Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Modern Marketing, Silver Bullets And Ghouls

A couple of weeks ago, I was running a digital strategy session in Poland for a group of very smart advertising folk.  We were talking about different ways to engage senior execs in networked media issues and I mentioned a recent experience I'd had when asked to go and speak to a Grand Fromage at a financial services organisation.  I explained that, prior to my chat, the only brief I was given was : ‘he wants to know what’s going on but says if you talk about technology he’ll walk out or go to sleep’.  Slightly daunted, my approach was to stick to business issues I suspected the GF was very close to and then mention a few points about how each was changing as a result of technological trends.  It seemed to work in that he stayed in the room – and awake.  Back at the digital strategy sessions during the coffee break, one of the more experienced agency folk approached me and excitedly asked what the ‘answer was’, following my chat with the banking executive.  I was slightly confused and responded that there wasn’t really, 'an answer'.  However, I understood what was meant by the question.  A lot of people...

Understanding The New Consumer Contract

The media and marketing industry has long been guilty of beating consumers (aka people) over the head with commercial brand messages until they pay attention. This mass marketing approach is crudely military with big brands seeking maximium reach and frequency by launching campaigns that seek to cut-through and penetrate. However, modern networked media has put the power back in the hands of individuals who are simply able to turn off, fast-forward, filter out and unsubscribe from irritating ads. This has left brands in a quandary about how to reach consumers and build that illusive equity that encourages shareholders to keep investing their shekels.  However, whilst mass marketing results in the majority of folk covering their ears, the new alternative may leave them looking over their shoulders.  This is because big brands are increasingly focusing on mass-snooping exercises to gather data about individuals in the hope of identifying likely customers.  Clearly, the collection of information about people isn't new. The direct marketing industry has been with us...

Why Networked Media Is Like The British Weather

Like many independent web workers, I sometimes find it tricky when people ask me what I do professionally. The day-to-day reality is that I research and analyse digital trends that I think are interesting and help like-minded clients work out if and how they are relevant. However, people don't always find that helpful. So sometimes I say that I work with marketeers and brands that feel overwhelmed by technology. Which, I suspect, can sound patronising. But it shouldn't. Feeling overwhelmed is a perfectly understandable reaction as, rather like the rain in the UK at the moment, technological change can seem unrelenting, which for many people is disturbing. I recall a session I ran earlier this year when an executive told me she was worried that the pace of digital change was eventually going to make her redundant. Not because her job was going to disappear but, despite being a smart, accomplished individual she felt she didn't have the time to keep up with the latest bits and bytes. Once again, this is understandable and the individual in question is certainly...

When Will It End?

Last week I was chatting to a Grand Fromage in private equity and he asked me what I do. I explained that my professional role is helping companies with challenges, in all their guises, arising from the ongoing march of networked media.  The GF in question said he found the area exciting and clearly had a sophisticated view so his next questions were very interesting. He asked, 'when will it end?', and will there be a, ‘Y2K moment’?  By which I think he meant will all this techy stuff just stop and leave us sitting around wondering why on earth we’d spent half of our lives typing updates into Twitter.  I know exactly what he means.  I frequently find myself wondering if technology has, finally, hit some plateau and that everything will just calm down a bit; whether Silicon Valley will lay off the macchiatos for a while so we can all take a breath. These questions may be down to the basic human desire for a stable, predictable world.  As they say, no one really likes change.  But change, it would appear, is what we've got. Furthermore, the type of change that can seemingly arrive from nowhere.  Strange new digital gubbins build up a head-of-steam under the radar and then evidently pop-up fully-formed, driving people into odd new Alice-In-Wonderland behaviours.  For example, normal folk become determined to be ‘Mayor’ of their local coffee shop.  But not really - only virtually!  Others start having conversations with, rather than on, their phones.  Or, more fundamentally, strange...

Software Is Eating TV

In August of this year, Marc Andreessen, the man who built the first commercial web browser, wrote that, ‘software is eating the world.'  Yet, he noted, companies continue to underestimate the impact modern technology is having on their markets.  Andreessen suggested this myopia might be down to bad memories and burnt fingers following the dotcom boom and bust, when many outlandish promises about the future were made and broken. Additionally, he cited a lack of appreciation about the speed of change that continues to take place around us and the subsequent dramatic shifts in the landscape for companies, brands and organisations. For instance, Andreeseen believes the rapid uptake of smartphones that's driving global access to the web will create vast online markets of five billion people. Furthermore, reaching these giant markets is becoming easier as the burgeoning capacity and efficiency of cloud computing continues to drive down the cost of running web services.  ‘Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming’, advises Andreessen who is now one of the world’s most influential technology investors.  It strikes me that his comments accurately capture the current mindset of...

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...  

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...

UK Media - Enjoy This 'Indian Summer' While You Can

I went along to an event this week entitled, ‘Making Money In the On Demand Media Age,’ hosted by consultancy boutique Oliver & Ohlbaum.   The session had the feel of an investment bankers’ world view and, as a result, there were plenty of Grand Fromages in attendance including Lord Hollick, ex-media baron turned VC; the much-admired broadcasting player David Elstein; Patrick Barwise the formidable LBS Professor and Government advisor and new kids on the block such as Richard Halton, CEO of the nascent UK web TV service YouView.  The initial presentation was a Meeker-esque onslaught of macro trends, backed up with some proprietary research that the room lapped up with a verve suggesting sober, grown-up analysis of the new broadcasting world is thin-on-the ground.   My overall impression of the hundred or so people in the room was something akin to a Monaco casino packed with high-rollers working out where to lay their next chips.  You could almost hear the neuro-based balance sheets ticking over as the analysis developed.  Among the many nuggets thrown out for the pack to chew on was that the recent speedier-then-expected recovery in the UK’s media markets might be something of a mirage.  One effect of the corporate axe being wielded in recent years is that profits have bounced back and there is a natural inclination for many big brands to invest straight back into what they know.  However, Oliver & Ohlbaum see this as being an, ‘Indian Summer’ before the realities of, ‘long-term structural change’ take grip in a couple of years and a, ‘new industry structure’ emerges.  What will this new world order look like?  In short, no one knows and in the follow-on session...

Google TV Goes Through The Looking Glass

The intriguing battle between Silicon Valley and Hollywood shows no signs of abating. This year Google offered the US TV Networks an olive branch with its 'Smart TV' only to be brutally rejected in recent days like just-another-starlet. However, at some point the proceedings reached a strange Alice-like point. While Google has built its own Web-On-The-TV without any TV content in the shape of Google TV, the US TV networks have built their own TV-On The-Web without any web content in the shape of Hulu. Confused? Don't worry - you aren't alone.  In fact it only makes sense when you realise that many of the ongoing developments, as the world reorganises itself from broadcast to networked media, are best viewed through Alice's Looking-Glass - where the standard rules don't apply. Just think back a few years to when the music industry was offered an apparent refuge by Steve ‘Brighter, Whiter & Lighter’ Jobs, away from those horrible ‘pirates’ (aka customers who just will not stop enjoying your products) on his lovely new, shiny and oh so secure iTunes store.  Only to discover that they had accidentally relinquished control of their industry to Apple. Oops. Now in the normal world handing over your business to a competitor who uses your generosity to unbundle your product, slash your profit margins, and in doing so transform themselves into a world-beating powerhouse, could seem like a strategically bad-hair day. However, in the topsy-turvy world of networked media, this was actually an improvement on what had gone before.  Previously, the newspaper industry gave over its house keys to Google without even noticing. All that was required was to look the other way and pretend the digital revolution wasn’t *actually* happening, allowing Messrs Page & Brin to open a global news agent to which they, and only they, had the keys.   So, while the music industry suffered badly at the hands of Silicon Valley, they did slightly better than their publishing bretheren.  And, in turn, the TV execs have done slightly better than...

'Information Wants To Be Paid For'

In discussion about Chris Anderson's article suggesting that the web is dead, Catherine Fitzpatrick's comment caught my eye over at the NYT Bits Blog : "Oh, of course not, that's silly. Where do people *go* with their lovely aps on their i-phones and droids? They go...to the web. To Facebook, to Twitter. That is, those websites might now be aps accessing servers and not "the web" in the same way, but they are still open public spaces. As aps mature and develop and take people to more log-on closed spaces, then you might start talking about a big change to the web. And that's ok. That's where the commerce is, and that's where people can make a living. Chris Anderson is wailing because Web 2.5 and Web 3.0 aren't the free opensource sandbox that it was in 1.0's day, hating on "walled gardens" and vandalizing them with technocommunistic formulas of "information wanting to be free". But eventually, organic human society prevails, and doesn't want to live in an open-sourced open culture that is so open that value is lost, that musicians, newspapers, book authors, artists all lose their intellectual property rights and all lose their livlihoods as a result. With the phones, capitalism returns to the web and flourishes on the ashes of the old 1.0 communism. It restores software and its contents as products you can buy with code that is protected and not forced free. It introduces the concept of hooks into proprietary software as API engineers, and not opensource mindless cultism. So it's all good. All sorts of things will start to thrive. Privacy and identity also have a powerful basis in dedicated phone numbers you pay for and which telephone companies, separate from the Googlized web, maintain for you, so that you data isn't scraped and datamined at least by all the IT giants. It's all good. Ads are fine. Put more in. Information wants to be paid for."