- New Marketing Ideas With a GenY Perspective from Matt J McDonald
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Via Greg Verdino. Just like AdmCom says with it’s Year of Creativity - All you need is a really cool business card.
Synthesis is one of the best things about marketing. Take two separate ideas and slam them together to get some great new thing. So here’s my Idea Mashup of the week. Paul Isakson + Valeria Maltoni.
First off, if you haven’t seen Paul Isakson’s The Future of Advertising + Marketing, then do it. Now.
A recent post from Paul talks about how a former CD at Urban Outfitters is moving to Anomaly. The best stuff is towards the end when he says “As more and more advertising gets ignored, agencies have got to come up with better, more meaningful ways to help their clients reach and connect with people.” and then wraps it up with “Maybe the title of the post should have been, “The Future of Advertising Is More Than Communications.”
And speaking of communications, the Conversation Agent, Valeria Maltoni had a great post about RSS, Email, and the whole push vs. pull argument. She talks about how, “It is so much better when you have people sign up voluntarily, when they choose to pull your content and give you permission to occupy a space in their reader and day.”
Both are great ideas. Here’s where things get interesting:
In the middle.
If the future of advertising and marketing is more than communications, and the next step in communications is based on “pull”, then the future is a place where more than just communication is “pulled”. This could be design, production, interaction, delivery, or any other part of the process. All on demand.
How would things change if we could “pull” something like design, and get something how we wanted it, when we wanted it?
TED Thursday is now TED Tuesday! I know, I know it’s exciting, but why the change? Well for one thing it sounds better, it really does. But also because it’s earlier in the week. A lot of times we’ll catch something that makes you think, but if it’s close to the weekend it gets filed away and some of the impact is lost.
So while the neurons are still firing, enjoy this great talk about mobile phones from Jan Chipchase a researcher at Nokia (and if you like Nokia check out their unbelievable Morph Concept)
If viewing in a reader, hit the link for video. It’s worth it.
Jan brings up a lot of great points in this talk. The last 5 minutes are especially insightful. Everyone can benefit from the lessons he’s learned in his years studying people and the way they interact with their environment.
5:15 - …the point of reflection, it’s that moment when you’re walking out of a space, and you turn around and quite often you tap your pockets..”
I’m sure all of us do this, I certainly do. In almost a ritualistic way I tap my right pocket, left pocket, back pocket (keys, phone, wallet) every time on my way out the door. It’s such a simple act, but it’s funny to think of it as almost a universal human trait.
6:05 - “The absolute 100% guaranteed way to never forget anything ever…is to have nothing to remember.”
A great quote.
11:18 - “…and it’s all about the social network, and the knowledge floating around.”
Common knowledge is important, but the application, as with the people that actually fix the mobile phones, is what makes the difference. Great knowledge without application is not great.
14:30 - “And actually the benchmark for a big idea is changing. If you want a big idea, you have to embrace everyone on the planet.”
If you’re going to innovate, to be future ready, you have to go outside your comfort zone. No longer are ideas only locally relevant.
What are you doing?
By now many of you have heard of Twitter, the micro-blogging/status network that’s popular with a lot of marketers right now.
Regardless of how you feel about Twitter or it’s use, you can’t deny it’s Zen quality.
When you’re using Twitter and in the “Twitterstream” you’re in. When you’re out, you’re out. There’s no searching the archives, no paging back for hours reading the comments of everyone you’re following. You have to accept the fact that the information thats happening now is the most important information there is. As they say, “The past is past, The future is yet to be”.
At first it may seem unsettling because there’s a tendency to feel like you’re missing something, like you’re out of the loop. But soon you begin to realize that everyone’s out of the loop.
Unless, of course, they’re in the loop.
Happy Twittering (and follow me if you’d like)
When I was in college, a friend and I were have a catch with a large orange (don’t ask) in our house. After a couple of rounds of back-and-forth, my friend got tired of throwing to just me. He yelled out a quick “hey, catch!” to a girl standing near by and then launched the orange in her direction.
She wasn’t paying attention.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone get hit in the face with a two-seam citrus fastball, but it’s not pretty. Needless to say, my friend was embarrassed, the girl was hurt, and I was pretty surprised at the whole thing.
Now take this story and swap out the orange for your marketing message.
You might be throwing you’re message out there pretty hard, so you can be sure it gets where you want, but people have to be ready for it. When I search for multivitamins I’m ready for ads for multivitamins. When I go to the movies, I’m ready for for previews of upcoming movies. Knowing what’s coming makes a big difference.
Matching the right product to the right audience is key, but you also have to consider how open they are to the message.
It’s worth the extra time it takes to make sure it’s right. A bad marketing message hurts a lot more than a speeding orange.
Welcome to a new series: TED Thursdays. Every Thursdays I’ll be presenting a video of a speech given at the TED conference. Each speaker/video is unique but they all provide incredible value.
On a side note, I’m doing everything I can to get to TED 2009, but $6,000 is a little out of my range. Anybody want to sponsor my endeavor, either fully or partially? I’m sure we can work something out.
Either way, enjoy the clip.
Malcom Galdwell is an absolute champ. I don’t know how many other people can pack as much meaning into a speech about spaghetti sauce. My favorite moments are as follows.
4:11 - “They were looking for the perfect Pepsi, and they should have been looking for the perfect Pepsis.”
This is a home run. So often we spend so much time thinking about what one thing will be the perfect solution for everyone, we forget that there might be a million perfect solutions for a million different people.
10:28 - “People don’t know what they want…and a critical step..is to realize that we cannot always explain what we want.”
Asking people want they want is not enough. In this case, actions really do speak louder than words. Let them show you instead of telling you.
“First of all, I think y’better watch your tone son. I’m Leonard Washington.” Dave Chapelle as Leonard Washington
Now did Dave Chapelle intend to give us a marketing lesson with that line? My guess is no, but they’re wise words none-the-less.
If you want people to share your message, to pass it along, then you need to make sure it’s in the right format.
Take the latest car insurance commercial from Nationwide, which proclaims “Switch to Nationwide and you could save like 500 bucks.” Grammatically incorrect? Sure is. Little big of slang? You bet. Sound like something almost anyone you know would say? Exactly!
It’s much easier to hear yourself saying “Hey, Brain. Did you know with Nationwide and save like 500 bucks on your car insurance? than “Were you aware than the average savings for customers switching to Nationwide for their auto insurance was 489 dollars?”
I’m not saying we should eschew all grammar and sentence structure in the name of “speakability”, but if you want people to run with your message, you better make sure it’s something they can carry.
My Motorola Q cell phone has more computing horsepower than my first PC.
That might seem a little wacky until you realize that there are full-featured computers out there that are smaller than my first cell phone.
Mobile devices are getting more powerful and including a larger feature set. Computers are getting smaller and more portable. These are pretty much a given. The question is: Are we going to end up with really powerful cell phones or really portable computers that make calls? Either way, there are a few big implications.
First, people are going to have constant access to all the information out there. Most of us do research online before buying a car, computer or other major purchase. But what happens when the cost of research (in time, effort, and expense) gets so low that we do it for almost every product? If we’re always completely connected, is it outrageous to think that people won’t look up notebooks, potato chips, coffee mugs, or work boots? As this happens, the impact and importance of what people are saying about you is going to mean even more than it does today.
As barriers go down, the number of informed consumers goes up.
Another major implication is that as the amount of information goes way up, and the access to it increases, people are going to need a way to manage everything. “Information Overload” is already a buzzword today, but how bad will it be when we literally have all the information all the time. Someone is going to have to figure out a way for people to manage the data flood. Think a Content Management System, but on a personal level.
Sound a little too far out there? Consider this: in 2001 about 120 million Americans were using cell phones. As of late 2007 there was over 250 million. Compare that to the entire United States population of a little over 300 million.
The times they are a changin’
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