20 million plan today as a means to ‘re-brand’ Australia with a new tourism tagline and logo to reboost diminishing interest in the country as a tourist destination”
He admires the New Zealand campaign: “100% Natural”. The CEO of the Tourism and Transport Forum is a little cautious (and rightfully so) about what a new brand might look like and realistically achieve. He says:
We often look to the great success of 100 per cent Pure New Zealand, though New Zealand in a way is almost mono-destinational and mono-product. Everything can be encapsulated in that.
Exactly. They are promoting NZ as a tourist destination. That’s it. And that’s the problem with this brief, IMHO.
You can’t be all things to all people. What do we want to do? Appeal to tourists? They don’t give a rip about the investment opportunity. Do we want to appeal to investors? Why would they care that this is a great place to study? Or fish? Or go to the beach?
You want to do it right? Three audiences. Three dreams, three campaigns. Not one. With that many spin doctors around, is there no one to help the politicians with this?
What I would do online if I were you
August 6th, 2009That is, if you haven’t done it already. I probably don’t have to convince anyone that as a business today you have to be online; the question is more likely what you should do, and how much of it. There are hundreds, and hundreds of people online giving you all different advice, which in some way makes it harder, rather than easier to determine what you should do.
So why are you reading this instead? Possibly because you’ve read some other posts I’ve written and decided to come back, or you know me personally and decided to follow this blog. In either case, the fact that I have your attention is a demonstration of what you can achieve online without spending a dollar.
Just a reminder why you should do this….
Most of all, your competitors do it badly - I can almost guarantee that your competitors don’t do half of the things they could be doing online. The vast majority of businesses still see marketing (and therefore their website) as a “set and forget” kind of thing. There’s an immediate opportunity. Look at your competitors and see what they do badly.
Top things to do
Invest time in content - the more you’ve thought about your niche, and how you position yourself away from others, the better. This means that you can use SPECIFIC key words in your content and page titles that will help people understand your differentiation, and search engines find you. Make sure people can find the information they may be looking for FAST. Don’t be gimmicky; people are in a hurry.
Invest money in design - create an online presence that makes you look bigger than you are, and is a window to you and your brand. If you do have some money to spend, spend it on someone who can help you with design. Why would you go through all the effort to get someone to your site, to present them with an image of you that is crap? YOUR NOT A DESIGNER, AND THEY’RE NOT THAT EXPENSIVE.
Make a blog a key page of your site, so you have your own media outlet. It is STILL the way to give your prospects and customers value that they won’t get from your competitors. If you’re looking for ideas for online PR in particular, Read David Meerman Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”.
Get active in social media - If you are in B2B make sure you are on LinkedIn. If networking is the lifeblood of most B2B marketing, than you have to invest time in continuously building your network online. A LinkedIn account with two contacts is useless. A LinkedIn account with 50 or 100 is starting to get pretty powerful.
Start a Twitter account and use it wisely; contrary to popular believe, your customers won’t give a toss if you’re stuck in an airport, you’ve just divorced or if you’re playing with your kids. (Yes, all of these have come through in my Twitter stream of professional contacts) What you DO want to do is use it to follow your customers, (if you can), post links back to your blog, or to other sites your customers might be interested in. Or to promote a special, only to your web followers. Your Facebook page can be automatically updated with your Twitter update too.
Experiment with Google pay per click advertising, BUT spend the time researching the best possible keywords, the same keywords you have used right throughout your website content. If you have extra cash, use an agency. In Melbourne, I’d use Salsa
Be as local and specific as you can, and use the phrases that describe your specific niche and your local market as much as you can.
It’s going to take time -Whatever you do, online or off, it is going to take time and as the saying goes, the best time to start is yesterday, but today is the second best option.So, what are you waiting for?
Did I miss anything?
