thecustomer

marketing strategy & thecustomer

Will Rowan | TheCustomer is now updated on TheCustomer digital marketing strategy

Personalistion....

I like this
a lot.

"Choose your favourite voice for your navigation system. It's fun, it's entertaining and it can turn a boring journey into something a bit more interesting.

"Simply download the voice you like best from our selection - a celebrity, a dialect or just plain funny - and watch out for more voices being added to extend the range."
or other voices

Brand leading hardware, with your choice of voiceover.
perfect use of the interweb to make the world a better place.

Economist has some of the story

I hesitate to challenge the Economist, but just this once...

The pitch of their 'ultimate marketing machine' article is grounded in analogue principles, where marketing is controlled, scheduled and edited by the advertiser. Not online it isn't. The customer has control.

This though is embedded in thinking from Cluetrain to Tipping Point: markets are conversations, which marketers may participate in and influence, but they do not control. This is the fundamental shift brought about by the internet. All else is short term competitive advantage in analogue marketing's 4 p's.

Link: Internet advertising | The ultimate marketing machine | Economist.com .

Firefox/Feature Brainstorming - MozillaWiki

Corporate Transparency

No sooner than Firefox 2 is out, they're asking for ideas for Ffox3: on a wiki!

How many companies are smart enough to harness their customer's energy & wisdom in the product development process?

Link: Firefox/Feature Brainstorming - MozillaWiki.

Orchestrate - Manage Yourself

almost-too-smooth-to-be-true...

I like this - it's soo monkey see monkey do - but I also know a number of folk who would be flummoxed by the complete lack of buttons to be pressed.

Ease of use does not always equal usability!

Link: Orchestrate - Manage Yourself.

Tenth of shopping now online, says IMRG report - vnunet.com

never mind the technical revolution, that's a cultural revolt, and it won't stop at 10%: I was with a clothing manufacturer recently who has 20-25% of his products sold online....

The report also picks up the big High Street names that aren't getting their share of online sales - will they go online, or risk being sidelined? Ocr an companies like IKEA survive with an online catalogue?

Is there research on the cannibalisation effect? Five years ago I saw info from large retailers that found online shoppers also spent in-store, and spent more in total.

Link: Tenth of shopping now online, says IMRG report - vnunet.com.

Adwords video ads

Wow
What a stunning new service.
And I suspect that this is tech running ahead of many adwords users' creative abilities - we're going to see some horrible train-wrecks for video ads.
And they may be all the more effective for that!

It's going to be an interesting ride...
Link: Inside AdWords: Click-to-play video ads for AdWords.

Research - You Really Do Get What You Pay For - Stanford GSB

I've always believed that online buyers are less likely to treat 'price' as a fixed entity, and are more likely to seek a value exchange. And that in time this behaviour would transfer to the analogue world.
Here's a piece of research from Stanford that's in the same ballpark - the more you pay for something, the more efficacious you expect it to be.

Link: Research - You Really Do Get What You Pay For - Stanford GSB.

Emergence Marketing: Can word of mouth marketing be considered a "new" media "channel"?

I've not seen such detailed research evidence for 'word of mouth' marketing before: very interesting, and much more prevalent than many give it credit for!

Link: Emergence Marketing: Can word of mouth marketing be considered a "new" media "channel"?.

Can word of mouth marketing be considered a "new" media "channel"?

Dave Baltar, the CEO of BzzAgent, along with the BzzAgent Director of strategy led a pretty interesting workshop on how to run a word of mouth (WOM) marketing campaign at Ad:Tech last week.

First let's look at some of the numbers that were bandied around - as some of them were quite interesting:
2/3 of the US economy is influenced by WOM - this is according to a McKinsey report
15% of all conversations contain a reference to a product - based on a recent Northeastern University research paper
40% of all WOM episodes include a reference to other media - according to their own research
80% of consumers trust WOM recommendations more than any other source - according to a Forrester reportThis is all very much in-line with the research done by Everett Rogers on Diffusion of Innovation - some of which was first reported in the 60's and 70's

At BzzAgent, they now have close to 160,000 BzzAgents - volunteers who engage in conversations with friends, family, and acquaintances and make word of mouth recommendations for products in the context what happens naturally in their environment. In trying to develop and manage WOM as a real media channel, BzzAgent tries very hard not to turn their evangelists into "sales" people. In fact, the principles they adhere to include - no scripting, 100% volunteer, double opt-in, allow both positive and negative WOM, and ensure disclosure.

While WOM is not a "new" media channel, but one that has been in existence for as long as social networks have existed, if you look at BzzAgents' rate card, it looks like they have been able to turn WOM into a manageable and predictable media channel - and that maybe something new. For $65K they will deploy a 1,000 agents, which will generate 47,375 conversations over the period of 12 weeks. If you've got a little over $2M to spare, they will deploy 75,000 agents who will generate 3,553,125 conversations in a 12 week period.

If this is all working, and all indications are that it is, then there may be another hidden "lesson learned" here - one that companies should apply to their traditional sales force - have them be less scripted, and freer to improvise and create real dialogues with their prospects instead of delivering sales pitches. But that is not "new" either - David Weinberger and his co-authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto have been saying that for over a decade..

Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival the PC As World’s Dominant Internet Platform

Very interesting stat in here - that one in four mobile users have been online, and a third of mobile households have received an e-mail by phone (I wonder what proportion have managed to send an e-mail?)

Link: Mobile Phones Could Soon Rival the PC As World’s Dominant Internet Platform.