the latest edition of Bulldog Solutions Marketing Watchdog Journal has a great section titled “SXSW 2008 What we learned” with impressions by their staff of this recent edition of the annual idea fest. Of particular interest is a session on “10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger” with these 10 tips that I’m sure will get wide coverage in the PR community, or so we hope!
March 18, 2008
This is a great presentation of some of the key developments that have already arrived or are on the horizon. It’s clear that they will have an impact on the financial services industry, with search and mobile being areas in particular where innovation will happen based on what’s called the semantic, or intelligent web. Another area will be recommendation systems where things are moving ahead with improved results noticeable to users.
March 18, 2008
Great post on ReadWriteWeb giving a glimpse of what’s to come in mobile applications. Here’s one related to finance:
8. Credit Card and Biometrics as Software
The business world is also going to benefit from mobile innovation. Soon credit cards will become software. You will walk into a store and to pay, you simply choose a credit card button. The iPhone will communicate securely with the cash register in the store, via Blue Tooth or Wi-Fi. The safety of the transaction will be ensured via biometrics. For example, a clerk in the store might ask you to place a randomly selected finger onto the screen of your iPhone to verify that the phone belongs to you (assuming that all phones are securely initiated in the store and may not be reset).
Lots of very exciting stuff and, of course, 12 more reasons for getting yourself an iPhone…..!
March 12, 2008
Social Media Will Change Your Business
Posted by Joe under Web / Technology, web 2.0Leave a Comment
This lengthy article in Business Week
was first published in May 2005 and recently updated. It still is a great general description of blogging its effect on media consumption and business.
As for the difference between blogs and MSM – or main stream media – I like this quote from the the article
If this were a real blog, we probably would have posted our story pitch on Day One, before we did any reporting. In the blog world, a host of experts (including many of the same ones we called for this story) would weigh in, telling us what’s wrong, what we’re overlooking. In many ways, it’s a similar editorial process. But it takes place in the open. It’s a discussion.
Why draw this comparison? In a world chock-full of citizen publishers, we mainstream types control an ever-smaller chunk of human knowledge. Some of us will work to draw in more of what the bloggers know, vetting it, editing it, and packaging it into our closed productions. But here’s betting that we also forge ahead in the open world. The measure of success in that world is not a finished product. The winners will be those who host the very best conversations.
February 25, 2008
Make Web 2.0 deliver business benefits
Posted by Joe under Web / Technology, web 2.0Leave a Comment
This ComputerWeekly.com article presents a great overview of the potential web 2.0 is starting to show for business.
Previously most of the media attention has been on the personal aspect of applications like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube and many managers have been wary in embracing the term. This attitude is starting to shift and rightly so as these tools can produce tangible benefits if introduced and used properly in a corporate environment.
February 21, 2008
Unfortunately I missed this event but Josh Benoff of Forrester summarized some of key comments of Doc Searls which I quote below:
1. Advertising as we know it will die.
2. Herding people into walled gardens and guessing about what makes them “social” will seem as absurd as it actually is. (Facebook is his example.)
3. We will realize that the most important producers are what we used to call consumers. (Yup.)
4. The value chain will be replaced by the value constellation. (Many connections.)
5. “What’s your business model?” will no longer be asked of everything. (What’s the business model for your kids?)
6. We will make money by maximizing “because effects”. (“Because effects” are what happen when you make more money because of something than with it.) E.g. search and blogging.
8. We will be able to manage vendors at least as well as they manage us. (Agreements between companies and customers shouldn’t be skewed in favor of the companies.) At Harvard Law they call this VRM — vendor relationship management — which is what Searls is working on (projectvrm.org).
10. We’ll marry the live web to the value constellation. (The Live Web isn’t just about stars. Relationships of anybody to anybody.)
All this might not be readily accepted by marketers today, but let’s remember that most of what the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto loudly proclaimed ten years ago about how the web will change consumer behavior and marketing has come to pass. My take is that he’s right again.
February 13, 2008
Adam Weinroth of iMedia Connection has a very informative post on this high profile subject, including his definition of what makes up social media and how to be effective in this key area of the web today.
As I’ve stated on this blog previously, it’s all about the conversation, how to monitor, embrace and join it. Ignorance is not an option!
Tags: socialmedia, social networking, UGC
February 6, 2008
Super Bowl Advertisers Fumble Search, Social Media; Gain Elsewhere
Posted by Joe under UncategorizedLeave a Comment
this report in MarketingVOX makes the example of how E*Trade used their commercial in social media, which I posted on yesterday even more noteworthy.
Of course, network TV advertising is still used by and large for branding by companies with the necessary marketing budgets and cross media integration is the exception rather than the norm.
The article, however, seems to indicate a pretty strong shift to include paid search in the equation.
Good news for Google, it seems!
February 5, 2008
The E*Trade commercials, here’s the one on banking:
were some of the best that ran on an otherwise pretty lackluster slate during the Super Bowl.
What’s even more impressive than the creative, and certainly very effective, is how the company is leveraging this strong TV presence across the web by using YouTube, where they have their own channel featuring all their latest TV spots, their own home page and Google search results.
The entire integration is explained in detail with screenshots in this post on NetBanker.
Certainly credit unions don’t have marketing budgets allowing for Super Bowl commercials but the use of all the other tools mentioned here is open to anyone and do not require a substantial budget to run. Combined with an effective, dynamic website that can convert the interest and the qualified leads generated through web based marketing, this kind of integrated campaign should be a fixed part of any CU marketing program.
February 4, 2008
BoomTown Decodes It, So You Don’t Have To!
a follow up to my last post. Parsing Google’s response trying hard to play David to the perceived new Goliath! Believable? Hardly. Stay tuned as this unfolds, or should I say, drags on and on and on…..
