What We’re Reading

Meta

Smart Marketers Are Increasing Their Value Internally

Avenue A | Razorfish hosted is eighth annual client summit in New York in May. Their clients are made up of fortune 100 companies. The intent of the summit was to gather the worlds top experts on digital marketing and explore the trends. Avenue A | Razorfish has graciously posted excerpts of summit.

The opening speech by Clark Kokich, CEO of Avenue A | Razorfish, offers an excellent overview. If you’re struggling to convince your senior executives that digital marketing is not the future, but require strategies today, I recommending sharing this 18 minute video during a meeting. I think it could create that light-bulb moment that could buy you support to move forward on a digital marketing.

There are 16 other videos capturing snippets of what have must been a fascinating and valuable summit for their clients. I am impressed that they invited not only experts to speak but also competitors to speak. What a bold and powerful decision and made me love Avenue A | Razorfish even more for it. Also, they walk-the-walk of digital marketing (and so they should but most companies struggle with truly doing what they advise their clients). By providing content from the summit, in the way of video snips, they are sharing the summit experience with other marketers and organizations creating opportunity for others to experience Avenue A | Razorfish – creating a branding moment. So beautiful and inspirational.

So back to the purpose of this post “Smart Marketers Are Increasing Their Value Internally”. While watching Kokich’s speech he speaks about how smart marketers are getting their organizations to think strategically about social media and are able to produce results.  In return, these smart marketers are also increasing their value internally and are likely to get more attention from senior executives. They will have more say on how to integrate marketing, communications, public relations, customer service and various other touch points to make their company and organization more genuine, more likeable, more transparent – in order to build word of mouth, loyalty, and ultimately revenue.

What do you know about social media? Are you on top of the social networks? Are you listening to your customers? If you simply start by listening, then you can provide massive amounts of value to your organization and enhance your career.

- Jenifer Schaefer

Posted under Branding, Business Resources, Case Studies, Conference, Digital Marketing, Education, Marketing, Social media, Strategy

This post was written by jschaefer on September 16, 2008

Tags: , , , , ,

Amazon’s Free MP3′s and Elimination of Geographic Boundaries

Here it is. The first of many posts. I like to think of these entries like little seeds to germinate, grow and flourish – should I be so lucky.

The task of writing one’s first post is exciting and a bit daunting. There are so many areas to explore and ideas to share.  Here’s the first thought to ponder.

Should online promotions for internet based products and services have geographic/ political boundaries?

Background: I am an avid user of Plurk and one of the people I follow is nethead. He plurked that there were “FREE MP3s from Amazon.com.” I was delighted to read about the promotion and eager to take a look at their song selection. There were a few there that interested me, but when I moved onto the ‘download’ step I was blocked. It was only for people located in the United States – or those who faked their ID (not my style).  Yes. (dot)CA was blocked and I was disappointed. After hurting Amazon’s brand for me because of the negative experience, I started to think if if the promotion should have been approached differently. Amazon is a completely online retailer and it’s MP3′s are even delivered online. Shouldn’t that lend its promotions to being open globally, and not limited to geographic/ political boundaries?

Business Application: When developing your promotional objectives, strategies and tactics start to think beyond your usual geographic markets and think ‘net’. Ask  yourself the following five questions?

  1. What are our goals and measurable objectives with this promotion?
  2. Why do our customers buy and use our product?
  3. Does it matter where our customers are geographically located? Isn’t it enough that we’re reaching our target market?
  4. How can we overcome real, or mentally created, barriers to delivering this promotion without geographic boundaries and focus on reaching our target market?
  5. If we commit to thinking and acting in a global perspective, are we going to be able to handle the success?

Online promotions are only one aspect of marketing and branding. Thinking from a more strategic level it’s important for organizations to understand that Brands are global. Brand experiences occur around the world, a great thank-you to the internet and social networking sites. Brands do not stop at the boarder crossing. If you haven’t already… it’s time to break down those geographic silos and be a global brand. Think. Act. Be Global.

I’d love to hear your feedback and ideas.

Posted under Branding, Global Focus, Promotions, Strategy

This post was written by JenSchaefer on August 25, 2008

Tags: , , , , , ,

Search

Categories