Rockmarketing

Marketing: the art of failing

Posted on 23. Mar, 2009 by Tom.

A lot of posts about measuring return on investement pop up lately.  Especially since social media is gaining some momentum, it seems like everybody who doesn’t know what they’re dealing with wants to know what they’ll get in return. 

But the problem isn’t that you can’t measure social media, in fact no marketing effort can be properly measured.  You can single out different efforts and measure the effects.  Sure, with some room for error it’s possible that you know how much people saw you ad on television.  Different studies gave percentages how much of those viewers are actively watching your ad and other studies have calculated how much, from those who’ve actively watched the ad, took some form of action.  A lot of “IF’s” for something we’re trying to measure.  If it was mathclass, we’d fail miserably.

Another “IF”.  How do you calculate the combined effect of different efforts?  A commercial, combined with radio ads, a website and some billboards?  Even if you ask people directly what made them come to your shop, you’re still not sure it was that single effort or the combined effect of everything together.

The truth is that marketing is taking on shot in the dark after another.  It’s a lot of times guessing what will work based upon previous experiences and information about your target demographic.  I don’t like an over-analytical point-of-view that doesn’t make sense.  However, I don’t mean you don’t have to analyse the results!  Because at the end, the combined efforts should relate in some way to a result.  Based upon which you can ‘guess’ what worked and what went wrong.

A great marketer should be someone who basically has a great gutt feeling and, more importantly, has the ability to change his course when he sees that something doesn’t work.  He has to be flexible and be able to quickly adapt when he fails.  Marketing is something where every effort is a failure unless something or someone makes it right.  It’s failing over and over again and trying to fix everything as fast as possible. 

How was this for a career-promoting post!?

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Facebook isn’t a trend… get over it!

Posted on 20. Mar, 2009 by Tom.

This post is originally posted on Who’s Reading Anyway?

I don’t really have anything against trendwatchers… if I could make money by telling people what they already know, I wouldn’t complain.  Recently a lot of items came up telling people Facebook is the new trend, or Twitter is the trend of 2009.  That’s not really true is it?

Facebook isn’t really a trend, it’s just a hype.  The reason why Facebook exists… that’s the trend.  The growing need to identify yourself, to pull yourself out of the crowd and scream: “This is me!”.  Ever since the world got smaller and communications got more easy, people needed a way to distinct themselves from their peers.  That need to identify yourself is a huge opportunity for marketers, it means that if you can find a way to reach them at an emotional level you can keep them, make them yours, loyal and ever-buying. 

The use of Facebook is just an illustration.  It shows how people desperately look for short-term solutions for long-term answers.  Trends are something that evolve… slowly.  It’s not something like Facebook that pops up one day out of the blue and answers to a certain demand.

Most people try to find ways to monetize hypes, while they should be finding ways to monetize trends.  Riding the Facebook train is easy, it’s already there, but it’s not you.  You can’t really call it ‘trendwatching’ when it’s something that’s already there.  Trendwatchers who think that ‘Facebook’ is the trend spend days, weeks, months thinking about how they can use it to profit from it.  By the time they do find it, there’ll be a new Facebook around.  Watch the Kevin Kelley presentation again and wonder… do you really think that technology will give you the time you need to identify and utilize these hypes?  By the time you find them, someone (your competitor) is already working on a new one!

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ROCK+ROLL marketing presentation and bibliography

Posted on 20. Mar, 2009 by Tom.

As promised, the English version of our presentation.  Remember… it’s a very visual presentation, maybe we’ll find the time to record something so the presentation makes sense.  Click the visual and you’ll be redirected to SlideShare.  Feel free to download if you want to.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PASSION
·  Constantin Brancusi, wikipedia biography.
·  All the passionate people we had the pleasure talking to.

TALENT
·  Gladwell, Malcolm (2008). Outliers. London: Allen Lane Books. (Amazon)
·  Pink, Daniel (2005). A Whole New Mind. Why right brainers will rule the future. New York. Riverhead Books. (Amazon)
·  Pink, Daniel (2008). The adventures of Johnny Bunko. New York. Riverhead Books. (Amazon)

CREATIVITY
·  Arden, Paul (2006). Whatever you think, think the opposite. London: Penguin Books. (Amazon)
·  Claxton, Guy (1997). Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind.  How intelligence increases when you think less. London: Fourth Estate. (Amazon)
·  Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row. (Amazon)
·  McLuhan, Marshall (1960). Explorations in Communication. Boston: Snow Carpenter Beacon Press. (Amazon)
·  Pauling, Linus (1986). How to Live Longer and Feel Better. Avon Books. (Amazon)

DESIGN
·  Godin, Seth (2007). Meatball Sunday. London: Piatkus Books. (Amazon)
·  Heath, Dan (2007). Made To Stick. London: Random House Books. (Amazon)

TRENDS
·  Everything about communities: FreshNetworks blog.
·  List of emotions

RESPECT
·  “Let’s try something different, let’s start telling the truth”, Bill Bernbach

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