marketing

We are creating a story of how people REALLY see marketing – not in words, but in pictures!

I’ve been asked to give a presentation entitled Marketing for a public presentation on the 25th of March at Chapter, in Cardiff. So, I want to build a presentation about how YOU see marketing? Not how I see it.

This presentation is not a usual academic lecture about research, case studies, or the state of Business Schools or higher Education in the UK (How Boring!!). This is far more interesting. It is for the first ever Pecha Kucha Night in Cardiff … so I want to do something a little different. 

Pecha Kucha is Japanese for ‘chit chat’ … and occurring in over 270 cities world wide Pecha Kucha Nights I am told are informal and fun gatherings. It is where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts, holiday snaps – just about anything really, in the PechaKucha 20×20 format – a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds.

So my idea … “If a picture says 1000 words – how do you see Marketing?”

I want to build a presentation about how YOU see marketing? Not how I see it. Be it student, creative, marketer, web designer, consultant, statistician, a dad, a mum, a teacher, nurse, a secretary, a doctor, a politician, a truck driver … whomever you are, what ever you do, where ever you live – ‘How do you see marketing?’

TO PARTICIPATE:

1. Think about marketing – what do you visualise? What do you think of? Who do you think of?
2. Take a picture, draw it, find it and email it to me at info@caseinsights.com or tweet it using the #mktgpic … by Friday 12th of March.
3. There are two categories: student and non-student.
   a) For non-student include: Your name, your profession/job, and a maximum of 300 words to describe the picture in your own words. I don’t want to use my words.
   b) For student entries, include: Your student number, university and university email address.
4. From those received, 20 images will be selected to include in the presentation for the first ever Pecha Kucha Night in Cardiff. The presentation will also be available online.

All the images received will also be uploaded and publish on Flickr with their descriptions for everyone to ponder and consider. To keep this real, I’d like to include all contributor professions (e.g., student, lawyer) with the images on Flickr.

It would be great to see how the rest of the world see’s marketing. So send me your picture and description today to help create a visual story of Marketing.

Big smiles

Kelly

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Me Tarzan – You Jane!

Can you imagine the impact on sales if we treated our customers like this? Well maybe in some ways we do, but our customers haven’t known any better! But that is changing, and changing quickly.

One of the biggest things we are seeing electronic technologies having an impact on in marketing is not just how we do marketing. Electronic technologies are changing the mindset behind how we view marketing, talk about marketing and the roles of who is involved in marketing.

Them & Us = Mass Marketing

Has marketing ever been a linear process? Do we as human beings actually interact with each other in a linear way? Now time is linear, and because we organise processes usually by time, many of our working processes are linear. But in fact we live and work in social networks.

If we think back to the agarian age, before the inception of mass machines of the industrial era, we lived and shared goods in social networks of close geographical proximity. Bartering and developing strong-tie bonds to facilitate the exchange of goods.

But as large scale machinery was introduced, enabling standardisation in production and broadcast media was invented to reach the mass audience with a single message, so too did the mindset of marketing involving the formalisation of linear marketing processes and strategies to market to the masses evolve.

Born was the concept of sales processes and mass strategic marketing. These are inherently linear one-way processes in which organisations (them) – be it marketers, sales teams, advertisers or account managers, develop strategies and programs to sell and advertise to segments of consumers, customers, buyers (us).

But inherently in mindset there is a divide, a physical and psyhcological divide between organisation and community. It’s a them & us mindset, in which the community is something marketed and sold to! They are not participatory, but passive.

Even the language – customer, consumer, user – denotes a psychological position in the mindsets of marketers. ‘You are inherently someone who responds, purchases, consumes, or buys on behalf of an entity’. You should feel happy I’ve identified you as a attractive segment I’m going to market to.

I can see the relationship to Tarzan and Jane now - Me provider – You Customer!

With the social web this mindset is evolving and tomorrow’s marketers especially, are seeing the world differently. They didn’t grow up in a time of mass mechanical machines but in one of social digital networks.

Me + We = Social Marketing

With recent developments in digital social web services – be it tools, technologies, channels, or platforms – we are starting to see changes in how marketing is viewed, spoken about and the role of people within it!

Marketing is far more social today than it ever has been. By social I don’t mean ‘socially responsible’, I mean as part of a wider social network or community, not apart or distant from it.

Marketing projects are increasingly organised less and less in silos – such as advertising, PR, sales, distribution – and more fragmentated involving cross-functional teams across social networks. We are recognising the need for very differing skills in collaboration – be it in IT, usability, system design.

Electronic tools, technologies and channels are the enactors in this evolution, facilitating the rise in the ‘I’ generation (me), where my role in the media, in the message, in the marketing process I as an individual can define.

These choices are not just up to marketers, but to customers, consumers, buyers, employees etc to choose their role and participation in the marketing process. We also don’t want to be seen as a segment or number, but a person!

As a result marketing is being forced to focus more on people (me) and the social network, the community they are part of (we) and listen and interact within this community. Not just sit outside it, viewing the community as something we can break up to target or reach.

So perhaps marketing is moving out of the jungle … evolving from a mindset of them & us to one of Me + We!

I wonder who amongst us in this profession will survive? As Charles Darwin once wrote:

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.

« CASE Insights: Exploring Marketing’s Evolution Through Technology »

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The core distinguishing character of the social web to more linear electronic resource such as TV, Radio, Print and even Web 1.0, is the degree of involvement the user plays in generating and sharing content than ever before. This is why we love it! But do they actually control their content?

It might be user-generated, but is it really user controlled?

Let’s say our organisation decides to use social technologies in their marketing activities or build a social network where our customers, consumers and stakeholders can share and interact. Where a dialogue and conversation can evolve. Where we as a company we can engage with the community within which we coexist. Sounds great!

But as a user or participant in this community, can I really choose how that content is displayed? To whom it is shared? and What the very nature of that content is? Or does someone else control this, for what ever purpose, or aim or objective they have?

This is very much dependent on the nature of the properties of an electronic resource – the technical, structural and experiential properties. And these properties are contingent on who designs, builds and develops it!

Not the user who might use it. Despite the user being the most important node for network sustainability. After all they do create the content.

Properties of Electronic Resources

Electronic resources such as the social web comprise technical properties (hardwired, mechanical elements) that enable structural properties of a resource, such as how interactive it is how vividness etc. This in turn influences the experiential properties – user perceptions and experiences such as ease of use and utility.

Source: Page (2009)

For example, if I design the functionality of a system or network in a certain way (the technical properties), I can influence the degree of control a user has over what they can do with the system or information in the system. This is known as a structural property called ‘pacing’.

Pacing can varying in degree from being controlled by the designer/marketer. We call this externally paced. With more control being given to the user, thus is considered more of an internally paced system.

For many broadcast delivery systems such as television, these are external pacing where the transfer speed and the information sequence is controlled by the advertiser and network- with minimal influence by the receiver of the information (audience).

Turn on your television, select a channel—how much control do you have over the order in which you receive the information and the speed at which you receive it? Compare this to watching a rental video or a DVD. With print media, users have a larger degree of freedom of choice of the order and time allocated to the information, which is why print media are regarded as more internally paced than broadcast media.

User Control and The Web – Who is Pulling the Strings?

Although the concept of information/media control has been around since the 1960′s the development of computer and network-based communication technologies like the Internet and Web has increased its relevance.

With resources like database technology upon which Google and Amazon are based, users have a larger degree of control over the order in which they access information and the amount of time they take to process it.

The social web on the other hand, has an increased capability to enable both external and internal pacing with a common example being the difference between ‘user generation & customization’ (internally paced) and ‘system mediation and personalisation’ (externally paced).

Let’s look at Myspace and Facebook. Myspace is designed to enable more user customisation, not just in content display and sharing, but also in design and functionality, with a lesser degree of system mediation. Facebook in comparison, adheres to more terms and conditions of the use of their network, limiting user control in functionality and design, but enabling it in content generation and sharing.

If I don’t like either of these offerings and their control over my content, I can create my own … a blog through WordPress, a wiki through PBWorks, a social network through Ning and define my own ideas of who controls both the system and it’s content … or as is technically possible through these systems.

So I suppose the closing questions of this blog post are:

• As a participant/user I need to consider who inherently has control over the content I generate? The designer, system developer, the management or marketer … they can add, remove, publicise or ban my content at the click of a button.
• As a designer, developer, management or marketer … how much external and internal control does my community expect or want from the system, and how much am I prepared to give?

« CASE Insights: Exploring Marketing’s Evolution Through Technology »

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CASE Insights comes from a differing mindset of marketing than is traditionally held by many.

Focusing on a social-system world view that places emphasis on social networks and developing insights from case examples, we see marketing as a dialogue with many participants and communities in order to create and deliver real human value.

In order to maintain this dialogue we participate in, coordinate and implement many activities and use many different resources (people, technology, knowledge, time). So we don’t see a marketer as as a mixer of ingredients anymore, but as a node in a network of resources coordinating and implementing a network of activities to create and deliver real human value.

In summary we see marketing as constantly evolving from focusing on:

• the product offering
• target markets
• exchange such as a sale
• creating and delivering added value
• the world as in silos and hierarchical
• the environment as certain and predictive
• using traditional marketing management frameworks and practices that are historical and rigid
• trying to control resources (people, technology, knowledge, time) and counting them (numbers)

And continually evolving towards focusing on:

• resources (people, technology, knowledge and time) and activities
• people and being part of a community
• being part of a dialogue, a conversation
• creating and delivering real human value
• the world as social and electronic networks
• accepting uncertainty with the only constant is change
• using frameworks, ideas and processes that are flexible, fluid and adaptive to contextual and environmental changes.
• working with resources (people, technology, knowledge, time) and listening to them (numbers and words)

Given our interest is especially the role of electronic technology … we see that all of the elements listed above as increasingly evolving because of developments in electronic technologies. This is the purpose of CASE Insights, to explore and document this evolution.

« CASE Insights: Exploring Marketing’s Evolution Through Technology »

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