Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

On Holiday

I am away for two weeks in sunny Spain where I will be detoxing from networked media, reminding my brain that reading slowly is good, sipping Rioja, eating mucho tapas and teaching my daughter to swim.  Hasta La Vista people….

TV's Shifting Sands

"The Internet is becoming consumers' primary entertainment source and the TV is increasingly taking a back seat to the cell phone and the personal computer among consumers age 18 to 34", according to IBM.  It's one of those findings that comes as no surprise at all but is of interest because senior marketing folk take top-tier consulting reports as fact. For brands, the implications of moving from broadcast to networked media are very significant because it's not just a question of moving budgets.  Instead of being the centres of gravity around which consumers orbit, brands become another fragment of information seeking to penetrate the increasingly sophisticated social filters people are using to determine what's relevant.  (Via NewTeeVee).

[UPDATE: More of the same from the annual Ofcom stat-fest, including the completely unsurprising yet chilling fact that, "78% of DVR owners claiming that they fast forward through advertisements while watching recorded programmes."]

SuprNova - Back With A Bang

Torrent community site SuprNova is being relaunched by The Pirate Bay scoundrels and in true PB style - they mean business.   The service will go live with 1 million torrents and 25 million peers and despite previous brushes with the law, they aren't taking prisoners.  Here's their message to the 'anti-pirates': “This is how it works. Whatever you sink, we build back up. Whomever you sue, ten new pirates are recruited. Wherever you go, we are already ahead of you. You are the past and the forgotten, we are the internet and the future.”  (Via Torrent Freak.)

The Internet Makes Young People Happy

I've long thought that there's a generation gap when it comes to people's view of the web and this research study from MTV and AP among US 13-24 year olds seems to confirm that:  "Cell phones, the Internet and other technologies are integrally woven into the lives of today's young people and nearly two-thirds say they make people happier.  Half of those young people polled say the Internet alone helps them feel happier.  And contrary to popular views of technology as a source of stress, many young people would be more stressed out without technology, with nearly half saying they never turn off their cell phones - even when they're trying to chill out."

How The Soap Box Beat The Loudhailer

Advertising folks are always banging on about the perfect idea and the genius insight that creates a powerful campaign. One that will change people's behaviour and drive sales and vast shareholder value.  But the world has changed. The tectonic plates that the marketing industry sits upon have shifted.   What adfolk don't get is however great their ideas - no one cares anymore.  Let me explain why...

Conversations Aren't Markets

David "Markets Are Conversations" Weinberger offers this reminder to the word-of-mouth marketing industry: "Marketing has to change. It has to recognize that market conversations are now the best source of information about companies and their products and services. It has to recognize that those conversations are not themselves marketing — you and me talking about whether we like our new digital cameras is not you and me marketing to each another. Neither is our conversation a "marketing opportunity." But the temptation to see it as such is well nigh impossible for most marketers to resist."

Reevoo - 100m & Counting

A little word of congratulations for Reevoo (which I have advised) on reaching the huge target of 100m user reviews published onto its ever growing network of retailers' websites.  They are a great bunch of people and it goes to show that, in spite of US dominance, the open web platform is alive and well in the UK.  Next step 1bn!

TV Studios See The BitTorrent Light

To say that BitTorrent and the major US studios aren't exactly best buddies would be like saying that George Bush and Ossama Bin Laden don't quite see eye-to-eye on some aspects of faith.  So to hear a Warner Brothers Television executive describe, albeit anonymously, how he used the giant P2P network to promote a new TV show is the broadcasting equivalent of The Road To Damascus.  Tellingly, the executive in question had to get his 'neighbour's kid,' to do it so he could get, 'some kind of uploading credit'.  Cute.  Illegal - but cute.  And belief is spreading as this AdAge interview shows with an excutive producer who uploaded her new programme onto the web because, "Showtime is great, but it does have a limited audience."  Repeat after me, in the beginning there was the word and the word was LimeWire.  (Via the peerless-to-peerless TorrentFreak).

Consistent Messaging vs Human Words

Etsy's Robert Kalin has written an inspiring post about the lessons learnt from running the huge online craft fair.  The whole thing is a must-read but one part that caught my eye was the challenge of consistent messaging versus letting humans be humans: "There is no “Etsy” in the monolithic sense of a single identity or being. Etsy is the several dozen employees of Etsy, Inc. and even more, the several hundred thousand members of the community.  As I see it, large corporations try to sanitize all their outgoing messages for the sake of keeping face. It is very easy to identify this kind of behavior. Whenever you read something and it sounds like a series of pre-made phrases strung together, instead of a human being speaking, this is sanitized communication. To me, this stuff sounds inhuman.I want Etsy to stay human. This means allowing each person’s voice to be heard, even if it’s squeaky or loud or soft. I will not put a glossy layer of PR over what we do. If we trip, let us learn from it instead of trying to hide it; when we leap, let’s show others how to leap."