Monthly Archives: July 2012

July 10, 2012 · 9:56 am

Marketing From A New Perspective

IBMconducts a survey of marketing professionals each year and the results are put out in a document called “The State Of Marketing.”

Image representing IBM as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

If you want to see a presentation about it, you can click through here to read 28 very interesting slides.  Generally, the document talks about how the role of marketing has expanded to let marketing take a lead role in the entirety of the customer experience but the part that I found most interesting was this:

More must be done to link insight to action for online visitor data…high performing companies leverage their online data in other channels.

Yet we still see the silos in place that are limiting the effectiveness of what activity is out there:

  • Only 22% currently run social tactics as part of integrated campaigns
  • 79% run social marketing in silos discretely and on an ad hoc basis
  • 51% marketers don’t use social media data to inform decision about marketing offers and messages.

The document goes on to talk about the need to integrate systems, budgets, and alignment.  Hard to argue with any of that and as companies change their marketing tactics from push to pull, they’re going to encounter another barrier:  time.  Whether we call it content marketing, inbound marketing, or something else, the purchase cycle is different for these types of messages and this kind of media.  The expansion of platforms from one main screen (the TV) to multiple screens (computers, mobile devices) is a huge contributor to the complexity of not just the message but also form factor.  As eMarketer stated in their summary of the report:

The continued fracturing of the media landscape has made it increasingly difficult for marketers to reach customers in large numbers. The poll found that the largest percentage of respondents, 41%, named the growth of marketing channels and devices as the top challenge to their company over the next few years.

It’s hard to change perspective, particularly when what we’re trying to hit is a changing and moving target.  This report is proof of that.  The thing we can all try to do as marketers is to keep an open mind, focus on the customer and not our own internal power bases, and look on this as a huge opportunity, not as a massive pain in the rear.  It’s a new perspective – I think those are always exciting.  You?

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July 9, 2012 · 9:38 am

Goal-Line Technology And Your Business

The lords of international soccer recently gave their approval for the use of technology that can tell if a ball crossed the goal-line for a goal.

a soccer goal, shot on the German »Chambers Le...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Revolutionary for soccer but the same technology has been in use for tennis for quite some time. We’ve all seen the cool animations CBS provides during the U.S. Open although frankly I’d rather see another McEnroe tirade than an absolutely correct call.

The use of technology to improve upon the imperfections of human officials is widespread.  The NFL uses TV replay to get things right, as does the NHL and, to a more limited extent baseball.  Be that as it may, there was an interesting quote in the Reuters report on the introduction:

UEFA president Michel Platini is among those who fear that Thursday’s ruling will open the floodgates for other forms of technology to be introduced.  “I am not just wholly against goal-line technology, I am against technology itself because then it is going to invade every area of football,” he warned last week.

Sounds like quite the Luddite, but he’s not alone.  Baseball doesn’t use technology to call balls and strikes although it seems possible.  Other sports don’t employ technology, preferring to let the quirks of human referees remain part of the game.  What does this have to do with your business?

Your business might be in the same boat.  Developing strategies without planning a set of KPI’s to measure progress is the same mentality.  Not having a system in place to capture, analyze, and report on what’s going on the digital world is as well.  You wouldn’t dream of operating a business without some sort of financial reporting yet we often ignore many other pieces of vital information that could help us make the correct calls.

The technology in place won’t end all of the questionable goal calls in soccer.  That’s OK – we’re still talking about some of them (The Hand of God goal) 25 years later.  But if we’re to be talking about our businesses 25 years from now, we’d do well to take advantage of every piece of information we can.

You agree?

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July 6, 2012 · 8:12 am

Mr. Roboto Comes To Cook

For our Foodie Friday Fun, today’s topic is the delicate balance between being consistent and being boring.  What spurred the thinking on this topic was, in fact, a food-related story that comes to us from The Daily Mail’s website.  It seems that in China they have a number of restaurants operated almost entirely by robots.  The machines do pretty much everything – cook the food, serve the drinks, take the orders, you name it:

If you pay a visit to this restaurant, in downtown Harbin, China, you will find 18 robots – from a waitress to a cooker to an usher – ready to ensure your dining experience is perfect.  The restaurant has 18 types of robots, each gliding out of the kitchen to provide your dish, with specialty robots including a dumpling robot and a noodle robot.

I’ve written before about the need to provide our customers and clients with a consistent, predictable experience yet I find this story repugnant.  I’m sure the food is uniformly something – good?  Bad?  Mediocre?  No, I guess the word soul-less comes to mind.  And that’s the business point today.

Cooking and serving food to another human being is not just another piece of manufacturing.  When I think of robots I think of them building cars, not canapés.  Oh sure, there are automated processes throughout the food industry, but they’re for packaged goods and supermarket foods, not restaurants.   What does this have to do with your business?  Think about how many business transactions involve us talking to a machine (I count email on that list – it’s more machine-like than human, lacking nuance and expression) or machines speaking to one another (digital media buying more often these days, for example).

Our clients want to see the humanity.  I’m willing to bet most clients and customers are willing to sacrifice a bit (and ONLY a bit) of perfection for the human touch.  The smile they get when they’re greeted by name.  The new photo of their kids they get to show off.  Business isn’t just an exchange of something of value for compensation – when it’s done well there are a number of intangibles that no robot can offer.

So ask yourself this.  Are you acting like a robot or like a human?  If it’s the former, maybe you ought to contemplate the differences that make us the latter.  You with me?

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