Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Definitions That No Longer Apply

As digital tectonic plates continue to shift and once separate media sectors merge onto a single global platform, the terrain for brands and marketing definitions remain in a state of flux.  Just take a few recent examples.  Last week Facebook indicated it’s no longer a social network but a 'platform', while Twitter reconfirmed it’s dropping the social tag in favour of a new guise as an 'information network'.  Leaving some questioning, if even Facebook and Twitter are dropping the label, what ‘social’ actually means in context of marketing; other than the constant buzz of a global bazaar.  Additionally, big technology players are constantly redefining themselves and their markets.  Amazon, the one-time online book shop, confirmed it is going into direct competition with Apple, the one-time desktop computing manufacturer, with the launch of the Fire tablet.  The reason being that both increasingly seek to extend their credentials as global media players offering music, TV and films.  Meanwhile, Google, the one-time search business, has bought Motorola, the one-time handset manufacturer, to bolster its own planned entry into the world's TV markets; whilst simultaneously becoming an alternative to a credit card provider by launching Google Wallet.  Elsewhere, Hulu, an online television service that was established by the US TV networks as a defensive strategy to see off Google’s YouTube, is being sold off because it success is undermining the revenue model of the owners' traditional businesses.  (Ironically, the possible buyers include Google, Amazon and Yahoo).  Even the idea of images and photographs is being redefined as demonstrated by the plight of Kodak, one of the...

In Networked Media Links Mean Business

Historically, different types of media were independent from one other and there weren’t really any links between them. However, as all media, including TV, gradually becomes networked onto a single digital platform, the links between them are becoming very real, very varied and very valuable. Today, consumers (aka people) can easily switch from one type of digital media to another, and equally easily to an e-commerce checkout. The result is that the consumer path-to-purchase, that for a long time used to look a fairly simple flowchart driven by Yes/No decisions, now resembles a bowl of spaghetti, such is the choice of routes through the new media ecosystem. Hyperlinks were the first example of valuable connections between different types of media giving consumers the opportunity to follow their own paths of interest. When reading a physical paper the only way to follow-up on an issue or offer was to rip out the article or coupon and file it away. As newspapers became networked this behaviour changed and people could immediately click-through an article or promotion to find out more.  Today, as increasing amounts of media becomes...

The Marketing Industry's Silos Are Its Bunkers

Recently I met someone who described their specialism as Twitter strategy. Now while I wish the individual in question the best of luck with their offering I also thought it was a small example of the silo-mentality that is hardwired into the marketing business. One that, in my humble opinion, is taking the industry in the opposite direction to a world that is becoming increasingly intertwined. Everything that has occurred in the world of technology and marketing over the last five years will play out over the next twenty. In short, all media will become networked in the same way that all PCs were brought onto a single network by the Internet and then the web. On the supply-side change is being driven by powerful forces such as Moore’s Law and rapidly improving connectivity, the two mega-trends that between them are building the much-discussed cloud, into which all media will eventually be drawn. On the demand-side the growth of smartphones, tablets, connected TVs and other groovyware is providing the complementary lifestyle changes in people’s behaviour. The result is an increasingly sophisticated media ecosystem of which brands will remain a key aspect, providing people with signposts and trusted offerings – just as they always have. The overarching characteristic of this ecosystem is...

What's The New Normal For Big Brands?

What's the ‘New Normal’ for global brands?  By which I mean that following the collapse of global finance, the ensuing reshuffle of the world’s powerhouse economies and rapid growth of vast technological platforms, what do global brands care about and to which companies and sectors are they turning for assistance? I keep returning to three thoughts. Firstly, that corporations and brand-owners’ aims haven’t really changed a great deal. They want the same business outcomes, such as awareness, sales, loyalty and product differentiation, that create and support Mega-Brands and the shareholder dividends that follow. Secondly, media and marketing remains in the throes of huge waves of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter alluringly called ‘creative destruction’; the painful process by which one economic order is gradually replaced by another.  In the context of media and marketing, creative destruction has come in the form of digital IP technology breaking open the barriers between previously separate industries to create a single global platform upon which vast new networked media oceans surge.  Finally, most global corporates have been quietly shifting their investments into fast-growing markets for years. Now, as growth falters in Europe and the US, these booming economies seem to promise a golden future. Many such as Brazil, India, China and Indonesia see the creative destruction of technology, media and telecomms as a welcome opportunity. They invest enthusiastically in new...  

Please Step Away From The Ledge

From time to time I meet up with marketing folk, often as part of an initial briefing, who appear to me to be standing on a precarious ledge from which they are about to throw themselves.  What do I mean by this?  By the 'ledge' I mean when a marketing executive has decided or been instructed to launch a digital marketing plan regardless of its relevance to their business.  In recent years these plans have mostly involved social media and mobile apps. However, the ledge mindset is surprisingly common in other areas too.  I think of my job as helping people make sense of the trends and issues arising in digital and networked media.  But the fun bit is applying those issues to real world problems.  And that means grounding them within the context of an overall business and marketing strategy, which is the part often missing when people are standing on the ledge.  They have effectively decided to take a professional leap of faith, something they wouldn’t do in any other aspect of their business decision-making. The ledge mindset is generally created by being overly-focused on technology and specific services that are growing at a very rapid speed. The massively quick adoption of digital tools by consumers (aka people) has a strange affect on marketing executives.  Growth of a service becomes the only consideration.  So it doesn’t necessarily matter what the service is.  Or who is using it.  It also doesn’t really matter if the context is right for a brand.  Or, occasionally, even if their customers can access it!  One particularly colourful example of this in the last few years was...

When The Big Idea Becomes Marketing's Big Problem

A few years ago I sat in the office of a much-admired Digital Creative Director when a call came through from the mega-media shop that his agency was linked with via its global network.  When the DCD saw the number flash up his shoulders slumped and he rushed around to find someone to answer the call and say he wasn’t available. He then switched his mobile off and we sped from the building for a long lunch, over which he explained his reaction.  For the best part of five years he’d been taking those calls and a pattern had been established that he could no longer bear.  It went something along the lines of the media powerhouse explaining they’d had a terrific brief from a client at MegaCorp and it needed some digital input.  However, it would then emerge that the brief had already been answered and the client had bought a concept in the shape of an above-the-line campaign.  So the digital agency was actually being brought into the process a few months after the brief had landed and was being asked to provide a digital execution of a TV spot.  “Sometimes they just say, ‘make it go viral’”, said the DCD with the look of someone who’s been given a plate of old mutton and asked to give it a lamb makeover.  I was reminded of this conversation a few weeks ago whilst talking to a creative team from a widely-regarded digital agency, also associated with a large parent network. One of them half-joked that...

Marketing Has An Identity Problem

Digital Identity has long been a fascinating area but it wasn’t really of interest to the mainstream because, for a long while, only geeks had online identities of any significance. Obviously that has now changed. Twitter, blogs, Etsy, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn and Quora are just a few of the many services that people use to maintain their digital IDs.  As a result, the everyday influence of these identities is growing.  Even limiting the view to the professional sphere we can see how important the world of online identity has become.  A LinkedIn profile can get you a new job but a crass comment on Twitter can get you fired.  A great YouTube channel can earn you a living as can a shop on Etsy. An informed blog can help you turn a hobby into a job; whereas a photo on Facebook can be ‘career-limiting’.  And these IDs are here to stay.  In fact, we can expect the range and depth of people's digital identities and the extent to which...

What's The Answer To Marketing's Chicken & Egg Dilemma?

I had a really interesting discussion the other day with two very experienced creatives from a large London network agency.  ‘All the digital stuff is great, but where’s the excitement?’, one commented.  I asked him what he meant. Surely there’s enough excitement to go around at the moment I thought, what with the entire world’s media industry gradually being sucked onto a single IP platform. But then I understood.  He was talking about excitement beyond the technology itself.  Of course, if you are involved in anyway at all these days in the vast bubble that is the technology business, you’ll have all the excitement that you want. However, if the ins and outs of Silicon Valley basically sound like a lot of geeks talking about widgets, technology offers all the thrills of a cold bath.  So, as the man said, where's the excitement?  Chatting around the subject we came up with a few examples of 'big' brand ideas using creative technologies that were genuinely exciting.  Many of the usual suspects were included.  Then we moved onto why there were so few ideas to choose from.  One of the creatives ventured that it was because clients still can’t see, aside from PPC, how they can measure the value of online channels.  This meant that they wouldn’t put any significant investment behind a digital idea, even if they thought it was fantastic.  So there is a tendency for ideas in traditional media – that can be measured or have the perception of measurability – to gain priority over ideas in new digital channels and snaffle the big budgets.  And, unsurprisingly, an OK idea with $10m of backing is likely to outperform an amazing one with a budget of $20k and lots of goodwill.  The traditional ideas almost always look more effective because they have the inherent advantage of...

Who Will Survive In The New Networked Media Oceans?

Media companies used to exist in their own separate waters. The newspaper industry was the newspaper industry.  TV was TV and so on and so forth.  Each of these unconnected territories had a few super-predators that were top of their respective food chains, untroubled by the small fry. This was also true of technology and telecoms. However, in recent years, the tectonic plates have shifted to reveal a single networked media ocean into which all media, technology and telecomms companies are gradually being drawn.  The result is a gory realignment of the food chain as these corporate animals, so used to roaming their own backwaters as unchallenged predators, thrash around to establish who will survive.  Some will maintain their status.  Others will be usurped by sleek new species and left to wonder where it all went wrong. The tectonic shift was, of course, driven by rise of the Internet and the Web, and more recently the Moore’s Law-powered growth of online computing power aka the cloud.  The reason the undertow is so powerful is because, increasingly, this new networked media ocean is the sea to which consumers themselves are heading.  But why didn’t every big media and technology beast notice the plates were shifting to create this vast new habitat? Simply because they had...

Evil Plans & Global Microbrands

Hugh 'Gapingvoid' MacLeod was kind enough to send me an advance of his latest book – 'Evil Plans - Having Fun On The Road To World Domination'. It’s a great read. As a long time reader of Hugh's blog I was familiar with many of the ideas in the book, but there are some very juicy nuggets that are well worth revisiting. One of them, that I have always found really helpful, is the Global Microbrand. To me, this means that today’s world of networked media gives individuals and small companies a voice in the world.  And that’s a really significant opportunity.  It’s an idea I’ve used to help shape Collaborate Marketing.  In spite of being a one-man consultancy, the company has a disproportionately extensive online footprint.  One that brings lots of advantages which have made it possible for me to operate successfully and, crucially, build a positive reputation around the world.  This is probably best illustrated when an American media corporation called me up and asked me to come in and discuss an engagement.  They had found Collaborate Marketing online and only had one stipulation – ‘Please don’t bring a massive team of people to the first meeting, we really find that a turn-off.’  I explained that this was unlikely as Collaborate was, in fact, just me.  This seemed to go down well, maybe just by being different from the approach of traditional Mega-Consultants, and I was very happy to be engaged on an exciting strategy project.  However, creating a Global Microbrand is easier said than done which is where Hugh’s latest book comes in giving lots of ideas and encouragement.  However, it’s also what it doesn’t do that I think makes it genuinely helpful.  There aren’t any checklists or planning tools.  It really just poses the challenge to find out what your personal aims and strengths are and challenges you to bring those to life using the myriad of online services available to anyone in 2011.  All very refreshing.