P&G marketing chief: Fundamental shift from TV to digital required - News GLOBAL - Procter & Gamble (P&G) has admitted that it needs to make "fundamental shifts" in its approach to digital marketing and move spend out of TV advertising into digital channels. Marc Pritchard, global marketing and brand building officer at P&G, was talking at a P&G conference held in the consumer goods company's Cincinnati headquarters. In the UK, P&G is by far the biggest spender on TV advertising, where it directed £136m out of its overall advertising spend of £203m in 2010, according to Nielsen. The move to focus more on digital marketing comes as the maker of Gillette aims to drive up lower cost sales and forge closer relationships with its global customers through digital channels. Pritchard outlined its new approach to digital marketing as it aimed to build "lifelong, one-to-one relationships in real time with every person in the world". He said: "Today is not about digital marketing, it's about brand building in the digital world."
I Guess Im Not A 501 Developer - adit.io Update: here’s a cached link for the 501 manifesto. When I started reading the 501 Manifesto, I agreed wholeheartedly. Coding jobs (especially in San Francisco) encourage you to have long hours at work, and I don’t enjoy that. I want programming to be fun, and forced long hours make it work. Then I get to this: If you: Write a technical blog Contribute to open source projects Attend user groups in your spare time Mostly only read books about coding and productivity Push to GitHub while sitting on the toilet Are committed to maximum awesomeness at all times, or would have us believe it …we respect you for it. You lost me. Open source is a wonderful thing. I was so certain I was a 501 developer. It’s just 8 hours a day. 5 days a week. To which I guess you would say: To us it is just a job, but we still do it well. You don’t love programming. P.S.
Four Steps to Building a Strategic Communications Capability - Georgia Everse by Georgia Everse | 3:36 PM March 7, 2012 Do you have the confidence that every message and experience that customers have with your organization rings true and leaves a positive impression? Developing an integrated communications capability within your organization will give you just that. It will also enhance your reputation and the value of your brand. 1. Managing communications in an integrated or system-wide way will require a new set of behaviors at all levels of your organization — behaviors that embrace a process and apply set standards for all communications efforts. 2. The What/How/Who Model requires that plans be developed at each of the following levels: The What of your communications requires Category Plans. The How of your communications requires Channel Plans for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of alternative channels for delivering your message. The Who of your communications requires Audience Plans for the targeted audience you want to reach. 3. 4.
How we got over funded in just 1 week on Kickstarter Note from Tom: Lucid (Edgar Muniz) is a valuable member of the Construct community and also contributes source code to our open sourced Construct Classic. His sucess on Kickstarter has been deservedly phenomenal, with 9 days to go at time of writing he has raised nearly $42,000, $17,000 more than he asked for from over 1,000 backers. One reason for the sucess is the idea - a 2D sprite animation tool that game developers from around the world want and need. We asked Lucid to write our first guest blog post for us on his Kickstarter experience and lessons learnt as we think it could be a good way for Construct 2 users to also get their projects funded. You can follow Spriter on Kickstarter at www.KickstartSpriter.com When I first quit my job to work on Spriter full-time, the original plan was to begin speaking to investors and trying to otherwise sell the beta when there was a few months of self-funding left. At this point there were basically two alternatives. First option Second option
How Top Brands Pull Customers into Orbit - Mark Bonchek by Mark Bonchek | 12:00 PM March 5, 2012 The most successful companies in business today have something in common. This trait doesn’t just make them better than the competition; it makes them fundamentally different. Where traditional companies push out messages and products, these companies pull customers in. Instead of treating customers as passive targets, they treat them as active participants. Like the sun in a solar system, they create a gravitational field that pulls customers into their orbit. Consider three top companies with orbit strategies: Apple, Google, and Nike. These orbit brands are actively building new Customer Gravity Generators. Orbit brands are organized differently than traditional companies. Orbit brands are more like scientists building a supercollider. To get started with an orbit strategy, start by measuring the strength of your gravitational field. A good test of where you are on the push/pull continuum is your social media strategy. You can also start small.
Rubber Duck Problem Solving At Stack Exchange, we insist that people who ask questions put some effort into their question, and we're kind of jerks about it. That is, when you set out to ask a question, you should … Describe what's happening in sufficient detail that we can follow along. We have a great How to Ask page that explains all of this, which is linked generously throughout the network. What we're trying to prevent, most of all, is the unanswerable drive-by question. Like I said, we're kinda jerks about this. It's quite common. How can I thank the community when I solve my own problems? It's not a new concept, and every community seems to figure it out on their own given enough time, but "Ask the Duck" is a very powerful problem solving technique. Bob pointed into a corner of the office. I love this particular story because it makes it crystal clear how the critical part of rubber duck problem solving is to totally commit to asking a thorough, detailed question of this imaginary person or inanimate object.
Neuroscience Makes Strong Case for Engagement, Personalization in Marketing Recently, Facebook sponsored a study run by NeuroFocus -- found via Search Engine Land-- intended to quantitatively determine how people respond to websites and website ads. The results had some interesting findings for marketers who are wondering how their site structure and ad campaigns affect how users react to their website. Let's just dive right in to those results and see what marketers can learn from their experiments. What the Study Looked At NeuroFocus used devices to measure the brainwaves of searchers when visiting websites, and looked to see if any patterns emerged. The test subjects were 50% men, 50% women, aged 21-54, and with a minimum annual household income of $30,000. The researchers were able to combine scores given for each of these responses into something called Overall Neurological Effectiveness, a composite measure of the efficiency of a test subject's cognitive processing. Interesting Findings From the Study 1.) 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.) 6.) 7.) Image credit: digitalbob8
Silicon Valley's undeserved moral exceptionalism | Features Silicon Valley likes to think of itself as morally exceptional. When Google went public in 2004, the Internet search company’s wunderkind founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, penned a letter to prospective shareholders that has become the Internet industry’s version of the Magna Carta. In it, they pledged that Google was “not a conventional company” but one focused on “making the world a better place.” Their manifesto followed a venerable tradition in Silicon Valley (meaning the swath of technology and Internet companies based in the cities and towns between San Francisco and San Jose). The newest inductees to the Silicon Valley pantheon have continued to think very well of themselves and their motives. After the financial crisis and the great Wall Street swindles of the past few years, this all sounds refreshing. Though Silicon Valley’s newest billionaires may anoint themselves the saints of American capitalism, they’re beginning to resemble something else entirely: robber barons.
Win the Pitch: Tips from Mastercard's "Priceless" Pitchman - Kevin Allen As a growth officer in my early career with the mad men and women of McCann Erickson, my mom could never quite grasp what I did for a living. But, when we pitched, won and delivered the phenomenon now globally known as Priceless for MasterCard, she could finally brag to her friends at my Aunt Rose’s kitchen table. From the moment the very first television commercial appeared (You remember it, right? “Two tickets: $28. In one of the industry’s most hotly-contested advertising accounts, dozens of agencies’ pitches were winnowed down to two contenders. We all make pitches every day — for that highly-prized account; to a client who’s reluctant to accept your scary proposal; for a skeptical CFO to loosen the purse strings; or for a wary new team to believe in you. 1. There are no magic tricks or hypnotics to persuade people to do what you say. 2. To find the hidden agenda, you need to identify your audiences’ wants, needs and/or values. 3. 4.
My daughter taught me to fail more. | Whitetail Software Gwen and Thomas I’ve been watching my daughter grow up for almost two years now and recently she led me to an epiphany. I should fail more and I should do it at many things. I was watching her run around the park a few days ago and I was struck by the way she moved around. What would the world look like if everyone took on life like this? The world is pretty big to a two year old child, but she doesn’t see it as daunting or intimidating. I’m off to pickup the gauntlet. About Robert Graham I am Robert Graham.
Request for Proposal: How to Make the Most of It Stacie Levy | February 2, 2012 | 1 Comment inShare9 How to develop a scoring system to evaluate marketing automation providers. In the column, "What Marketing Automation Tool Is Right for You?" I outlined five key considerations when selecting a marketing automation provider. The second step is the ever-so-loved request for proposal (RFP). In the first step to the RFP process, build a list of questions around capabilities and functionality that are important to you and your organization. Email marketingLead scoringLanding page and optimizationSocial mediaData managementCustomer relation management (CRM) integrationSales functionalityReportingOther capabilities (webinar, survey, etc.)Customer support, etc. Before finalizing the list of questions, capture input and feedback from key stakeholders, such as others from the marketing and sales departments. Step one: Go through each capability or question and weight how important it is for your business.
Avoid Distractions and Remain Focused | Brett Hardin's Blog Building a startup is exciting. Every day you are working to create something that will shake up an industry, perhaps even change the world. When building on your product, there are distractions. Each of them, at different points in time, seem fundamental to the success of your startup. There are so many things occupying your time it can be challenging to prioritize and remain focused on what can benefit your startup the most. But what should a startup be focused on? Stay Focused On Delivering Value As a startup the most fundamental thing is delivering value. Working out doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is delivering value. But, what value should you deliver? Initial Value And Pivot When you begin working on your startup, even before building product, you assume what your customers will care about. What value you deliver can take multiple forms. Always Be Measuring and Incrementing A-B-C. To be a successful startup you need to have your metric. Don't Burn Out