MBA Geek

Excellent insight for marketers:

Robert Scoble, blogger and entrepreneur, discusses his thoughts on how ideas spread. The public session was part of the Stanford GSB marketing course, the Power of Social Technology (Dr. Jennifer Aaker). A panel of experts, including Robert Scoble, MC Hammer, and Loic LeMeur, discussed how social media can build successful brands.

I was reading an interesting post entitled “When to Quit Twitter“, which zooms into the fact that traffic on Twitter is generated from 10% of the user base, implying that 90% had abandoned it. It talks about Twitter’s main problem, that people sign up without a clear idea of what to expect and how to measure what value it’s adding to their life. The article outlines a couple of points that can help you decide Twitter, or any other social network for that matter, is worth your while. These are:

1. Determine specifically what you want to get out of the site.
2. Set a period of time during which you’re willing to experiment with the site and develop a clear method to measure your progress.
3. Evaluate your success and determine whether the time you put into it is worth the return.

Some of us live in Twitter constantly, while for others it’s a brief foray. For example, if one is running a marketing campaign for mother’s day 2010, then they have a short, sharp focus that is easily measurable. However, for lots of people, the Twitter engagement is about trying to add value to their work, their day or their life. You can intrinsically gather if it’s really providing value. Otherwise, use the points above to see if they can provide a clear path.

I went to an interesting talk earlier this week and I was introduced to an interesting personality matrix called Firo-B. It stands for Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation and is theory useful for analysing interpersonal relationships. It’s based around three different criteria which are Inclusion, Control and Affection, where people exhibit both Expressed and Wanted traits. Different people operate across different measures of these scales and it was interesting to see how these factors affect people’s behaviours.

It was interesting to see how different personality traits will affect behaviour. Obviously, these are all intrinsic factors, but there are others that also take their toll. The interesting thing is how you can apply these ideas to marketing. Say you’re trying to sell the best acne treatment around. You can appeal to different people based on their behaviour and what they’re looking for. You may consider it all psycho-babble, but if it can help you market your product better, it’s worth taking a look.

How many brands can you list off the top of your head? Well, I’m sure there will be quite a few in the list of Top 100 Best Global Brands of 2009. The last on the list if Campbells, but you might be interested to know the top 10 which are:

• CocaCola
• IBM
• Microsoft
• GE
• Nokia
• McDonalds
• Google
• Toyota
• Intel
• Disney

It’s interesting to see just how many technology firms there are in the list. You’re probably not going to find mundane items like companies selling FMCGs or fat burner in the list; the companies that make it have to be on everyone’s lips; so it’s a pretty prestigious list.

I came across a really amusing marketing piece by the Weetabix Food Company where an advert on TV shows them using a minimising gun to make their mini Weetabix and the operator accidentally gets minimised. The advert encourages you to help Find Nigel by visiting a purpose built website. The website guides you through a few inane games, but always reinforcing the chocolately goodness that the new Weetabix Mini have. I thought it was a really good and cohesive marketing piece which immerses the viewer in an experience that would be too hard and expensive to convey by TV alone.

Obviously, different products would have different ways of encouraging action from views. A company selling information and cures for Mesothelioma cancer for example, would find it pretty hard to engage in this way. But for FMCG tyle products (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) I thought this was a genius campaign, both in its viral aspects and in terms of the depth of consumer immersion.

Great work guys!

I was thinking about my previous post, which was about our recent visit to Butlins and was thinking about the pointers that I picked up from the trip. I think the major take away was the success of Marketing as an encompassing function. You see, many organisations see marketing as a means to an end, a way to get clients through the door, a way to attract their attention. The great thing about our experience seemed to be the fact that marketing seemed to be engaged with the entire customer experience.

Does this mean that marketing should dictate how a company is run? Well, it depends. If the merits of your company isn’t based around the customer’s experience, then maybe not. For example, selling industrial equipment supplies is more than the customer experience. It’s about reliability and performance. But, if on the other hand, you’re engaged in delivering a valuable experience to your customers, then marketing SHOULD dictate the where and the wherefores of how the service is run.

What do you think?