We know it is yet we find ourselves still shovelling offering up the same old marketing and advertising.

Now I’m not one to throw the baby out with the bath water… but I am one to call a spade a spade and the way we do marketing and advertising needs to change.

I don’t have all the answers (just yet) but I am fully ready to acknowledge that it’s time to start digging.

I was recently approached by company X to help deliver a proposal that would drive sales. I asked for a week to do some research. I circled back a week later with a proposal that suggested their focus should be on customer service and operations to plug the holes in their bucket not on driving sales. Their churn rate was 1 in 3. Why spend so much time and energy on finding 900 customers just for 300 to walk away with such a negative experience that they wouldn’t consider returning. They thanked me and moved on. They needed to tick the boxes and meet their targets. I get it.

Some trends worth noting:

• An increase in niche communities will only further splinter the customer base beyond what it is now
• Instantaneous sharing of customer experiences, good and bad – although bad news appears to travel a lot faster.
• A strong dislike for noise <broadcast advertising online>
• The world is going niche
• The Adv. Model is broken – #AdMad
• If 78% of customers trust the recommendation of their network then we have to ask ourselves, “How do we become part of the conversation being had by the 78%?” – it’s certainly not by broadcasting to them
• The adoption model is shortening although not as fast as we’d expect
• Businesses have to work hard at being relevant (to their customer… not to their shareholders, although ironically…)
• I think @EricQualman is right… you have to embrace Social Technology now to even be a player in this market five years from now. And it does not equal facebook!

I wonder about Affinity Marketing and if it’s yet to see it’s full success. I wonder if Loyalty Marketing and Affinity Marketing hooked up to recognize and reward the conversations being had about you and your brand that leads to a sale or referral.

The conversation fascinates me… if you share a similar mindset or have some insight that you feel proves me to be a little off centre – then connect with me – I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

photo credit: Kevin Steele

The Facebook story of April 2010 got my tongue wagging:

• What is the value of generalist and bigger than life communities?
• Is Facebook shimmying to the monopoly corner?
• The advertising model #AdMad is broken, what does the right one look like?
• What does this all mean to us 12 months from now?

The enemy of community is noise (some refer to this as a lack of quality)! It happens the moment the community loses its focus, its purpose.  Typically wanting to be more to more people or by not keeping focus and quality at the forefront of all they do.

The social landscape has become so big <and fragmented> that I no longer consider myself informed on it all. I recognize that I have two choices: remain a generalist with a shallow knowledge of a whole lot, or pick a corner of the landscape and own it.

Generalist vs. Niche – there is a glaring <and I’d bet, welcome> opportunity here. Drop the 50 different RSS feeds, multiple social alerts and the constant monitoring mode and take five steps back. Scan both the social landscape and the market to find your niche.   Is your portfolio diverse but your target customer specific? Or is your product or service niche and your customer base diverse?

If you are already finding your community with too much noise, then you need:

• a plan
• a collaborative approach
• to be OK with your community numbers dropping – giving you less noise and more quality

This year will see a significant increase in niche communities – what I can’t be sure of is how we will make use of the noisy generalist communities over the next 12 – 18 months.

• The more we age, the more opportunities we find to become jaded.
• When start ups grow into big companies, they can lose a je ne c’est quoi in the transition.
• When events become so big and crowded, there’s a tendency to become overwhelmed, to stick with the one we came with.
• When communities get really big, they feel less like a community and more like a city, losing their small town feel.
• When a city’s population doubles and triples, the city can feel cold or outgrow it’s infrastructure.
• When a social networking platform becomes so big it is being referred to as a monopoly, the attraction may eventually disappear.

Certainly not a universal law, but if history is anything to go by, I think we may find that small becomes the new big – that smaller velvet rope networks gain in popularity and our attraction to yesterday’s brands may evolve into a love affair for tomorrow’s.

by the way – if you are wondering what I’m on about… check this out: It’s a Facebook world after all…

Well? Am I missing the boat… if you have any thoughts or ideas, please, share.

photo credit: eatmorechips

Interesting. Facebook is a hot topic in the marketing and tech world these days… and rightfully so.

In layman’s terms: facebook is no longer in the business of connecting people. They are in the business of connecting people to places, objects and services. The ramification of which could be significant. What’s happening?

In April, Facebook announced several major initiatives that will see Facebook weave it self into and across the web. Facebook’ has a host of social plug ins for you to use within your website that marries your site with Facebook enabling your visitors to see who in their network of friends:

1. is a member of this site too

2. likes the content

3. is tweeting commenting or being active on it right here, right now.

4.  is recommended as a pretty cool person to know

All with the intention of further personalizing your web experience and perhaps taking your likes and lumping them into common categories.  The evolution from connecting people to connecting people’s worlds has been talked about for several years. It is inevitable and a natural progression, only I didn’t expect it would come to be through an attempted monopoly.

If Facebook offers:

1. Live streaming of updates and activity – what does that mean for twitter?

2. Integration between recruitment sites and your network on facebook – what does that mean for linkedin?

3. geo- location services and apps where you can check in – what does that mean for foursquare?

This makes me wonder: what do facebook users think of facebook – I mean really?

1. Do we really care what all 350 of our friends are liking, doing, and commenting on?

2. When we like something – do we like it because we like it, or are we doing it to support a friend? in a moment of weakness? Do we return to that page we liked? do we engage it?

3. Is being part of a country sized network all it’s cracked up to be? Perhaps.

4. Why are we there? How many people do we really engage with on FB? How many of our friends are purely profile candy?

Then I wonder… what’s the opportunity here? Is it more niche networks? We already have 10 million of those. Is it to further build on what Facebook is already doing? Developers, although conflicted, may agree. Does the company or brand zero in on Facebook only? What about advertising being noise? being intrusive? being unwanted? How do they best use this new world of Facebook effectively?

We could very well see a replay of Beacon. Or we could see this continue for the next 12 months and evolve into Facebook schools, Facebook airlines, Facebook auctions and whatever else it mops up.

It will be interesting to not only monitor, but evolve with. More to come on this later.

photo credit: http://roughwriter.yc.edu

an ad or a marketing campaign included the target audience as part of it’s creative? The more I think about this, the more I like it.

What is Google Wave? Glad you asked. There is a link to an hour, 20 minute video on you tube if you’re so inclined… or you can just have a peak at a brief summary here:

So what does Google’s Wave, (founded by the two who brought you Google maps, brothers who founded start up – Where 2 Tech that Google quickly sucked up) mean for us 12 months from now? In two words: crazy fast. But let’s see how I came up with that.

1. First and foremost I believe conversation to be king. Some would argue content. It doesn’t matter. They’re both important but conversation is more important! HAH!

2. We are in an evolution that allows us to use GPS and Google Maps instead of buying a paper map. We use email, e-cards, e-invites, and e-grams instead of snail mail. We skype (video, phone and screen sharing all in one conversation) instead of picking up the ol’ rotary phone. We use wikis, blogs, and podcasts to disseminate thoughts to the masses. We enable socially inclined tools to allow our audience to engage us, agree with us, disagree with us or just tell us about the train that stopped running out of Boston!

3. Today’s statistics about market trends, emerging media and the evolution of consumer behavior are staggering. This new online space is controlled and shaped by consumers. Marketers can participate in this space but the rules are very different.

4. Bite size pieces please: Our chicken comes in popcorn size. Blogging has gone micro. Music has gone nano. Movies went from VHS to DVD to MP3 to streamed on your laptop.  We tweet/ txt/SMS in 140 characters. We eat 100 calorie type chocolate bars and we read Glamour in hand bag size. <ok. that is not new to us… but it supports my point so I’m keeping it>. For whatever reason, we are more inclined to process information in bite size pieces knowing full well that any one of those bite size morsels can lead to truck loads more information.

5. Co-llab-or-a-tion. People are powerful in groups. They know it. We know it. I’ve been to more seminars and read more books about how this social space shifts the power to the people – heck I’ve even suggested it takes the power from your boardroom and places it into the hands of your consumers. Don’t buy it? Google Wholesale foods. Oh! or the Nissan Cube. oh! or Dove anything. My point is this… People want to connect with people who are like them. they want to buy from them. Sell to them. Refer them. Hang out with them. Create with them. This absolutely translates online. Flash mobs are another fun, yet powerful effect that all stems from like minded people collaborating.

Alright – Google Wave. Let’s pretend you agree with me: Conversation is king. We are evolving at unprecedented rates. We prefer to process <certain content> in pieces. And finally we is better than me.  Google Wave is feverishly working on it’s very beta’d version of Wave to bring conversation and collaboration together. Period. They are convinced that communication is the future. They have figured out how to enable people without the traditional barriers of email, wikis, and the rest of it so that multitudes of people can organize, create, share and evolve.

So what does this all mean 12months from now? Yikes! Crazy Fast!

1. Crazy Fast answers to your questions. Imagine kicking off a project with all key stakeholders sat around your wave with the ability to add, edit, share, create and all traceable back to author. Hmmm. heaven – non?

2. Crazy Fast good quality ideas be it for business or dealing with a terrible two year old at your finger tips.

3. Crazy Fast timing for people to bring things to market. Product, Service or Start Up.

4. Crazy Fast and efficient communication means geography will really and truly be irrelevant. sort of.

5. Crazy Fast organizing of groups to support causes.

6. Crazy Fast travel for news. Yes. Faster than it is now.

7. Crazy Fast mobilizing of consumer groups to take action against something you just did that thoroughly pissed them off.

8. Crazy Fast abilities to work with your group on a school project.

Time will tell of course. But I can’t help but imagine that more efficient tools that mobilize like mined individuals, virtually, will only contribute to the evolution and the speed at which things happen.

Special thanks to the lovely Avery Swartz for sending this my way!

So here’s a crazy idea… You go to the grocery store, you pull out your swipe card of some sort and insert said loyalty card into the shopping cart to free it – you proceed to shop!

What if the shopping cart was some how transformed when you stuck your card into it? What if the shopping cart recognized you, welcomed you by name… asked if you had a list to scan and helped you through out your grocery marathon with locations and information on these cans of beans are currently on sale for but those cans of beans are …?

Wouldn’t it be cool to have an assistant in the store right at your finger tips – select the “where is” button. punch in first three letters – van – and presto, you are getting directions on your digital map of where the vanilla exrtract is located.

Having your very own Knight Rider version of the shopping trolley would be fun… but hey you Marketers! Imagine the data collection… the cross sell/Up sell you could be doing at the time of purchase… not at the point of sale.

If there are any techie geeks out there <preferably in London England> who get this and are somewhat entrepreneurial… come see me.

The future is bright! The future is data!