1. The future of marketing is collaborative
2. The future of marketing is generous
3. The future of marketing is experimental
4. The future of marketing is helpful
5. The future of marketing is playful
6. The future of marketing is personal
7. The future of marketing is honest
8. The future of marketing is participatory

Via Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog.

What People Trust on the Internet (Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey April 2009)

I was reading earlier today a post written by Seth Godin about the CPM gap and how advertisers are pushing for interruption advertising (through display advertising, mainly), when they should be aiming for building online communities in which advertising is integrated with the needs and wants of those communities, where “attendance is a choice [made] by the consumer” and not an “in your face” overlayer.

Somehow in sync with this idea, Ionut Oprea just published on his blog the forms of advertising in which consumers trust “somewhat” or “completely,” based on a Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey from April 2009.

The study shows clearly that the CPM league is actually trailing at the bottom of the list, with consumer trust level running in the 30-40% range. If we look at the top tier, recommendations, consumer opinions, brand websites, editorial content and brand sponsorships are still the top factors that influence consumers’ trust in advertising.

It’s funny thus how clients still ask for display advertising (considering online advertising options) and then are disappointed by the poor results generated when instead, advertising clients should focus on engaging their customers inside their communities. And ironically, even though online advertising is still a minor fraction of total advertising budgets, two out of top three customers information and trust sources are online.

Update: More info about the Nielsen study on their blog.

F5WebCorp - Digi Cafe

We’re deep within a global economical crisis in which one of the hardest hit industries is the auto industry, probably also because it is highly dependent on financial instruments because of its highly priced products. Despite the crisis, or maybe because of it, there are reasons to look at this industry and see how the online industry can help it, directly or indirectly. In the west, the online is quite a powerful sales channel for automotive products and services, while in CEE we’re still talking about a very incipient market.

Tonight, at Digi Cafe, regional and local online players that successfully work with the automotive industry will tackle the issue of selling automotive products and services online. If you have an interest in this combination of industries, make sure you will be there, because it’s free and it will most probably be an informative and useful experience.

Digi Cafe 3 - Speakers

]]> http://www.secareanu.ro/2009/05/28/digicafe-online-marketing-in-the-auto-industry/feed/ 0 http://www.secareanu.ro/2008/12/29/apple-going-mainstream/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=apple-going-mainstream http://www.secareanu.ro/2008/12/29/apple-going-mainstream/#comments Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:01:55 +0000 Daniel http://www.secareanu.ro/?p=401

Apple Logo (source: Wikipedia)

We probably all remember the times when owning an Apple device was something cool that we were dreaming of with a passion (some still do, and I find myself among this last category since I do not own any Apple device, but I desire a few of them). Well, it seems that being an Apple lover is not so hip anymore, simply because Apple developed so much in the past few years that it became mainstream.

The NextWeb mentioned today a Wired article that offered a few reasons why Apple is not so exquisite anymore simply because you can now find it almost everywhere you go.

Apple is big in Hollywood and this is pretty obvious in the nice product placement in Wall-E. However, this is no big surprise, since Steve Jobs was the CEO of Pixar. Apple is also skipping MacWorld because evangelizing is not needed anymore. Apple’s marketing machine has pretty much achieved its goal turning the brand into a lovemark.

Steve Jobs will no longer be the MC of the Apple keynotes at MacWorld, being substituted by one of his senior VPs (rumors say that this is mainly because of his health, but they also say that MacWorld is no longer so important to require Jobs’ presence either). Because it can, Apple is giving up on FireWire, the cool data transfer technology it invented and pushed onto the market, simply because USB is more ubiquitous, and thus, more mainstream.

Apple has become the laughing stock of the Simpsons, showing us that it’s culture is not so cult anymore, as it caught the attention of the general public. Even Obama uses Apple and has used Apple technology in his US Presidential campaign. Moreover, Wallmart is selling the iPhone in its retail chain, thus bringing the world’s coolest and most exclusive smartphone at the fingertip of the masses.

Sorry Apple user, you’re just a plain boring sheep now (source: thenextweb.com)

Ultimately, since Apple products are so loved, Digg.com has almost every day an Apple story on its top technology headlines page. Some people say that bloggers have even generated more than $400 million worth of free advertising for Apple. What more could you wish if you were Apple? Would you wish to go back to the small group of loyal customers you had 10 years ago?

Fortunately, Romania is still far away from becoming a mainstream Apple culture and thus you are still cool and hip if you own an Apple device. However, this won’t last for too long, since we, as a nation, seem to have the strong tendency to copy the Western world, especially the Americans.

The question for the future is: How would Apple position itself in the mainstream economy? Would cool still be its primary emotional hook on its customers? Would Apple be forced to become more competitive on the functional attributes of its products? How would Apple shepherd its fans if coolness would not be a differentiator anymore? God knows… or maybe Steve Jobs .

As Orlando mentioned in his post, in the Spring of 2007, Netbridge Investments (branded NetBridge at that moment) split its business in two, the original company keeping the online advertising business (Boom Online Advertising Agency), while a new company, Netbridge Development, took over the online publishing and services projects. Rumors said that the split was caused by top management conflicts rather than a strategic decision, since there could have been quite some synergies between the two parts of the business.

A year and a half later, the history repeats itself. Netbridge Development splits its projects again, keeping this time the online content publishing side in the mother company (auto.ro, animale.ro, hit.ro, bloombiz.ro, etc), while spinning off the online services side (okazii.ro, trafic.ro, myjob.ro, hr-romania.ro, etc) into a new company, Netbridge Services. I will refrain from saying what were the reasons for this move, but you can probably figure it out by yourself.

While in a sense I can see a business reason why one would split the original company in the three different parts that exist now, I can not stop thinking about the loss of synergies caused by this separation and what common projects could have been run better. However, NetBridge is now history and if you want to know more about the active projects of each of the now three Netbridge companies, check their website at www.netbridge.ro.

International Forum for Digital Content 2008 - Madrid, Spain

This past weekend I was in a team building together with the New Media Division of Realitatea-Catavencu Group and I presented to my colleagues some of the ideas from FICOD2008. I will share with you some of these ideas as well, since I think that they’re important for the future development of the online industry in Romania.

I will list the ideas here in no particularly logical order (just the order I jotted them down in my notebook) and I will not go into details explaining them (I leave you to perform this exercise). The ideas came from the main speakers at FICOD2008: Chris Anderson, Kevin Roberts, Gerd Leonhard, Jaqueline Hernandez, Nikesh Arora and Adam Daum.

• Niches become more interesting online and thus you can satisfy minority taste, which makes niches become mainstream
• Lower cost of digital distribution allows you to offer more content
• A link is a vote/recommendation -> the ultimate word of mouth promotion -> influence
• The amateurs make it big on the web because they can
• Online news can became really regional, reaching even the remotest locations – the idea is that news that are close to us are more interesting/important for us than events happening thousand miles away -> quality content is about relevance
• Mass customization -> the long tail
• We live in the screen age and all screens should be interactive (TV, PC, Mobile)
• We have to move from classic TV to a platform agnostic entity -> touch all the customer’s screens
• TAMI -> Total Audience Monitoring Index (TV, mobile, Internet, cable, radio, outdoor, etc)
• Some priorities: understand the customer, be everywhere, be global, connect with passion points, be aspirational
• Ask consumers for feedback
• Communication is all about touchpoints (forget ATL & BTL)
• The only constant in life is change (Asimov), the most adaptable ones survive, not the strongest/smartest (Darwin)
• Digital world – from information to attraction (express emotions)
• The consumer is the boss now
• The emotional connectivity will make the difference
• Rational leads to conclusions (meetings), while emotional leads to action (buy, do)
• Multimedia is all about sight, sound and motion
• Simple stories are at the basis of today’s consumer experience (people, emotions, creativity, truth, authenticity, etc)
• Online industry defined by rapid change: fail fast, learn fast and move fast – execute fast and stay focused
• Execute the paradox: invest and cut costs at the same time by executing efficiently and being creative and innovative
• Information -> Emotion
• Knowledge -> Attraction
• Inspire the consumer to act, hope and dream
• Consumers don’t want to be marketed at, but connected to
• Other priorities: dream big, aspire for lovemarks, learn from TV, inspire with a paradox, share the love
• Consumers are now co-partners in your business
• You need to figure out how you want them to think, feel and act
• Behavioral targetting -> serve ads to users, not content
• Customer experience is king
• Social networks -> generate content
• Publishing sites -> generate revenues
• Neet to be content centric, not product centric
• Attention/audience -> primary mean of making money
• A world of no permission is a world of no money
• It’s not about emerging technologies, but about emerging cultural practices
• Command & control should become coordinate & cultivate

… and a quote I learned from one of my marketing professors that summarizes the ideas above:

“Tell them and they will forget. Show them and they will remember. Involve them and they will understand. (ancient Chinese proverb)

NetCamp 2008

NetCamp 2008 took place today as an online business development and entrepreneurship event organized by Evensys, the company ran by Cristian Manafu. The program and the speakers were highly interesting based on the way they were marketed on the event website, but the presentations themselves during the event were a bit disappointing.

I realized most of the people in the Romanian online industry (and even some from outside our borders) are not able or do not know how to create powerful and effective presentations that keep the audience not just awake, but hooked to the topic of the presentation. People don’t know how they can pass across a few and simple key concepts and a lot of them do not have good presentation skills. One of the notable exceptions to this rule seems to be Dragos Manac.

For those who feel that they fell into the cathegory described above, please see the following sources that will most surely help you improve a lot, both your presentations, as well as your presentation skills:

• Seth Godin – Really Bad Powerpoint
• Seth Godin – Nine Steps to Powerpoint Magic

The idea is that you have to avoid flooding your audience with a lot of information, because the audience’s attention is limited and it will only remember a few simple concepts from your slides that are filled with walls of text. On top of it, reading your slides (which happens mostly when you have a lot of information there that you cannot remember easily) turns off most of the audiences, especially since it often makes you turn your back to it (if you are moving somewhere below or in front of your presentation screen and you turn around to look at it).

Other than this major issue that I felt I needed to touch upon, NetCamp 2008 was a pretty interesting event from which I jotted down quite a couple of ideas, not necessarily extremely new, but interesting enough that I wanted to remember them and revisit them when thinking about the online projects I am currently involved in. Here is a really short list of the ideas I’ve wrote down for myself (I watched the develop workshop track):

• Web 1.0 = Control; Web 2.0 = Loss of Control;
• Five web 2.0 concepts – don’t be a dictator, but a majority… say no to censorship… don’t bore your users… don’t trick your users… don’t underestimate web 2.0 potential;
• Twitter could be an interesting application for citizen journalism;
• Developing and online project = writing a business plan (plan to fund, develop and implement) with targets, deadlines and milestones;

If I were to compare FICOD2008 with NetCamp 2008, I can safely say that the Western Europe is far ahead of us in terms of their ideology and their implementation of digital content, most probably at all levels. There are, however, a lot of good and successful online ideas working out on the Romanian online market as well, such as eOK.ro or Trilulilu.ro, for example. But the ideas presented at the NetStartUp, at the end of NetCamp, dissapointed me greatly, because it proved to me that most of the Romanian online entrepreneurs have no idea how to sell themsevels and their ideas (albeit interesting, most of them) to potential investors.

However, if you were to ask the marketing centric professionals, most of them will probably tell you that marketing is actually business. If you think about a business in terms of the wholistic marketing approach, everything a business does is actually marketing. From the CEO devising the company strategy to the doorman welcoming the guests in the company headquarters, every action contributes to that company’s ability to sell more, for more money, to more people, more often and more efficiently (the exponential definition of marketing).

Defining the focus of my blog on both Strategic Marketing and Business Development allows me to touch upon subjects that explore, but are not limited to, coaching, education, marketing, business development or entrepreneurship. In a sense, I have been already doing this in the subjects that I’ve touched upon on my blog, but this minor declared editorial change is simply legitimizing it.

In the end, since the only constant in life is change (as Einstein once said), our blogs, like ourselves, are social creatures constantly changing and evolving as needs, wants, desires, priorities or the personal and professional context dictate us.

The TV set in the hotel room has moved beyond the basic TV that we’re used to handle everyday at home, at work or even in a hotel room, at least in Romania. The Madrid hotel TV is a truly interactive WebTV, controlled not only by a remote that acts as a mouse, but also by a keyboard that allows you to actually surf the web on your TV screen. In terms of digital content, the WebTV offers regular TV channels to watch (kind of a limited offer, just some Spanish, German channels and CNN), as well as pay per view TV channels (from business to sports and even adult channels) and special shows and channels that you can play, pause, rewind/fast-forward and even record.

While at FICOD2008 people are looking at the future of digital content, while also experiencing it in their everyday life, I believe that we should also move beyond just discussing future business opportunities in the digital media and start putting it to work because the technology is here already, we just need to educate the market to accept it, adopt it and pay for it.

Congratulations Barack Obama! Congratulations America!