Steve Rubel has an embedde scribd in his lifestream, as well as a short video about 4 of the main points underlying the 10 ideas mentioned in the paper:
Global (technology, consumers, applications, etc.)
Mobile (mobile devices, use cases, etc.)
Companies (can’t stand on the sidelines any longer)
Data (driving everything, smarter decisions, data privacy).
Not quite digital marketing, but similar rules surely apply to creating well selling online web pages. The NY Times has a piece on how restaurants are trying to improving their menues. Things like highlighting the most profitable items on the menue via putting boxes around them, display prices without a dollar sign, etc. Some restaurants seem to be continously testing how to best design menues so that revenue and profitability increases.
“If admen had souls, many would probably trade them for an opportunity every restaurateur already has: the ability to place an advertisement in every customer’s hand before they part with their money.”
There has been a lot of talk about the end or decline of the destination sites. Mainly about the big portals as well as brands sites – the decline in daily visitors happens at the same time as visitors to social media sites are steadily increasing. Here is a blogpost that nicely visualizes this effect for a few famous brands and social media sites.
Coca-Cola and Unilever now announced that they’ll start shifting their online campaign activities from dedicated microsites to sites, profiles or channels on social media sites. Makes sense, considering the users are already there and they can tap into a ready community:
The FMCG giants are moving away from sites created on a campaign-by-campaign basis in favour of investment in existing communities.
Coca-Cola: “We would like to place our activities and brands where people are, rather than dragging them to our platform,”
Unilever: “You’ll see fewer brands creating a site for one campaign and then throwing it away. Certainly we won’t do that at Unilever any more. It’s natural online to go to the place where people are already consuming media,” she added. “It’s less effort to ask people to leave an environment they’re already in.”
They won’t do that for all campaigns, and certainly not immediately, but given the current change in the media landscape it does make a whole lot of sense for some brands to move closer to where their customer are.
Happy new year (almost „belated“, since I haven’t posted anything in two weeks…). First post should hence be about new year resolutions. But not mine, which do in fact include the obvious (more sports, loose weight, etc.), but some listed by the viralblog:
1. Make Social Media marketing line budget item (so that it gets its proper place in the marketing mix)
2. Generate ROI using Social Media (prove the added value of social media tactics within the marketing mix)
3. Start listening to the audience (they are already talking about you, and they know what’s best for them).
4. Develop Social Media Strategy (don’t tinker from one tactic to another).
5. Always remember the 4 C’s (Content, Context, Connectivity, Continuity).
They are, obviously, not resolutions for me as an agency person, but they are nevertheless my resolutions when advising my clients this year. Let’s see how social media develops this year.
Every year around this time one can find many predictions about the new year in terms of tech & social media trends. So in order to get an overview myself, I have started this post with a collection and summary of the various predictions I could find:
Pete Blackshaw wrote in an Ad Age column that social media marketers will need to embrace three critical words in 2010: Serve, Shrink and Simplify. Since you need to log on to Ad Age, you can read some excerpts on Pete’s blog. The main idea: service is the new marketing, our screens are shrinking, make things easer/reduce complexity for your customers.
The groundswell team lists 6 predictions, but you get an excerpt. Nevertheless, you can read the topline predictions on the groundswell blog. Overarching theme is, according to the blog, that social technology will be a mainstram part of what marketers do.
eMarketer lists 12 predictions for 2010. The insights include „future monetization models, the effect of transparency on advertising, social and search, mobile, social commerce, public relations, social advertising, Twitter, video and mom/pop internet usage“.
Read/WriteWeb has two different kinds of lists: General predictions and social media predictions. The general predictions consists of the views of 9 contributors from rww and cover a wide variety of topics concerning social media, mobile, cloud computing, Google/Twitter/Facebook/bing, etc. The social media predictions list 10 ways social media will change in 2010, i.e. how it will become part of everyday life, being increasingly used on mobile devices, ROI will become more important (and will be measured), etc.
The NY Times „bits“ blog writes about 2010 being the year of the tablet PC. Quite a few companies seem to be on the verge of presenting their versions, but everyone is, of course eager for Apple to release theirs!
Mashable has a post about 2010 being the year of the data. Data that should and will be used by every profession – journalism, marketing, SEO, Advertising, PR, etc. User data (static and behavioural data, I suppose) is becoming ever more important. Somehow I don’t think this is a trend just for 2010. It has been going on in 2009 already and will stay with us forever…
Pete Cashmore of Mashable wrote a special for CNN Tech about the 10 web trends to watch in 2010. the keywords are: Realtime, location, augmented reality, content curation, cloud computing, internet TV and Movies, convergence conundrum, social gaming, mobile payments, fame abundance and privacy scarcity.
As I find more predictions, I will add them (let me know if you know of any).
I suppose you all remember Jill and Kevin’s wedding video, in which the couple and a few of their friends were dancing to „forever“ by Chris Brown?
For those living outside Germany, here it is (YouTube is blocking music videos in Germany):
I really liked that video and copied it into my German Blogs. I enjoyed the story of how this idea came about (here is some background info about the wedding). I liked the idea of the couple wanting to celebrat their most important day in a special way. And I am sure quite a few of the many million who have watched this video thought alike.
Hard to believe, I have to admit. Highly disappointing if it’s true.
So what was it marketing for? In that article it says that it was a campaign for the music of Chris Brown, who had popularity challenges and low record sales after having hit his girlfriend Rihanna.
Which is apparently the reason why you could not only purchase the song „Forever“ via Jill and Kevin’s website, but also donate for the Sheila-Wellstone-Institut, which is a foundation against domestic violence.
I am not sure whether this story is true, since I haven’t heard anywhere else about it. But if it is, then I am heavily disappointed:
People (including myself of course) believed this story to be true – only to find out the they have been tricked by a marketing campaign. Working in advertising myself, I know about the current challenges to get the attention of the target audience. But lying and cheating should never be an option for any marketer.
So I wonder: is it true, was it really just a marketing campaign? Does anyone know?
Wo ich sonst so bin...