Here is a list of ideas to keep the mystery (or creativity) in Electronic Marketing … or should I say the marketing in electronic marketing.

Marketing, after all is not just a management planning process, but a creative process based on ideas, not just the resources used to manage and implement these ideas.

1. Defy reason – make a decision for your product or brand based entirely on feelings and emotions (not data) …
2. Allow for the unexpected – play with social media such as a blog, FB group page etc for your brand and just see what happens …
3. Invite difference – post messages on twitter, comment on blogs and talk to strangers about your brand (not just folks in your company or contracted to work for you) …
4. Don’t just search – use the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ function on Google and think how the site you come across might be connected with your product/brand …
5. Enjoy and celebrate the unsettling feeling of not getting ‘it’ 100% right’ on your website … yes it is ok! Uncertainity, change, failure and imperfection are natural elements in life … just as they are in the use of technology in marketing, be it your website, social media campaign or just use of work email … enjoy the fact you still have 100 emails in your inbox …
6. Walk away from your computer, grab a piece of paper, some coloured pens and draw something … anything … to remind you that marketing is also about creativity …
7. Wonder at old technologies … the printing press, the telephone, the turntable, the cassette tape …
8. Don’t send that email … pick up the phone, walk down the corridor and have a conversation, a coffee or just hi …
9. Spend a day with a child or teenager having fun and ask them to show you how they see electronic technologies through their eyes … it’s not just about data and information, it’s about having fun, being connected …
10. Never forget that electronic marketing is actually about people, not just technologies … with electronic technologies we are observing someone, contacting someone, interacting with someone … so think people first!

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The above quote from Plato provides a good foundation from which to begin this entry. The introduction of any written works, the start of any piece of performance – be it theatre, cinema, or even the birth of a new life is often championed to be a very important part of any life work.

It is from this from which we draw cues by which to define or classify the entity. From the cover of a book we determine if it is a fiction novel or biography. From the opening scenes of a performance, we infer if it is a comedy or musical? From the birth of a child we ask is it a boy or a girl?

I sometimes wonder, however if there really is such a thing as a beginning? Or does life and our experiences just continue to coevolve from one experience to the next in one long journey.

This post I hope is the first of many conversations about exploring and documenting marketing’s evolution through technology, however I am hesistant to call it the beginning.

Over the last 10 years (or maybe more), myself and colleagues in both industry and academe have been researching and documenting the adoption and use of electronic technology in marketing.

Observing, interviewing and writing about the impact electronic resources are having on marketing activities. So although this might be the first post on this blog for CASE Insights, it isn’t the beginning, but perhaps part of the journey.

CASE Insights is a research initiative that explores marketing’s evolution through technology and documents this journey through insights. This initiative is inspired not just by marketing and technologies themselves (although pretty cool!), it is inspired by a naturalist, a media philosopher and a group of artists!

• Charles Darwin, the naturalist and his studies about the diversity of life and his work the Origin of the Species
• Marshall McLuhan, the media philosopher and his work the Medium is the Massage about technology and societal meaning
• The Impressionists, the artists who used an innovative style to record contemporary life with new methods and techniques.

Each has provided an inspiration, although it is the love of technology and marketing practice that lies at the heart of CASE Insights.

The aim of this website www.caseinsights.com, is to share these insights and contribute to a wider dialogue about marketing’s evolution. Some writings here are current, some recent, while others are historical. The idea is to document marketing’s evolution through technology, be it to inform practice (or be informed), contribute to knowledge or educate tomorrow’s marketing professionals today.

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