Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

'They Do What?!'

The recent rise of Quora, the social net based around (mainly) cerebral Q&A, created the customary reactions, including one that I always find interesting. It’s a common outburst from many people upon being introduced to any type of new web service that goes something along the lines of: ‘They do what?! What on earth!?’, ‘What’s the matter with them?’ and at some point quite possibly, ‘Where do they find the time?’ and, if you are lucky, ‘Don’t they have jobs?!’. Sometimes with some spluttering and eye-rolling thrown in for good measure.  I went through almost exactly this train of thought the first time I saw Twitter.  I remember someone showing me a Tweet from one of their pals saying they were waiting in for the plumber because their boiler had broken and they had no hot water.  ‘They do what!?’, I spluttered, ‘Why would anyone be interested in this?!’.  However, I then caught myself and realised I was about to say everything that people had been saying to me about blogging for the previous few years.  (For some reason the blogging version of this outrage often involved people’s pyjamas evidently implying something about the plight of the lonely.  As in,‘blogging is just about people in their pyjamas writing about...

Networked Media Doesn't Do 'Channels'

Do you know what the most annoying thing about builders is?  It’s when they refuse to talk to each other. You’ve probably been there. ‘Guys, why is there water leaking in through the ceiling?’.  ‘Don’t ask me guv, the plasterer probably knocked the pipes upstairs'.  ‘Can you take a look at it?’.  Cue sound of obligatory-sucking-in-of-air-through-teeth.  'Not today mate, ring Mick and ask him if he’s got some waff-wizard’.  ‘Huh? What’s waff-wizard. Actually, never mind, could you ring him?’.  ‘I haven’t got his number mate'.  ‘I can give it to you'.  ‘Bye, make sure to ask about the waff wizard'.  ‘Hi there, John said I should ask you about waff wizard because there’s a leak in the kitchen.  ‘Waff-what?’. ‘Waff-wizard, oh forget it, look there’s a leak in the kitchen'.  ‘Yes I saw that, looks nasty, talk to Gary - tell him he needs to use a pobble-pibble'.  And so it goes on.  What feels like an infinite number of specialists all of whom have their own languages and tools, but who see any other professionals as being inferior or incompetent, feel obliged to contradict any advice they offer and refuse to talk to each other directly.  Whilst flicking through last week’s Campaign Magazine, I had a strange feeling that the marketing industry was showing some similar traits.  There were experts from each part of the business talking about the way they saw the year ahead panning out.  Each was extolling the virtues of newspapers, digital, TV, outdoor, production, direct, sponsorship and many other areas.  All of them made sound, interesting points about their own fields, including lots of technical terms and diagnoses.  However, there was very little, if any, reference to how well they all work together.  These first-class professionals were all deeply dug into their own particular siloes.  Now, this is hardly new.  We’ve all worked in agency networks where...

Marketing's 'Big Bang' Is On The Way

There are some huge technological changes coming down the line that haven’t quite hit the marketing and media industry as yet. However, like massive waves a long way out at sea - they are on the way. Think about the effects of the ‘cloud’, or in other words, the limitless amounts of storage space that the web provides and the speed at which people are filling it up with personal information, creating scrapbooks about every tiny aspect of their lives for clever folk to analyse and decipher. Or the rise of the mobile web driven by new types of groovyware that mean we can log onto digital grapevines wherever we are and snack on a mixture of tips, opinions, offers and suggestions, all personalised to our own specific interests and passions. Or the reality of products being linked to the web and providing information about themselves. All huge waves that are about to crash onto the doorsteps of brands and global businesses seeking to maintain the mainstream audiences that drive their revenues, balance sheets and state-sized market valuations. When trying to understand this kind of epic-style change, I’ve been wondering about other industries that have dealt with similar levels of disruption. The one I keep returning to is the global financial services industry that underwent its so-called ‘Big Bang’ in the middle of the 1980s, with its epicentre in the City of London’s Square Mile. The specific date of the ‘Big Bang’ was the 27th October 1986, an event driven by the Tory government overhauling the way the London Stock Exchange was regulated. The primary changes consisted of...