Global Meltdown, aka Where did all my money go??
By bear | November 4, 2008
Does anyone remember junk bonds in the 80s? A great securitised product based on high risk loan products with exorbitant interest rates, which had a very high return as long as Americans kept paying off their loans. Of course they didn’t, and the junk bond market collapse contributed heavily to the 80s recession, and the downfall of many major brokerages.
Sound slightly familiar? Of course this time around the products were high risk low interest-bearing products with no securitised value whatsoever, except they propped up an entire housing market, and the silly lenders who accelerated their own growth via poor credit decisions. Now both the market and the lenders are ruined, and recession again rears its head in the US.
Australian business is reeling too. A beer with some colleagues last week provided interesting facts - every single employer of my mates had started to “reduce headcount”. Large scale redundancies, a “getting rid of the fat” play. Media houses in Australia are in the same boat, with Fairfax, Telstra & PBL Media all letting staff go in recent times.
For us marketers this means a few key things. Firstly, we’re usually the first ones to get the chop when “down-sizing” occurs (see Telstra for example), which means we all start to feel a bit nervous. Secondly, consumer sales tend to go down during a recession, putting financial pressures on companies whose stocks are already getting pounded, and increasing pressure on sales & marketing teams to “do more with less”. Thirdly, advertising budgets get put on hold, recruitment freezes become the norm, and risk-aversion becomes the company mantra. All of these issues cripple an organisations ability to counter reduced sales and profitablity.
Therefore it is important that we marketeers work hard to ensure our businesses continue to build forward momentum. Engaging our customers gains importance, because whilst brand loyalty is dead, brand equity is still alive in the collective subconscious. Involving our customers in our business and product development gains greater importance (if possible!) as we need to fight for every sale in a tougher world.
For many companies, creating two-way conversations with their consumers to increase brand engagement is still considered innovation (and more so from an internal culture perspective). Innovation is risky, and often costly, and will be a hard pitch to nervous corporate decision makers. But for marketers to prove their worth in tough economic times, they will need to show measurable returns to the bottom line, and conservative thinking won’t cut it.
Topics: Employment Trendings, Marketeer Babble, Secret Boardroom Business | No Comments »
The rise of RSS?
By bear | June 22, 2008
Quite a few years ago, when I was producing websites and regularly reading whitepapers on emerging web technologies, the orange RSS icon would often raise itself up as a great hope for the future and a working example of the power of XML schema. The consumer-centric side of me however could just not see its value; who knew what it meant, who maintained an RSS reader, who could actually bother with it?
I’ve lost track of the number of times an executive asked me what it meant and how it could be used, only to walk away from my explanation with a blank look that said “brain processing information delete-command now”.
Quite simply, RSS readers had no relevance to general consumers. There was no practical way to incorporate feeds into everyday websites unless you were a techo. It rambled along as a small orange icon on the bottom on news stories that no-one knew how to use.
Of course, web 2.0 sites have changed all that. Blogs have most certainly provided tools to incorporate content feeds via RSS (or similar) for quite sometime, although in the main these have remained until recently in the domain of the digerati. Facebook has made a significant contribution to the spread of RSS amongst the general universe, since it has given consumers a custom home page where they can add their own content to help build their personal image and brand (a core driving motivator for most consumers, and indeed the secret to Facebook’s success).
Personal content aggregators, such as iGoogle or netvibes, have taken this even further by creating a true personal space where an individual can draw together all of their favoured news sources, sort them, organise them, and have them on hand whenever they feel the need for a quick info fix.
The humble RSS is finally building a consumer proposition. It is useful, personal, contextual, permission based, self configured & available from most content sources, and can now inhabit the virtual home of almost every consumer. More importantly however is that with the mobile internet now giving consumers personal 24/7 access, aggregated RSS feeds will soon be able to follow the consumer everywhere.
We may not think of this feed technology as we go about our daily digital travels, but it is a humble and hard-working little friend that is driving much of the consumer value of our web 2.0 world. Respect where respect is due.
Topics: The Machine - Social & Semantic Construction | No Comments »
iPhone or iYawn - over-marketed consumer goods
By bear | June 22, 2008
I was trying very hard not to write this post, but there’s been so much hype leading up to the Australian launch of the iPhone, as well as Sydney’s new Apple store, that I’ve been moved to add a brief commentary.
First of all - I’m over it. A little speculation can build demand, but too much for too long just builds pre-purchase dissonance, and I for one have lost interest now in the final product. It’s just like hearing a once killer track for the 900th time on the radio and tuning out forever.
Second of all - features, NOT! I’m a huge fan of convergent devices, and friends will tell you I’m on the mobile internet almost every minute away from my laptop. The iPhone offers much for the mobile web user and there are many in the industry who hope the device will push mobile web into the mainstream. But the phone needs to at least provide the features we use everyday on our existing handsets. To that end, why leave out basics like MMS, video recording, voice recording, flash support and expandable memory?
There is no doubt the iPhone is visually stunning, contains a range of great new features and will be a big hit with the right demographics. But I suspect competitors will very shortly have devices available that compete on these levels as well as building in the features that Apple forgot. Bring it on.
Topics: Mobile Affairs | No Comments »
The Twitter Conundrum - microblogging or conversations?
By bear | June 10, 2008
I have to admit to being a somewhat passive member of Twitter, more from time limitation than by design or intent. But from my distant voyeurism I’ve noticed that far from their interesting beginnings as microblog musings, tweets seem to be evolving into mid-90s IRC-style conversations for stay-at-home mums and other company-starved individuals.
Now I’ve been to a few *TUBs (Tweeter meet-ups) and met some interesting peeps and had a generally great time. But if you want to have conversations online, find a flavour of “chat” and use that instead, because Twitter is an extremely poor piece of chat software and the conversational tweets are using up much needed resources.
Worst of all however is that the most valuable and informative tweets are being lost amongst all the conversational clutter, which will devalue Twitters consumer proposition (and therefore long term viability & sustainability) going forward.
Still want to follow me?? - @nakedbearmedia
Interesting tweeter of the day - @STS124 - regular tweets from the Space Shuttle Discovery and its mission to the International Space Station… or someone claiming to be them!
Topics: The Machine - Social & Semantic Construction | No Comments »
Who’s running ninemsn?
By bear | June 9, 2008
What a week for the leading aggregating portal ninemsn, with resignations from CEO Tony Faure, Commercial Director Jason Scott & Group Mobile Director Chris Noone topping off a host of senior resignations in the past two quarters. All of this on top of earlier resignations by Jane O’Connell (Head of Content & Network Innovation), Jennifer Wilson (Head of Innovation) & Tony Thomas (Marketing Director) to name just a few.
The upshot - a loss of marketing leadership, content leadership, innovation leadership, mobile leadership, commercial leadership and strategic leadership. The organisation is big and robust though, and like a dinosaur with its head chopped off, it should still be able to stumble along for a while yet, especially with some heavy hitters from PBL Media jumping in to give a helping hand.
A good injection of new blood in the senior ranks may be just what the media giant needs to evolve with the rapidly changing digital media world of fragmented and deconstructed consumer activity. As long as it happens before ninemsn’s media rivals take advantage of its current wounded state.
Topics: New Media Manouverings | No Comments »