Powerful structures for product-driven organisations
This post from a chap at LBi starts out as a review of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail but turns into an interesting discussion about the concept of democratisation in internet economy and amongst internet communities. We talk endlessly about the effect that the internet has on people. It allows anyone with a PC (and let's… Continue reading In the name of democracy
Presumably there's no surer sign then the whole industry is about to melt down than the increasing talk about businesses that don't have any plan to move to profit being bought or re-financed with millions of dollars of pension fund money. There's a horrible sense of deja-vu from the 90s. Antony reports on this sort… Continue reading Planning Innovation
From the department of faster horses*, Robin's post about the new ad format from Yahoo! The Smart Ad reminds me of a few quotes: Firstly, when VCCP (where I worked) announced it was starting its own search specialist, Rob Forshaw of Grand Union was quoted as saying "The move is potentially very lucrative, although I'd have thought… Continue reading Grubby behavior
As Robin mentions here, Forrester has recently reported a significant shift in how marketing is working and should be measured: The marketing funnel is a broken metaphor that overlooks the complexity social media introduces into the buying process. As consumers' trust in traditional media diminishes, marketers need a new approach... Once engagement takes hold of… Continue reading Broken Funnels
There are a few things in life that sound like they're going to be great but always seem to fail in practice: fondues, windows mobile devices, the conservative party. But surely king of the hill in terms of 'will never live up to expectations' is direct marketing. Advertising is so random, we hear. So what we… Continue reading Direct to Hell
When I read this post on Robin's blog, I had to check it wasn't April 1 and time for more 'Google buys France' and 'Apple's going to make a mobile phone' stories (oh hang on a second, one of those was true). So, courtesy of the New York Times, here is Publicis Group's strategy:… Continue reading Turn the machines back on
A great example of the car crash of old media and new media as Vodafone et al remove their ads from Facebook on the grounds that they are appearing alongside the BNP's groups and pages. I hear this on the same day that someone from one of the world's largest companies told me that advertising simply wasn't… Continue reading When two worlds collide
A good day, yesterday for things fitting together and falling into place (to mix up the metaphors a little). The day started reading Amelia's amazing piece in the Spectator. However much you're in to new media there's no denying how cool it is to read people you know in august titles like that, especially when… Continue reading In my day
I've been a member of the Marketing Society for a few years now. The thing that normally convinces me to cough up the membership fee each year is Market Leader, the great quarterly publication. I've always been amazed at how the society markets itself. We all know about the problems of coblers' shoes, but it… Continue reading I can’t believe it’s not better
Stumbled upon this very good summary from James Gardner of Lloyds TSB of the questions that face enterprises in deciding if they should 'unleash' the power of web 2.0 inside their corporations. My favourite insight into all of this - which I think I originally heard from Euan Semple and James also mentions - is… Continue reading Inside out
Leading product 