After more than sixteen years - yes sixteen! - combined service with the British Council, Martin McEwan and I have left to set up our own consultancy business. We'll be aiming to help UK and overseas based organisations improve their marketing operation, primarily in the public and education sectors.
Another post from Seth Godin which postulates that the ratio of "message" to "noise" on the net is decreasing. Which on the face of it is absolutely correct. It is harder to get your message out to people now as the amount of competing messages increases exponentially...
But that's always been a fact of life in marketing, with the advent of newsprint, then radio, then TV etc, so how can we get better reception?
So another online music store has opened. So what? Well if the descriptions are true, then eMusic could be the start of true niche music marketing online...
I've just heard that China now has over 221 million users online, slightly more than the USA, making China the largest single online market...
Just thought of this and not really sure whether anyone else has commented (apologies in advance if they have).
The Mac Air ad shows the all new must have object of envy being unwrapped from an inter-office document envelope. Thats how thin it is! It then outlines all the modern non-wired, non-optically driven features it possesses.
The problem for me is that in these email/facebook/twitter fueled communication networked days, who uses OR HAS EVEN SEEN an old distribution envelope like that in 5 years???
A couple of weeks back, I came across the Google home page and it was reversed out - black where it should have been white. At first I thought that my MacBook display had given up the ghost, but luckily for my wallet it hadn't. It was Google's contribution to the lights off energy saving initiative...
After the Radiohead episode, it looks like more bands are looking for newer and more innovative ways of reaching their fans (and getting new ones of course) and persuading them to purchase their product.
The latest idea seems to be a try before you buy version whereby fans can trial new music before buying. This hits two birds with one stone sometimes as with REM letting fans hear their new album via the iLike function on FaceBook recently. REM wanted fans to let them know whether their return to earlier influences was a good or a bad move, and also obviously gave them a huge PR opportunity...
Phorm is a new service that will connect advertisers to their audiences by monitoring their browsing habits and then serving up ads that should reflect their interests or intentions. For example if you've visited a series of pages or sites looking at say BMW cars you'll be served up ads from BMW retailers. Simple right? What could be wrong with that?
...after a short break...and it's good to be posting again.
To communicate...to sell online...to build awareness...to do some good even.
It could be all of the above or something completely different. But here's the thing. If you don't know why you or your organization doesn't know why the website is there, then you need to rethink. Take it down and spend the money and time on something else...
As my friend Martin says about marketing, it's all too easy to treat it as the superficial topping on a not very good dish...
Its the same with New Marketing or Web 2.0. They'll always be pressure from senior management to put on the bells and whistles of social networking, mash-ups and so on, onto your corporate website.
But if your website (and the customer service and experience wrap around activity) isn't right and does not reflect the web 2.0 "topping" it will still be the lipstick...