My favourite of course is the podcast for Chapter 17, the Digital Marketing chapter.

If you are a student taking Marketing for the first time, or just interested in reviewing your knowledge, these podcast summaries will provide a useful review to aid you in your revision of the material covered in each chapter of our book. If interested in learning more about some of the specific areas of Marketing such as Digital, Services, International or Retailing, download just the specific chapters and have a listen.

These podcast are freely available on iTunes for all who are learning about, interested in or students of marketing.

Smiles

Kelly

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Increasingly I am being asked to deliver talks within organisations, usually to marketing, communications or media teams about the evolution we are experiencing in digital and social web media. These talks are often used to open the dialogue within teams at the beginning of a workshop or as part of a ‘training week’ about how the ‘media space’ has changed considerably and how the host organisation can best approach, use and/or learn about social media.

I use these talks as an opportunity to encourage personnel in marketing, media or communications to consider the need to ‘unlearn’ and explore ‘new mindsets’ with which to approach their communications activities. To step outside the box from what is traditionally termed ‘marketing’, ‘PR’ or ‘media management’, and consider that their role in communications has fundamentally changed within society, within their organisation, within their own lives. With this has come the need to learn new skills, new ways of looking at the world, and new ways of behaving within it. Why is this important? To be sustainable, ethical, and effective in communications activities in a digital and social web space. When the world moves on, you have to move with it, it is the nature of evolution. It’s not easy, it’s not cheap, but it’s most certainly the fundamental principle of evolution – change.

In this talk I use a number of case insights to explore my position on this, comparing campaign-led communications initiatives by Skittles.com (2009) and Rage Against the X-Factor (2009)  to more sustainable community-led activities of Compare the Meer-Kat (Ongoing), Patients Like Me (Ongoing), Wiggly Wigglers (Ongoing) and National Theatre Wales (Ongoing).

The core message of this talk is that the “social web is about people, conversations, dialogue, listening, and being ‘a part’ of a community, not apart from it or promoting or communicating to it!” Something required by personnel in business, marketing and media management to learn following the unlearning of traditional ‘communications’ mindsets.

In September 2010, I delivered this talk for Community Housing Wales, and VerseOne, a major provider of CMS to the public sector. The slides from the talk are embedded below, and can be found on drkellypage on slideshare.

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Have you ever wondered the educational value of academic publishing? Wondered how the research we do filters into the classroom? Maybe not! This is not something often discussed and debated in business academia, where the ethos and culture is driven to publish in top-tier academic peer-review (?) journals. However, for some of us, behind closed doors, in secret we are also engage in another publishing activity. An activity not often discussed with high esteem or value by research-driven colleagues, where the words “I’m writing a textbook” seem like sinister words. However, if we really think about the educational value of academic publishing, it is textbooks and the educational resources we develop where a real contribution to knowledge and wider value in education is most certainly felt, not just through journal articles. Here in this blog post I share part of my experience and the view that “writing of good textbooks should be central – not marginal to our HE mission as researchers and teachers”.

OUP Sales Conference 2010

This week on Wednesday, 25th August 2010, I attended the Sales Conference for my textbook publisher – Oxford University Press (OUP) in Warwick (UK). Not a sales representative, nor a member of the publishing industry, I’m an author and an academic so I attended to reconnect with the sales team I met 2 years ago who are responsible for a book title I’ve coauthored titled, Marketing. In this I participated in a session about how our 1st edition has gone and to discuss the launch of the 2nd edition due out in December 2010.

This experience was invaluable. Sat in the room was the hearts and minds of over 30 people who are in direct contact with lecturers, universities and book stores from across the UK and Europe. They are deeply embedded in the publishing industry and the dynamics with which it is changing, both due to economic constraints, changes in technology and market preferences. In brief, students are not using books like they used to, it’s about differing formats, differing resources from a variety of locations! And these people know their business and are some of the most humble about their value in the publishing process. In awe of their knowledge and commitment to distributing good educational resources and how they could help educators, I most certainly was. One thing I love about Oxford University Press (OUP) as a publisher, and their team … is they also have heart! They care about the books/resources they develop, the people they work with and the people who they are developing for. Yes they have to generate revenue, but maybe this cultural ethos is because they have a charity status and so are not as commercially driven like most publishing houses.

Why Write a Textbook on Marketing

The above is why I really engaged with this project over 2 years ago in 2008, not just because I wanted to write a book, actually at the time I didn’t want to as academic textbooks are not as valued by business academia like a journal article is (a view I am opposed to!). But with OUP’s ethos, and our coauthor and editorial team, not only did we have a vision for what students in marketing today should be learning in and out of the class room, but the team also saw the importance in not just writing a book, but in developing an overall suite of resources for all in marketing education – lecturer and student alike.

So myself and two colleagues, Paul Baines from Cranfield and Chris Fill from Portmouth, came together on this project through differing routes and bringing differing skills, knowledge and experience to the table. I was the publishing novice, and in some ways still am, still trying to juggle personal and professional deadlines with publishing ones. But one thing connects us, our vision on the value of coupling a deep knowledge of learning and education with marketing theory and practice in business management academia. Our focus has been on developing a resource – not just a book – that helps both students and lecturers in learning and educating about marketing in the many differing spaces it occupies, in the many differing formats it comes, in how it is evolving and the differing ways in which we can learn and experience it. Essentially we spent three years prior to 2008, creating an ‘educational resource’ that brings practice into the classroom, brings not just theory, but also critical debate around marketing theory into the class room and most importantly, engages with the many differing ways and styles with which we both learn and can educate about marketing – online, offline and through experience. Marketing is going through not just an evolution given changes in society, but also a digital revolution.

The Value of Textbooks in Academic Publishing

However, along this journey I must say I’ve been saddened by the lack of value academia, especially business academia appears to place on the value of textbooks in academic publishing, an ethos which has filtered throughout our institutions, governance structures and our education system. Spurned by a ‘publish or perish’ ethos around peer-review (?) journal articles and a governance system – the Research Assessment Exercise or Framework (RAE 2008, REF ?), that propagates this view. I’m not saying these are not important, they are, we couldn’t write books, develop educational resources or educate without them. But our myopic focus on the importance of a journal article above everything else and thus their production at cost to everything else (e.g., teaching quality, educational innovation, staff morale) is harming the inherent basis on which university and business academia exist – “to contribute to knowledge through research, education and community engagement” (this is what I signed up for when I joined academia at the completion of my PhD in 2003). I didn’t sign up to an ethos of “to write just journal articles”.

Yesterday I sat and listened. I knew how well our book at done in its first edition,  but I didn’t realise just how well. Our book – Marketing, the first edition released in 2008, is 2nd in the UK academic market for 1st year marketing textbooks with 30% marketshare, 2% behind the leading textbook, and beating Kotler … “the god of marketing” … who is third. Whoop! Whoop! Our title is apparently OUP most successful business title and purchased by thousands of students across the UK and Europe. This was well above our expectations, in the begining we just wanted to challenge the status quo in 1st year marketing education. Challenge what we were teaching and how! So, a celebration yes! But a personal one! We don’t get huge royalty cheques, and these books don’t really count towards promotion as they are not as valued as much as a journal articles (REF/RAE), despite how much time, work and resources goes into their creation and how well regarded they are outside the academy (e.g., in business). So it’s not about the money and nor drive for a tenured track Professoriate position.

Its about an educational ethos, and contributing to the knowledge of tomorrows marketing industry. In this, for our title, we have reached the minds of 100′s of lecturers and thousands of 1st year marketing students in the UK and Europe and contributed to their knowledge of marketing theory, marketing practice and importantly challenged the status quo in marketing education. That is worth more than any promotion or 4* journal article.

A Manifesto for Textbook Writing

But this journey over the last 4-5 years has made me really question how business academia, across the UK, Europe and in wider international communities really value the academic textbooks and educational resources in business academia and their contribution to business knowledge, theory and practice. I cam across this great blog post on “The Higher Education Academy” websites about “Writing Textbooks in a Cold But Changing? Climate. This post has some interesting insights about “To Write or Not to Write a Textbook?” In short the author Rob Pop concludes with a Manifesto for Textbook Writing, for all educators, researchers and authors.

A Manifesto for Textbook Writing (Rob Pope, 2003)

• Textbook writing is a central, sensitive and symptomatic indicator of all that we do.
• Textbooks come into being and operate precisely on the cusp of teaching with research, of education with economics, and of a vision of knowledge as personal empowerment and satisfaction with one of knowledge as public commodity and techno-political power.
• Textbooks are the main interface where the notion of the subject in general is embodied in the particular heterogeneity of all the subjects who study it; it is therefore the major tool whereby subjects in every sense have lasting effects.
• Textbooks are also the main site where the fundamental structure and significance of the discipline is communicated and debated. It is therefore not only the place where the existing territories are consolidated and boundaries reinforced; but where the work of inter- and cross-disciplinary re-definition and re-negotiation goes on — publicly and accountably, amongst ones peers as well as students and, sometimes, a more general public.
• Textbooks are thus where specialist knowledge and skills are accumulated and made generally accountable as well as accessible. Thats why a good textbook is precious — and a bad one pernicious.
• In sum, the writing of good textbooks should be central — not marginal — to our higher educational mission as teachers and researchers.

So with this Manifesto in mind, I have continued with my co-author team to develop our title, Marketing, with the launch of our 2nd edition in December, 2010. Why? Because like Pope (2003), I too believe that writing good textbooks and developing good educational resources should be central, not marginal to our HE mission as teachers and researchers, and our governance structures.

Smiles

Kelly

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For those that don’t know, the Academy of Marketing (AM) is our national body of marketing academics and it’s core purpose is the advancement in marketing knowledge through research, education and scholarly activities. It tries to foster links with practitioners, research councils, funding bodies, professional associations and offer guidance to marketing academe in the pursuit of our activities. For example, the AM has a research committee, shared by Dr. Nina Reynolds, with the mission to inform and be part of the debate of developing professional research practice in marketing academe. This is becoming incredibly more difficult in current times. As an academic, your life is often torn in many differing directions, undertaking many numerous, complicated and sometimes very mundane tasks – in education, research and administration. Would I say that the AM Conference is our annual highlight? Well, it’s not like a Christmas or birthday party or your annual holiday (Yes, academics in HE only get 3-4 weeks a year). But it is most certainly a time when marketing academics come together to present their work to each other, catch up and network.

So each year we meet somewhere across the country to exchange ideas, present work we are currently working on and network with fellow academics in our respective fields. I’d like to say that we get into heated debates about the work we are presenting and end up drawing numerous equations or thematic maps on a white board. However, like most areas of modern life, we too are heavily scheduled and squeezed into short time silos with usually only 15 minutes allocated to each presentation, with probably enough time afterward for 1 or 2 questions. Most discussion about research occurs during the coffee breaks, in the evenings at social events and in the taxi on the way back to the conference hotel. So, in essence this is more of a networking event for the young and eager early career researcher (what we call a ECR); a time to catch-up with old friends (for those more established who are vying for promotion); and a chance to offer advice or mentor others coming through (for those well known names who grace the inside covers of some of our leading journals).

A number of things to note about marketing academics, we are many and varied. Some come from practitioner backgrounds, others from academic and education. Some are good, some are great and some are like most industries, still trying to figure it all out. One thing that does define us, we have diverse research interests – no two are ever the same! The conference this year had over 400 delegates presenting in the fields of consumer behaviour, business to business, marketing education, electronic and interactive marketing, sales and key account management, retailing and channel management to name a few. Reflective of not just the scope of our marketing field, but also how marketing has increasingly fragmented so incredibly over the last 20-30 years.

As in most years the papers and presentations are of varying quality, with some of more interest than others. Two in particular I paid attention too was the work of Dr. Paul Harrigan and James Seligman from Southhampton Management School, on the new DNA of Marketing Education; and Dr. Bev Hulbert from the same institution on the Evolution of Technology and Marketing. In brief, I was fortunate to listen to and meet this group of colleagues, who like myself, think marketing education in the HE sector needs to evolve beyond the current education curriculum focused on tired and out-dated frameworks and models of the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s … curriculum that doesn’t take into account the the impact Digital and Electronic resources have had on not just marketing practice over the past 20 or so years, but also on markets and the individuals who make up these markets.

This means what we educate and how we deliver it in HE requires not just to evolve … but a total new way of thinking about higher education in management and business disciplines like Marketing.

So after 4 days of networking, attendance at the AM research committee meeting, sitting in on fellow colleagues presentations, drinks at the Herbert Art gallery, a visit to Warwick Castle and a black-tie dinner in a motor muesum … the Academy of Marketing conference for 2010 came to an end and I made my way back to Cardiff Business School. A little tired, but also a little more inspired by my fellow colleagues at Southhampton whom recognise the impact digital media has had on not just marketing or marketing education, but individuals and their everyday lives.

Developing our understanding of Digital Media Literacy in marketing through critical research embedded in methods such as observation of the development of digital media strategies, community participation and netnography, discourse analysis of what our professional bodies (e.g., CIM, IDM, FEDMA, WAA) are certifying as digital professional practices is critical to understanding this New DNA of Marketing that Southhamptom presented.

Just like Darwin observing the species was critical to mapping his evolutionary theory … so too is it critical for marketing academe to observe and record marketing’s digital evolution.

Smiles

Kelly

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The afternoon inspired me to reflect on the very same questions for what I do, the reason I started CASE Insights and found myself leaving the commercial marketing research sector for academic research and teaching. Reflection I haven’t done for a couple of years and given how difficult it can be juggling teaching, research, administration, marking, supervision and life … I thought it was increasingly important to revisit these questions!

The Beginning …

When I get asked what I do, I usually say I teach Digital Media Marketing at Cardiff Business School. If I get asked what I research and why, a few years ago I would have told you the following:

“Since the inception of my PhD, I have been reading about and researching the psychology behind technology usage and exploring the role of human knowledge. Namely the differences in perceptions, behaviours and contexts of usage of differing users of technologies: from the expert to the less expert, from the web desginer to the non-designer; from the highly engaged to those that see digital technologies as not that relevant to their lives.”

However, over the last few years this has evolved (as all things evolve) as I’ve been witnessing the evolution in marketing theory, media practice and marketing philosophy because of digital media and electronic technologies. And in all honesty, it’s really hard trying to keep up!

The initial aim of this earlier commercial and academic research was to develop our understanding in how and why people adopt and use digital technologies and inform how and why we use digital media in business management, media/communications and marketing. I’m still interested in this, but increasingly as I tranverse along this academic, research and philosophical journey about digital media in business and society, and how marketing is evolving, it is the conception of ‘knowledge’, ‘learning’ and ‘literacy’ about and with digital media in business that is resonating in my work most.

“As our environment evolves, so too do we: our knowledge, our skills, our learning and like it or not, business, media/communications and marketing management are evolving.”

Knowledge, Learning & Literacy …

The interesting thing, is if we use the words ‘digital media learning’ or ‘digital media literacy’ business and management schools and the communications or marketing profession don’t appear to have a deep rich investment in the discourse. The discourse on learning and literacy of digital media is heavily focused on the social context of high school education, and university departments in the disciplines of education, the arts, anthropology or media/digital media (amongst others) with specific focus on researching (or teaching) learning and literacy. Coupled with this is the support of industry and government partners interested in the policy debate about digital media literacy – in youth, in schools and in certain areas of higher education, esp. as it pertains to equality and access.

Don’t get me wrong, these approaches to digital literacy is very important and business schools are interested in education. They are higher education providers after all and education is a core part of their product offering with student fees from undergraduate and postgraduate programs the main revenue source of their business models.

However, much management research on digital marketing (and some of mine can be included in this) is focused on how we use digital technologies to improve firm performance, increase marketing efficiency and effectiveness and most significantly improve click through, satisfaction or sales (e.g., website design), increase loyalty (e.g., loyalty cards and scanner technologies); or improve data acquisition for competitive advantage (e.g., RFID).

Although interesting and relevant, these inherently focus on outputs from the use of digital media and technologies – the effect they have. But not on as much as the knowledge, skills, and learning contexts required in business and management (esp. media & marketing management). This would facilitate their usage or design OR more importantly to ensure that actors/agents in the process can not just use them effectively, but also responsibly, ethically and in tune with their socio-cultural evolution. In short:

• If ever there was a field who’s activities and processes have been fundamentally changed by digital media – it would be business, media/communication and/or marketing management.
• If ever there was a field undergoing dramatic change in skills, language and philosophy – it would be business, media/communication and/or marketing management.
• If ever there was a field who’s impact is so great (good and bad) on society, youth, education and culture – it would be business, media/communication and/or marketing management.

And NO – it’s not just about selling more stuff through digital media or building a better website. It’s about education, ongoing professional development and instilling tomorrow’s [and today’s] business, media/communications and marketing professionals with the knowledge, skills and key insights so they can participate, engage, be informed and most importantly act responsibly in the digital media space. Long gone is the focus on the model T-Ford through mass production or a business case about a Fortune 100 company or PR/Communicatiosn through printed press release. It’s about digital learning, literacy, participation and engagement.

Why is it important?

Digital media literacy for marketers and media/communications management professionals and education is increasingly important:

• For Community Participation: Media management and marketing professions are increasingly expected to adopt and use digital media technologies to reach, communicate and interact with the communities within which they coexist [Mandated by society and organisations].

• For Digital Community Engagement: Business management and marketing professions have to actively engage – “be involved, interested, interact, converse with and share information with” those more socially and technically digitally literate than themselves on a daily, weekly and monthly basis – from web designers, social media [web] consultants, programmers, engineers and expert users – as they adopt and use digital media technologies in their marketing and business activities?

• Because of Community Impact: It is the marketing and related business professions who develop, design, produce and make the decisions on the use of digital media in marketing, customer service, PR, promotional, product development and community engagement activities. And it is these that can (and do!) have a profound impact on society, youth, culture, and education. Be it for the marketing of a charity like Oxfam, an arts organization like NTW, a government initiative like Safe Sex, a new music or literary star like J. K. Rowling, or a product offering like Skittles, Cadbury, Orange or the Toyota Lexus. Marketing has an impact! Good and bad!

Digital Media Literacy in Business, Media Management and Marketing is about exploring the digital knowledge and skills that are evolving in business, management and the marketing profession.

The aim is contribute to the discourse about the core digital knowledge, learning and literacy  ‘learners’ in Business, Media Management and Marketing require so they can participate not just effectively, but also appropriately and responsibly.

So! Now when people ask me:

• What: “I research & teach Digital Media [Literacy] & Marketing at Cardiff Business School“.
  How: “Through practice-led and research led teaching [situated]: I work with practitioners and researchers to develop insights from cases and research projects, to inform theory, practice and education about how and what we do in digital media management & marketing”
  Why: “Because I want to help students, business, academe and the community develop the skills to learn, participate and engage in the digital space – effectively, appropriately and responsibly”… and to write about the journey
  

To learn more, here is a talk I gave at Chapter Arts Centre (UK) in March 2010 entitled: Marketing’s Digital Media Evolution: Do you see what I see?.

Smiles
Kelly

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Martin Evans

“A contributor to knowledge”; “a creator of impact”;  ”a giving citizen in the academic research community”: all are most certainly terms that describe Martin Evans. Martin Evans was not just a teacher, or a lecturer. He was also an inspiring research scholar whose research interest and research integrity was grounded first and foremost in making a contribution to knowledge in the fields of Direct and Interactive Marketing, Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Research.

He published over 180 publications, in national and international journals, case studies and reports and 8 books. Many of his works are nationally recognised for their contribution, and their author was a multiple academic prize winner from the Academy of Marketing (AM), the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) and the International Conference of Marketing Communications.

Martin also served on the editorial board of some of the UK’s leading national marketing journals: Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Marketing Communications, Journal of Strategic Marketing, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing and Journal of Database Marketing and was full editor of the Journal of Consumer Behaviour: An International Review.

His expertise, support and years of research experience contributed to the knowledge and learning of numerous colleagues, co-authors and doctoral students, hundreds of masters students and thousands of undergraduate students, both in and outside the class room, the office and traditional publication channels.

Martin’s research contribution though was not just limited to the academic community. He also engaged actively with the wider business and social community to share and co-create knowledge through research partnerships, committees and informing industry policy and regulation, especially in Direct and Interactive Marketing. He was a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) and full members of the Marketing Research Society (MRS), the Federation of Direct and Electronic Marketing (FEDMA) and the Academy of Marketing (AM).

He was an inspiring research scholar, mentor, colleague, teacher and friend.

Dr. Kelly Page
Lecturer in Marketing & Strategy
Cardiff Business School.

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I thought very hard about this question, and reflected on the last 5-8 years of my academic career. I looked at who has inspired me in exploring knowledge, adoption and use of electronic technologies. The works I’ve read and reviewed range from the work of Charles Darwin on Evolutionary Science, the writings of Plato and Sir Francis Bacon on Form and Knowledge, Marshall McLuhan in his media philosophy of the 1960′s,  to more recent work of Innovation Theory by Everett Rogers and Technology Adoption by Fred Davis.

But if I think back to the early days of my research career, as an Honours research student in the mid 1990′s embarking on research about the impact of technology on Marketing philosophy, it would be the work of Prof. Donna Hoffman that really inspired and changed the way I viewed at not just technology, but also the socio-cultural implications/influences of technological developments.

Prof. Donna Hoffman

In the early stages of the research component of my honours degree at Griffith University Australia, I was given a article to read by my Professor of Internet Marketing, Prof. Ed Forrest. Ed was a visiting Academic in Australia from Florida, and established a programme on our schools graduate programme on Internet Marketing and Internet Marketing Research. A programme that for the mid-1990′s was cutting in edge in the critical discussions we had in the classroom about the role of technology in business and wider society. As a research student on the undergraduate programme, I took part in these discussions of Toffler, Media Determinism and Network Complexity.

However the article from these discussions that has remained integral to both my academic and commerical work since that day was an article published by Prof. Donna Hoffman in the highest ranked marketing journal – Journal of Marketing. It was co-authored with Prof. Thomas Novak and was entitled: Marketing in Hypermedia Computer Mediated Environments (HCME’s): Conceptual Foundations. It was this article that raised the critical enquiry in marketing about technology-mediated communications and for me, the acqusition and creation of knowledge about technology – given their complexity in technical design, and situational context of application and use.

Prof. Donna Hoffman award winning and Internationally recognised research set the tone for marketing enquiry into internet marketing and digital media management and as the founder of eLab, an online laboratory for consumer behavior research and the Co-Director of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing, her work not only informs academic enquiry through publication in top marketing and management journals, but informs policy for commercialization and use of the Internet.

So my pledge for Ada Lovelace Day, is the work and approach to technology science of Prof. Donna Hoffman.

Twitter: @profhoff
Web: Sloan Centre of Internet Retailing

Smiles

Kelly

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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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Is Usability a Marketing Thing?

No longer just the domain of web designers, system developers and the technological proficient. For marketers this area is of increasing interest as our communities (consumers, clients, buyers, customers, our fellow marketers), and even ourselves are facing greater technological interaction.

In my mind, this should be a core skill-set of the marketing profession not just tomorrow, but today, and yesterday! We are using technologies in customer service, communications, marketing research, service delivery … nearly every function of marketing, nearly every activity touches human-technology interaction. And if we are not using it, the people we are trying to reach surely are.

Yet overall, as a profession who knows our products and our markets very well, and can sell and promote to them, we are not that proficient in understanding the core basics of what it means for a technological interface in a hypermedia world is to be ‘usable’.

We measure trafffic, monitor sales and collect survey’s on satisfaction, but whose domain do we leave ‘usability testing’?

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

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