Bob Rinderle / Business & Beyond

Not A Fan of Twitter As RSS

I'm not a big fan of marketing firms, businesses, and pundits whose tweets are no different than RSS feeds; I feel like I am following a popularity contest or race to relevance among a sub-set striving to be the first to link to a new article or piece of research. I much prefer companies and people that make their own content the centerpiece of their outreach.

Is Your Company Managing For Growth?

"The current economic downturn has... accelerated and intensified the digital migration among both providers and consumers of content," according to the PricewaterhouseCooper Global Entertainment & Media Outlook.  "Companies who grasp the opportunities... in this fast changing marketplace... will be able to take full advantage of the potential and new revenue models as they emerge."

That statement sounds so simple.  Yet companies across a wide range of industries are struggling to evolve to stay relevant.  The recession has forced companies to cut overhead and streamline FTEs, but that is just one side of the economic equation.  Who is managing innovation?  Businesses can't cut their way to growth, so where will future growth come from? 

In the books Disruption and Trading Up, the authors suggest real change can only occur when leaders enter from outside an industry, or are capable of leveraging a new perspective; too often entrenched thinking puts blinders on one's ability to see new possibilities. And certainly executives across many industries including publishing, music, automobiles, retail, advertising, etc., have failed to imagine the future. What steps is your management taking to optimize for innovation and to imagine new opportunities for growth? 

What Is Driving Increase In Viral?

According to the Forbes "Ad Effectiveness Survey," 54% of marketers who spend in excess of $1 million on digital expect to spend more on viral marketing, while 50% expect to spend more on SEO.  This same group will decrease spending on ad networks by 52%.

I'd love to know what their expectations are for "viral."  The jump in SEO spending with the corresponding decrease for ad networks suggests an increased emphasis on click efficiency.  So what is viral's role in the mix?  Do marketers expect it to drive additional clicks, or do they hope it will be a less expensive way to drive branding?  Viral is not a strategy, so I'm curious about the intent. What do you think?

ROR the new ROI

Return on Investment = Return on Information = Return on Relationships.

As optimal marketing moves from a message-push and content development model (which is costly and controlled) to an open forum driven by social dynamics and the power of the individual, the reality of one-to-one marketing, long-held to be the Holy Grail of digital communications, will be measured by Return on Relationships.

John Wanamaker's famous statement that half his advertising dollars were wasted will be completely inverted; not only will mar-com dollars pay back, but they will succeed exponentially, propelled by the power of community, and at a fraction of a brand's historical spend.