Making sense of life, & communications, online & offline
Advertising
Social is going to be digital all over again for ad agencies
March 6, 2012
Whilst watching the Facebook Marketing Conference in New York the other day (you can catch up with all the talks on the LiveStream link here), I was enormously happy to hear Nigel Morris (@NigelDMorris) from Aegis’s comments on how ad agencies need to adapt for social. Watch the video below and listen particularly to Nigel’s comments from the 13 minute mark. Nigel talks about a dual challenge that is on the one hand talent based (who they are, where to find them, how to manage and keep them), but also an organisational design element which is how we integrate these people into the More >
Marketing Predictions for 2012
January 1, 2012
At this time of year we see a multitude of articles about predictions for the year to come – some obvious and some less evident – I’ve tried to keep my list short and focussed this time around as we marketers have only a limited bandwidth to evolve our increasingly complex ecosystem. Some elements may seem like they should have happened in 2011, whilst others are reaching their peak now. There is no doubt that 2012 will, yet again, be a year of changes – let’s hope that this time around the marketing world can keep up!
1. Content Marketing
Content marketing is coming to life, and 2012 will More >
Death to the email
December 5, 2011
by LexBZ
in Advertising
I was very pleased to read an article recently on French tech firm Atos who are stopping the use of internal email, CEO and ex French Finance Minister, Thierry Breton, hasn’t sent an email since 2008 and wants to increase efficiency by eradicating this ‘long form’ of internal communication. He is moving employees away from email which is costly in terms of time spent reading and writing and also almost 20% spam, instead he is forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.
This reminds me very much of some of the More >
Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]
October 31, 2011
I particularly liked this infographic from Voltier Digital as it lays down in very clear terms the old vs. the new. In the amusing and beautiful design there are some very key points that relate to one-way messaging and looking for consumers as opposed to understanding that they are in control and that it is about being found and adding value – marketing has changed, and marketers need to change too.
Infographic courtesy of Voltier Digital
Follow The Money – Focussing on Inputs or Outputs
October 10, 2011
Deep Throat said it to Bob Woodward in 1976, and it’s still true today – if you want to understand, if you want to really get to the truth, you need to follow the money.
And this is is just as true in the advertising business as we try and evolve an ageing traditional, TV and print focussed, business model into our 2.0 world. Agency holding companies have created digital exchanges, ad agencies have bought up their BTL counterparts and certain organisations have even attempted to renew their entire staff base by bringing in new digital specialists, but at the end of the day, bringing ‘digital’ More >
Barriers to the Phygital Revolution
August 22, 2011
I love that word phygital, I didn’t come up with it, and I’m not even sure it was coined by Momentum either (although they have trademarked it), but they seem to have optimised their site for this term and their positioning as An agency for the Phygital™ world.
But phygital doesn’t belong to just one agency. Phygital as it sounds is the combination of the physical and digital worlds and it is, IMVHO, the real sign of the coming of age of technology in the marketing world. As we move away from the days of a super full flash website, just because you can, or a mobile or iPad app that doesn’t More >
Content & Amplification – The New Brand Brief
May 25, 2011
Sometimes it’s still hard to talk to ‘traditional ad guys’ and get them to understand how the business of communications has changed, how the web has exploded the number of channels through which we can deliver messages and also empowered the consumer to respond, turning a monologue into dialogue and thereby giving them a voice. And how these evolutions have not just created a step change in the strategy of marketing communications but really created a paradigm shift in how we approach our work.
Hence it is still not uncommon to be presented with very traditional print or outdoor brand ads More >
My Job is about Change – Agitating & Activating
April 10, 2011
Depending on who I’m talking to, I find it very hard to describe what I do – a lot of the time I talk about ‘digital strategy‘ but I know that if I find it difficult to explain, that probably means that others find it even harder to understand – it’s a logical conclusion.
What is digital strategy? Where does it start and finish? How is this different from business strategy or communications strategy? Invariably, when I start to try and answer these questions, I end up talking about the tasks I cover, or what I deliver, or how a typical day looks – but really this doesn’t get to the heart of More >
Outside the Box – The Future of TV
March 8, 2011
I was recently interviewed by Communicate on the subject of The Future of TV, see the full piece below or download the pdf here.
Hollywood 101 for Marketers
February 27, 2011
#UsBlogs week 4 theme: “What we learn from the movies”
To understand what we can learn from the movies, we need to first break down a movie into its constituent elements;
- An idea – All good stories start with ideas and a movie is no exception, the screenplay is everything.
- Cast, crew & production – Getting the right skillet on board can help in ways that you couldn’t even start to imagine.
- Marketing – Finally you need to get the word out, to get those proverbial ‘bums on seats’.
- Distribution – Sure it starts in the cinema, but after that there is still DVD, TV and all the licensing.
So More >