Who is in control of your brand?

It’s sometimes hard to find valuable, insightful and new information online. If you’re into marketing like I am, these blogs should all be regular reads. Whether they’re an industry voice, thought provoking or factual, each of these blogs/news sites will help you stay at the forefront of marketing. (Some are organisations and some are individuals)

These are my top 14 marketing thought leaders:

• A Digital Perspective – Jye Smith on social media, marketing and the internet
• a shel of my former self – Blogging at the intersection of communications & technology
• acidlabs – Conversation. Collaboration. Community.
• Ad Age – CMO Strategy
• Chris Brogan – Solving business strategy challenges with social media
• Laurel Papworth – The business of being social
• Marketing Charts – Charts and data for marketers in web and Excel format
• Marketing Magazine
• Mumbrella – Everything under Australian media & marketing umbrella
• Servant of Chaos – A blog by Gavin Heaton
• Seth’s Blog – A blog by Seth Godin
• The Steve Rubel Lifestream – Daily links, insights, photos, videos and more on emerging technology.
• Web strategy by Jeremiah Owyang – Social Media, Web Marketing
• Love Digital – A weekly interview podcast – digital marketing
• Come Together – Thoughts on community and conversation

Is there something you read regularly that you would add to this list? Or do you disagree with one of my recommendations? Post a comment.

This list endeavours to rank all the lists on social media/marketing blogs in Australia.

Laurel Papworth discusses the importance of leaderboards in communities, what do you think ?

And one of Australia’s top bloggers, Darren Rowse, view’s on ‘top blog’ lists.

The problem with ‘Australian Blogs’ for marketers

Blog’s based in Australia don’t necessarily have an Australian readership. What we need is a ranking of the top blogs READ by Australians. Julian? Hitwise?

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.

Dave

So, my good mate, David Campell decided to sell up and move to Londontown. From everything I’d heard late last year the world was about to explode/implode and big cities were being hit hard. Sydney certainly felt it, with most big advertising agencies having global mandates to free all hires, and even fire people.

That makes David insane really, well, he’s a digital creative director, and proportionallty (considering population differences) he found that there there were 10x as many digital creative director roles in London to Sydney… Weird, I thought London was about to implode?

Emma

Then when another mate Emma Rhys flew through town for a wedding, over a quick coffee I discovered that maybe London would be a better place to be as she’s getting offers left right and centre. She’s a digital producer.

This post was prompted by the following article in B&T’s daily email out.

Source: B&T Today

The economic downturn has led to a 30% cut in marketing budgets and the transfer of marketing dollars from traditional areas to digital, according to Joseph Payne, CEO of global online marketing firm Eloqua.

In Sydney for the Ernst & Young’s CEO Roundtable “Creating and Sustaining Business Growth”, Payne said: “We are seeing a shift of business dollars to online marketing with business purchasing search terms, raw lead sources and technology to generate and manage pipeline leads.” Payne also encouraged companies to focus on bringing in business leads from both sales and marketing.

Marketing Decisions CEO William McNamara, on of Eloqua’s Australian partners, said: “These companies recognise that in times like this you would be a brave chief marketing officer reporting on a new branding initiative to the board rather than describing, via numbers, how many new leads you are qualifying for sales to convert, and how many have indeed converted.”

McNamara added that tough economic times have witnessed a “shift from broad spend on advertising to specific measurable programs that generate leads”.Eloqua is a provider of demand generation applications, while Marketing Decisions is a b2b marketing agency.

This is all great news for people in digital (*waves*) as we’re used to delivering high & short term ROI. But my only concern is that digital may be perceived as only that, a DM channel, not a place for building reputation, loyalty and long term ROI… We will see.

So what does all this mean? Move to London? Become a ‘social media consultant’? Don’t listen to Dave? Start up a new TV channel? I dunno, but there are opportunities where you want to see them.

(PS I’m starting a new job on Monday, I’ll let you know more later. One thing I can say is that I’m looking forward to it.)

This post may not win me any friends, but I’ve needed to get this off my chest for a long time.

Marketer of company X needs to reach their ‘target market’ with a message and influence them to buy/like their product.

So they have options, radio, magazines, newspaper, TV, direct marketing and other stuff.

With all of these media they try to reach as many of their demographic as possible, but there will always be wastage, i.e. you’ll reach people to don’t intend on reach.

EXAMPLE 1: Lets try TV as a channel

So Jane, the marketer, buys some ads on TV, and she’s targeting mothers so she places the ad during desperate house wives. Great, good TV show (Jane likes it) and channel 7 say it’s predicted to reach 100,000 people (its actually much higher) and the TV station ‘knows’ that 60% of them are mothers. So Jane reachs 60,000 mothers. Simple. Great. Sounds ridiculously awesome. And on the surface it is, but there are some MASSIVE assumptions in here.

The way they know 100,000 people watch the TV show and 60% of them are female is because the TV industry pays people to do surveys. They’ll have samples in each region i.e. Melbourne CBD. So 2000 people complete a survey, whether its digital or log book isn’t the point (although there are massive differences), and they find that of those people 50% watch desperate house wives, so they scale that % up, and based on Melbourne CBD’s population that equals 100,000 (it doesn’t but you get my drift).

So in terms of accountability there are some major flaws:

1. Its based on averages, based on surveys, so many assumptions

2. Just because some was ‘watching the show’ doesn’t mean they were there when the adverts were on, or were they playing with their laptop

3. And there could be 6 people sitting on the couch, who counts as a viewer?

So when channel 7 come back to you on Tuesday with your report saying you actually overshot your target and reached 65,000 mothers, you actually have NO IDEA.

They’re saying that more of the surveys said they were watching desperate house wives, and they saw the advert, and you’re assuming that the average is the same for all of Melbourne CBD…

EXAMPLE 2: So now let’s talk about the Internet

Let’s say in this instance that Jane buys some adverts on MSN Recipe Finder, they say you’re like to reach 100,000 people and of those 60% are mothers. Sounds fair and decent right?

Then they give you a report after the campaign that shows you overshot your target and reached 65,000 mothers. Fantastic! But wait, thats the same as TV, and Jane likes Desperate House Wives…

There’s one thing I didn’t mention, the report that MSN give Jane is ACTUAL count of the exact number of people (unique visitors) that they reached. Now there are some technical debates about ‘unique visitors’ but its neither here nor there in the scheme of things.

COMPARISON: Measurement TV vs Internet

Both TV and Internet delivered a report that said they reached 65,000 mothers. The only difference is that the TV stats are based on a small sample survey with the findings extrapolated out, whereas the Internet stats are based on things that actually hapenned.

WHY?

Every time you visit a website, download a file or view an image the activity is recorded. ACTUAL ACTIVITY NOT A SURVEY.

And the others?

Well radio, TV, Bus Shelters/Billboards (OOH), magazines and newspapers are all based on LESS complex systems than TV. Resulting in human error, forgetfulness and well its a boring survey.

SO WHY THE RANT?

Paul Fisher, IAB

Well, Paul Fisher, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Australia, is focused on increasing the ‘measureability’ of the Internet…. He’s the representative of the Internet as a marketing channel, and he’s out and about saying that its not accountable? WHAT THE? Sorry, but there are much more important issues here to deal with than this. (NB: It seems to be an international focus for the IAB, not just Australia)

There was a story in today’s DIGITAL MEDIA Journal, we also interviewed him on Love Digital a few months back, and he was harping on about the same thing… GRRR.

We can no longer hold our heads up high and say unique browser is the metric we use to measure. Let’s find a metric that works, that people believe in.

From my experience, my clients are overwhelmed by the accountability, to a point that it sometimes can be over-analysed and they end up going with something with less accountability but it ‘feels’ right. (It’s happened more than you’d think).

UPDATE: Paul was interviewed by Mumbrella today with a mention of education and training… That’s what I’m talking about, wonder if anything will happen?

I’d put it out there for Paul to respond or what do you think the IAB should be doing…?

This is the IAB’s mission, as stated on their homepage

1) To promote the standardisation of ad formats
2) To ensure timeliness and transparency of industry data
3) To educate the marketplace about the value of online advertising

I think they’re completely mising the mark with number 3… Contrastly, Free TV Australia are kicking arse at education with ThinkTV.com.au promoting the pants off TV. It certainly persuades me of the benefits of TV Advertising.

… So now you might see why Love Digital was formed. Through this we’re interviewing international and national gurus like Seth Godin, Joseph Jaffe and loads more… With no support of the IAB… weird?

Am I the only one that thinks this? What do you think?

Related articles by Zemanta

• The lie of print advertising (followed by good news) (buzzmachine.com)
• IAB Canada Creates New Tripartite Industry Committee For Online Audience Measurement in Canada (newswire.ca)
• IAB Unveils New Workflow Improvement Initiatives (searchenginewatch.com)
• Why Only Stupid Marketers Use Age As A Demographic (socialmediatoday.com)
• The Inauguration as a tipping point for the death of broadcast television (inquisitr.com)

A survey by the CMO Council released by AdAge reveals some alarming stats amid a lot of talk, although there are some shinning lights amongst the haze.

Proctor & Gamble and Unilever are leaders in ‘conversational marketing’ and understanding social media.

Last month Unilever held a word-of-mouth summit dedicated largely to understanding how social media affect its brands and Proctor & Gamble have a refreshing approach to engaging in social media.

“Aside from technology, it’s almost been a natural thing for P&G to [listen to consumers],” said Stan Joosten, innovation manager-holistic consumer communication. “What technology does for us is truly extend what we can do. For the first time ever with this technology, conversations are visible to us. … You cannot start in social media without knowing how to listen.”

Some of the key stats from the survey of 400 executives were:

• 56% said their companies have no programs to track or propagate positive word-of-mouth
• 59% don’t compensate any employees based on improvements in customer loyalty or satisfaction
• 30% rated their companies highly in their ability to handle or resolve customer complaints

So again, it comes down to social media being a very exciting space, however, little actual action.

However, it’s not all the marketers fault, kind of, it’s more of an organisational change that’s required…

One problem for marketing executives is that they’re not clearly in charge now of managing the customer experience, customer loyalty or social media today, given that public-relations, sales, consumer-affairs and research-and-development departments all have a stake in those areas now.

In any case, this space of ‘conversational marketing’ and utilising social media is one that requires leadership internally from marketers, not from external consultants.

The only kind of consultant required to get your business ready for all this is someone focused on cultural change and change management, something Jenny Williams from the Idea Garden has been talking about for a while. (We interviewed her on Love Digital a few months back)

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/