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June 10, 2006

Closing Remarks: The Changing Face of Marketing

From closing remarks by Columbia's Berndt Schmitt at the 2006 Corante Innovative Marketing Conference:

Here's what *hasn't* changed about marketing: We still need to develop products, we stll need strategy, we still need branding

What *has* changed is the way we implement marketing -- the 4 P's -- and the way we run our marketing organizations.

There's been both revolutionary and evolutionary change....technology has created a revolution and allowed the consumer to have more control over your brand....but after that revolution, the change [that marketers take to adjust to the new landscape] is evolutionary.

Interaction and conversations have not been represented in traditional marketing. But the question for marketing remains -- what value does the consumer ultimately get out of those interactions and conversations?

I don't recall him saying this, but the reason that's important is that a company can only recognize value for itself if it's able to create value for its customers.

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 9:25 AM | 28 Comments

Many Channels, Many Messages, Many Problems for PR

From the panel on The Changing Face of PR at the 2006 Corante Innovative Marketing Conference:

The session started with a discussion of whether or not press releases are dead. The conclusion: Press releases are not the be-all and the end-all; they are simply channels through which information is conveyed and conversations started (though they are not really good at starting conversations, because they generally do not include a way for the recipient of the message to respond). The day press releases begain to be published on the web for all to see was the day they began to be a different kind of channel, potentially opening a conversation with a different audience.

The problem is when PR people see their jobs as simply putting out the press releases their clients want them to, and when senior management sees the function of PR as putting out press releases, which to panelist Lois Kelly is "low value," when "in today's world, the role of public relations is to be the people who create understanding. You take complex things and you make people understand."

Shel Holtz agreed: "The main problem with PR is that the] PR profession is focused on tactics, when press relations is managing relationships with various publics...any public that can present obstacles to your being in business....all of these publics are now able to talk to each other."

So it all seems to come down to the explosive increase in the channels available to distribute information and the fact that PR can't control all of the channels, much less the messages. What can PR do about that?

Be more honest and open, was the consensus. "The message that things didn't go as well as planned is a shocking statement for a company to say, but it's an honest statement...[companies should] show some humbleness but have confidence that the purity of that [humbleness] message should resonate," said panelist John Moore.

And that too would seem to depend on the channel: "You're not going to see a company say "I'm sorry" in a press release, but you can on a blog." -- Shel Holtz

The bottom line is that there's a danger that the changing face of communications is pushing PR toward irrelevancy, cautioned panelist Neville Hobson. What PR doesn't seem to get is that they can no long completely control all of the messages nor all of the channels through which the messages are communicated.

But at the same time PR people are not exerting control where they can -- over themselves and the *way* they do things. Said Shel, "The public side of public relations is changing for sure, because the public is changing...but in a lot of the organizations where the CEO is blogging in most cases it's not the public relations department that's driving that, it's the desire of the CEO, or the new media department."

So, what would a truly innovative PR department in a foward-thinking company look like?

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 9:15 AM | 10 Comments

Compensation for Spreading Word of Mouth Marketing?

At yesterday's 2006 Corante Innovative Marketing Conference, Larry Weber had this to say about word of marketing: "Compensation is a big red flag for word of mouth marketing.....true word of mouth is transparent recommendations."

This was said at a conference at which at least a few in the audience were engaged in that very thing -- coming up with appropriate ways in which to reward people who spread the word about their products and brands. No one questioned him on it at the time, but I had a couple of conversations afterward with a few attendees about it.

For me, the only truly authentic ways for a company to be involved in word of mouth is to come up with truly great things (products, services, promotions, etc.) for people to spread the word about. And make it easier for them to spread the word by making the word available (putting information on the web where it can be linked to, making company reps and spokespeople available for comment to people besides the mainstream media). And then use all available technological means to track what's being said and try to measure the effect.

It seems that when a company tries to do more than this to manipulate word of mouth, the potential downside is just too great.

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 8:40 AM | 4 Comments

June 9, 2006

Larry Weber Interview: Getting PR's Act Together

From the Marketers Forum at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference in New York, produced by Corante and Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership.

Larry Weber, Chairman of W2 Group, talks about influencing people through content, the signficance of mobile, changing channels, the rise of social media, opportunities PR musn't miss, co-creating attractive content, shaping the next generation of the social web, more control in web 3.0, the new prime time, communication transparency.

Download the podcast (MP3, 7Mb, 16:20)

Posted by Neville Hobson at 6:47 PM | Add Comment

Max Lenderman Interview: Delivering Brand Promise and Consumer Empowerment

From the Marketers Forum at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference in New York, produced by Corante and Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership.

Max Lenderman, Creative Director at GMR Marketing LLC, talks about experiential marketing and delivering brand promise, building the buzz, search marketing, mobile marketing, consumer-generated advertising, empowerment and the future.

Download the podcast (MP3, 6.8Mb, 15:50)

Posted by Neville Hobson at 6:28 PM | Add Comment

Craig Newmark Interview: The Role of the Marketer is Changing

From the Marketers Forum at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference in New York, produced by Corante and Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership.

Craig Newmark, Founder of craigslist.org, talks about trust, Craigslist expansion, consumer-generated content, unconventional marketing, enabling communities, online advertising, Congresspedia, the changing role of marketing.

Download the podcast (MP3, 5.4Mb, 12:30)

Posted by Neville Hobson at 5:55 PM | Add Comment

Innovation in Advertising

During the panel discussion on the “the changing face of advertising” there’s been plenty of discussion about the extent (or not) to which the advertising agencies are adapting to the changing marketplace. One panelist claims that this lack of change is because “there is no line item for R&D in advertising agencies”. What do you think it takes to innovate in advertising?

Posted by Paul Gladen at 3:04 PM | 3 Comments

Focus on the IMC

From the Marketers Forum at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference in New York, produced by Corante and Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership. So far today, I've made the following lenses on the different sessions:

• A New Marketing Foundation
• Models for Innovation
• The New Toolbox
• Consumer-Generated Content
• What's Working?
• The Changing Face of Marketing
• The Changing Face of Advertising

I'm here with a team of six lensmasters -- and I'll be sure to share additional lenses as they're completed.

Update: I've also added a lens on The Changing Face of PR

Posted by Heath Row at 3:01 PM | Add Comment

Yet More from Larry Weber - Contributing to Communities

Lots of great tidbits already online about Larry Weber's talk at the Innovative Marketing Conference today. Clearly Larry struck a nerve with his rap about out with the old, in with the new.

To me, one of the most important bits was about the growing role of online communities in everyday life -- and therefore their growing importance for marketing. If people do indeed now trust "people like me" more than any other authorities (per this year's Edelman Trust Barometer, much discussed yesterday at the conference), than one of marketing's top jobs is to build and contribute to those rich online communities where people gather for business, education, entertainment, etc. It's all about content that contributes to the conversation -- and it's critical, as others have pointed out, to be transparent and totally above board along the way.

Some folks in the audience suggested that there is a difference between producing content for customers and potential customers, on the one hand, and participating in conversations and communities, on the other. The implication was that if you're merely producing content, you're stuck in the old broadcast mode and failing to see the new reality that conversation is king. But unless customers are purely interested in idel chit-chat, though (which I suppose some might be), don't the two go hand in hand? Most customers are interested in deliberative conversation; they're trying to get something done. For the most part, then, you better have something substantial to contribute to the conversation.

Posted by Rob Leavitt at 2:48 PM | Add Comment

Dianne Hessan Interview: The Power of Communities

From the Marketers Forum at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference in New York, produced by Corante and Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership.

Dianne Hessan, President and CEO of Communispace Corporation, talks about tapping into networks of customers to address business issues.

Download the podcast (MP3, 8Mb, 18:30)

Posted by Neville Hobson at 2:47 PM | Add Comment

Larry Weber Answers Ten Questions About Marketing

At the 2006 Corante Innovative Marketing conference, Lois Kelly just interviewed Larry Weber of the W2 Group, and closed her interview with the same "10 Questions" used on Inside The Actor's Studio.

1. What's your favorite marketing word: "engagement"

2. What's your least favorite marketing word: "advertisement"

3. What turns you on creatively, emotionally and spiritually about marketing: "Take spirituality out, I still haven't found what I'm looking for (me and Bono)...what I like about marketing is that this is one of the last business processes that is going though radical change. It's exciting and great not knowing where things are going."

4. What turns you off about marketing: "CEOs that don't engage marketing as one of the most critical things in their portfoilio of responsibility....I find that insulting."

5. What's your favorite curse word when you see bad marketing? "That sucks."

6. What's the sound or noise that marketers make that you love? "I'm not gonna say....[I read that] people in marketing love porn sites....enough said."

7. What's the sound or noise that marketers make that you hate? "Overanalytic sounds....theh sounds of chart after chart on how we're gonna drill down in this data."

8. What profession should marketers become better at, to be better at marketing? "Catholic priest...no, just kidding.....I would say goumet cook, you have to please people in an emotional way, an environmental way, come up with good recipes." (there was more there that I missed, but you get the gist)

9. What profession should marketers never try? "Law."

10. If heaven exists, what would God say when a marketer arrives at the pearly gates" " 'Probably you're at the wrong gate.' "

How would *you* answer these questions?!

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 2:40 PM | Add Comment

Deepak Advani Interview: Driving Lenovo Awareness

From the Marketers Forum at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference in New York, produced by Corante and Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership.

Opening keynote speaker Deepak Advani, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Lenovo International, talks about the reactions surrounding the US State Department's purchase of PCs made in China; viral marketing; employee communication at the time of Lenovo's purchase of IBM's PC business.

Download the podcast (MP3, 7Mb, 17:30)

Posted by Neville Hobson at 1:35 PM | Add Comment

The Changing Face of Marketing

Larry Weber is talking about the changing face of the marketing department and believes the first job of marketing should be "24/7 monitoring of the digital landscape".

Do you agree? Is your marketing organization doing this?

Posted by Paul Gladen at 1:35 PM | Add Comment

Johnnie Moore & John Winsor Interview: Co-creation Is About Passion

From the CMO Summit at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference in New York, produced by Corante and Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership.

Johnnie Moore of johnniemoore.com and John Winsor, Founder and CEO of Radar Communications, talk about the relationship between co-creation and open source marketing; what a brand is; beyond content and control: relationship development; figuring the mix of structure and spontaneity; where and how to apply co-creation; it's not about monetization and ROI, it's about passion; accomplishments vs experiences.

Download the podcast (MP3, 8Mb, 18:50)

Posted by Neville Hobson at 12:38 PM | Add Comment

What Do Metrics Have to Do with Customers?

Two thought-provoking comments from the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference panel on metrics:

You can't be customer-centric if you're too focused on ROI because you lose sight of customer needs, says Bryan Eisenberg from Future Now; are your customers the investors or the people who are actually paying for the product?

About word of mouth marketing -- a company can invest in WOM advertising by creating superior experiences, says Bryan Eisenberg. Example -- Jet Blue.

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 12:15 PM | Add Comment

What Happens When Consumers Control Content?

Notes from a panel on user-generated content at at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference:

John Hiler, CEO of Xanga.net -- When you turn something [a site] over to the community they may start doing something they consider to be good clean fun that's actually against a federal law....in order to control this you must tap the wisdom of crowds, such as self-rating...you have to self-regulate or the government will come in from the top down and regulate you. In terms of making money, we're not CEOs, we're more like unelected politicians of little towns in cyberspace...in order to make money you need to manage your approval ratings, make your space a better community. If you can pull that off then the money will take care of itself.

Craig Newmark of Craigslist -- Every day we have the issue of trust, since the internet is everyone's printing press, a place where everyone can express opinions and launch disinformation campaigns.....and now we have this wisdom of crowds effect, and use lots of people working together being smart to help control the bad ones. It's critical to be explicit about the environment that you're providing (re ownership of the posted content) and then let people decide whether to participate or not. One way to make money is to charge people who are paying more for the same advertising elsewhere...the future of marketing may be customers participating in public discussions to get messages to companies.

Chris Tolles, VP of Marketing for Topix.net -- Citizen journalism is the ability of the people to talk back to the news, which is what traditional news editors don't want them to do.....you have to trust the community not to be evil all the time. He cited an example -- during the Mohammed cartoon scandal, they got 50,000 comments, but the negativity was defused largely by adding to each post the requirement of including the name of the town where they were from, which seemed to work because people didn't want to bring disgrace on their town.....In terms of making money, it's critical to listen to the people in the community, not because it's the "right" thing to do, but because it's smart to do so.

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 11:45 AM | 1 Comment

Brands Are What You Do -- Lenovo's Story

At the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference, Deepak Advani, SVP and CMO of Lenovo, made the fundamental but oft-ignored point that brands are what you do, not what you say. Describing Lenovo's brand-building efforts at the Innovative Marketing Conference, Deepak reminded the audience that delivering on the promise is more important than communicating the promise. Along with all the marketing communications, his effort highlights product innovation (e.g., with the Thinkpad as core product), global service and support, and giving back to the larger community.

On the latter point, Deepak described Lenovo's initiatives to work with Microsoft on combatting software piracy in China (most Thinkpads now ship in China with official versions of Windows, compared with a small fraction just a few years ago), funding the micro-financing group Opportunity International to support economic development, and helping found and support Computers for Kids, which organizes "Geek-a-Thons" to build and donate PCs to schools in the U.S.

All good stuff, and a useful corrective for those who still concentrate on the logo, tagline, elevator speech, and advertising approach to brand building. It's not that Lenovo is ignoring the the marcom piece; they're doing a nice job there with an integrated approach -- and actually putting relatively more emphasis, wisely, I think, in things like viral marketing and PR versus traditional advertising.

One sour note, though: one of the more "clever" viral initiatives, creating an allegedly independent site with "smuggled videotapes" from the Lenovo research lab, definitely fails the smell test. It's a cool little site, and apparently generated great traffic, but this sort of manipulative technique is only negative in the longer run.

Posted by Rob Leavitt at 11:30 AM | Add Comment

David Sutherland Interview: The Role of Marketing in the Innovation Process

From the CMO Summit at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference in New York, produced by Corante and Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership:

David Sutherland, PhD, Founder and Managing Director USA of Launch Institute, talks about models for innovation in creating successful new products and services; the role of marketing in the innovation process; the organizational characteristics for co-creation.

Download the podcast (MP3, 8Mb, 18:45)

Posted by Neville Hobson at 11:24 AM | Add Comment

Co-creation in Action

Our current panel on consumer generated content at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference is really hitting home the message of co-creation from yesterday’s discussion. The first two panelists Chris Tolles from Topix.net and John Hiler of Xanga.com have both discussed how users began doing things that were different to the original "intent" or focus of their businesses and how they adapted their capabilities to better serve the interests of their users -- a clear case of co-creation.

Posted by Paul Gladen at 11:03 AM | Add Comment

Building Trust with Customers

From a panel discussion on new marketing techniques (search, buzz, mobile, etc.) at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference:

People are going to get upset about tricks...how you create the trust will be a big deal. It's not about perfect execution, but about not tricking customers. What are the tools that will help us build trust?

Example: Camp Jeep -- a three-day festival held around the country that people pay to go to where Jeep teaches people how to go off-roading, how to be eco-friendly. (Max Lenderman, GMR Marketing)

As long as the fulfillment comes through, I think you build the trust. (Heidi Lehman, Third Screen Media)

The worst thing you can do is pretend to listen. If you're not going to listen, don't tell people you're giong to do it. You don't have to be perfect but you have to do what you say you will. (Diane Hessan, Communispace)

One builds trust over time, between people, and between people and the brand. Often you're making a promise and if you don't keep the promise you erode trust. If you keep it you build trust. Set expectations and meet them. (Kevin Lee, Did-It.com)

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 10:37 AM | Add Comment

Innovation = Creating Things Your Customers Will Value

Yesterday during the "attention scarcity" discussion at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference, the idea of customer value came up -- in that case, in the context of exchanging customers' attention for something you provide that's of value to them. In today's panel discussion on "Models for Innovation: Creating New Products and Services That Work" this notion came up again. Panelists, especially Anthony Ulwick and my colleague Gwen Ishmael -- were talking about *how* to get to customers' unmet needs (now that everyone seems to understand that this is what underlies successful innovation). Gwen talked about talking with customers to discover their unarticulated needs. Ulwick talked about talking to customers about what jobs they need doing and how they measure the value of getting those things done. To me, this notion of the value customers attach to getting things done *equals* unarticulated need.

In any case, both of these panelists agreed that talking to customers about solutions doesn't get you to any of what you need to hear -- the underserved needs and values of the customers. It's not such a big leap to come up with a solution that gets at these needs and/or jobs -- the leap is innovating a solution that your customers will value and therefore, adopt.

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 10:10 AM | 1 Comment

Eric Mankin Interview: The Degrees of Making Co-creation Work

From the CMO Summit at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference in New York, produced by Corante and Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership:

Eric Mankin, PhD, Executive Director of Babson Executive Education, defines the concept of co-creation, a core theme of the CMO Summit; explains the difference between co-creation and co-invention; and outlines the three types of products and services that are best suited for co-creation and the degrees to which co-creation could actually work.

Download the podcast (MP3, 6Mb, 13:35)

Posted by Neville Hobson at 9:54 AM | Add Comment

Putting Innovation into Marketing

"Every business should devote 10% of their marketing spend to experimenting." -- Diane Hessan, President & CEO, Communispace at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference.

Posted by Paul Gladen at 9:41 AM | Add Comment

Where Does Design "Live" in a Company?

Day two of the Corante Innovative Marketing Conference was kicked off by a talk from Deepak Advani, SVP and CMO of Lenovo. Advani was talking about how innovation works on a practical basis at Lenovo. As part of his answer came this tidbit -- at Lenovo, the designers report to Advani (marketing), not engineering. Advani's point is that if design reports to engineering you get the next turn of the widget, essentially (paraphrasing here!). If design reports to marketing you get decisions made in the design and product sphere that are more representative of the brand and its strategy.

This makes some sense given what we were talking about yesterday -- that marketing, or the strategy for reaching out to customers, should be followed through on as consistently as possible, even (especially) in product design.

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 8:53 AM | 1 Comment

Innovation That Matters

A new day at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference at the Columbia Business School, presented by Corante and the Center on Global Brand Leadership.

Our first session is a presentation by Deepak Advani CMO of Lenovo. Encouragingly in talking about the Lenovo brand and marketing Deepak has emphasized a fundamental focus on the product i.e. delivering the brand promise is a far greater priority than communicating the brand promise. Deepak talks about “innovation that matters” making the ThinkPad better by investing in meaningful innovation and design – high quality and reliability as well as emphasizing customer service as a differentiator. These are themes that are consistent with our discussion yesterday about developing customer centric products and services.

An interesting aside – Lenovo plans to deliver executive seminars and insights in conjunction with business schools and business media that help other executives understand how Lenovo manages a global multi-cultural business. The rationale is to use these activities to build awareness of the Lenovo brand – an innovative approach to “guerilla marketing” to the business sector.

Posted by Paul Gladen at 8:48 AM | Add Comment

June 8, 2006

So What Business Are You In?

John Hagel had a great riff at the Innovative Marketing Conference today on companies not understanding -- or deciding -- what business they're really in. According to Hagel, there are three fundamental types of business:

- Infrastructure management: companies that do routine, high volume tasks, such as manufacturing, transportation, call centers, etc.

- Product innovation and commercialization: companies that focus on developing great new products and services

- Customer relationships: companies that based on serving specific customers' needs.

Hmm...but don't many companies do all three, or at least two of three? Yes they do, but according to Hagel that's a problem. It's hard to do more than one of them well, he said, because they each require different cultures, economics, and skills. All three can be profitable, but only if they are managed as a focused business, and companies that try to do more than one typically underperform because they fail to see the inherent internal conflicts.

So what business are you in?

Posted by Rob Leavitt at 11:27 PM | 3 Comments

The CEO Should Be a CMO

That was the end point of the heated discussion referred to below. I'm not sure everyone agreed with it, although one person said "That would be nirvana."

But if marketing is about demand (either driving latent demand or creating it out of thin air), and serving as the entry point in the corporation for the customer co-creation and conversation, why *not* have the CEO be CMO?

UPDATE: In his closing remarks, Columbia's Bernd Schmitt characterized the heated discussion as like Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" -- either everyone at the company should be a marketer, or no one but the CEO should!

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 4:40 PM | Add Comment

Marketing is Broken - Here are the Repair Tools

A stimulating day which included an animated discussion led by David Weinberger about what's broken in marketing. Plenty seemed to be the consensus, but plentiful also were the ideas about how to fix it. There was a clear consensus that the ideas of social currency and co-creation offer opportunity to re-orient marketing - but that underpinning it all is TRUST.

Posted by Paul Gladen at 4:37 PM | 2 Comments

Three Keys to Co-creation

Co-creation was a big topic at today's Innovative Marketing Conference, and David Sutherland of the Launch Institute provided a useful framework for thinking about how and where to involve customers (and others) in the offer development process. The premise, of course, is that collaborative development sparks creativity, ensures a closer fit with customer wants and needs, and improves the success rate for new offers.

According to Sutherland, there are three common platforms to developing new products and services within an organization: Insight into new opportunities, Creativity in putting together compelling offers to meet those opportunities, and Value Capture to bring those offers to market in a profitable way. In thinking about co-creation, the issue is how best to engage with customers, partners, and potentially even competitors in each platform.

Insight is the easiest. Most companies work directly with customers and others to assess new opportunities, although they usually can improve the process. Conference participants put a lot of stock in social anthropology and ethnography as a way to get deeper insight compared with typical survey research and focus groups.

Creativity gets a bit tougher. Tech companies actually co-create customized solutions with individual customers every day, but moving from those one-offs in the field to a more systematic approach to broader offer development is still more theory than practice. As Sutherland noted, it's really hard for companies to get past their product-based approach which runs counter to the more collaborative, start-with-the-problem ideal of co-creation.

Value Capture can be the toughest. When customers and others are literally present at the creation, figuring out intellectual property rights, revenue sharing, and other shared concerns can create all sorts of problems -- unless it is clear from the beginning that the lead organization retains all ownership.

Not surprisingly, conference participants tended to fall back to the Insight phase, stressing all the great listening initiatives to help figure out the requirements for a better mousetrap. It's not really co-creation in the fullest sense, but may at least be a decent step forward.

Posted by Rob Leavitt at 3:19 PM | 2 Comments

Something We Can Learn about Marketing from Evangelists

No, not customer evangelists....Christian evangelists. As an example of how to scale customer-centric marketing, John Hagan offered a recent Malcolm Glawell article on Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church in California and author of The Purpose-Driven Life. Here's a link to Gladwell's article. The point of the comparison is this -- though Saddleback Church is very large (20,000 members, more or less), the church is divided into small groups according to interests. For example, a group of bikers are bonded around their motorcycles. This is not uncommon in very large churches and in fact has been pointed to a number of times by churches and denominations as exactly the way the Christian church got started -- people gathering together according to affiliation by interest, proximity, relation, etc., and worshipping together in homes.

Disclaimers on all levels: I read Gladwell's article when it came out and loved it; I read Warren's book about a year after it became a big sensation and didn't like it all that much; and I myself participate in a small interest-focused group as part of my 3000-member Methodist church (the group's interest is acoustic and folk music of all kinds, both playing it and listening to it live).

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 3:16 PM | 2 Comments

Are You Paying Attention

John Hagel has lead us in a very thought provoking discussion on the issue of attention scarcity. Our group drew out some key aspects of attention that need to be worked through. First was the idea that attention and permission are interlinked and permission is a function of context as well as trust (and privacy). So the timing, extent, depth of my attention to my financial advisor is very different to the attention I may be willing to provide to my cable company. So if you want to increase the level of attention you receive from current and prospective customers you must create capabilities, situations and scenarios that are consistent with the context, needs and expectations of the customer – otherwise you risk “assaulting the customer” at inappropriate times and in inappropriate ways.

Another area we discussed was the use of tools to help manage attention – for example using RSS to channel and manage those information sources that we are willing to give our attention to. John Hagel also provided the example of CISCO which provides diagnostic tools that help customers better identify their needs and help focus the conversation.

Posted by Paul Gladen at 3:06 PM | Add Comment

Discussion on Attention Scarcity

Permission vs attention -- how do those things work together? Sometimes a brand have my attention but I don't want to give you permission.

Contextual -- if my mind's on food, I'm not interested in hearing about a car. And some feel they are already assaulted enough, that they want to protect their privacy.

John Hagel says the gap is in creating value for the customer out of all the information companies gather from customers. Companies should think in terms of value exchanges.....how can you exchange trust for value over time?

How can a company become a trusted advisor? According to John Hagel, the answer is helpfulness. Offer to be helpful, move beyond intention. Genuinely offer to help people use your product, and offer to help them navigate the context, find what and who wlese could be helpful to them. A comment -- "the answer to 'how' is 'yes' "....we all know how to get someone's attention, it's not rocket science, but someone at the company needs to take a risk and do something different.

An example brought up was the book Ambient Findability by Peter Morville -- increasingly, findability is a key dimension of competition....online media is great, but how do they find you...how do you become findable in all of the contexts where people aren't really looking for you but it's relevant to them to find you there?

Continue reading "Discussion on Attention Scarcity"

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 2:50 PM | 1 Comment

Bernd Schmitt Interview: Is the Message Getting Through to Marketers?

From the CMO Summit at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference in New York, produced by Corante and Columbia Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership.

Prof. Bernd Schmitt, PhD, Executive Director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership, talks about the topics being addressed at the conference; about branding and innovation in marketing, developments in marketing, brand ownership, advancing brands through conversation, crazy ideas and measurement metrics, and what relationships customers want.

Download the podcast (MP3, 5.6Mb, 14:00)

Posted by Neville Hobson at 2:34 PM | Add Comment

Johnnie Moore on Co-Creation

Conversation's intense so blogging's light but for a taste tune in to Johnnie Moore's blog where he follows up a point he made during the wrap-up for the co-creation session: "We sometimes talk about co-creation in marketing as if it is something that some folks are doing and some are not. That's fine, but I think the truth is that as human beings we are co-creating the whole time, but maybe not noticing..."

And also: "What if organisations took the time to simply attend to what is being co-created in all their relationships. so perhaps we can avoid just using co-creation as another stick to beat ourselves with."

For a growing pool of photos of today's sessions see Flickr, under the tag "imc2006".

Posted by Hylton Joliffe at 1:34 PM | Add Comment

John Hagel on Attention Scarcity and its Effect on Marketing

Live from the Corante Innovative Marketing Conference -- John Hagel set the challenge for the second round of table discussions.

In short, the challenge he posed is: The new scarcity = attention; there has been a profound shift in busienss economics from shelf space as the key scarce resource to people's time and attention and the key scarce resource.

So what does this do to/for (because there's opportunity as well as challenge) to branding, marketing, metrics?

According to John, marketing was formerly based on the three I's -- Intercept, isolate, inhibit -- and instead it should be based on the three A's: attract, assist (develop understandingn of context both pre and post purchase); affiliate (mobilize people to help deliver value)

Continue reading "John Hagel on Attention Scarcity and its Effect on Marketing"

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 12:48 PM | 13 Comments

Russ Klein Interview: Explaining Social Currency

The first podcast interview by FIR's Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz from the CMO Summit at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference.

Opening keynote speaker Russ Klein, EVP and CMO of Burger King Corporation, expands on a theme he introduced called "social currency" - an evolution of word-of-mouth into a real-time and ongoing collective conversation in the marketplace.

Download the podcast (MP3, 9Mb, 21:38).

Posted by Neville Hobson at 11:10 AM | 1 Comment

Challenges of Co-creation, Within Organizations and Outside Organizations

From the Corante Innovative Marketing conference: We've just finished listening to a terrific presentation bby Burger King CMO Russ Klein (about which more later). We broke into groups to discuss co-creation....my group essentially raised a lot of challenges, such as:

-- How can you navigate co-creation in a culture where the customer experience is "owned" by more than one group? The person who raised this question called marketing departments the "most guilty" of this, of feeling as though they are the only ones who can truly understand customers and should own all customer co-creation initiatives.

-- It seems to our group as though there are two ways to *do* customer co-creation. One would be to proactively seek customer input and ideas through specific projects and initiatives. The other would be to watch your customers' behavior, by any means you already are connected with them, and react to it.

Continue reading "Challenges of Co-creation, Within Organizations and Outside Organizations"

Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan at 11:07 AM | Add Comment

Co-Creation

Blogging live from the Corante Marketing Innovation Conference, which is being held in conjunction with Columbia University Business School's Center on Global Brand Leadership, where we've been discussing Co-Creation. In our breakout discussion group led by John Winsor we have co-created this blog entry to summarise our discussion. Our conversation covered a range of different issues and dimensions including:

- The concept of holistic co-creation
- Opensource and Linux as the original cocreation model
- Using "jams" (internally and externally) to drive cocreation - and ensuring these are focused on positive issues
- Realizing that while cocreation is mostly thought of as creation with customers, many businesses often have untapped opportunities to cocreate internally
- Continuing the theme of expanding the participation of cocreation, opportunity exists to work with business partners and providers of complementary products and services to build a cocreation network
- the importance of nurturing community - taking baby steps and not getting frustrated early on, being willing to "fail fast and move on" and having a thick skin
- considering the consequences of not co-creating - i.e. your customers will cocreate with your competitors (and your employees may move to businesses that enable them to cocreate with customers)
- by developing the community over time you will learn what what customers truly value and can align your pricing to those values (rather than your internal cost structure).

Feel free to co-create with us by adding your ideas and comments about the success factors for co-creation

Posted by Paul Gladen at 10:36 AM | 2 Comments

Marketing BlogJam Begins!

Is it live, or is it Memorex?... Today, marketing to consumers is sometimes both, and sometimes neither -- and certainly nothing like your father's marketing environment. Top issues facing marketers will be addressed live on-stage at Columbia Business School today and tomorrow at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference. In tandem, FC Now will host a concurrent Marketing Blogjam here, featuring bloggers posting live from the event.

Click here to learn more about the conference, which is sponsored by Corante and the Center on Global Brand Leadership of Columbia Business School.

And come back to FC Now throughout the day for updates in the Marketing BlogJam.

Posted by fastcompany.com editors at 6:24 AM | 3 Comments

May 25, 2006

Marketing BlogJam Update

Just a reminder that FC Now will host a Marketing BlogJam in two weeks, led by several bloggers from Corante. They'll be covering the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference presented by blog site Corante and the Center on Global Brand Leadership of Columbia Business School.

fastcompany.com readers can attend the conference, too, at a discounted price. Click