Marketing Automation Services, Demand Generation, and Lead Management | Allinio
The Marketing Consigliere was honored to have lunch with David Rudolph (@davrud) of Eloqua earlier this year and was tickled to see this creation of his on Eloqua’s blog today. Dave has taken the “Lost Generation” viral video and cleverly applied its upbeat message to our world of Marketing Automation.
Thank you to Eloqua and Dave Rudolph for sharing this!
If you’re in Washington, DC on the evening of February 9th 2010, you may want to come over to Gua Rapo in Arlington to the Capital Cabal networking event from 5:30 to 9:30 pm. From there we will be tweeting the winners of the 2009 B2B Twitterer of the Year Awards. There will be a great mix of marketing and tech professionals, so it will be a night to remember. It’s the best $15 you can spend in Washington.
This video of the most recent Capital Cabal event above was created by @EricaAmerica, aka Erica Anderson, and captures the spirit and opportunity of such an evening. Look for a cameo by The Marketing Consigliere himself.
The Awards Program is relatively new (of course), so won’t quite have Oscar accessories like red carpet and Armani suited/gowned celebrities. But it will be fun and is a milestone in the history of Twitter, because with the use of this platform by B2B companies, it is clear that Twitter is “growing up.”
But if you can’t get here from your corner of the globe, feel free to follow @B2BTOTY on Twitter – we’ll be tweeting the winners live from the event so you’ll still be in the loop!
Sponsors, it would behoove to consider sponsoring the program – Capital Cabal events are promoted to 30,000 of Washington’s leading marketers and tech leaders, all with contacts all over the country. Check out the sponsorship page for more information.
John Jantsch‘s Duct Tape Marketing is a great blog and his post today reminded the Marketing Consigliere that he needs to renew his membership in the Businesss Marketing Association. He also missed out on this year’s annual conference, where he would have seen the above skit. Thank you to John for the reminder!
In a Marketing Consigliere blog from last year, it was noted that the integration of eye analytics and ultrasound by companies such as Influence Media make possible the delivery of audio messages to precise spots in a public space, based on eye contact . Another blog from around the same time described the possibility of using video and off-the-shelf technologies to profile automobiles entering a parking lot and target messages via digital signage as shoppers enter stores.
Now, a year later, a recent wire by AP’s Dinesh Ramde that was run in a multitude of publications documents another stage in the evolution of net-centric marketing in a retail environment. The headlines ran “When you’re watching an ad, it might also be watching you,” or “…checking you out.”
This may be rather alarmist, but the truth is that the B2C advertising world is trying to get more personal – literally. TrueMedia Technologies, Inc. is one of the companies mentioned in the article that is leading the march – using its video analytic technology combined with technology from dZine, a kiosk placed strategically in a mall can determine a person’s gender, approximate age, and sometimes ethnic background. Base on the determination, the kiosk’s digital signage can serve an ad that may be relevant to the profile of the viewer. The gender identification accuracy is about “85 to 90″ percent accurate, but the ability to identify the other characteristics need some improvement.
While this is another step of progress for net-centric marketing, there is still a long way to go. A 30-something white woman may be there to get a toy for her child, and not care about the lingerie sale at Victoria’s Secret. But how far could this go if a marketer wanted to push this? Based on a physical shape, could the kiosk serve ads on the local food court, GNC, Jenny Craig, or Gold’s Gym? Do people want to be publicly served an ad that could betray a need they may want people looking over their shoulders to see? Could other types of sensors be employed to gather metrics such as cologne worn, pulse, what kind of electronics once could be carrying?
Without other correlatable data such as the type of car the person drove in with or zip code, or some other type of video analtyics such as that used by the security industry, predictive anlaysis or behavioral targeting is not feasible. Maybe data and capability carried around on an “opted in” cellphone by an individual (Google Latitude, anyone?) could facilitate a much more rewarding engagement if someday integrated with this type of system. For now, it will probably stir up more controversy than it deserves.
But once again, this is just the beginning. We will get there..
There are two very interesting net-centric marketing developments for in the B2C world that have made the trade press recently.
The Kraft iPhone Assistant is available through iTunes and allows users to view recipes (using Kraft products of course), save favorite recipes, watch a cooking video, create shopping lists, find stores, and even get offers or incentives from participating stores. All this while seeing ads for Kraft products. It is currently in the top 100 list of favorite downloaded apps for the Apple iPhone.
Launched last fall, Walmart’s Walmart Smart Network is an IPTV-based network already deployed in 300 stores and will expand to 2,700 stores by the end of next year, with a total of about 27,000 in-aisle screens. By utilizing response measurement and message optimization technologies, this network will be able to deliver timely, relevant content to shoppers and can be segmented by day of the week, by time of day, by store, and by screen,. Content about products in the store can be customized for a shopper at the shelf location so they can make a quick decision to purchase. Response measurement, learning, and message optimization technologies were developed by DS-IQ. [Read more...]
