Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
LJJSpeaks: Blog Post: Get to the Heart of the Matter and Engage your Customers!
Emarketer.com: Digital Media will depend on Engagement-Listening and Communicating is key.
Emarketer.com: Original Post http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007486
Consumers Demand Engagement
JANUARY 29, 2010From campaign- to consumer-centric
Marketers will continue to shift dollars from traditional to digital media in 2010, but simply including online ad campaigns and social media efforts is not enough for an effective marketing mix. According to the Alterian “Annual Survey 2009” report, the maturity of digital and social media requires integration of marketing strategies. Marketers must move from a focus on siloed campaigns to an emphasis on listening to and communicating with consumers across channels.
More than one-half of marketers worldwide reported directing at least “a fair amount” of effort toward integrating their communication strategies to emphasize multichannel consumer engagement.
“The age of sending out silo campaigns is long gone,” according to the report. “The only communications tolerated by consumers are those that are appropriate, timely and relevant—regardless of channel.”
The majority of marketers surveyed recognized social media as increasingly important to the marketing mix, while 14% went as far as to call it critical for success. It is yet another channel to be incorporated into an integrated communication strategy, rather than addressed on its own. And it can provide unique insights into the consumers who can now use earned media to build brands alongside marketers.
Most marketers say they are at least “prepared enough” to take advantage of new techniques in digital and social media, but more than one-third felt minimally prepared. Staff education and training was a substantial concern.
The largest group of respondents said some of their marketing staff had the skills to implement new customer engagement strategies, but that knowledge was generally restricted to personnel in digital roles. Only 17% said most or all of their staff was prepared, although 37% planned further investments in the area.
“Engaging with customers is becoming paramount and the yardstick by which we measure those brands that survive and those that don’t,” said David Eldridge, CEO of Alterian, in a statement. “Marketers now need to appeal to the individual and engage with customers on a one-to-one basis.”
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Check out today’s other article, “Stepping Up to the Mom Market.”
MentalFloss.com: From SlowCow Smooth Drink to Chili with no GAS factor... top ten Edibles from Fancy Food Show!
This January brought the 35th annual Winter Fancy Food Show to San Francisco. Held each year at the Moscone Center in SF, the enormous event highlights just about anything you could put in your mouth. It’s like Comic-Con for foodies, the kind of place where the makers of the “world’s best salt water taffy” rub shoulders with guys who try to reinvent the snack chip in their garage. Here are a few things that stuck out at this year’s show.
1. SlowCow Smooth Drink
The fizzy, bubblegum-flavored drink features a comatose looking cow on its label and seems to be marketing itself as an antidote to energy drinks like Red Bull. The makers claim that it’s like an acupuncture session in each can. I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about picturing myriad sharp needles when I’m putting something into my mouth.
2. Bacon, Bacon and More Bacon
Who doesn’t like bacon? Featured at the show this year were smoky treats like Sir Francis Bacon’s Peanut Brittle, bacon flavored pretzels, and, get this, bacon envelopes.
That’s right, J&D’s Foods, maker of Bacon Salt and Baconnaise, brings you bacon flavored envelopes. Called “mmmvelopes,” the things actually do taste like bacon when you lick them, and feature a fanciful pink and white exterior reminiscent of a nice marbling of fat.
3. Fartless Chili
The Fartless Factory in Idaho claims that their chili lacks most of the gaseous output of regular chili. Do they have any empirical evidence? No, but the owner casually refers to himself as “The Old Fart,” and whether his chili makin’s deliver on his gasless promise or not, you’ve got to like a business owner with a sense of humor.
4. Watermelon Wheat Beer
Brewed by 21st Amendment Brewery in San Francisco and called “Hell or High Watermelon Wheat Beer,” this brew is just flat-out bizarre: fruity and yeasty and hoppy and watermelony. It may be a good gateway beer for light beer drinkers, or fruity drink lovers, but a bit of a departure for those who would rather sip on IPAs and stouts.
5. Quirky Combinations
Earth & Vine Provisions, a small jam and sauce maker from Loomis, CA, figures that if you like bananas and oranges and jalapenos and mustard and garlic, you’ll like them all at the same time. And, for the most part, they’re right. Their apricot-pineapple-tangerine jam is delicious, and so is their blueberry-lemon-ginger. Their chipotle-honey-lime mustard is great on pretzels, and their banana-rum-pineapple jam is killer on ice cream. However, I’m not sold on the spicy apple garlic jam.
6. Funni Bonz Barbeque Sauce
Classic Marketing. With over 80,000 products at the Fancy Food Show, you’ll try anything to get noticed. Funni Bonz goes for the old “crazy spelling trick,” which probably isn’t even necessary since their ridiculously good sauces speak for themselves.
7. Hippie Chips
Hippie Chips, however, goes for the other classic: “sex sells.” While they claim that the “hippie” label refers to their all-natural baked potato and hemp seed chips, it equally applies to the impossibly hourglassed ladies on their bags of chips. These girls make Barbie look as curvy as a fencepost.
8. Cheese Honey
The Savannah Bee Co. markets its honey not by variety—wildflower, orange blossom, etc.—but by what they think goes well with it. Hence, Cheese Honey, Grill Honey, and Tea Honey. Sure, they sell regular honey too, but the pairing idea is rather genius when you think about it. The one thing to look out for is a consumer expecting a big chunk of Roquefort floating in his honey pot.
9. The Jelly Belly Motorcycle
OK, this one isn’t edible, but I had to include it. Jelly Belly is one of the most popular candy brands in the country. I’m sure they’re comfortable putting their logo on just about anything. But I fail to see what audience they’re going after with the Jelly Belly low-rider motorcycle. I just can’t picture myself putting on my leathers and pulling out with the local Harley gang on my candy orange hog.
10. “The Food and Drink of Scotland”
Not exactly famous for their culinary prowess, the Scottish are trying to remake their image somewhat. A Scottish trade group had a large, sleek booth at the FFS and was telling anyone who would listen about their edible bounty. While no one is claiming that the Scottish are nipping at the gastronomic heels of the French—Gordon Ramsey be damned—a case can be made for the really fantastic ingredients that come out of Scotland: angus beef, salmon, shellfish, and, lest we forget, Scotch whiskey. Now pardon me while I go deep-fry a Snickers bar and watch Trainspotting.
SmartBrief for Leadership: How to be an Innovative, not just Business, Leader: Forbes, David Magellan Horth
Original Post: http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/27/innovation-change-strategy-leadership-managing-ccl.html
Center for Creative Leadership
How To Be An Innovative, Not Just Business, Leader
David Magellan Horth, 01.27.10, 06:00 PM ESTThree keys to making the essential leap.
Today's managers are full of ideas, theories and information. They have extraordinary knowledge and expertise. They are highly skilled at traditional business thinking. Yet many feel uncertain and unmoored. They find planning for next quarter a tough challenge, never mind committing to decisions that will play out over one to five years. They continually ask themselves what is the new process, the innovative product, the game-changing service, the compelling vision. One senior executive recently told me, "We've lost our crystal ball."
I can't give you a new crystal ball. But I will tell you that being an innovative leader holds the key to discovering what's new, what's better and what's next.
Truly innovative leadership means fostering new thinking and collaboration that produces new business opportunities. It means building a capacity for innovative thinking and using it in concert with business thinking.
Business thinking is based on deep research, formulas and logical facts. Business thinkers value proof and precedent and are often quick to make decisions, looking for the one right answer among the wrong answers. Business thinking is about removing ambiguity and driving results. But ambiguity can't be managed away. As problems and circumstances become more complex, they don't fit previous patterns. What worked before doesn't work today. The cost of failing to come up with new thinking for new results was colorfully expressed by one executive: "The more you drive over a dead cat, the flatter it gets!"
The traditional push for results can go nowhere when the situation is unstable, the challenge is complex or the direction is unclear. No matter how great the urgency, you need to be reflective and approach the situation in new ways. That's where innovative leadership and innovative thinking comes in.
Innovative thinking doesn't rely on past experience or known facts. It imagines a desired future state and figures out how to get there. It is intuitive and open to possibility. Rather than identify right answers or wrong answers, the goal is to find a better way and to explore multiple possibilities. Ambiguity is therefore an advantage, not a problem. It allows us to ask, what if? Business thinking comes into its own after we discover new opportunities through innovative thinking, when we then seek to implement and commercialize those opportunities.
