Desired Outcomes Matter
What happens when we really understand our customers' desired outcomes or the jobs they are trying to do?
Something pretty incredible happens!
Annette Franz Gleneicki, customer needs, customer centricity, utility
How Creativity Works
It's not hard to come up with something new. It's hard to come up with something new that people want.
I think that is kind of the separation point between having lots of ideas or creating lots of stuff, and just having maybe one thing that really resonates with people that they have that Ah-Ha moment when they see it.
~ James Carnes, Global Creative Director, Senior Vice President of Design at Adidas.
user insights, innovation, creativity, Design Translator, utility
Confused Definitions
More is better, according to the leading marketing theorists when it comes to brands participating in social media. Blogger how-to lists and entire books are dedicated to the proposition, and there are services that will tee-up "content" so you can repurpose it into the mediasphere. The Conventional Wisdom not only says this is effective commercial speech but that it's a replacement for old approaches, like advertising. Spend more of your marketing budget on it this year or risk being oh so 2010.
Jonathan Salem Baskin, Best Buy, corporate communication, utility, relevance, authority, content
Three Ways Location-based Services Can Add Value to Consumers and Marketers
This week's New Media Age contains a feature on location-based marketing looking at some case studies of where it has been used well and the opportunities for it as part of the marketing mix. We've written before about opportunities that location-based services offer to marketing. From using Foursquare as a small business to the many ways to use Facebook Places, location-based services offer many potentials for experimentation and new ways of communicating with and marketing too consumers.
Matt Rhodes, location based, value creation, utility
Better Billboards
There's a scene early in "Blade Runner" in which a blimp covered in big, billboard-like TV screens hovers over Harrison Ford and announces "a better life awaits you in the off-world colonies." Like many visions of the future, this wasn't terribly futuristic -- imagining billboards that are simply loud and intrusive isn't much more than a variation on the past -- and I'd say there's yet to be a true revolution in outdoor advertising. So I'd like to propose we start one.
Jonathan Salem Baskin, advertising, billboards, outdoor advertising, relevance, utility
Facebook Is a Utility; Utilities Get Regulated
From day one, Mark Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to become a social utility. He succeeded. Facebook is now a utility for many. The problem with utilities is that they get regulated.
danah boyd, Facebook, social networks, privacy, utility, regulations, utilities
In with the Old, Out with the New
Twitter and MySpace each announced programs last week intended to make money by giving advertisers access to their users. The approaches couldn't be more different, and I think they raise more questions about the nature and hopes for monetizing social behavior than they answer.
Jonathan Salem Baskin, Twitter, MySpace, monetization, utility, social behaviour
The Return of Commercial Speech
OK, I have to add my two cents to the prediction business and label what I think might be an emergent, if not important trend for brands and marketers in our nascent new decade: we're going to see the return of paid commercial speech.
Jonathan Salem Baskin, predictions, authenticity, relevance, meaning, marketing communication, utility
Spam Isn't News
I received my first Lenovo News email last week, telling "Dear Sir/Madam" that "information can be 'the' critical factor in establishing a competitive business advantage,"so I could look forward to having "a direct pipeline to the latest Lenovo and hottest PC industry news."
Jonathan Salem Baskin, news, relevance, utility, email
Code Words & Secret Meanings
by: Jonathan Salem Baskin
When Procter & Gamble lowered its sales outlook in the middle of last month, it offered up the most traditional, generic excuses for what was wrong...and what it intended to do about it. The one novel item in the announcement garnered no more media scrutiny than the lame rationale that surrounded it.
The company is suffering from pantry deloading.
premium brands, consumer needs, consumer habits, Procter & Gamble, Jonathan Salem Baskin, utility, relevance