New age marketing maven Seth Godin in action (courtesy of ashbuckles)
What is the future of marketing like? How can your company ride these trends?
To find out, I consulted my favourite marketing guru Seth Godin and his recently published book Meatball Sundae.
Hell Hath No Fury… (courtesy of Dinghy Blonde)
If you think being a personal blogger is difficult, wait till you try corporate blogging. It isn’t just a walk in the park. Just ask Coleman (a fellow media socialist), who wrote this excellent post on making your corporate blogs succeed.
But then, isn’t blogging just about shooting your mouth/fingers off and saying whatever you want to say. After all, it is the age of conversations, and everybody is a citizen journalist. Besides, people don’t want to just hear the filtered, fluffed up, fantastic stuff from the gatekeepers (like yours truly).
The horrific Sichuan Earthquake left many dead or injured (courtesy of szbluewater)
The recent spate of cataclysmic events happening around our region is simply awful. To date, more than 50,000 people in the Sichuan area are either dead, missing or buried, and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar has left more than two million homeless and tens of thousands dead. As we flip the papers, page after page describes the sad story of human tragedy caused by these natural/ manmade (some say that the cyclone is due to global warming) catastrophes.
From what I understand, both incidents are still unfolding. In other words, they will continue to dominate media spaces for quite some time.
In the age of increasing emphasis on individual preferences, coupled with the prevalence of social media, the traditional rules of marketing would need to change. We are no longer talking about market segments that aggregate themselves neatly into discrete demographic groups, or consumer preferences that follow neat patterns. Information is available fast and free, and the general levels of trust in advertising has descended to an all-time low.
How do marketers hope to thrive in this landscape? Enter the concept of I-Marketing.
Child’s Play or a Lesson in Marketing?
As I was going for a run this evening at the neighbourhood park, I noticed how kids have this boundless energy aimed at the sole purpose of having non-stop fun. Jumping and skipping from one activity to another, they appear not to have a care in the world, and are focused on their agenda of having pure, unadulterated fun. While watching them play in glee, it hit me that perhaps there are lessons there that we can learn from in the realm of marketing.
Indeed, some of the traits of childhood – especially at play – are invaluable to us jaded marketers. They include the following:
To celebrate my dad’s 68th and my niece’s 10th birthday, my mum decided to book a restaurant for dinner last night at Tiong Bahru’s Seng Poh Lane. Going by the unassuming name of Por Kee Eating House (porky?), the outlet was your typical old-fashioned Chinese restaurant with red plastic chairs and an outdoor al fresco eating area. It was as unpretentious as you can get, with a clear focus on its food rather than ambience.
When we arrived, we were ushered to a space next to the public carpark outside, under the starry moonlit sky. As the evening was cool, most of us didn’t quite mind sitting outside. Especially with a beer or two!
This article first appeared in Marketing magazine in February 2008. I thought it would be useful to share it with you here.
And yes, I am back to blogging again after a super long hiatus!
By now, every publicist worth his or her salt would have heard of the wonders of new media. Anything imbued with the word 2.0, social media, conversational marketing, blogosphere or peer-to-peer is laden with the Midas touch.
Courtesy of mercer machine
In the age of social media, one particular trend seem to stand out more so than others. And that is our penchant for perversity.
Just look at the leading blog posts and stories in technorati, digg, ping.sg and other blog aggregators. What hits you first and foremost? Most of the leading ones are either about controversy, coitus or corruption. If you have a feel good story, chances are that your efforts will be relegated to the backwaters of the blogosphere.
Courtesy of Laughing Squid
Love them or loathe them, award ceremonies are here to stay.
After all, everybody just loves to receive an award (or 10). Award ceremonies are also great occasions for you to dress up and look your resplendent best (plus put that $900 suit or $1,000 dress to good use).
Source of image
Here’s a counter post following my first one on how PR agencies should manage their clients. Hats off to Priscilla Tan who used to work in an agency but will now be joining a global MNC (drool).
Getting the most out of your PR agency doesn’t mean squeezing the life out of them. Conversely, it also doesn’t mean that you just let loose completely and pray everyday that page one news would come on its own. Sorry buddy it doesn’t work that way.
So what can you as a client do to optimise the Client-PR relationship?