It's an 80:20 World

I am in the middle of reading BLINK. Absolutely brilliant - a real eye opener. It highlights the dangers of over analysis and just like tipping point which was Malcolm Gladwell’s previous contribution to the language of modern business I'm sure that the term thin-slicing will start to appear in lots of presentations in the very near future.

If you have ever had a hunch then you maybe surprised to discover that the decision you arrive at within 2 seconds is quite often more valid than the conclusions you reach after days of mulling something over. The style is conversational and the case studies are really enlightening especially the story of the war games played by the pentagon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0141014598/qid=1142245397/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/202-9670953-0039023

It seems that there will be a move toward charging for email if the noises that are coming out of Yahoo and AOL are anything to go by. I think potentially this could be a very good thing for the marketing industry as it could help to eliminate a large amount of the spam that currently blights many people’s mail boxes. I think that people will start to seek the advice of expert direct marketers rather than bulk email senders whose only skill lies in their ability to bypass the spam filters.

So from now on I'm going to advise my clients to attribute a nominal charge per message – say 1p to all their email marketing activity. This should make think about what they are doing, encourage more rigorous testing of copy and creative treatments and prepare them for the inevitable day when email will attract a cost.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4684942.stm

I was speaking with 2 forty something colleagues yesterday and they were discussing with incredulity the success of myspace.com. What is the point – they were saying. Why would anyone bother to do that? I have come across a similar attitude to blogging amongst many of my business associates here in the North East of England. Typically, I will hear that there is no money in it, or it’s only useful for people in the technology sector etc. The argument is in essence - I don’t use it so why would anyone else.

I don’t have any quick responses that will make people at least investigate the new methods of communication that are sweeping into our lives nor have I become some kind of blogvangelist hell bent on converting people. What I can say, however, is that I find the blogs I visit regularly stimulating and interesting as they provide me with information, alternative view points, and new perspectives. How many people can honestly say they are getting the same level of stimulation from their local business press?

Anyway whilst my 40 something colleagues continued to discuss how they couldn’t be bothered to use any online web space – the young graduate we have hired quietly logged out of his myspace account.

My opinion of the blog, world was until recently, distorted by ignorance and a smug sense that it was something taking place at the extremities of the marketing communications world and not something my North East of England clients needed to be to concerned about. How wrong I was.

I had misguidedly shelved the blog world as something that I should keep an eye on but not actively integrate into my consultancy advice. I must make it clear that I’m not a PR professional however I do work closely with PR people primarily under the broad banner of e-marketing. I know what you’re thinking, how could I possibly claim to offer e-marketing advice without being in possession of a reasonable understanding of the blogsphere well believe me I feel suitably ashamed.

Within the regional marketing sector here in the North East I must confess, blogging has rarely cropped up in the discussions I’ve had with clients and when the subject has been raised it has been in the context of a general enquiry about what is blogging all about. I have fielded these questions by dismissing blogs as online diaries primarily used by computer people and extreme pressure groups. Sadly, this is what many old school marketing people want to hear. They like the old ways. They know how to make money out of the old ways. Their clients understand the old ways. Given this situation why would you potentially unsettle a client by introducing a whole new communications paradigm that is totally measurable thus making yourself directly accountable?

I think this notion of measurability is crucial. No ad agency is going direct a client’s budget toward pay per click advertising if they can get away with booking ad space instead. Why? Because fundamentally most ad people don’t know what it is and there is no money in it for them in the short term. Similarly, why would the NE PR industry embrace a new channel they don’t understand and ultimately can’t manipulate by calling in old favours or entertaining the right editor?

To me this is just like the candle maker who dismissed electricity as he failed to see he was in the light business not the candle business. Ad agencies and PR firms are in the communications business and if marketing is mirroring effective sales strategies by becoming more of a conversation between customers and suppliers then we are severely short changing our clients if we do not take time to learn how these new methods can be used to add value and profit to our clients businesses. Maybe I have read the situation incorrectly and the NE is teaming with marketing professionals all actively promoting new marcom methods if so I apologise unreservedly.

Last Friday (18th of November), I attended an e-PR conference at Sunderland University in the North East of England and the main thing that came shining through was the exponential growth of blogging.
Not much surprise there as anyone with even a passing interest in the web and new media communications could have told me that. No, the comment that hit me right between the eyes came from Tom Murphy of Microsoft who reminded everyone in hall that marketing is now all about conversations. It seems quite an innocuous statement yet I think it has quite profound implications on the marketing communications industry and highlights a profound lack of copywriting skills in the new media sector. The words on a web page are the only thing between you and your client yet all to often getting text for a web site is seen as a necessary evil – the result copy being published from other marketing materials just because it is there.
All the techies out there have pushed us towards Content Management Systems sadly this doesn’t address the problem of content generation. This has led me to consider the power of blogs and RSS feeds and suddenly I can see how it starts to fit together.
In terms of it’s revenue generation potential for marketing communications companies I am still a little bit unsure – what I am just sure of is that it can’t be ignored.