Archive for the 'New-Strategy' Category

Social Media Biggest Shift In Marketing Strategy Since Television?

Published
by
Karl
on March 5, 2008
in Marketing and New-Strategy
. 5 Comments

Hyperbole? I don’t think so. I believe that social media is reshaping the business landscape and is changing, or requiring change from every aspect of the business, from business strategy, to product development, to marketing, to human resources (hey, even Microsoft is taking notice see this FT article “A revolution is taking shape”).

The Newcomreview.com just posted on a report from TNS media intelligence/Cymfony that found 50% of Marketing Executives Believe Social Media Is a “Vital Component” of Corporate Communications, that’s a pretty huge shift if is really representative of marketers across the board.

I really like the way they seperated between “wait and see” folks who are just dipping their toe in with social media and and “revolutionaries” who have embraced the change.

The survey reveals that the early adopters (“Revolutionaries”) are more advanced in their understanding and execution of social media marketing initiatives than more cautious marketers (“Wait-and-Sees”). First, nearly five times as many Revolutionaries are already implementing social media in their organizations and three times as many Wait-and-See companies are only at the learning stage. In addition, Revolutionaries are far more optimistic about the future of social media with 81% saying it will grow in significance over the next five years. Only 33% of the Wait-and-Sees agreed with this outlook.

and even more fascinating and how do they approach marketing differently?

When asked about how they would use social media to influence their marketing initiatives, Wait-and-See companies put more emphasis on using social media for new types of marketing campaigns such as viral marketing and videos, while Revolutionaries focus more on listening to consumer and bloggers’ points-of-view. One area where they were in accordance was that both Revolutionaries (95%) and Wait-and-Sees (60%) are eager to connect with other colleagues to study consumer feedback and learn from

In other words the wait and see folks are still hooked into the “campaign” big bang fire and forget model, and the revolutionaries are “participating in the conversation” and building deeper relationships with their customers. Hmm, I wonder what has a better ROI.

So which one are you? Wait and see? or a revolutionary?

Concious Capitalism - Upcoming Panel at the Commonwealth Club SF

Published
by
Karl
on January 27, 2008
in New-Strategy
. 2 Comments

I’m really looking forward to this panel next week at the Commonwealth Club, it’s called Conscious Capitalism and it is covering topics that I often find myself thinking about and discussing. There must be something in the air as even Bill Gates recently called for kinder capitalism.

The panel is next wednesday (january 30th), it’ll be interesting to meet Nathan as we’ve corresponded over the years but have never met :-)

RAJAN DEV, Chief Operating Officer, Hot Studio
ERIC RYAN, Co-founder, Method
BRANDON SCHAUER, Experience Design Director, Adaptive Path; Co-author Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World
NATHAN SHEDROFF, Program Chair, MBA in Design Strategy program, California College of the Arts; Co-author, Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences

CONSCIOUS CAPITALISM: RESOLVING THE CONFLICT BETWEEN CONSUMERISM AND PROGRESSIVE INNOVATION

Why are there 50 varieties of toothpaste on grocery store aisles? How does this fit into the world’s heightened awareness of the need for sustainable business practices, and our own growing individual needs for self-actualization and meaning? Leaders in business, design and innovation will debate why a deeper understanding of human nature needs to be central to a 21st century business strategy and how it can challenge people’s attitudes toward consumerism.

Trying Sometimes Cheaper Than Deciding - New Strategies

Published
by
Karl
on December 18, 2007
in New-Strategy and Strategy
. 6 Comments

Fullb Alltied 01
T-shirt All Tied Up From Full Bleed via tcritic

Having read this on a post at LinuxWorld it got me thinking:

Google is one of the few large companies that gets one fundamental rule of the Internet: Trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it. (Compare the cost of paying and feeding someone to do a few weeks of P* hacking to the full cost of the meetings that went into a big company decision.)

So when the cost of deciding to do something becomes much more expensive than doing something, what do you do? Here are a few ideas:

  • Empower teams to launch experiments
  • Develop a process for manageing projects as a portfolio of experiments
  • Evaluate projects regularly
  • Killing projects should be as easy as starting projects and everyone needs to understand that, and the criteria
  • Start cheaply
  • Get ready to fail faster
  • Prepare to fail in public and be ok with that
  • Create a “beta” culture
  • Put basic legal boilerplate frameworks in place that minimize risk, don’t reinvent it each time

Those are just some rough ideas, any more? Anyone facing this issue?