Like … I’m just doing this in between auditions

12 Mar

Australian Youth Hotel

It is a funny name for a pub, The Australian Youth Hotel but it’s a great experience.

Yesterday my family popped in for lunch at this inner city of Sydney establishment. We ate in the dining room which was ‘classily’ designed with no blonde wood in sight.

We were served by a young lady who was exceptional in her friendliness (un-robotic), knowledge (food and wine) and general manner. I asked her if this was a part time gig (was she studying?) No, it was her job full stop and she did it well.

Sometimes wait people (don’t you hate that expression,) can be over the top with fake bonhomie which can be invasive and repellant. Like I’m just doing this in between auditions scenario. Often it can be non existent. This experience was real.

It’s good when people serving you like people!

On the way out I kind of discovered the secret. I spoke to the boss (family run business,) and told him how great the experience had been and pointed to the young wait um person.

‘Oh.’ He said with a smile. ‘You got her on a good day!’

Good bosses who make for happy workplaces create a customer service culture naturally. There’s no training needed. It’s natural, which is why Richard Branson is so correct when he says look after your people and the service will follow or words to that effect.

I love small business.

 

Welcome to the emojincey ward

1 Mar

emojincey ward

The digital sphere can be complicated for marketers and business operators, trying to keep up with all the new features social media is offering as well as apps and other whizz bang offerings.

I use the term whizz bang because when you really look at a lot of these innovations, they offer the excitement of the new. And we have been trained to upgrade from old to new even when the new features aren’t that special.

In the olden days marketing was relatively simple.

  • Create the message
  • Match it to your target market
  • Choose the best media option
  • Run the ad or the campaign.

Now targeting requires sorting through many variables to do with lifestyle and behaviours.

Ads or posts are run and testing is conducted using the analytics.

Often we are advised to run separate campaigns to ‘test’ the efficacy and effectiveness.

We are told to be strangely unique to cut through and to tell stories not to just sell.

TV channels have been replaced by internet influencers who command vast audiences.

It’s so un marketing in the traditional sense where a product or service was promoted to a market.

OK … that’s simplistic.

And there’s likes and follows. Shorthand ticks of approval from our ‘community.”

Other shorthands include the emoji.

now featuring an array of cute visages with stand out emotions. And gifs.

Like it or not, we are in the age of shorthand … short attentions span.

Ultra convenience services such as UBER Eats and Netflix stop people socialising.

But people are people and will no doubt get bored with social which is why they have to keep changing and updating and adding features.

Great advertising is still about the creative. Cut through only occurs when people stop and take notice.

So let’s open the emojincey ward where people are people and emotions aren’t a quick flick, insert and like.

emoji image:  

Do what it takes to stand out

1 Jan

Rombaut shoe copyAs I delve deeper and deeper into the world of digital marketing and social media, discovering countless apps, knowledge bases, channels, classes and courses, tips, tricks (hacks), opinions, videos, podcasts and webinars, influencers, etc. – it can tend to be overwhelming.

One thing hasn’t changed though and that’s the need to be creative. To have big ideas (thanks David Ogilvy) and to be brave.

It doesn’t matter what medium you are on – achieving cut through is more important than ever.

It might get people to stop just for a second.

AIDA = Attention Interest Desire Action

 

How Neruda let me be innovative

24 Jun

Last week I went to see a movie and there weren’t any super heroes in it.

Wait a second … there was a super hero but he didn’t have tights, a mask and a logo emblazoned on his muscular chest. No. This super hero was a middle aged, portly man with thinning hair. His super powers weren’t your usual mix but instead consisted of words and phrases and phrasing. The hero was a poet. The movie was Neruda. 

neruda_ver6

It was a beautiful film but not easy to follow. It was a portrait of a poet and a politician from Chile set in the 1950’s and it was a crime drama. Neruda was a member of the Communist Party (along with Pablo Picasso) who idealised communism as an ideal and an antidote to fascism. Of course these intellectuals were to be proved wrong when the walls went up but at the time it was about equality for all. When the government decreed that Neruda was to be arrested, he begrudgingly fled. The crime drama was the chase by a young detective who had his own back story.

neruda

Neruda performed his poems throughout the movie and that’s what opened the gates for me. During the movie, (which was subtitled), I listened to and read the words and i felt free. A lot of the poems were about love.

Neruda was romantic and seductive.

I’ve never been a great reader of poetry and to be honest it baffles me.

I just know that the words sometimes clash and when they do there’s a spark of freedom. Freedom opens the mind and can lead to innovative thoughts.

When was the last time you felt free?

DISRUPTION HAS HAPPENED BEFORE

12 Jun

disruption is nothing new

Wow what an amazing world we now live in. Technology rules … OK!

Disruption like fake news is a hot cliche. Could be the hottest right now.

Disruption describes new technologies and new business models that disrupt the current modelsprocesses and accepted standards of business.

  • Taxis were disrupted by UBER
  • Graphic design was disrupted by Adobe
  • Hotels/accomodation was disrupted by AirBnB
  • Commercial real estate was disrupted by WeWork
  • Photography and processing was disrupted by mobile phones + photoshop

It’s nothing new though. As the above photo depicts horses and carriages with a trolley car and next to that an early motor car. That was a disruption. But they didn’t have that neat phrase to label things.

In business we must track trends or we’ll be left behind holding the box brownie.

brownie_1

The importance of data is ‘yuge!’

10 Jun

Here’s a story I found on a blog I subscribe to. It’s about the people-based research and targeting platform developed by Merkle which has ‘tagged each person with digital IDs with hundreds and sometimes over 1,000 attributes. At this point, the total database covers 242 million people and counting.’

This supposes that people like targeted advertising and are OK with ‘a holistic understanding of people’s behaviors and motivations.’

‘“We’re undertaking a transformation as a global enterprise,” said Dentsu Aegis Network Americas CEO Nigel Morris.’

big brother

It looks like George Orwell was right but he just got the era wrong.

OK – I like a targeted ad as much as the next person but I already bought a BBQ!

https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/302542/census-advertising-dentsu-rolls-out-new-platform.html

This why we need special rooms to be innovative

10 Jun

innovation cave

One of the myths around innovation is that you need some kind of ‘special conditions’ to bring out the creative in you. See the Google workplace and just about every ad agency in the known universe.

I love these rooms with their funny pics and pinball machines and pool tables.

And I like how I get to wear my jeans – wow I feel so free!

Hang on there … I’ve got an idea coming. Here it is.

No wait. It’s stopped somewhere up the line to get some new passengers on board.

The names of those passengers are Mr Tired, Ms Bored, Mr Lazy and the Count of no account.

We’re all creative and we don’t need any special conditions to think of new ways. Just some energy and imagination.

Two surprising strategies for effective innovation — TED Blog

10 Jun

Picture this: Three kids are given a LEGO set with the pieces to build a fire department. All of them want to build as many new toys as possible. The first kid goes straight for the easy wins. He puts a tiny red hat on a tiny minifig: presto, a firefighter! In this way, he…

via Two surprising strategies for effective innovation — TED Blog

The Niche

10 Jun

There are a lot of good reasons to service a narrow market aka a niche.

niche

Here’s some info I found on Quora.

Niche Marketing

If you try to target all markets you will be in big trouble, because you’ll find yourself surrounded by a load of competition and it will be hard to showcase your unique value proposition.

A rule of thumb is to start narrow and then grow wider.

Start talking to one group of your audience and be specific about their needs and desires so that you can attend to them with your product and services.

Benefits of niche marketing:

  1. Less competitive – a small market means less competition. Carrying out good research across a small market makes it easier to find out the strengths and weaknesses of your competition and makes your product or service better.
  2. More affordable – you won’t be spending money on a broad target group, so you won’t waste money on advertising.
  3. Customers are more loyal – you will be able to nurture, teach, and understand them much better.
  4. Audience is easier to target – you know where they hang out and what their interests are, which makes it easier to target and offer them your solution.
  5. Focused – trying to offer different services for each market can be inefficient, whereas having one nice one will help you to be much more efficient and focused on one single market.

All you have to do is find yours.

Source: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-upcoming-digital-marketing-trends

 

Education disrupted

7 Jun

education and technology

An interesting article from the ‘not failing’ New York Times about how the tech billionaires are making fore-roads into schools with innovation grants and other funding and the questions around who is profiting the most. In an era that promises to automate many jobs and where industries are either disappearing or being reinvented it makes for interesting reading.

For those of you that still read …

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/technology/tech-billionaires-education-zuckerberg-facebook-hastings.html?_r=0

Image via: edtechreview.in