Happy "Blogiversary"

July 17, 2008 By Leave a Comment

cupcake

My, my… A year ago The Marketing Consigliere had no idea what work and fun blogging would be. He has slowed down lately due to his work at a startup company in the SaaS space…

However, he will try to pick up the pace to bring you another year’s worth of the latest in marketing technology.

A lot has happened in the past year in what he will call the Net-Centric Marketing arena, and it’s clear that it’s an exciting place to be with plenty of exciting people, companies, and technologies.

Thanks to the people who have commented, cheered him on, argued with him, bookmarked him, linked him, blogrolled him, smiled at the title of the blog, given him scoops, and inspired him. This is a great time to be a marketer and he plans on bringing you more of his humble opinion on what’s going on in a wired marketing world.

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

Gates’ Exit Out the Door

June 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Bill Gates

The Marketing Consigliere cursed Bill Gates before he ever knew he existed. His first job out of college was with Mayflower Moving. (How he got from working in trucking industry to working in the Internet industry is simple – they’re both transportation related. One is with packages while one is with packets – you must deliver them both on time without dropping them.)  Or you could think he got a job with his uncle Dominic’s local Teamster union… take your pick.

In the warehouse they stored computer parts for IBM - this was 1984, the dawn of the PC age. And he remembers having to fulfill parts orders to deliver to the nearby IBM facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland, for assembly. Part of the parts order included the shrink-wrapped DOS boxes, with their funny miniature 3-ring binder and five-inch floppies.

It always seemed like they would call an order in at the end of the day, just when he was about to wind down and go home.  So he didn’t know what DOS was an acronym for but he knew it meant it was a pain in the you-know-what.

Fast forward almost 25 years later… Bill gates, the mastermind behind DOS and the rise of Microsoft, is stepping down from his daily responsibilities at the software giant. Actually, The Marketing Consigliere harbors no resentment to him at all but does chuckle at the umbrage many techies take to Bill’s mere existence and the success of his leadership.

His departure really does signify the end of an era. Bill and Microsoft have dominated the computer, but even with Internet Explorer, the man and company have not dominated the Internet. There is a new era with new players and will prove to be even more amazing than the era closing with Bill’s new direction.

This is the true beginning of a net-centric world, with marketers discovering more and more the power that data brings to the enterprise. While other disciplines such as finance, operations, manufacturing and even sales have been automated and networked, marketing is finally getting its day in the sun.

What The Marketing Consigliere calls C4ISR Marketing is the ability to leverage the complete power of data and internetworking to deliver what the customer needs; although it has taken a long time to reach this ability, the marketing world sometimes doesn’t seem quite ready for it. Well, Bill is out of the limelight and now the real show begins…

Filed Under: C4ISR Marketing, Leadership, 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: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Lighter/Darker Side of Net-Centric Marketing

March 10, 2008 By Leave a Comment

American Civil Liberties Union

Back in December, The Marketing Consigliere blogged about the “Do Not Track” movement and how it was not good for B2C business (Do Not Resuscitate “Do Not Track” Part I & Part II). While he was critical of the privacy interest groups, he does have a sense of humor and admires their depiction of privacy intrusion in a Flash video he stumbled on the at the ACLU website. It portrays the CRM GUI of an order taker at a place called “Pizza Palace.”

Pizza Palace

With tongue-in-cheek irony, they illustrate the intrusive nickel and diming that a customer may suffer should marketers be allowed to collect business intelligence and perform over-the-top data mining and predictive analysis. He admits he laughed at the scenario.

His thoughts: While it’s technically feasible, it’s further off than they’re trying to make us fear.  The integration of those disparate data points are probably not in even the most enthusiastic of Net-Centric Marketers’ heads. While many would like to have a EMM platform of that capability, the everyday worries of marketing tools such as advertising to even get a single customer still weigh heavily on a marketer’s mind.

While C4ISR Marketing may sound scary when portrayed by the privacy advocates, it is a tool that can be used for the good of both the Marketer and the Customer. Ultimately, the Internet and net-centric world empowers customers too, and as far as I know, in the future there will be still be plenty of pizza joints to choose from….

To underscore his point, he asks you this – would you buy from Pizza Palace after being treated that way?

Filed Under: Advertising, B2C Marketing, Business Intelligence, C4ISR Marketing, CRM, Data Mining, EMM, Net-Centric Marketing, Predictive Analysis Tagged With: , , , , ,