Tag Archives: business

July 13, 2012 · 8:29 am

Zucchini Blossoms, Gazpacho, And Your Business

Our Foodie Friday Fun is all about Summer, my favorite food time of the year.

Gazpacho (Spanish liquid tomato salad).

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While it’s possible to grill all year long, it seems more appropriate to the Summer months.  I also find it difficult to fire up the smoker at times of the year when the air temperature is cooler and fluctuates more widely during the long periods of time required for real barbecue.

Grilling and smoking, however, are not the food topic today.  As you can tell from the post title, today’s screed is about two of my other Summer favorites.  It’s impossible to have great gazpacho at any other time of the year.  Then again, why would you want a cold soup at any other time?  The blend of fresh tomatoes, peppers, vinegar, garlic, and olive oil thickened by stale bread (and there MUST be bread in gazpacho!) is the best of Summer in a bowl.  For those of you who are uninitiated, stuffed zucchini blossoms are something you must seek out as well – find an Italian grandmother!  Stuffed with fresh ricotta and fried or even just sautéed on their own, they are well worth the effort it takes to find them.

My diet includes either fresh tomatoes or zucchini flowers (or both) whenever I can find them.   Of course, the time when these items are at their peak (or even available at all) is pretty limited, which makes them all the more dear to those of us who love them.  Which is exactly the business point.

One of the things that is getting lost these days is the sense of scarcity which breeds urgency.  After all, everything is always available, it seems.  There’s something to be said for scarcity.  The way, for example, that McDonald’s released the McRib sandwich for a limited time, or the way that great barbecue places often run out of food early in the day gives those who most value the product  a reason to act NOW. There are plenty of non-food examples, of course, but you get the point.

We need get our customers to think of our products like ripe tomatoes or zucchini flowers.  October is right around the corner, after all.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , , ,

July 12, 2012 · 9:56 am

Sports And Social

Some news this morning from the folks at Trendrr about social interactions with TV.

English: The iPad on a table in the Apple case

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On today’s list of not-so-surprising findings:

Sporting events continue to dominate in terms of social TV: ABC was given a boost by the NBA Finals, which accounted for more than 13.5 million social interactions. This made ABC the “most engaging” broadcast network in June.

Well, YEAH!  Sports is, and has always been, an extremely social activity.  In fact, when you think about the various ways in which people consume sports, it’s pretty obvious that without social something fairly big is missing.  The best sports viewing experience is in your living room.  Big screen TV, comfy chair, hundreds of people working very hard to make sure you see every detail of the game, supplemented with statistical insights and brilliant analysis.  Except if you’ve ever watched a game alone you realize it’s not as much fun as watching with a group.  Social is missing.

The other extreme is at the game itself.  It’s the best social sports experience.  You’re surrounded by thousands of other people who are doing almost nothing but socializing about the game, even before it begins (even before you get into the stadium in many cases).  It’s great, except you don’t have a lot of replays, you don’t get the insightful analysis, you  can’t see the perfect angle.  Social is there but obviously something is still missing.

To me, the ultimate sports experience is a sports bar.  Perfect game presentation, great social experience.  Social apps that we can use even when we’re alone help to bridge that gap and put us closer to that sports bar experience.  What Trendrr has reminded us is that the technology by itself is only part of the story – it facilitates something that has always been a major part of the sports experience.  It’s a good point to remember about your business: you can’t confuse the business with the technology.  I think activity around sports in these social areas is huge only because social has been a natural part of sports for a long time.  It doesn’t need to be manufactured.  Think about that as you contemplate using some new piece of tech.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under digital media, sports business

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

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?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under digital media

Tagged as , , , , , , ,