Over the past few months, I’ve had some great opportunities to meet folks from a variety of companies and I’ve detected a bit of a pattern. Organizations are genuinely challenged with what to make of the changes on the Web, both from an external marketing perspective as well as the internal enterprise.
For example, many companies are eager to take advantage of “social media” efforts, meaning non-traditional marketing initiatives that involve either unpaid media or interacting directly with consumers/customers/users and communities. BUT, there is risk involved and the most often asked question which is inevitably asked becomes “what’s the ROI”?
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Branding is thought of as “the process of creating a unique, positive and recognizable identity for a product or service” and has traditionally been achieved by companies through mono-directional interactions with their customers. Social marketing requires companies to let go of their death grip over their brand and put faith into the hands of users and customers. Branding 2.0 has nothing to do with product shots, tag lines or carefully crafted copy created by marketers. Branding 2.0 is about letting customers define your brand for you.
That G.U.T. Feeling
The catch with social marketing is that it doesn’t really matter how pleased the company is with the effort – if customers aren’t feeling it then it will fail. Try to make a piece of brand-friendly social media that doesn’t allow customers to interact with it the way they want to and you will end up with nothing more than a web based black hole that sucks in money and resources and never gives anything back. So what makes one social marketing effort a success and another a dud? The G.U.T. – Genuineness, Usefulness and Thoughtfulness.
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I’m both attending and speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City (this is a first for the city). Web 2.0 is a large event, with over 6,000 attendees over the course of 4 days and the focus of the NY venue is slightly geared toward not only a tech crowd but marketing, design and business as well. I had the opportunity to attend 3 very interesting sessions yesterday morning. Here’s a few take-aways.
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I have been thinking about my 20-year high school reunion of late and more than just looking forward to the superficial evaluations of people I once knew and how I rank. Hey, it isn’t just me! You’ve done it too!
The 20-year reunion is different, I think, than the ten-year reunion. After ten years, a lot of people look the same. Many are not yet married nor do they have kids. Some of them may not be what you remember from ten years ago. I remember seeing a girl who, in high school, was quiet, shy and, frankly, homely. When I saw her at my ten-year reunion she may very well have been the inspiration for Katy Perry.
Conversations are short, business-like and usually awkward.
“So how have you been?”
“Great. I live downtown, right on the park.”
“Me too, but I travel to Europe a lot for business.”
“How interesting. I just bought a European car, Mercedes-Benz.”
“Well, I’m glad it has all worked out for you. I’m going to the bar. When I come back, maybe you’ll be more interesting.”
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Earlier today, Google released their latest contribution to the internet: Chrome. This effectively ended years of speculation that Google was writing a browser, that it would throw its hat into the ring and kick off another heated browser war.
(Oh, and those of you paying attention might also note that this effectively also answers the question about a Google OS.)
Figures that Google wouldn’t just drop a bomb, it would lay waste to the expectations of a browser. My hat is off to the Chrome development team — you guys pulled off a doozy.
Google (correctly) identified that there is a significant problem with browsers today: They’re too slow. That generalisation is borne of the increasingly complicated apps that are being developed each and every day on the web. There’s so many websites out there that require extensive scripting and content richness that even the most advanced browsers sometimes chug away.
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