As every year around this time, all sorts of sites start to publish trends. Along the many lists that get published (and some of which I will subsequently link to), there is one selfproclaimed „Uber“-List, an aggregation of links of the main sites with trends. These trends do not only concern marketing and advertising, but also technology and internet trends.
It does sound a little like a link bait, but that’s fine for me as long as that lists gets updated frequently.
At the Church of the customer Blog, there is an approach of how to categorize communities, which I found quite interesting. The build a square, one axis being size, the other being devotion. Most communities can be aligned along these axes:
Little Devotion, little in size: Clique, like a small world. (Anyone who can invite me?)
Little in size, but high in devotion: Cult, like Maker’s Mark Ambassadors. (Never heard of them!)
Low in devotion but large in size: Network, like LinkedIn or Xing.
Large in size and high in devotion: Nation, like Netroots Nation. (Never heard of them either!)
So what does that tell us? Size and devotion are the two main things affecting any community. Question is, whether it is possible to increase both at the same time, or if it is better to focus on one at a time?
I have already mentioned the TED Talks a couple of times – very inspiring 20 minute presentations you can watch on the web. Now there is a good one by Larry Lessig, who talks about 3 stories in support of one central argument concerning paradigms shifts necessary in todays copyrights setup:
The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the „ASCAP cartel“ to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you’ve ever seen.
James Cherkoff tells us a nice little story about how tight marketing programs, the nice shop in a nice part of town, well trained sales people, the glossy leaflets and the good reputation of certain type of kitchen brand has been made obsolete by one single search on the web about what other customers of this brand had to say. The opinions were mostly negative and James ended up cancelling his order.
Of course, you would always have consulted other sources – most of all your closest peers – about opinions on any high involvement product or service. But the chances that you find many sources with the same brand of kitchen (car, dishwasher, etc.) in your closest range of peers was and is rather limited.
With todays possibilities to find opinions on anything on the web (even stuff you didn’t want to know about), it is ever more important for brands to keep their promises. People are fearing the moment of the totally transparent consumer, but hey, brands already face this complete transparency!
Interesting. There is a post at the „social media today“ blog that states that conversational marketing will outpace traditional marketing by the year 2012. The main obstacles at the moment seem to be:
“Manpower restraints†– 51.1%
“Fear of loss of control†– 46.9%
“Inadequate metrics†– 45.4%
“Culture of their organizations†– 43.5%
“Difficulty with internal sell-through†– 35.8%
The second point should be easier to manage, once the first point has been solved. But that needs success on point 5, which depends on point 3, because point 4 necessitates success on point 3. Confusing? Yes. But doable. And very necessary.
Wo ich sonst so bin...