April 10, 2008
On "Life After Katie"
I know this is a marketing blog, so excuse me if the following post seems every so slightly "off-center" but IMHO it is completely relevant...
I just finished reading a posting on the Time.com Tuned In blog by James Poniewozik titled "Life After Katie." The posting was about the rumored demise of Katie Couric's CBS Evening News show. His commentary should be read by every marketer, in every industry, in every role because it applies to all of us.
Here is a small excerpt from Jim's entry:
"Katie was brought in on the premise that she and her star power—plus a revamping of the newscast format—could bring in new viewers to the evening news, rather than just steal a few hundred thou from the competition. She cannot. God cannot. It is a losing proposition. As I have written before, Couric's newscast has been an expensive final refutation of the desperate belief that it is possible to reverse the slow, inexorable decline of network news. Network newscasts are a holding effort. They are a rearguard action. They are prisoners of demography and cultural shifts that are as irreversible as the physical laws of the universe."
Besides being cool writing, he is right. The article goes on to explain the various demographic reasons why Katie doesn't deserve $15 mil a year to safegaurd her chair while the broadcast's Nielsen ratings plummet. The point for me, however, was broader.
Across all facets of marketing, B2C and B2B, there are dramatic and continually evolving ways in the way the people consume information. Not that long ago, Wired magazine ran a cover story on "snack culture"...our growing predilection for information in small bites (bytes?). Media fragmentation continues to alter audience accessibility to marketers. Blogs and online video are redefining the term pundit. For marketers, the impact is a new landscape in which you must paint your marketing plan. And like network news broadcasts, any efforts to do things "the way you've always done them" would be rightfully characterized as another "rearguard action."
Katie Couric and CBS may have done a favor for more than just NBC and ABC. They may well have taught every advertiser and marketer just how important it is to change...or die.
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March 2, 2008
Content Comes to Marketing
Perhaps no complaint is more universal in the B2B marketing arena than the need for well-writen, relevant content. Yet, companies routinely short-shrift investment in content creation. That leads to a woeful lack of good information and a continual disconnect between marketers and prospects/customers.
That gap is why I found Steve Rubel's latest posting on his MicroPersuasion blog so interesting. Writing about event from the recent IAB Annual Meeting, he pointed out how digitally-savvy media companies had become. His angle was the threat that media companies now pose to traditional agencies. Some interesting stats he presented:
- By 2010, 53% of media companies surveyed expect to do more business directly with marketers. The majority of marketers (52%) feel the same about publishers
- Only 27% of marketers expect to be doing more business with agencies two years from now
- Today nearly every media company (91%) offers some kind of "agency-like" services. This includes former untouchables like idea generation (88%) and creative development (79%)
The implications for B2B marketers hungry for content? The answer may be in closer relationships with media companies hungry to leverage their content libraries and substantial content creation resources in new ways.
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February 10, 2008
New Expectations: HP's IdolHands Contest
By now, most marketing excutives have heard about the short-tenure woes of the CMO in many organizations. In an article in The McKinsey Quarterly titled "The Evolving Role of the CMO" there were some interesting insights into the trends that are makig the job so difficult. One insight I thought was really relevant was how today's marketing executive must manage a rapidly expanding universe of marketing techniques, channels and skills. For example, in media alone the expansion of user-generated content makes traditional approaches to media planning and execution insufficient. Add to that the increasing demand to create immersive engagement in campaigns that create more lasting mindshare and viral extension.
As a case in point, take a look at HP's recently released Idol Hands contest. This is not your typical marketing program. This interactive, user-generated content program supports HP's $3,500 TouchSmart line of touch-screen PCs, billed as "The perfect PC for families looking for an all-in-one touch-screen PC with easy, convenient access to information, family schedules, TV, music, movies and photos."
The campaign is intended to get consumers to upload a homemade video starring their hands. And upload people are! Some of the video are dumb, some quite elegant. All in all, it represents a completely different way of thinking about and using a marketing budget. The concept is engaging, interactive and gets an audience focused on one aspect of the value proposition for the product line. Very clever.
Gotta run, now. I need to get back to editing my submission....I could really use the prize money.
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February 1, 2008
Surfing Innovation. Cool, Dude.
Great blog posting by consultant John Hagel in his EdgePerspectives blog. The piece, titled "Innovating on the Edge of Big Waves," talks about what business executives can learn from surfers.
I found several of the points especially valuable:
- If you want to push your performance levels, find the relevant edge. The example "companies making diesel engines and power generators should be actively engaged in finding ways to more effectively serve lower income customers in remote rural areas of emerging economies. These demanding customers could prompt significant innovation in both product design and distribution processes in an effort to deliver greater value at lower cost."
- Bring technology developers and users together at the edge. Commonly discussed but less commonly practiced...no one knows better how to innovate than users forced to operate under challenging conditions.
Worth the time to read...worth even more time to think about how it could be applied to business situations you face in your company.
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November 20, 2007
Being Innovation
I was reading Tom Kelley's "The Ten Faces of Innovation" the other day and was struck by a paragraph just 14 pages into the book. The book which describes 10 approaches to innovation which it describes in terms of personas rather than elements. The sentences that caught my attention were:
"And thinking of the ten innovation elements as personas rather than tools reminds us that innovation is a full-time endeavor for all modern organizations, not just a task to be checked off periodically. The personas are about "being innovation" rather than merely "doing innovation."
Ever since I've read that, it has stuck in my head.
Posted by jcioban at 11:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
