How to read the future of marketing
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- Category: Our Blog
- Written by Brent Williams
If you want to know what will be happening in the future, follow what teenagers are doing today! This is the advice from COO of facebook, Sheryl Sandberg. Maintaining leadership within the media industry is a constant challenge. Organisations like Facebook are not only changing all the rules, but are rendering previous (and relatively new) channels obsolete – in this case email marketing ...mmm according to facebook only 11% of teenagers use email regularly. More likely these email accounts are used to create accounts, on social platforms, rather than for mainstream communicating..
To gain insight into the trends that are affecting our industries, it’s important marketers sit up and listen whenever any of these organisations shares consumer insight. Here is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s presentation at the recent Nielsen’s Consumer 360 conference. I suggest you take a few minutes and listen to what she has to say. http://bit.ly/abDhzF
Another example of shift within media is the ‘connectedness’ that underlies the online social scene, its openness and transparency. It’s interesting to see how big brands are now incorporating these concepts right down to product level. Take this Nielsen 360 event as an example. Not only is Sheryl’s presentation available, through a social channel: youtube, but also movies from the other keynote presentations are also available. Now, the 360 conference is expensive to attend, is Nielsen devaluing the product but sharing much of the content online …and for free? I’ll let you be the judge of that, but needless to say I would NOW love to attend the next event!! Another important shift - and without leaving the 360 event as the example - is the use of microsites. Have a look at http://www.consumer360.com/ (or the screen grab below).
Note that it is not a corporate website site or brochure-ware. Rather, it is a fully independent site that was developed solely to support the product and aligned to users needs. Notice the social-media widgets on the top, this allows people to interact with Nielsen on the platform of the their, the customers, choice. Also, the integration of the twitter-stream sitting prominently on the main page. This is Nielsen recognizing the value of its customers and what they have to say. As a brand it is actively supporting and sharing conversations and, in so doing, demonstrating its responsiveness to both existing and future customers. Now, Nielsen may be able to take full advantage of this technology, partly because it is their business, and also the intended audience being fully appreciative.
No one said it would be easy to take examples like this, and be prescriptive, in developing our own strategies. However we can learn much from our industry leaders. To understand and to incorporate new marketing concepts, particularly social and influence marketing, into our mix. Nice one Nielsen, your strategy is working!! Here is just another example of a blog post that is supporting your brands effort, more power to you.
