Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
More Favorite Videos
Much delayed, but here are some more videos that I have shared this year with my organization at our annual summit and during our monthly town halls.
1) Stefan Sagmeister: The power of time off
We started off our annual summit by reminding ourselves that turning off allows us to be more creative when we turn back on. I really like Stefan's idea of taking 5 of our post-retirement years and dispersing them throughout our career. As my dean from business school (Dr. Court Huber) says: "You can't lead, if you can't leave!"
2) Parag Khanna maps the future of countries
Our focus this year was to understand that the audience that we are trying to serve as marketers is a global audience (in fact more outside US than in the US) and thus this video does a nice job of creating a global context.
3) Jonathan Zittrain: The Web as random acts of kindness
Funny and inspiring to think that the world economy is now built on top of an infrastructure that no one entity owns! It is owned and managed by the collective "us" and it's scary to see that there are still companies that don't get the "social" in social marketing.
4) Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man
With the shifts in media mixes - I find this a funny look at the changing world of advertising.
5) Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
Another humorous examination of what motivates people. No surprise, it's often not money!
6) Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight
And to end it all, this beautiful talk from Jill Taylor as she talks about her experience of having a stroke. It's one of my all time favorite TED talks - as Jill (a brain scientist) makes a persuasive case for the spiritual nature of our world.
I feel like I may still be missing a few. I will add them as I remember. At a separate session we watched the following talks from the web 2.0 summit:
1) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Marissa Mayer
2) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Sean Parker, "High Order Bit: The Rise of the Network Company"
3) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Mary Meeker, "High Order Bit: The State of the Capital Markets, Version Six"
4) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Mike Schroepfer, "High Order Bit: The Infrastructure of Facebook"
I hope you enjoy these as much as I did. You can find all the Web 2.0 Summit talks on Youtube.
1) Stefan Sagmeister: The power of time off
We started off our annual summit by reminding ourselves that turning off allows us to be more creative when we turn back on. I really like Stefan's idea of taking 5 of our post-retirement years and dispersing them throughout our career. As my dean from business school (Dr. Court Huber) says: "You can't lead, if you can't leave!"
2) Parag Khanna maps the future of countries
Our focus this year was to understand that the audience that we are trying to serve as marketers is a global audience (in fact more outside US than in the US) and thus this video does a nice job of creating a global context.
3) Jonathan Zittrain: The Web as random acts of kindness
Funny and inspiring to think that the world economy is now built on top of an infrastructure that no one entity owns! It is owned and managed by the collective "us" and it's scary to see that there are still companies that don't get the "social" in social marketing.
4) Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man
With the shifts in media mixes - I find this a funny look at the changing world of advertising.
5) Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
Another humorous examination of what motivates people. No surprise, it's often not money!
6) Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight
And to end it all, this beautiful talk from Jill Taylor as she talks about her experience of having a stroke. It's one of my all time favorite TED talks - as Jill (a brain scientist) makes a persuasive case for the spiritual nature of our world.
I feel like I may still be missing a few. I will add them as I remember. At a separate session we watched the following talks from the web 2.0 summit:
1) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Marissa Mayer
2) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Sean Parker, "High Order Bit: The Rise of the Network Company"
3) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Mary Meeker, "High Order Bit: The State of the Capital Markets, Version Six"
4) Web 2.0 Summit 09: Mike Schroepfer, "High Order Bit: The Infrastructure of Facebook"
I hope you enjoy these as much as I did. You can find all the Web 2.0 Summit talks on Youtube.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Dan Ariely @ Google/TED
I just finished reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. One more in the emerging and fascinating "behavioral economics" field. Economics aside, what fascinates me are the implications to marketing. This will be the topic at my town hall meeting tomorrow. I will be back to share what ideas popped.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
My Interview w/ ZDNet and some personal thoughts on Social Media Marketing strategy
Last week, I spoke to Jennifer Leggio of ZDNet about TI's Social Media Marketing strategy. You can find it here. This is the second such interview I have given now about how we are using social media to connect with our customers and drive engagement. The first one was with a freelance writer and was published on this IDG site.
It's been interesting to talk to people over the last few months about social media strategy. Few observations:
1) I am sometimes surprised when companies are unable to figure out what social media could mean to them and their businesses. Using social media / web 2.0 tools gives companies such a powerful way to engage w/ their customers. To not take advantage of them seems like wasted opportunity to me.
2) Some companies struggle w/ engaging in conversations in such an open environment. In my opinion, any company who is still hiding behind their advertisements will soon realize that conversations about their brand are happening whether they are there or not. Wouldn't you participate so you can listen, learn and potentially shape and influence your potential customer's opinions?
3) Connecting w/ customers in such a direct manner is a refreshing (and often challenging) change for many companies, especially a lot of B2B companies. Although, I do agree that you want to move at the right pace for your organization. The steps you take here fundamentally change how you engage w/ your customers. You want to make sure that you don't take any steps that can potentially backfire. I think the biggest mistake marketers can make is "faking it". Come on!!
It's been interesting to talk to people over the last few months about social media strategy. Few observations:
1) I am sometimes surprised when companies are unable to figure out what social media could mean to them and their businesses. Using social media / web 2.0 tools gives companies such a powerful way to engage w/ their customers. To not take advantage of them seems like wasted opportunity to me.
2) Some companies struggle w/ engaging in conversations in such an open environment. In my opinion, any company who is still hiding behind their advertisements will soon realize that conversations about their brand are happening whether they are there or not. Wouldn't you participate so you can listen, learn and potentially shape and influence your potential customer's opinions?
3) Connecting w/ customers in such a direct manner is a refreshing (and often challenging) change for many companies, especially a lot of B2B companies. Although, I do agree that you want to move at the right pace for your organization. The steps you take here fundamentally change how you engage w/ your customers. You want to make sure that you don't take any steps that can potentially backfire. I think the biggest mistake marketers can make is "faking it". Come on!!
In this video, blogger Joseph Jaffe gives his take on the biggest mistakes some companies have made in social media engagement. He identified faking it as the #1 mistake companies can make.
In my opinion, don't put yourself out there unless you are ready and committed to actually drive the conversation w/ your customers in an honest and transparent manner. Having others blog for you, or tweet for you, or email for you - or even worse having generic email responses from marketing or legal departments is a pathetic attempt. You, your company and most importantly your customer will all be better off, if you had just stayed behind the corporate wall.
That being said, I know that getting to consensus in large companies about such radical behavior change is not an easy task. There are many people in different organizations thinking along different tangents. How do you get alignment with such obstacles? How do you ensure that your company does not show up in Jaffe's next video? Good questions - for another post.
4) My approach to social media strategy is the same as my approach to developing strategy in general: always understand your customer needs and behavior and map them back to your business/marketing objectives. Find the overlap, identify specific problems that you want to go solve. And focus on a few specific items as a start. Don't pick too many things at one time. It's better to do one thing well, than to do many things w/ mediocrity.
4) My approach to social media strategy is the same as my approach to developing strategy in general: always understand your customer needs and behavior and map them back to your business/marketing objectives. Find the overlap, identify specific problems that you want to go solve. And focus on a few specific items as a start. Don't pick too many things at one time. It's better to do one thing well, than to do many things w/ mediocrity.
5) The world has changed. The power in the marketplace is now with customers. They have access to all the information and the tools and technology to connect w/ millions of peers in moments - tapping into their thoughts about brands and products in seconds. Social media tools build upon the foundation of Internet technologies to more effectively connect individuals and harness that power of customers into powerful communities.
With this intense momentum, staying on the sidelines is a futile and foolish attempt. You will get swept in whether you want it or not, wouldn't it be better to do so on your terms?
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Future Of Social Networks
This deck from Charlene does a nice job of summarizing some top level trends in social networks as w emove forward. I don't even think we will have to go to far in the future to start realizing a lot of these. Many feel like 2009/2010 timeframe. The savvy marketers will understand these trends and incorporate them into their social marketing strategy today.
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