Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Book Review : 'Ignore Everybody'

I first met Hugh 'Gapingvoid' MacLeod at Reboot 7.0 in 2005 (my all time favourite nethead do) and have got to know him a little since.  Initially, over a couple of great conversations related to his English Cut and Stormhoek projects; then at a fun evening watching the film he helped out with; on a very entertaining trip to a Microsoft bashola in Paris where we both got to quiz MS' Grandest Fromages; and at a fine dinner with the Edelman crew last year.  And like millions of others I’ve followed his blog forever and have always admired his ability to be one step ahead of the game with concepts like the 'Global Microbrand' and 'Personal Sovereignty'.  Both notions I have taken to heart in my own professional life.  So I was very happy to receive an advance copy of his new book, Ignore Everybody.  However, I thought it might all be too familiar to really enjoy.  But enjoy it I did.  It’s based on Hugh’s fantastic ‘How To Be Creative’ manifesto but could also be described as – ‘Gapingvoid’s Greatest Hits’.  It’s a very unusual mixture of business book for the networked age, observations about life and practical tips on becoming a creative professional.  All genuinely inspiring stuff with the trademark GV dark twists thrown in for good measure.  I’ve already mentioned the book to a few people in passing and have almost given them my advance copy to read.  But I’ve decided to hold onto it.  I think one day it might be a bit of a collectors' item.  So go and buy your own!

Breaking The Campaign Mentality

Two conversations I've had with smart marketing folk summarise the problems that the marketing industry is trying to work through.  Last year, a savvy executive at a global, mega-FMCG company told me, 'It used to be the case that if you made three good TV campaigns, you became Marketing Director.  That's not true anymore.'  He then expanded on the point by saying that it went beyond television.  It was just that TV was the main tool in the campaigning approach historically used by the marketing industry and that this campaign mentality was the real problem.  Particularly, he added, as the mega-corp at which he plied his trade was engineered around that mentality and entirely geared up to deliver massive campaigns into the marketplace.  The problem he noted was that the consumer is fed up with being hit by huge campaigns from brands that then disappear - until the next time.  Like a lot of thorny issues in the marketing industry, as it slowly grinds away from a traditional model and searches for a new one, this all sounds in theory like a load of common sense.  In reality, however, fixing it is fiendishly complicated.  As illustrated by the second conversation with a Grand Fromage at a media company who told me about the acid test he likes to keep in mind during these exciting but challenging times.  When a brand manager goes into present the marketing plan to a buyer at Tesco's, an individual who may be responsible for the majority of the brand's distribution, what's going to cut the mustard?  An ongoing, conversational marketing programme, driven by some Facebook applications and a new blog?  Or a £25m above-the-line advertising campaign?  Whilst not as simple as all that, the scenario does highlight the problems that the marketing industry faces.  On the one hand we have a smart brand owner who knows that current practice is increasingly out-of-whack with modern day life.  On the other, a forward-thinking media man who knows that, at least in the FMCG world where the right space in the right stores is critical to the bottom line, innovation isn't *that* welcome.  Tricky, eh?

Open Data And The Dangers Of Moats

As all studious web watchers know, the next wave of internet innovation has been brewing for some time, as massive amounts of data has been pumped onto the web and made available for people to share-and-compare, play with and link to.  Yes, prepare yourselves people, The Web Of Data is on the way.  A world in which databases sit out on the web instead of behind firewalls, allowing new powerful styles of collaboration.  For corporations that have built competitive advantage around IP and black box business models the idea of data being open on the web is, to say the least, a bit scary.  However, in reality, it's just the next step along the journey that the web is inviting the world to take.  Initially, the notion of sharing documents on the web seemed unwise, then opening up personal information on social networks appeared risky.  But both have quickly become the norm, and of course are made up of data.  So this next evolution is just more of the same.  None of which will stop the corporate fear rising however.  In the same way that strange ideas emerged about the dangers of sharing company information using simple social media tools, peculiar fears will surface at the prospect of sharing databases that have previously been held under lock, key and firewall.  In fact, many of these fears are based on misconceptions and misguided analysis.  For instance, in the corporate world ‘open’ is often translated as ‘anarchic’.  Despite the fact that, as with blogs and social networks, there is plenty of control built into new 'open' systems.  For example, if you don't want the crazies to...

Buffett On Newspapers

'If Mr Guttenburg had come up with the internet instead of Movable Type back in the late 15th Century and for 400 years we had used the internet for news and all types of entertainment and all kinds of everything else, and I came along one day and said I had got this wonderful idea, we are going to chop down some trees up in Canada and ship them to a paper mill which will cost us a fortune to run through and deliver newsprint, and then we'll ship that down to some newspaper and we'll have a whole bunch of people staying up all night writing up things and then we'll send a bunch of kids out the next day all over town delivering this thing, and we are going to really wipe out the internet with thing - it ain't going to happen.'  Warren Buffett talking on CNBC. (via SAI).