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September 2, 2009
Are You A Change Agent?
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin
As a blogger, it is easy to believe that all businesses clearly see, understand and are acting to respond to the forces that are changing how marketing is done. After all, we operate in this brave new social-media-enabled world, and recognize the value of real-time, consumer-generated content, understand conversational marketing, blah, blah, blah.
In reality, outside the echo chamber of the marketing gurus, most business is still conducted under a host of constraints, roadblocks and assumptions. Every day, we still hear "the focus is on cost per piece", or "I've heard of Twitter", or "social media tools aren't used by our customers." Every business has its own reasons or rationale, but the result is the same -- marketing stagnation.
Today, I participated in a brainstorming session at a cash-strapped, industrial publishing company. We talked about:
- innovative ways of applying variable data printing to reduce unit costs on targeted promotional mail
- how to manage micro-targeting across multi-media implementations
- tips for e-mail list optimization
- techniques for optimizing personalized landing pages
- examples of content re-purposing applied to personal media subscriptions
In principle, this client doesn't have the budgets for breakthrough marketing, but in fact, that was part of the session's purpose -- how can we apply technology creatively to not only drive results, but reduce cost. The participants joked about hand-stuffing invitations for local seminars...then delved back into how they might apply smarter techniques to improve performance. The attitude was "can do", not "we can't".
That is the spirit that defines a change agent. As the recession wanes, we are learning that the new economy is likely to reengineer spending patters at all levels, from individual consumers to global corporations and government entities. Some industries, like printing, will be recast, and new industries, like location-based services, will emerge. Change agents will help companies invent...or reinvent.
Darwin was right. So, are you helping your business survive?
Posted by jcioban at September 2, 2009 5:45 PM
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Comments
Testing Comments....I heard that is was broken. Hopefully all's well now!
Posted by: Jim Cioban
at September 2, 2009 7:17 PM
