Who is in control of your brand?

As part of an interesting project run by Janette Toral over at www.influentialblogger.net, I’ve selected my favourite ‘emerging’ blogs of 2009. The definition of emerging can be debated, however, I’ve selected blogs which are new or have a very niche following… [And blogs must have started after May 1 2008]

My reason for participating? I like the fluid & community approach of this project – interested to see the result.

UPDATE (19/5): After receiving a few comments about this being a blatant link baiting campaign, I contacted the organiser and asked for her response. She said that she would respond in due course. In the meantime I’ve decided to scrap all the links until I get a response. I still highly recommend these blogs, and might add them to my blog roll instead.

UPDATE (20/5): Based on a bit of feedback I’ve reinstated the links to the blogs, however, I’ve removed the links to the sponsors – it just seems a bit wrong.

Since May 2008

Mumbrella – Everything under Australia’s media & marketing umbrella

Come Together – Thoughts on Community and Conversation

Love Digital – Making digital media less scary for marketing people

digitalOZ - Australian Marketing Online

April 2008 (Just missed out)

The Gloo

Before May 2008

A digital perspective – Jye Smith on social media, marketing & the internet

Acidlabs - Conversation. Collaboration. Community.

Public Opinion – public opinion deserves to be respected as well as despised” G.W.F. Hegel, ‘Philosophy of Right’

Only Dead Fish – Advertising, digital, media, communications, planning, magazines, life

Stilgherrian

Servant of Chaos

This writing project will not be possible without the support of sponsors such as Absolute Traders, My Brute Cheats, and Business Summaries.

After 2 weeks in my new role (working with exceptionally smart people), and reading this post my feelings/opinions around marketing have been reinforced. I’ve put together a series of posts to cover a range of topics.

Marketing at it’s core is simple and obvious, the world ISN’T changing dramatically, we’re just creates of habit and have become set in weird and wonderful ways. As a digital marketing strategist I’m proud to believe that mass / traditional media works. Buzz words like engagement, relationships, dialogue, feedback 3.0 are ways for people to talk around real outcomes and facts. Marketing is ALL ABOUT SALES, sure, engagement is great, but do we sell more product now or in the future?

The topics I’ll cover:

1. Buzz words, headlines and stupidity

2. People are people with core desires

3. Broadcast media works

4. Digital media is too accountable

5. Social media experts can’t exist

6. Marketing is inevitably about sales

7. Outcomes are key

These are issues that I deal with on a day-to-day basis as a Digital Marketing Strategist helping organisations connect with their audience. I felt the need to share them.

Hello

G’day I’m Simon T Small. This blog is a running commentary on marketing and digital media in Australia. Digital media should be seen as a marketing channel; a hybrid of everything from Direct Marketing to customer service to mass media marketing. It’s very powerful, it can be good or bad for you depending on how you approach it. To keep in touch subscribe to the RSS feed, my Twitter, Friend Feed.

Be one of the 35% of Australians and my favourite kind of reader by leaving a comment, its the best compliment you can give.

Jye Smith, over at ‘a digital perspective‘ has posted Ravi Prasad’s views on the highlights of 2008 and what the future brings for digital media.

I agree with many of his predictions, but for me the key points of his post are:

1. Traditional agencies still aren’t getting it

I was left with the impression that many major agencies, brands and media groups don’t yet ‘get it’ or are resistant to the evolution of the media space – this resistance was sometimes at very senior levels and within groups of powerful decision makers. For me, encountering this resistance raised some interesting questions, but I’ll come back to this at the end

2. Marketers, brands and agencies are slower than consumers

The biggest lesson to be learnt is that by 2013 advertising agencies, brands and marketers will have caught up to what consumers were doing in 2009.

3. Follow the consumers, Facebook and MySpace are just the start, more are on their way

In 2009, look for more platforms defined by target market demographics (and dispositions) and less by USPs or other brand propositions.

Social media, in general will evolve with speed and we’ll see a lot of new utility from existing platforms.

4. TV will continue to play catch-up with ABC leading the charge

By 2013, TV networks are in full blown crisis.

Video sharing platforms will now have a bigger share of audience than some networks.

Networks would have turned to a raft of different things to stop the haemorrhaging. All those cool things that the ABC Digital department are doing (think of what they did with programs like the Gruen Transfer to foster online interaction with the show) will be standard practice across most of the programming on most networks – including drama.

5. And his final wrap-up of what 2013 will look like

Given resistance to change from senior brands, agencies and marketers, and the inevitable necessity that change has to happen, I think my final prediction is this: by 2013 there will be a massive change in leadership underway amongst senior brands, agencies and marketers. This will be driven by a crisis or relevancy. We will see, among other things, entirely new classes of marketing, strategic and creative businesses.

You can read the full article here

http://jyesmith.com/a-digital-perspective-ravi-prasad-head-of-strategy-topia/2008/12/16/