Il miglior condimento è l’appetito.
Hunger is the best sauce.
CXOs – Get Marketing On Track! Part III
February 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment
“CXOs – Get Marketing On Track! Part I” and Part II have attracted new readers that The Marketing Consigliere has been happy to become acquainted with. The timeliness of this blog apparently has hit a nerve and now another report underscores the need to “get marketing on track.”
CXOs – Get Marketing On Track! Part II
February 24, 2009 By Leave a Comment
No sooner had the Marketing Consigliere posted yesterday’s blog entitled “CXOs – Get Marketing On Track!” did another occurence involving online metrics and web analytics come to his attention.
Reporting on the Interactive Advertising Bureau‘s Ecosystem 2.0 Annual Conference, ClickZ writer Zachary Rodgers wrote in “Millard Issues Plea for More Art, Less Science in Online Ads” that Wenda Harris Millard, co-CEO at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, said during her speech about online advertising that “While for years the business seemed to err on the side of art, now I think it errs on the side of science and math.”
Ms. Millard addressing the audience at IAB's Ecosystem 2.o
CXOs – Get Marketing On Track!
February 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment
image by insidestoryflashcards.com
Alterian‘s December 2008 research is starting to reverberate around the Marketing world. While some leading trade publications are still picking up the news, the message is clear – most marketers still need to get their act together, but thankfully realize it. The main problem is money (of course), time, and corporate culture.
When Offline Won’t "Bomb"
February 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment
When does offline beat online? When you need to make a point about the physical world and physical media can pack the most punch. The Marketing Consigliere likes to focus on Internet based technologies that marketers should use, but tips his hat to some good old-fashioned analog ingenuity. DMNews recently highlighted a very creative effort by agency DraftFCB New Zealand that helped their client, the Aotearoa New Zealand Cluster Munition Coalition (ANZCMC)
A year ago, The Wellington Conference on Cluster Munitions, the largest disarmament meeting ever convened in New Zealand, was an opportunity for the ANZCMC to promote their cause. They played a crucial role in raising awareness of New Zealanders on the issue of cluster bombs, wanting to rally the populace to garner opposition a weapon that doesn’t exist in New Zealand and most citizens had most likely never thought much about.
They printed thousands of M-85 cluster bomblet-shaped leaflets, which explained the deadly threat of cluster bombs, and also served as petitions for people to send to the New Zealand Ministry of Defence.
Out of “concerns for litter,” the Wellington City government refused to give the group permission to fly a helicopter to drop leaflets over the city. However, the ANZCMC went ahead anyway with an airplane, dropping 30,000 of the leaflets. This video, posted on YouTube, shows some graphic depictions of victims of cluster bombs, but is overall a great recap of what the ANZCMC accomplished.
The effort was covered by major New Zealand media, and DMNews reports that over one third of the leaflets were sent in. However, the Marketing Consigliere couldn’t imagine a that high of a response rate given the random landing of leaflets dropped from an airplane. While the ANZCMC reports a few thousand petitions being submitted to the New Zealand MOD, it is uncertain whether they were all the result of the air drop or from other distibutions of the pamphlet during that time period.
Nevertheless, it is good to see agencies helping their clients achieve positive results with offline campaign management. It is with dark irony that they used the same distibution method as cluster bombs to make their point. This is not an example of Net-Centric Marketing, but is a great example of public relations for a cause.
Intelligence 2.0 – Much Smarter Than You Think
February 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment
The Marketing Consigliere likes to take examples from our nation’s honored warriors and apply them to business and marketing problems. He also wants to recognize things which can be publicized from the impressive United States Intelligence Community that are relevant to Network-Centric Marketers.
Yesterday, the Adobe Intelligence Community Executive Forum, sponsored by Adobe and Carahsoft Technology Corporation, a Washington, DC based government IT solutions provider, was held with a gathering of over one hundred professionals from Federal agencies and contractors. Bob Gourley, CTO of Crucial Point LLC, a well-respected security technology consulting and program management firm, served as a panel moderator for some very good talks on what Federal agencies were doing with regard to collaboration, information sharing, and Web 2.0.
The Keynote Speaker, John E. Hale of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Intelligence Community Enterprise Services (ICES), enlightened the audience with ODNI’s embracing of technologies that help his internal customers accomplish their missions. He and his team help enable the Intelligence Community by giving them many of the capabilities that the private sector is trying to give its people, albeit in an extremely secure computing environment.
They have a wiki for user generated content known as Intellipedia, which in less than three years has grown into “the” repository of information that allows authorized intelligence employeess to create, edit, and have dialogue on content in a way that was previously impossible due to physical and logical silos of data. Datawarehousing and security remain top priorities, but within the confines of their closed networks. They allow IMs, del.icio.us type bookmarking, self-service hosting, and blogging, using WordPress MU. There is also the capabilities for mashups, tagging, and user profiles stating interests. Of course, there is document sharing including terabytes worth of documents, images, and video.
All this and more to be better able to “connect the dots” for the safety of all Americans. Let’s hope more leaders in the private sector take a cue from the Intelligence Community and empower their employees to internally use social network technologies to better gather, store, analyze, share, and act upon data.
