FOSE Followup Folly

April 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment

First allow The Marketing Consigliere to apologize.  He migrated to WordPress 2.5 this weekend and found out there’s a major bug that doesn’t allow you to upload images.  He will keep his text brief so your eyes don’t glaze over!

A week after FOSE and his blog about it, he  received an email that caught his attention, but not for the reason that the Marketer who sent it wanted. Apparently CompuSystems‘ service, BuyerConnect, is telling him that it has a record of all the exhibitors he allowed to scan my tradeshow badge. And that “Compliments of show management, you can access the contact information for these exhibitors – FREE OF CHARGE – when you visit the BuyerConnect website.” All I have to do is go to a link they provide in the email and type in the ID and password they’ve provided.

Hallelujah! The Marketing Consigliere never knew he could get vendor contact information “FREE OF CHARGE!”  In a Network-Centric Marketing world, at that!  He guesses the free program from the show listing all vendor contact information doesn’t count.

He hopes that their Marketers have some back office intelligence that would measure his behavior if he went to their site; it would be of particular value to the exhibitors if there were some data from a lead scoring engine that could be shared with them.

However, the back office intelligence would be the only intelligence present. The email copy lacked intelligence. What Marketing muttonhead thought that The Marketing Consigliere would be like Pavlov’s Dog, rushing to connect with the vendors he spoke less than two minutes with?  Why not provide him with a feedback mechanism that allowed him to rate the booth aesthetics, competence of the booth staff, or measure his recall of the exhibitor and its products or services?

In a B2B world with an increasing reliance on critical CRM tools, BuyerConnect and their customers are blowing a C4ISR Marketing opportunity. So much more could be done with the technology they are leveraging, and they could have done a much better job with their messaging.

Filed Under: B2B Marketing, C4ISR Marketing, CRM, Net-Centric Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Marketing to the Feds at FOSE

April 2, 2008 By 2 Comments

FOSE

The FOSE show this year as a whole was not anything to write home about; many from the circles that The Marketing Consigliere knows avoided it this year. Nevertheless he wanted to see if any net-centric marketing products or services were being “Fed-peddled.” It seemed like every fifth booth either was some sort of document imaging and management platform or a device for shredding hard drives.

But in this decent B2B (or rather B2G) show, there was a glimmer of net-centricity.  There was still a military marketing presence, but the C4ISR The Marketing Consigliere means is the marketing type of course, not the military. Of particular note:

Turning Point Device

Turning Technologies, LLC featured a great enhancement for Microsoft PowerPoint – their TurningPoint audience response system integrates within the PowerPoint application and allows audiences to participate in presentations by submitting real-time responses to questions using a credit-card sized keypad. The keypad transmits the answer to a USB device which plugs into the presenter’s laptop or desktop. The data can be saved and plotted for later or shown to the crowd. Barry Gromada, one of their Account Executives, was gracious enough to give me a quick demonstration. It seems it could be a great tool for gathering data in a network-centric way.

Vovici Logo

Vovici, whose advertisements have prolifereated the major marketing trade publications, was at FOSE touting their “Enterprise Feedback Management” capabilities. Their online survey capabilities have come a long way from when I dealt with them as a company called WebSurveyor. The robustness and ease of use has improved. The Marketing Consigliere loves the application, but hates (after all, he’s a Consigliere) how they mangle up the pronunciation of their name (they say “vo-vee-see,” not the “vo-vee-chee” that Italians and Latin enthusiasts would naturally think – how much did they pay a branding consultancy for that fiasco? – not pronounced “fee-as-so!”). But don’t worry, Vovicisti (vo-vee-chee-stee), The Marketing Consigliere will try to leverage your application in the future and recommend others to do the same…

MURV-100Physical Optics Corporation gave him his “Aha!” moment when he spoke to Jim Apple, the Director of BizDev (Homeland Security). They have a camera and lighting mounted on a briefcase-sized robotic platform that can used to inspect the underside of motor vehicles for explosives. The image quality of the video was quite impressive. (Note: The Marketing Consigliere couldn’t find a graphic on their website and has substituted a similar robot for illustrative purposes)

Why not use this platform at stadium or mall parking lots and conduct “courtesy inspections” of visitors’ automobiles? Working with the customer, a Jiffy Lube or Meineke or even an independent could make a digital video of underneath a customer’s car or truck, make a quick diagnosis to see if there are transmission or oil pan leaks, etc., and then wirelessly schedule an appointment. Or if the customer is not around, leave a little card with a unique URL in the windshield for them to go to later to see the video for themselves. It could be a great publicity stunt and possibly generate business for the company that has the wherewithal to execute.

Is there anyone out there who could monetize on this C4ISR Marketing idea?

Filed Under: B2B Marketing, C4ISR Marketing, Marketing, Net-Centric Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Sounds Like REALLY Targeted Advertising to Me

March 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment

In the April 2008 Wired in “It’s All in Your Head,” Clive Thompson recently wrote about technology beaming to our heads and the inevitable civil rights battle over the act of doing so. While it is reminiscent of my February blog entitled “EmSense – Common Sense or Nonsense?,” it’s not about mind reading but about mind influencing – through advertising.

The interesting technology, ultrasound, creates sounds whose wavelengths in the millimeter range, and therefore can be projected in a very narrow, relatively straight beam – think laser, but not necessarily “pinpoint.” It’s actually been around for a number of years but hasn’t been heard about much (no pun intended). But with price points dropping and range of depth increasing, you probably will hear more about it (again, no pun intended).

AudioSpotAmerican Technology Corporation

I quickly found two North American based companies that appear to be leaders in this field: Holosonic Research Labs of Watertown, Massachusetts, and American Technology Corporation of San Diego, California.

Influence Media of Langley, British Columbia, is an American Technology Corporation reseller and has a very interesting platform in its EyeBox2/EyeAnalytics product. With it, you can “see” who is looking at your billboard/hi-def screen, prop, or whatever, and deliver a “private” message to that individual that only he or she can hear.

I believe the concept is both interesting and feasible, and it will likely be successful for the early adopters. While there may be some suspicion at first by privacy rights groups and some consumers, the real problem will be when this type of advertising proliferates.

Advertising Delivery using Eye Analytics and Ultrasound

The Scream, by Edvard Munch (1863-1944), National Gallery, Oslo

Once price points allow a large scale of it, there could be an almost spam-like deluge of it in our streets, malls, arenas and other public places where sometimes we just want to think. Can you imagine those speakers on buildings everywhere like cell antennae, pointing down every which way? Will municipal governments have to draft new regulations for this technology to keep parks, beaches, hospital zones, schools, libraries, etc. free from such marketing? Would taggers spray paint sidewalks so people could know where to walk without getting “assaulted?”

Would there be other “backlash” that some enthusiastic Net-Centric Marketers did not anticipate? Hmm. I better find a quiet place to think about it…

Filed Under: Advertising, B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, C4ISR Marketing, Net-Centric Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,