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The Marketing Agency Dilemma
4 December, 2009
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Those running marketing agencies today face a crushing dilemma. Of course there are the usual challenges: a surfeit of competitors, including large, lumbering giants and hungry startups; a shortage of creative business problem-solvers; and an unforgiving economic climate squeezing everyone, client and supplier alike.
Even considering all this, the chief problem is not one of opportunity: more brands than ever need all the help they can get when it comes to delivering on their marketing promise.
The definitive challenge for agencies today is strategic: where to compete. Read more…
Don’t Sack Your Marketing Team Just Yet
25 November, 2009
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Photo by petrr
Even before brands faced today’s budgetary age of austerity, a populist meme was gaining traction: that while marketing is a necessary function, perhaps we don’t need a large, dedicated team to deliver it.
Mike Hutchison, writing for the blog Unlimited, argues this very point in his post Hitting Your Mark. Hutchison’s cites an oft-quoted piece of industry lore of motorcycle manufacturer Ducati sacking its marketing department and delegating responsibility throughout the organisation.
The super-objective Hutchison craves – where individuals up, down and across an organisation take real, tangible responsibility for marketing the brand – is the right intention but the dramatic headline is unhelpful; we might have fantasies about eliminating marketing departments, yet actually doing so creates a number of acute, real problems that cannot be so easily reduced to theory. Read more…
Categories: Marketing Strategy
Marketing
Save Football, Save Our Souls
20 November, 2009
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Photograph: Marko Djurica/Reuters
I admit it: I’ve taken the outcome of the farcical World Cup 2010 playoff between France and Ireland more seriously than I ought. My smug, albeit neutral, perch affords me the lofty position of unbiased – and therefore the harshest possible – judgement.
Thierry Henry’s shameful handling in the lead-up to the final French coup de grace, reminiscent more of a touch-down in rugby than the usually prescribed path to soccer goal scoring, leaves even the non-partizan reeling in contempt.
The incident has been described as the ultimate expression of human frailty; for the referees, whose experience and good sense abandoned their eyes at the crucial moment; for the French players, whose desire to win at all costs cruelly hijacked their common decency; and for the spectator, neutral and invested alike, who have been left roiling or rollicking to face a long, cold winter digesting the ugly and inescapable realisation that – regardless France’s performance in next year’s World Cup – the outcome is immutably corrupted. Read more…
It’s Doomed to Fail But I Like FourSquare Anyway
30 October, 2009
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In the very early 1990s America, my friend Eric and I revelled in the then-advanced technology of Laser Disc. I’ve included a link to its Wikipedia entry as I’m guessing a few people will have no idea what Laser Discs are, having skipped that generation of technology entirely.
Eric and I stared, rapt, at the glorious picture delivered in delectable elegance on a magical disc. It ditched all the horribleness of VHS – the dodgy picture, the interminable rewinding and the fragile tape – and bestowed crystal clear images, instant chapter skipping and full THX-like sound. Read more…
Categories: Personal, Social Media
Marketing, Personal, socialmedia
Social Media ROI is Fine but it’s the NPV We Need
29 October, 2009
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Image Credit: viZZZual.com
Most brands grappling with developing a social media proposition reach the ‘ROI question’.
It has many variants, depending if it’s asked by the finance department, the head of marketing or the CEO, but the ROIQ may ultimately be expressed simply as:
What financial benefits will the business receive in return for investing in social media?
Naturally this questions can be asked of any marketing activity but I choose social media specifically – as opposed to traditional media – as it’s the activity least likely to be understood by the senior executives in an organisation.
Nevertheless, it’s the right question to ask; we’re running a business after all.
In 2007 Forrester’s Charlene Li and Chloe Stromberg produced the much-thumbed ROI of Blogging, perhaps the first serious attempt to calculate, in hard dollars, the value of an activity which brands were increasingly being urged by agencies to adopt or at least consider.
While blogging is just one tactical consumer touch point, Li and Stromberg posed thorny questions the stampeding suite of fresh-faced, emerging online services would inevitably face. Read more…
Categories: Marketing Strategy
Marketing
What I Don’t Know
23 October, 2009
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![superman-12274[1]](http://davidblanar.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/superman-122741.jpg?w=236&h=177 "superman-12274[1]")
Where to begin?
As many of my friends have repeatedly observed, I’m loathe to admit pain, the defining personality characteristic of an Eight according to the Enneagram model, I’m reliably informed. In this case, the pain is ‘lack of knowledge’.
However, I’m liberating myself of the marketing consultant’s burdensome, perceived Cloak of Omniscience. I wish I knew everything, alas I do not, and at the risk of losing out on future contracts, I think it only fair to share some of the areas I know spectacularly little about: Read more…
Categories: Personal
Open Up Now Makes its Move
21 October, 2009
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Open Up Now was founded by a small group of thoughful, committed citizens.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
– Margaret Mead, US anthropologist (1901 – 1978)
I have been continually impressed by the recent campaign launched just this week by Open Up Now, a small group of concerned citizens asking, simply, that the UK “hold an Open Primary in every constituency before the next General Election, so that voters can directly select the MP candidates that will stand in the General Election.”
It is surely the least we deserve.
Of course the movement has a web site, a Twitter account and – most impressively – a dedicated YouTube channel with a selection of incredibly well-produced and humourous videos which aptly skewer the inanity forced upon us by the shenanigans and goings-on of our Parliament. You can even be a fan on Facebook. Read more…
Categories: Personal
Government
England Football: Pay-Per-View Analysis
10 October, 2009
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Perform provide the Ukraine v England match feed, featuring former England Manager Sven Goran-Eriksson
I watched the first web-only distribution of an England football match, the 2010 World Cup Qualifier hosted by Ukraine. Ukraine won the match 1-0, I’m confident you can find a competent match summary elsewhere.
However, the real story is the fact that the game was only available via the internet; it was not screened on terrestrial television, via commercial satellite broadcasters or any other dodgy continental method. Perform Media was the only distributor of the match which is the “biggest ever pay-per-view event in the UK”.
Defining success is difficult.
Success for Kentaro, the Swiss agency that held the rights is easy to define: did it profit from the initiative? Undoubtedly, that answer will be yes; clearly, the largest pay-per-view (PPV) event in the UK will, almost by definition, deliver a profitable adventure, considering the target was the £900,000 offered by the BBC. With estimates of more than 250,000 subscribers at £11.99 a pop, they look well on target to clear this amount.
But as others have already noted, the key factor to look at is not necessarily the distribution method – which, let’s face it, has been around for a while – but whether or not this is a legitimate channel for future delivery. Read more…
Blogging, frustrated
7 October, 2009
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It’s embarassing, actually.
I’ll write it here, seeking a modicum of peace through my confession, but the truth is: my credentials as a blogger are in serious peril, even facing outright rejection.
How did it come to this?
Back in the Day …
In 1999 I started managing my first web site, which was devoted to women’s football in the States (specifically, women’s football at the university level). Initially CollegeSoccerDaily.com was part of the Rivals network, but I left and then managed it separately until I moved to the UK in 2000 when I stopped publishing the site altogether. Read more…
