Emergence Marketing: marketing Archives

November 15, 2007

Measuring ROI on social media investments

need%20help%20sm.jpg A lot of people and companies are struggling to come up with good ways to define an ROI for social media investments - Patrick Schaber's recent post on the topic is just one of the many thoughtful pieces on the topic.

The key to measuring your investments in social media is to first define what it is you are trying to do - are you trying to increase sales, improve the SEO of your site, get more new product ideas into your new product development funnel, trying to improve customer service, or enhance your PR by getting a bigger share of voice in the social media space? And yes, you can do all that with various social media strategies - we have case studies in each and every one of them.

So once you have defined what it is you want to do - measure it the same way you would measure any other program deployed for that same purpose. If you already track idea sources and various percentages to gauge the success of your new product development pipeline, just add a category for the new social media-based community and measure everything else the same way. If you want to increase sales, just measure the efficacy of the social media based campaign the same way you would measure any other lead generation program. And if PR/awareness in the social media space is your goal, then there are many more tools at your disposal in the social media space to measure progress than there are in traditional media. One bonus of social media-based programs is that they will impact multiple marketing functions much more so than traditional marketing programs. So in effect you might develop an ROI in one area and see the cost of doing business in other areas go down at the same time.

Now, the real problem is that we measure traditional marketing programs the wrong way. Almost everything in traditional measurement programs is customer transaction-based - how much will it cost to get a customer to buy...ONCE. What we really want to measure is how programs affect a customer's life-cycle value - including his/her ability to influence others in making buying decisions. The other problem with most traditional measurement yardsticks - and ROI is perhaps the most famous of them - is that they are trailing indicators, not leading indicators. Not enough companies measure things in ways that give them indications of where their business is going, or how sucessful add-on programs will be.

We are currently working with Deloitte on a research project to uncover how companies are measuring the progress and success of various social media-based external communities. If you would like to help with that or if you have opinions on the subject, feel free to email me at francois [at] emergencemarketing [dot] com.

[Tags: marketingt social media ROI marketing measurement marketing 2.0]

November 14, 2007

Fun Viagra ads

While on the topic of ads - here are a couple of clever Viagra ads :)
(via Ads of the World)

November 13, 2007

The end of advertising as we know it

A new study by the IBM Institute for Business Value predicts that the next 5 years will hold more change for the advertising industry than the previous 50 did (here for executive summary, and here for full pdf report of the study).

Based on a survey of 2,400 consumers and feedback from 80 advertising execs, they see four change drivers that will shift control within the Industry:

Attention - consumers are increasingly in control of where they direct their attention. And not just by using Tivo-like products which enable them to skip ads and watch what they want when they want it, but because of a fundamental shift from TV usage to PC usage. 71% of the survey respondents use the Internet more than 2 hours a day, with only 48% spending equivalent time watching TV. 19% spend six hours or more on a PC with just 9% watching that much TV.

Creativity - consumers now have the tools to create their own user-generated and peer-delivered content. User generated content sites are already the top destinations for viewing online video, attracting 39% of the survey respondents.

Measurement - advertising executives predict that 20% of all advertising dollars will shift from impression-based models to impact-based models within 3 years.

Advertising inventories - ad space is increasingly available through open exchanges instead of proprietary channels that were controlled by broadcasters.

Based on these drivers, and considering that two of them have a high degree of uncertainty - the attention driver and the open inventory driver - the study envisions 4 possible scenarios for 2012:

Continued Evolution: One to many still dominates but thanks to DVR's, increased penetration of CGC and better measurement techniques, a greater portion of direct marketing dollars gets allocated to channels typically used for brand oriented advertising.

Open Exchange: Not much changes in this scenario other than most inventory gets bought through open exchanges.

Consumer Choice: In this scenario the user takes full control of the way ads get viewed and filtered.

Ad Marketplace: In this one the consumer choose preferred ad types as part of self-programming their media choices and are more involved with the creation and distribution of the ads.

Here is how the study predicts advertising spend allocation will evolve over the next 3 years:

[Tags: marketing advertising IBM]

Anti-Hummer campaign

This one is quite funny...

(via Coolz0r)

November 7, 2007

History repeats itself - ad skipping in 1934

This article in the April 4th edition of Modern Mechanix reminds us that many new ideas are...well not so new after all - "Radio listeners who dislike advertising announcements and long speeches will welcome a new invention that automatically shuts off voice programs."

(via MIT's Advertising Lab)

November 1, 2007

Amazing to see how many marketers spam...

Almost 10 years after the ClueTrain you would expect marketing professionals to no longer spam - especially not in social media based marketing networking groups. Yet that is exactly what happens all the time. I must be spending an hour a week cleaning up spam in the Marketing 2.0 group on Facebook which I created a couple of months ago.

Sometimes I just yank the spam, sometimes I write a note to the author, especially when it is somewhat borderline, sometimes I get pissy, especially when there is a lot. Spam ranges from get rich quick schemes and incredible-sounding offers to people just adding a link to their company or blog without engaging in the conversation. Sometime people I write notes to take it well, sometimes I never hear from them and sometimes they get mad. One guy, who kept plastering the group with a link to his blog, sent me emails adding up to almost 1,200 words now - telling me that I did not understand the meaning of the word spam, that he would "interpret (my) note as a stupid act by a guy who's intelligent in at least some respects," and eventually graduating to telling me that "The so-called Web 2.0 world doesn't need another pompous ass." ...he also told me that I should apologize.

Maybe I should follow Chris Anderson's lead and just have a note in the group that lists those people who do not get it.

...but wait, it was the threat of doing exactly that which sent the poor chap over the edge...so this could actually be a dangerous course of action :)

[Tags: marketing social media facebook spam marketing 2.0]

October 10, 2007

Is the customer really in charge?

So in the past couple of years there has been a lot of talk about the democratization of media, citizen marketing, the amateur hour, and other themes & memes pointing to the fact that the customer is now in charge. He owns the message; she decides what happens to the brand, etc.

Fact is – the vendors are no longer is charge. Nobody would argue against that point anymore.

But does that automatically equate with saying that the customer is now in charge?

Academic research about democratic sites like DIGG shows that a majority of what makes it to the front page comes from a very small number of people – in fact, researchers talk about the “tyranny of the minority.” Other research, such as the one done by Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell and reported in their Citizen Marketers book, finds that the percentage of people who actually create and broadcast content is 1%.

So is the customer really in charge? Or is it a small group of non-democratically elected loudmouths who now controls the message?

This is just one of the topics that we will talk about this afternoon during the interview with Jackie Huba.

October 5, 2007

Are the 4 P's still relevant in today's world?

As I was responding to some discussions in the Marketing 2.0 group on Facebook, I started talking about the relevance of the 4 P's in marketing, which of course is one of the cornerstones in marketing education worldwide.

But are they really relevant anymore?

Let's look at them one by one:

Product - I guess this one stays :) - although are you sure that people are always buying your "product"? Or are they buying an experience associated with your product? Or perhaps a "personal identity" that comes with the use of your product?

Place - is amazon.com a place? Is a search engine placement a place?

Promotion - people are not taking your corporate BS anymore...And according to the Strategy and Business article I posted in the Facebook "posted items," 80% of all insurance policies will be bought based on information not provided by the insurance companies! So does promotion in the insurance industry still matter? Maybe - if you think that the company can participate in the creation of the user generated content that people will base their decisions on without hiring corporate "shills."

Price - many new business models have funny pricing schemes - as in "free"

In the late 80's some academics (I cannot remember who they were) came up with a replacement for the 4P's - the 4C's. While not perfect, the 4 C's may sound a little more modern/appropriate for the times:

Customer instead of product
Communication instead of promotion
Cost instead of price
Convenience instead of place...

Using the 4P's as a roadmap for success for new products may not be the best roadmap to use anymore... It is a bit like using north, south, east and west as guides to find your way in deep space.

Thoughts?

[Tags: marketing 4 p's 4 c's marketing death valley marketing 2.0]

October 1, 2007

Comparing Wal-Mart and Target on Facebook

Both Target and Wal-Mart have sponsored groups on Facebook - both of which are targeted at college kids.

Target has over 7,000 members and mostly positive comments in a vibrant set of discussions. The Wal-Mart group on the other hand has a little over 1,200 members, no discussions are allowed, and the wall postings are mostly negative.

What is the difference do you think, except for the fact that a large portion of the population believes that one of the two companies is truly evil?

The Wal-Mart home page looks like another interactive ad.. The Target home page is more inviting and enlists the help of users to co-create the experience. Any other differences that you can think of that would result in such a difference in membership and tone of conversation?

We can take the discussion to Facebook - in fact I started a thread on the subject in the Marketing 2.0 group, where we now have more members than the Wal-Mart Facebook group.

[Tags: marketing social networking facebook wal-mart target]

September 28, 2007

Do we really need a new and more verbose definition of Marketing?

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) decided that its 30-year old definition of marketing was no longer good and that they needed to come up with a new one (via The Economic Times). The results are depressing.

Here's the old definition:

The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably

The new one:

The strategic business function that creates value by stimulating, facilitating and fulfilling customer demand. It does this by building brands, nurturing innovation, developing relationships, creating good customer service and communicating benefits. By operating customer-centrically, marketing brings positive return on investment, satisfies shareholders and stake-holders from business and the community, and contributes to positive behavioural change and a sustainable business future.

Yikes...the inmates are running the asylum at CIM!

How about something real simple, like Peter Drucker's view on marketing:

The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.

[Tags: marketing definition Chartered Institute of Marketing CIM peter+drucker]

September 27, 2007

So you think that message saturation is a new phenomenon?

In prepping for the interview with brand guru Tom Asacker tomorrow I ran across this fabulous quote in one of his thought pieces - this one his visual illumination on how to connect your brand to THEIR lives.

“Psychologists tell us that the mind is under a continual bombardment of ideas, all of which are trying to make an impression on it. The prospect, therefore, does not sit around with his mind a blank, calmly waiting for someone or something to capture his attention without a struggle. The salesman enters a field already well occupied and must fight for the undivided attention that is a successful sale.”

This was written in Modern Man in 1918!

That right 89 years ago...and who said that message overload is a new phenomenon?

Make sure to join us tomorrow - it should be fun.

September 26, 2007

Do the dumbest marketers work for cell phone companies, or is it just T-Mobile?

10/03/07 Update: Somebody from T-Mobile got in touch with me and offered me a Blackberry Curve for less money than what new users buy it for. I took the offer. Thankfully someone at T-Mobile is watching out and taking action - but I still think they would benefit from making this a proactive program instead of a reactive one.

I am a T-Mobile user and yesterday I tried to upgrade to the Blackberry Curve. Even though I am long-time loyal T-Mobile customer, spending $180+/mo on their services, I would have to pay $400 for the new handset instead of the $250 that new customers have to pay. I was furious but the guy in the store could not do anything and recommended that I call customer service - which I did. Half an hour into that call I got the same response.

Obviously I am about to become an iPhone user until those guys screw up - no matter how much it will cost me to break my contract (earth to T-Mobile marketing - it isn't about the money, it's about principles on how you treat your customers).

It is of course not the first time that this has happened to me, as I am sure it has happened to you. This time around, however, I figured I would do some back of the envelope calculations to demonstrate the stupidity of this particular marketing technique/abuse campaign.

I am a very loyal customer and if they would have switched me and not screw up too badly in the future I could have easily been with them for another 4 years. At $180/mo, that is a loss of $8,640. I am also a big recommender when I like a product or service, and can point to many people who switched to T-Mobile because of my recommendations. Let's say that 4 people become subscribers every year based on my recommendations (might be more with a cool toy like the Curve), and let's further assume that 50% of those would have joined through some other marketing outreach program from T-Mobile. For the sake of this exercise let's say that those people who do sign up based on my recommendations would spend half of what I spent. That means that by losing those recommendations they would lose $8,640 in referral business the 1st year, $6,480 the 2nd year, $4,320 the 3rd and $2,160 the 4th year. And supposing that the customer acquisition cost, not including handset subsidies, is around $200/customer, the other 8 referrals who might have joined based on other outreach programs might have saved them another $1,600 in acquisition cost.

So the lost opportunity so far for not giving me the discount is $31,840. I know, it should be converted into its net present value to get the real number - but for a $150 rebate??

Now that is not all. I am sufficiently turned off with this idiotic marketing behavior that I am willing to write about it on my blog. With 18,000 unique visitors/month according to Google Analytics and close to 1,200 RSS subscribers according to Feedburner, I can only assume that a few people will not switch to T-Mobile because of my bad experience. Add to that the number of social networks that I belong to and where this recommendation will get syndicated, and the amount of lost business because of my negative recommendation could actually be far worse than the lost business caused by me no longer being a customer and referrer.

How stupid can this be? And when will the government step up and let us own phones that are no longer locked to a particular service provider?

[Tags: t-mobile social networking word-of-mouth WOM customer lifecycle value customer referral value]

September 25, 2007

The value of word-of-mouth

The latest issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article on how to calculate the value of customer referrals (article not online yet).

They conducted two studies - one in telecom and one in financial services. Some interesting findings from those calculations include:

People refer way less than they say they do

The customer referral value is higher than the customer life-cycle value

The people with the highest customer life-cycle value are not the ones with the highest referral value

The importance of these findings are twofold. First you need to segment your customers along the customer life-cycle value axis, but also along the customer referral value axis. That will enable you to target your incentives to groups to either increase their usage or increase their referrals, or both. Second, this research shows that customers will low customer life-cycle value can in fact have a higher value to your company through referral value than those with high customer life-cycle value.

[Tags: marketing social networking word-of-mouth WOM customer lifecycle value custormer referral value]

September 24, 2007

Two great telephone interviews coming up

On Friday 9/28 at 1pm I will be interviewing branding expert Tom Asacker, the author of the great book "A Clear Eye for Branding," as well as the blog by the same name. You can find out more information about the event and also sign up through the Facebook event page that was created as part of the Marketing 2.0 Group.

On 10/10 @1pm I will be interviewing word-of-mouth expert Jackie Huba, the author of "Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force," and co-author of "Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message." You can find more information about that session and sign up through the Facebook event page created for this interview.

Soon we will be announcing additional interviews, debates and discussions with other marketing thought-leaders - so stay tuned.

September 20, 2007

What is the marketing potential of LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace

Reveries.com conducted a survey on the potential of social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Myspace as media for marketing activities (pdf download of survey summary results and analysis are here). The main finding seems to be that marketers are in the very early stages of truly understanding the potential of these new networks - with only 18% of the respondents calling the potential of online social networks as a medium for marketing "huge".

Other interesting tidbits from the survey include the fact that marketers see "word of mouth" as the most promising aspect of social networking sites, and that many pointed out that marketers should participate in the conversations that take place on those sites without interrupting them.

Unfortunately, the reality is that many spammers have already invaded Facebook, Myspace and other similar sites. Go check the walls of the most popular interest groups in Facebook to see for yourself - many are littered with posts that are total sales pitches or with information that is totally irrelevant to the group's conversation.

[Tags: marketing social networking conversational marketing social media facebook myspace linkedin]

September 19, 2007

Marketing Voodoo and Fufu Juice Descend on Conversational Marketing...

Following the phone conversation with David Weinberger last week, during which he expressed doubts about whether marketing can be conversational, I ran across this piece on conversational marketing by Joe Marchese on MediaPost's Online Spin blog.

Talking about best practices in conversational marketing he says:

"The best practice is to imagine your brand’s message as a circle and a community’s conversation as another circle; what you are looking for is the area where the circles overlap. Once you find this overlap, you can begin to look for ways to participate in the conversation and achieve your marketing goals at the same time. Three things to remember: First, speak frankly and understand that each individual you are communicating with is a peer, not a demo. Second, as my friend Rishad Tobaccowala pointed out so succinctly, if your product sucks, don’t bother trying to create conversations. Third, remember, conversation without permission is just interrogation."

Further in the article, he suggests that:

"as a marketer, (you) should be prepared to finish the conversations you start."

I think David was right...marketers will screw it up. For those marketers who even get what Joe is trying to say, I can just see them expanding their "brand message circle" to where it totally overlaps with the "community circle". I bet you some brand message "areas" will be turned into ellipses, squares and other fancy shapes just to make the overlap happen.

The very clever ones will claim that the shape of the "community circle" is not really what it appears to be. Surely some marketers will agree that the "community circle" of the "Empower Patients" group on Facebook overlaps with the "brand message circle" of heart burn medicine; or that the 104,633 people who belong to the "Foundation for the protection of Swedish underwear models" cause on Facebook might be interested in engaging in conversations with cruise organizers.

As for the other recommendations - I am not sure that I agree with any of them. For starters, not everyone you are communicating with is a peer. I know they are not a demo, as they are hopefully human. But what if the community consists of a bunch of doctors, and you engage with them because you have the expertise to help them in an area where they don't - say accounting. They are not your peers. Now this is more than bickering about terminology - being peers implies certain acceptable behaviors in conversations which are not appropriate if you are not peers.

And saying that if your product sucks you should not start a conversation is a potentially a misleading recommendation. For the longest time Google docs may have looked like a product that sucks for high end professional services companies that spend a lot of effort in creating sophisticated proposals, and who would not blink a eye at the money required to get a really high-end collaborative environment. For many of us freelancers on the other hand, it was a product sent from heaven - even if the app would crash periodically. The whole "innovator's dilemma" landscape is littered with products that suck but displaced very successful incumbents.

And can we really not end a conversation? Sigh...

OK - so let's try to summarize this:

Markets = conversations
You either have a legitimate reason to engage in the conversation - or not
In some communities it is ok to talk about "crappy" products - in others it isn't
Sometimes you have to have permission to speak, and sometimes you don't
Communities are not always made up of peers
=> Marketing can be conversational if you can handle it; but most often it can't - either because of you or in spite of you...

See - easy to understand and no Venn diagram required!

I cannot wait until the conversation marketing experts talk to us like humans and not like demos :)

[Tags: marketing marketing 2.0 conversational marketing markets are conversations]

September 18, 2007

The new complete marketer

The latest issue of Strategy+Business has a good article on the new complete marketer (requires registration, but free here)

The article is making very similar points to the McKinsey article that got published earlier. They too talk about the need for broadening the marketing function, saying that : "Once a fairly discrete department within the organization, marketing is more and more often being asked to fulfill a far more significant, strategic role with implications for the entire enterprise."

The article also refers to a research project that they conducted in conjunction with the Association of National Advertisers, in which they distilled six themes that the best CMO's adhere to:

Put the consumer at the heart of marketing

Make marketing accountable

Embrace the challenges of new media

Recognize the new organizational imperative

Live a new agency paradigm

Remain adaptable

Some of these themes may seem simple and mundane, but is in how CMO's execute against them that determines the winners from the losers.

[Tags: CMO marketing strategy+business social media customer needs voice of the customer]

September 17, 2007

Markets are conversations, but should marketing be conversational?

That is the question that David Weinberger tried to answer during a public phone interview I conducted with him last week for the Marketing 2.0 group in Facebook.

His view? Perhaps not - marketing may be not be able to engage in the conversation without corrupting it.

One alternative, which we have implemented for a variety of clients - including the FASTforward conversation on Enterprise 2.0 for FAST Search, and the Mobile Messaging 2.0 conversation sponsored by Airwide - is to host a conversation that is sponsored by that company, but which is editorially independent from the company. We let our clients engage in those conversations, but their engagement is subject to editorial approval. For some of those communities we also started to set up editorial boards who help us make decisions on what is appropriate and what is not.

Of course there are other marketing functions that cannot not be conversational, but more on that later...

[Tags: marketing david weinberger marketing 2.0 conversational marketing markets are conversations]

September 12, 2007

Do not miss the interview with David Weinberger this afternoon

This afternoon I will be interviewing David Weinberger on the future of marketing. The interview will happen over phone and is open to the public. You can register for the event on Facebook, or you can simply dial in 1-605-475-8590, the conference room # is 5785861.

We hope to see you there!

September 4, 2007

Funny Toyota ad in Brazil

(link for RSS subscribers)

August 23, 2007

Advertisers vs. online identity

On NPR last night they were discussing the impact of of the known presence of registered sex offenders on social networking sites like MySpace or FaceBook on how advertisers will make their advertising decisions...concluding at one point with an expert opining "well if I were P&G I would worry"...

Should they really worry? Do they worry now whether sexual predators subscribe to the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times online? Is the importance of identity in marketing really different online then offline?

August 21, 2007

Marketing 2.0 - a discussion group on FaceBook

I have created a new discussion group called Marketing 2.0 on FaceBook. 89 people joined the group since I made it public yesterday afternoon - so it has the potential to become a great conversation on the future of marketing.

Join the Marketing 2.0 conversation - and if you want to help organize stuff, drop me a note!

August 16, 2007

The CMO role is broadening...

McKinsey Quarterly has an interesting article on the evolving role of the CMO (requires subscription). In it they argue that while most CMO's have their hands full, their role should be further expanded - to represent "the voice of the customer" throughout the organization.

(Yes! finally some common sense on the role of the CMO from an authoritative voice ...)

In the face of a rapidly changing customer - ignoring "push" marketing and making buying decisions based on their own research rather than sales recommendations - and with bloggers and other consumer-generated content now determining corporate reputations, companies need to change the way they meet customer needs, the way they innovate, and the way they behave in the marketplace. That will require change efforts across the entire corporation, and who is better positioned to lead those charge than the CMO?

You don't buy the fact that "push" marketing is dead? Then consider this: in consumer electronics more than half of the buyers buy products based on their own research rather than advice from sales staff. More than 60% of baby boomers use the Internet to supplement their doctor's advice (so pharma marketers have to rethink the pitch to doctors). And by 2010, it is expected that 80% of all insurance purchases will be based on consumer research rather than information supplied by insurance agents.

You are not worried about consumer generated content? McKinsey Quarterly says" "User-generated media account for almost one-third of all the time individuals spend on the 100 most visited US Web sites, up from roughly 3 percent just two years ago."

The change in consumer buying habits is broader than some may expect. It is not just that the number of customer touch points with a company has increased dramatically, there is also a more rapid growth of the low and high ends of the the market at the expense of the middle.

So a marketer does not just need to understand the changing customer need as it relates to their product or service, they also need to understand the changing buying needs of those same customers and adapt the whole company to deal with those changes.

[Tags: CMO marketing corporate reputation buying habits customer needs voice of the customer]

August 13, 2007

Leveraging social media to deal with a corporate public affair's nightmare

Johnson & Johnson is suing the Red Cross and other parties over the use of the Red Cross. Talk about one heck of a juicy story. The reality is that J&J is suing the Red Cross because it is licensing the use of the Red Cross symbol to for-profit organizations, while J&J holds trademarks to the Red Cross symbol since before the Red Cross actually existed.

So what is a VP of corporate communications at J&J to do in response to such a corporate public affair's nightmare? Send out press releases, hold press conferences, use all the traditional tools available to corporate communicators in crisis management mode? Not so for the J&J corporate com VP, Ray Jordan, who took his story to the J&J corporate blog, where he wrote up J&J's point of view in an everyday and personal voice.

The result? A large number of comments and stories generally providing broad support for J&J's point of view. While there are negative comments, the blog achieved what no other crisis communication's vehicle would have delivered.

(via Johnnie Moore)

[Tags: Red Cross Johnson & Johnson J&J corporate communication crisis management]

July 27, 2007

Interesting research on online video usage

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released some interesting research about online video usage. It was especially interesting to see those results in light of a project that we are working on (work in progress at www.crappybills.com - feedback welcome!).

57% of online adults have used the Internet to watch or download videos, and 19% do so on a daily basis. More than half (57%) of online video viewers share links with others, and 75% say they receive links to online videos from others!

For young adults (18-29) comedy is the biggest draw, with 56% watching humorous videos.

[Tags: online marketing online video youtube]

July 25, 2007

64% of emails get read on mobile devices...

...and chances are that your email campaigns look like crap on those devices.

New research from MarketingSherpa indeed shows that 64% of all emails get read on mobile devices (available for free for a period of time here). The article has some recommendations on what to do if you are a heavy email marketer, and also contains some interesting stats on mobile email usage.

[Tags: email marketing mobile email direct marketing]

July 24, 2007

In New Product Introduction - more is less

The Executive Corporate Board has a great white paper entitled "Boosting the Impact of Innovation and New Product Launch Processes." In it they have some mini case studies of how companies who try to achieve top line growth by introducing an increasing number of product/service extensions often times end up with reduced revenues instead.

They also recommend that companies focus on "market segment" innovation rather than pure product innovation - which has traditionally been used to help differentiate products. With the advent of fast followers becoming increasingly faster, product innovation no longer helps with product differentiation. They describe the case studies of P&G and Best Buy as good examples of "market segment" innovation - where you look at product innovation based on the insights gained from well defined market segments.

[Tags: innovation product introduction market insight]

July 23, 2007

What do you do when the old foundations are no longer there - attention, differentiation, and loyalty...

Many of today’s companies are realizing that traditional marketing no longer works – they are finding it increasingly difficult to reach their target audience and to differentiate their offering in ever more overcrowded markets, as well as finding that with commoditization becoming the norm rather than the exception, customer loyalty is becoming a thing of the past.

And while many of today’s agencies are catching up to the new market realities, most of them have yet to make the shift and help their customers in ways that deliver quantifiable ROI’s – which is why many companies are turning for help to alternative sources.

The key to success these days is a company's ability to tap into communities - existing or created ones. Communities can help with everything - from getting the word out, to gaining insight from the market on product requirements to market research and innovation.

As a few of us are embarking on a project to quantify how companies are leveraging communities within their business practices and how they measure success, we would love to hear from anyone involved with business communities. If you have a story to tell, please contact me at francois [at] emergencemarketing [dot] com

[Tags: innovation marketing community]

July 19, 2007

When large companies buy innovative startups - a case study: HP buying LogoWorks

[warning: rant coming] I have used LogoWorks for 4 projects now. The first two experiences were so delightful that I could not stop talking about them - resulting in more than one referral customer. The third experience had a little problem, but they addressed it by giving me a change, which I would have had to pay for, for free - so I was still a champion.

Then came my last experience. I ordered a logo last Wednesday, which was supposed to be ready this past Monday at 4:37pm Mountain time. When that time came and went and nothing happened I emailed support - getting a machine generated response. The next day came and went and nothing happened again, so I emailed support and got that same machine generated response. On Wednesday I took a closer look at that email only to find out that it listed the email for my project manager and that I should contact that person (for some obscure reason the system could not do that I guess...). So I did - sent an irate email to my project manager.

She simply responded: "Sir, you must complete your billing informatin for us to continue." After a quick check, I found that not only had I received a receipt, my credit card had been charged. So I sent back all the supporting information with a closing saying: "Now what? This is RIDICULOUS..."

Now at some point in time I did create another account by accident, but that one had no projects in it - all four of my projects were in the same account that kept showing me:

My project manager sent me another saying: "Ok Sir I am so sorry about this I was looking up your project under your gmail address...I can see that the problem with your logo is that we do not have enough information about the company to get started." Now, just like any other time I created a project with them, I followed the instructions and filled out the whole creative brief. But I never received an email asking me for more info...not at my main account nor at the other account, which had an email that I also use. In addition, I could not even access the brief to add more info...it was closed and telling me that designers were working on my project. I complained to my project manager about the fact that no one ever contacted me and that there was no way for me to add info to the profile.

My project manager responded by explaining that they never contacted me because they were looking at the other account - the one that has no active projects in it! And that I could email her the additional information about my company.

What are they thinking? That their customers are stupid or something?

So I responded: "That makes no sense (and note that in my experience as a marketer it is never a good idea to BS a customer – especially not an irate one)...But even if your system would have gotten confused, as you are, then I should have received a email there and that did not happen either...I am still not sure what info you require to continue….when you say you can email, what do you need? Address, telephone number, number of employees, color of my eyes? I am pretty sure that I said that this was a marketing services company – providing marketing consulting services. What else do you need???? When you are the one that is screwing up and aggravating the customer beyond belief, don’t you think you should be a little more helpful in trying to get the customer somewhat satisfied again?"

That was yesterday afternoon....I have not heard from them since - and my dashboard still says "Designers are working on design concepts....Check back Jul 16, 2007 4:37 PM Mountain Standard Time to view design concepts."

Is this a case of a large company screwing up a gem by integrating it with their customer prevention processes? Or is this just a case of a team that made money on the acquisition and lost their passion around the business? Obviously I cannot tell, but having done 4 projects now, I could clearly see the downhill trend in this case.

[Tags: customer support logoworks customer+service ]

What do you do when a customer insists on a standalone ROI?

So you have developed a project which enhances PR, improves the amount of feedback you gain into the new product development process, helps with lead generation and which perhaps impacts a few other business areas. Yet your customer or your manager insists that you measure ROI on the project as a standalone project - not including how it positively impacts other business areas for which you are not responsible for.

What do you do?

Quit?

Modify your project so that it can be measured as a standalone project - perhaps at the expense of positively impacting other business areas

Wait until they shut down your project

Obviously, none of those options are beneficial to the company as a whole, yet considering that it is unlikely that you can change the manager or the customer, those seem like the only options. One way or the other your project will end up being crippled at the ROI altar...

Measuring ROI can hurt companies if not done properly - badly!

July 2, 2007

Cool PSP ad

Sony came out with a fake book - including fake hands - to let you play with your PSP while looking seriously busy with your book. Too bad it's in Italy or I would definitely try to get one of those :)

[via engadget]

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