Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Let Battle Commence

Adland has launched Battle of the Ad Blogs and this blog has been included as a contender in the Best Marketing Blog.  It's high-stakes stuff with a t-shirt AND a badge up for grabs.  Place your (Modern Marketing) votes here!

Customers Know More

Here's one of those academic quotes (Von Hippel) that just makes plain (common) sense...“Users generally have a more accurate and detailed model of their needs than manufacturers have.”   And here's the ever-articulate Johnnie Moore on the subject..."If you want to spend a fortune trying to be more clever than your customers, well good luck. On the whole it might be cheaper and easier to assume they have some idea about what they need and want."

Why Hells Angels Know Best

On our trip to New York we met Richard Wise, Chief Strategic Officer at Agency 16, modern marketeer and a very saucy fellow to boot.  He has paid close attention to that great US company Harley Davidson and the history of its brand.  He explained that at one point the bikers that are so closely associated to the epic motorcycles were quite reviled by the company's management.  So much so that they were referred to as the one-percenters - as in the one percent who spoil it for everyone else.  HD's mindset was that it was best placed to decide what its customers wanted.  The management were shocked when...

Blogs Are Just Websites

Right there we go, it's said.  It's so often overlooked but as Adrant's Steve Hall so eloquently says here, blogs are just websites that are easy (for individuals) to use.  Just tools.  They have become synonomous with a certain type of *snarky* writing but this is also misleading.  In our blog reports we always find as many people who are enthusiastic about a brand or issue as those who are opposed.  The point is that blogs are just an affordable way for individuals to do what companies have been able to afford for ages - using expensive publishing systems.  It's exactly this simplicity which makes blogs so disruptive and it's the management and response to that disruption that throws up all the opportunities for brands.  That's where the fun starts...

Future Marketing in NYC

We met up with the splendid Piers Fawkes yesterday as part of our post-sauce wind-down.  As well as giving me some excellent NYC shopping tips Piers was telling us about his involvement with the Future Marketing Summit in NYC in Feb.  He has organised a very good speakers list including the hotter-than-hot Alex Bogusky.  Go straight to Piers for more.

$13 TV Ad

Here in the US a company called Spotrunner is offering a service that allows small companies to run TV ads from $13 for a 30 second slot.  You just choose a pre-prepared ad, customise it and then select a schedule online.  Not something I'd imagine the ad industry are tremendously happy to see arrive in the marketplace.

The Penguin Guy

We have been having great fun serving up Open Sauce in NYC and seeing it go down so well.  I particularly enjoyed a comment from one participant who when I met her said, "Oh great, the penguin guy".  There is no doubt that the US is ahead of Europe when it comes to modern marketing and it's good to see it first hand.

Open Source Documentary

Today's Independent has an article listing top ten open source websites - obviously of interest to us modern marketeers.  One of them was a new site looking to recruit participants into a documentary-production about Murdoch - called OutFoxed.  It's a project run by Robert Greenwald  in the guise of Brave New films.  So if you think you fancy a shot as a 'volunteer field producer' then sign up here.

Paxman's Second Life

The world of MMORPG is set to become a greater part of the modern marketing scenario.  I spent the year 2000 planning and designing just such an environment for the James Bond franchise and so have a particular interest in them.  Back then Everquest was about to explode but now Second Life is where it's at.  Even BBC Newsnight's Paxman is in there...

Co-Creating Value

I'm enjoying setting my sights on the modern marketing issues for 2006.  This is a nice nugget from C.K Prahalad talking in The Future of Competition: "Companies can no longer act autonomously, designing products, designing products, developing production processes, crafting marketing messages and controlling sales channels with little or no interference from consumers.  Consumers now seek to exercise their influence in every part of the business system.  Armed with new tools and dissatisfied with available choices consumers want to interact with firms and thereby co-create value.  The use of interaction as a basis for co-creation is at the crux of our emerging reality."  Well said.