May 2009 Archives
EMPLOYEE: (indignantly) I am an individual; let me speak for myself!
EMPLOYER: (blusteringly) I pay your wages! I make the rules!
It's a funny situation. According to the third annual Deloitte LLP Ethics & Workplace survey, 60 percent of business executives believe they have a right to know how employees portray themselves and their organizations in online social networks. However, employees disagree, as more than half (53 percent) say that employers have no business monitoring their online activity.
Fascinating research, but I think we might be overlooking something here...
Social media marketing is new and exciting.
Direct mail is outdated and dull.
An easy conclusion to reach these days, but wrong. Not only are they both effective in their own ways, but put the two together and you get something fantastic - and you won't see a better example than the DM campaign above and the reaction it gained when it went out last week...
In this very
compelling and thought-provoking presentation, Umair Haque presents an
alternative perspective on the current economic situation.
Part economic
treatise, part manifesto, he first discusses how the situation we find
ourselves - the bankruptcy of the western economic model - was fuelled by the
pursuit of what he calls 'thin value': not real value at all, but about
creating perceived value out of nothing in a self-centred and unsustainable way,
and not benefiting the greater-good at all. The
result of this he calls is the 'Zombieconomy' - industries and corporations now
worth nothing. Great phrase.
Interestingly, he then
argues that for the economy to grow we need to re-conceive value creation, and it
needs to be based upon providing real value all the way through the economic
chain. To be based more upon
principles than strategy. It's
certainly and interesting perspective on where we find ourselves now and
definitely worth 20 minutes of your time to view it yourself. He has some interesting examples.
To me it seems for B2B
brands, taking up the positions of leadership, stewardship and trusteeship Umair
talks about could provide the potential to become truly different and to grow
sustainably out of the current crisis.
Offhand, I can't think
of many in b2b who are really taking this kind of approach right now. Do we think that the up-turn will come and we'll be back to
how it was before? View the
presentation and let me know your thoughts.
As you know, good examples of B2B social media marketing are thin on the ground at the moment. And they are all the harder to find when many B2B companies seem to confuse social media with multimedia. You know the kind of thing: people who believe that posting a few corporate videos to YouTube counts as 'social media marketing'. Now don't get me wrong - using video is not to be discouraged as a medium, but unless you have true interaction you still have one-way communication. It's really little more than advertising messages delivered by a new and funky channel.
But this week I found how easy it is to jump to conclusions...
If we stop and think about the trends we have seen, and continue to see, in how buyers find, investigate and choose potential suppliers the future isn't too bright for any of us. Marketing agencies and marketing professionals in general could well become extinct unless we adapt and evolve.
The death of marketing communications as we know it may well be a pessimistic view of the future, or there again it could be the beginning of something new and exciting. All the research we see indicates a slow but sure move of budgets from outbound communications to inbound marketing, from shouting about your brand to get your buyers' attention to delivering compelling experiences that create online conservations much more influential than any trade ad campaign. But where could it all lead?
