Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Brand Conversations – Is Anyone Listening? (And If So, Do They Care?)

It can be quite hard to be clear about the effect social media has had on brands and the broader marketing landscape.  Some people would have you believe that the online global conversation that social media has unleashed is a revolution that brands simply have to be involved in if they are to stay relevant.  Others say it's only really significant within specific, albeit important, areas of marketing such as customer service.  Either way, there can be no doubt that social media in its many guises has changed people's habits and expectations and therefore it remains an area of ongoing fascination for brands who pride themselves on being close to their consumers and the marketplace.  However, for such brands to join the conversation in a credible way...

Does Fail-Fast Make Sense For Big Brands?

‘Fail-Fast’ is a software development mantra that has slowly permeated into other areas of the commercial world.  However, it doesn’t translate to mainstream marketing – yet.  The term is bandied around a good deal these days but basically refers to a project management style where, instead of excessive pre-planning, an idea is quickly put into practice and monitored closely.  The focus is on the continuous examination of performance and smart, speedy reaction to the marketplace.  In light of poor results, the aim is to iterate, change direction (sometimes euphemistically known as ‘pivoting’) or kill off the project altogether.  Thereby preventing long, drawn-out 'zombie' projects that suck up valuable resources before anyone notices they have joined the walking dead.  Crucially, to work effectively Fail-Fast requires an environment of constant, real-time feedback loops - which is exactly what you get when launching new initiatives, for example applications, onto the web or into purely digital media.  However, most brand marketing environments don’t look anything like this.  They remain approximations of what might be happening, in contrast to networked and digital media that show what is actually happening.  For instance, in the UK, the audience, cost and efficacy of TV advertising is determined by the British Audience Research Board (BARB) and its Television Measurement Service which is a panel composed of 5,100 homes.  Far from being a software-driven mirror of actual events, BARB's panel doesn’t measure...

Online TV Comes Of Age In The UK - So What?

John Lewis, the UK department store chain, has created a very cute Christmas TV ad that continues its tactic of playing on people's heart strings to rise above the yuletide shopping onslaught.  My attention was drawn to the commercial by a Telegraph journalist I follow on Twitter who added that even his hardened hack colleagues had been moved to tears.  How could I not take a peek?  So over I went to YouTube to watch the ad (two hundred and fifty thousand views and climbing) and to see if I could pass the dry lacriminal test.  (I couldn’t, no one can).  @hwallop also noted that the first showing of the ad would be on the following Saturday night during X-Factor, and indeed I glimpsed it for a nanosecond as I steamed through one of the show’s giant ad breaks at 60x normal speed.  Now I recognise that my own media consumption habits aren’t a perfect microcosm for the country at large.  Not everyone will be guided by Twitter to the degree that I am.  However, I am a John Lewis customer (who isn’t?) and I suspect that as Web TV grows in the UK, my own experience of the ad will become more normal, not less.  Web TV I hear you cry!?  But YouTube isn’t Web TV.  It’s YouTube - where dogs skateboard and babies giggle.  Well not anymore it isn't.  Sharp-eyed VC Mark Suster spotted that...

That Distant Rumble Is Big Data

‘Big Data’ is the phrase of the moment in tech circles which probably means it will be appearing on the to-do lists of marketing folk soon.  The expression refers mainly to the oceans of information being poured continuously onto the open web and social networks by ever more connected consumers (aka people).  This tsunami comes in the shape of comments, images, scans, tweets, likes, views, posts, videos and a kaleidoscope of other digital expressions.  However, whilst people's everyday lives are providing a big piece of the pie, the scope of Big Data goes much further.  Less obvious but just as vast are the intelligence flows that stem from our web browsing behaviour or location signals from smartphones.  Other component parts include corporations publishing market information , governments opening up public data for others to use, or vast social platforms that encourage smart developers to weave new applications and services.  The result is a share-and-compare economy where people, companies and organisations trade digital views, opinions and information in order to help make decisions - commercial or otherwise.  As ever, this creates challenges and opportunities for marketing and brand folk.  But there’s no shortage...

Software Is Eating TV

In August of this year, Marc Andreessen, the man who built the first commercial web browser, wrote that, ‘software is eating the world.'  Yet, he noted, companies continue to underestimate the impact modern technology is having on their markets.  Andreessen suggested this myopia might be down to bad memories and burnt fingers following the dotcom boom and bust, when many outlandish promises about the future were made and broken. Additionally, he cited a lack of appreciation about the speed of change that continues to take place around us and the subsequent dramatic shifts in the landscape for companies, brands and organisations. For instance, Andreeseen believes the rapid uptake of smartphones that's driving global access to the web will create vast online markets of five billion people. Furthermore, reaching these giant markets is becoming easier as the burgeoning capacity and efficiency of cloud computing continues to drive down the cost of running web services.  ‘Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming’, advises Andreessen who is now one of the world’s most influential technology investors.  It strikes me that his comments accurately capture the current mindset of...

Definitions That No Longer Apply

As digital tectonic plates continue to shift and once separate media sectors merge onto a single global platform, the terrain for brands and marketing definitions remain in a state of flux.  Just take a few recent examples.  Last week Facebook indicated it’s no longer a social network but a 'platform', while Twitter reconfirmed it’s dropping the social tag in favour of a new guise as an 'information network'.  Leaving some questioning, if even Facebook and Twitter are dropping the label, what ‘social’ actually means in context of marketing; other than the constant buzz of a global bazaar.  Additionally, big technology players are constantly redefining themselves and their markets.  Amazon, the one-time online book shop, confirmed it is going into direct competition with Apple, the one-time desktop computing manufacturer, with the launch of the Fire tablet.  The reason being that both increasingly seek to extend their credentials as global media players offering music, TV and films.  Meanwhile, Google, the one-time search business, has bought Motorola, the one-time handset manufacturer, to bolster its own planned entry into the world's TV markets; whilst simultaneously becoming an alternative to a credit card provider by launching Google Wallet.  Elsewhere, Hulu, an online television service that was established by the US TV networks as a defensive strategy to see off Google’s YouTube, is being sold off because it success is undermining the revenue model of the owners' traditional businesses.  (Ironically, the possible buyers include Google, Amazon and Yahoo).  Even the idea of images and photographs is being redefined as demonstrated by the plight of Kodak, one of the...

'Collaboration Is A Survivalist Necessity'

Super comment left by Richard Goutal on the post below : 'It occurs to me that entrepreneurs need a niche to be seen and heard. They need a "long tail" to be found and to be vital. So while it is true that the silos are not that by which marketing decisions should be made, it is also true that generalists are largely unsuccessful in marketing their services unless they have come up with a USP that again allows them to stand out above the rest. I also wish the Twitter specialist luck. But more, I wish him good collaborative thinking, where he takes his special ability and openly collaborates with other media sectors, knowing you can't be good at everything, so collaboration is a survivalist necessity.'

In Networked Media Links Mean Business

Historically, different types of media were independent from one other and there weren’t really any links between them. However, as all media, including TV, gradually becomes networked onto a single digital platform, the links between them are becoming very real, very varied and very valuable. Today, consumers (aka people) can easily switch from one type of digital media to another, and equally easily to an e-commerce checkout. The result is that the consumer path-to-purchase, that for a long time used to look a fairly simple flowchart driven by Yes/No decisions, now resembles a bowl of spaghetti, such is the choice of routes through the new media ecosystem. Hyperlinks were the first example of valuable connections between different types of media giving consumers the opportunity to follow their own paths of interest. When reading a physical paper the only way to follow-up on an issue or offer was to rip out the article or coupon and file it away. As newspapers became networked this behaviour changed and people could immediately click-through an article or promotion to find out more.  Today, as increasing amounts of media becomes...

The Marketing Industry's Siloes Are Its Bunkers

Recently I met someone who described their specialism as Twitter strategy. Now while I wish the individual in question the best of luck with their offering I also thought it was a small example of the silo-mentality that is hardwired into the marketing business. One that, in my humble opinion, is taking the industry in the opposite direction to a world that is becoming increasingly intertwined. Everything that has occurred in the world of technology and marketing over the last five years will play out over the next twenty. In short, all media will become networked in the same way that all PCs were brought onto a single network by the Internet and then the web. On the supply-side change is being driven by powerful forces such as Moore’s Law and rapidly improving connectivity, the two mega-trends that between them are building the much-discussed cloud, into which all media will eventually be drawn. On the demand-side the growth of smartphones, tablets, connected TVs and other groovyware is providing the complementary lifestyle changes in people’s behaviour. The result is an increasingly sophisticated media ecosystem of which brands will remain a key aspect, providing people with signposts and trusted offerings – just as they always have. The overarching characteristic of this ecosystem is...

What's The New Normal For Big Brands?

What's the ‘New Normal’ for global brands?  By which I mean that following the collapse of global finance, the ensuing reshuffle of the world’s powerhouse economies and rapid growth of vast technological platforms, what do global brands care about and to which companies and sectors are they turning for assistance? I keep returning to three thoughts. Firstly, that corporations and brand-owners’ aims haven’t really changed a great deal. They want the same business outcomes, such as awareness, sales, loyalty and product differentiation, that create and support Mega-Brands and the shareholder dividends that follow. Secondly, media and marketing remains in the throes of huge waves of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter alluringly called ‘creative destruction’; the painful process by which one economic order is gradually replaced by another.  In the context of media and marketing, creative destruction has come in the form of digital IP technology breaking open the barriers between previously separate industries to create a single global platform upon which vast new networked media oceans surge.  Finally, most global corporates have been quietly shifting their investments into fast-growing markets for years. Now, as growth falters in Europe and the US, these booming economies seem to promise a golden future. Many such as Brazil, India, China and Indonesia see the creative destruction of technology, media and telecomms as a welcome opportunity. They invest enthusiastically in new...  

Please Step Away From The Ledge

From time to time I meet up with marketing folk, often as part of an initial briefing, who appear to me to be standing on a precarious ledge from which they are about to throw themselves.  What do I mean by this?  By the 'ledge' I mean when a marketing executive has decided or been instructed to launch a digital marketing plan regardless of its relevance to their business.  In recent years these plans have mostly involved social media and mobile apps. However, the ledge mindset is surprisingly common in other areas too.  I think of my job as helping people make sense of the trends and issues arising in digital and networked media.  But the fun bit is applying those issues to real world problems.  And that means grounding them within the context of an overall business and marketing strategy, which is the part often missing when people are standing on the ledge.  They have effectively decided to take a professional leap of faith, something they wouldn’t do in any other aspect of their business decision-making. The ledge mindset is generally created by being overly-focused on technology and specific services that are growing at a very rapid speed. The massively quick adoption of digital tools by consumers (aka people) has a strange affect on marketing executives.  Growth of a service becomes the only consideration.  So it doesn’t necessarily matter what the service is.  Or who is using it.  It also doesn’t really matter if the context is right for a brand.  Or, occasionally, even if their customers can access it!  One particularly colourful example of this in the last few years was...

When The Big Idea Becomes Marketing's Big Problem

A few years ago I sat in the office of a much-admired Digital Creative Director when a call came through from the mega-media shop that his agency was linked with via its global network.  When the DCD saw the number flash up his shoulders slumped and he rushed around to find someone to answer the call and say he wasn’t available. He then switched his mobile off and we sped from the building for a long lunch, over which he explained his reaction.  For the best part of five years he’d been taking those calls and a pattern had been established that he could no longer bear.  It went something along the lines of the media powerhouse explaining they’d had a terrific brief from a client at MegaCorp and it needed some digital input.  However, it would then emerge that the brief had already been answered and the client had bought a concept in the shape of an above-the-line campaign.  So the digital agency was actually being brought into the process a few months after the brief had landed and was being asked to provide a digital execution of a TV spot.  “Sometimes they just say, ‘make it go viral’”, said the DCD with the look of someone who’s been given a plate of old mutton and asked to give it a lamb makeover.  I was reminded of this conversation a few weeks ago whilst talking to a creative team from a widely-regarded digital agency, also associated with a large parent network. One of them half-joked that...