Posts Tagged ‘Business’
My Perspective. The New Rules of Relationship Management.
März 7th, 2010 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Altimeter, Brands, Business, Monitoring, Reports, Social, Social Business Design, Social CRM, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Tools, World
Altimeter Group has just published its new report entitled ‘Social CRM. The New Rules of Relationship Management.’ It assumes that companies are simply overwhelmed with social interactions. They need tools, but they need tools to deliver on certain, clearly defined objectives. This report tries to give an overview on the tech-related maturity of SCRM tools and their relation to company objectives. Most of you will find it f*****ing boring. I don’t. 
About half a year ago I posted an article entitled ‘Social CRM. Ready for action?‘. I tried to give a rough overview on the relevance of a new approach to brand-customer-relations in an era shaped by interactions among users via social software.
Of course I am not the first one to reflect the outcome of a world gone social for CRM. People like Esteban Kolsky (read his articles ‘The Roadmap to SCRM‘), Wim Rampen, and a few more CRM guys try to define the role of SCRM for today’s marketing. And now there is a new report by Altimeter’s notorious Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang – Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management.
What’s it SCRM?
Social CRM extends the classic definition of Customer Relationship Management. According to Paul Greenberg…
CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.
SCRM accepts the fact that there are millions of people virtually interacting . They are chatting about your brand, recommending your sneakers, or rate your restaurant online. This is where SCRM starts off…
Survey. One in five U.S. Marketing Dollars will be social by 2015.
März 3rd, 2010 • Comments Business
Tags: Business, emarketer, Future, Prediction, Report, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Survey, Trends, World
If there is one survey result connected to social media which really surprised me, it is this. According to emarketer and a survey by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association (AMA), almost 18% of all marketing dollars will be parked in social media activities by 2015. This is one fifth of every U.S. all budgets - not just digital or PR. Yes – wow!
Facts and Figures. The world of google.
Februar 26th, 2010 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Brands, Business, Cool, Diagram, google, Strategy, Tech, visualization, World
Twitter is crowded with marketing people. And what do marketing people really, really like? Right, statistics. Among loads of animated short movies which stage facts & figures from the web, we have seen a lot of wallpaper-like statistical info visualizations lately lately. First I thought “Nice”, until I found out that pretty much everyone nowadays puts his facts and figures into these kinds of banners. Anyway, I think this visualization is one of the better ones. It was created by Pingdom and tries to integrate many interesting facts about google in one place. Interesting!
Bring the Noise. Why google Buzz will Fail.
Februar 11th, 2010 • Comments Social, Social Business
Tags: Brands, Business, Facebook, google, google Buzz, google wave, Social Networks, Strategy, Tech, Trends, Twitter, World
Two days ago google announced google Buzz, a new socialnetworky add-on to its well known and beloved gmail service. As expected, google is trying once more to advance into enemy territory – social networking. Since its foundation the company is great in search and media but it sucks big time when it comes to content and real, human interactions.
So, yesterday morning I found this google Buzz Button in my gmail account. And what I saw next was nice but two years too late.
One day with google Buzz
google Buzz tries to do anything at once and doesn’t do anything really good. Basically it’s a mixture of twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and Foursquare. That does not sound too bad, unfortunately I have no idea where google is in this concept.
Apart from the lack in own, new ideas the first finding is – the UX is horrible. Years ago google was on the forefront of UX design. But google Buzz almost looks like google Wave light. Do you remember google Wave? Sure you do (I have 1 gazillion invites left if you like). In short, google Buzz combines at least four specialized interoperable social services in one shitty interface, spices it up with even worse than ususal privacy flaws, integrates it into gmail an calls it Buzz.
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Agency Strike. Belgian Agencies show the Finger.
Februar 9th, 2010 • Comments We like
Tags: Agencies, Business, Cool, Experimental, Funny, Ideas, Pitch, Truth, We like, World
Basically it’s an update to my post from yesterday which reacts on Bud’s article about the future of agencies. Today the agencies of Belgium went on strike to protest against the erosion of pitch norms. They synchronized their websites to display one message which you can click through one after another and jump from website to website – an impressive act of resistance against what seems to be the sad truth in the industry nowadays.
I have posted the screenshots of all 14 pages below. The virtual strike will only last for a week.
Let’s call it reality. Why agencies will pretty likely stick around.
Februar 8th, 2010 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: Agencies, Brands, Business, Debate, Experimental, Future, Prediction, Strategy, Trends
Bud Caddell from NYC’s Undercurrent has published a great rant about the question on how the agency of the future looks like. As usual it is a great text to read but it ends with a plea to share our opinion. And that is what I do now.
Hi Bud.
I would like to share my opinion with you and I appreciate the time and effort it took to write such a long article about the agency of the future. First up, it’s a good perspective to start a discussion. But before we talk about the question what the agency of the future might look like, let’s begin with the essential question what an agency actually is. At this point we encounter the first logical problem. You won’t find a global definition of “Agency” on Wikipedia. But you will find a definition of “Advertising agency”.
An advertising agency or ad agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients.
If you scroll down a little bit further you will find the chapter “Types of advertising agencies”. It separates different types of agencies – such as Inhouse, Interactive, Search Engine etc.
Simply stunning!!! This little chapter alone demonstrates the disadvantage of 99% of the world’s agency models. It is not at all focused on the core business needs of their clients but on the output the agency founder once planned to generate – SEO, Social…you name it. But do we still have a clear understanding about what we are supposed to produce? In a small poll on my blog last week I asked if there is still such a big line between traditional and new jobs in the industry. The answers ranged from ‘Absolutely. Traditional agencies haven’t got anything to do with digital ones’ to ‘Not at all. The future model is integrated’. Or, to put it another way, there is no average ad guy who has got a precise understanding about what he is supposed to produce anymore. Pure confusion, no matter where you look.
The problem
Agencies are just normal companies in the first place. And then there was the web, this fantastic engine that made all these fantastic concepts of crowdsourced products, E-Learning, brand fandom and LOLcats possible. But, the web is half as old as I am. And 7% as old as the Top 3 ad networks nowadays. Companies such as Ogilvy, JWT, or McCann have been around for decades. They produced innovation at a certain point in time. But unfortunately they cannibalized their own concept. Customers drowned in messages and meaningless awareness campaigns while more and more products hit the markets.
It may sound a little bit cheesy, but my dad told me about his childhood days in Germany last weekend. There was not too much choice when you were a kid in Frankfurt in 1960 – there were only a handful of products, few toys and most of the time you played soccer outside with your friends. According to a study from earlier this month modern kids spend enough time with screens of all kinds to make it a full-time job – 53 hours per week!
What I say is, the crisis of the agency business is the crisis of our society. We just have anything we could dream of. And it’s not a question of traditional versus ‘new’ agencies. It’s not a question whether I drown in traditional or digital messages. It’s just a problem that we possess anything and nothing seems special enough to us anymore. We are not not thrilled by brand campaigns anymore. We aren’t thrilled by anything anymore. We just struggle to stay alive in a sea of stuff.
Apps. An Explosion is underway.
Februar 2nd, 2010 • Comments Mobile
Tags: Android, Apps, Business, Diagram, iPhone, Lifestyle, Mobile, Prediction, Smartphones, Strategy, Trends, visual, World
Ooooh! Aaaaaah! 2010 is the year of the mobile, social, social CRM, IPTV App. No matter how realistic that is, check out this lovely piece of info visualization from the Fast company. Because according to Gartner an app explosion is underway. A developement which is closely intertwined with smartphone sales. Word up!
Civilization. The evolution goes on.
Januar 24th, 2010 • Comments Games
Tags: Brands, Business, Civilization, Cool, Creativity, Future, Games, Gaming, Prediction, Social Gaming, Strategy
One of the most succesful computer games ever is about to reinvent itself completely. Sid Meier’s civilization is not only a brilliant computer game, it is also very flexible as it has found the way to consoles, iPhones and soon to Facebook. This is more than just an adaption. CIV is a highly complex strategy game, not necessarily dedicated to be played with simple interfaces. But it mastered this challenge and might soon redefine social gaming – in an unpredicted evolution in UX, marketing and gameplay.
I love Civilization. Chances are high that you played it. It can easily be labeled as one of the most addicitive pieces of entertainment ever. The rules: you become the leader of a primitive tribe on a fictional continent (or real scenarios). Your job is to make this tribe flourish and to turn it from cavemen in 4000 B.C. into an advanced civilization ready for space conquest.
CIV has a 12% share of my teenage days as it made me play for days. Once you have built the Pyramids or declared War on this other tribe you could not stop anymore. And…the simple gaming principle did not rely on superior visual effects but on an outstanding and highly intelligent game. No two Civ matches were the same as the complex combination of environment, your people’s properties and your neighbours mixed up to a time-eating complex which you simply wanted to be the best in.
Figures. The Gaming Industry.
Januar 19th, 2010 • Comments Business, Games, Trends
Tags: Business, Future, Games, Gaming, Strategy, Trends, visual, World
We all love Info visualizations. Similar to the ones by The Oat Meal this one explains us the wonderful world of video games. The gaming industry succeeded in becoming the #1 entertainment sector, to be at the forefront before music and movies. And even though there was a drop in video game sales in 2009, it’s quite impressive to see the industry recover.
Here are a couple of figures revolving around this industry. Don’t forget to check out the numbers behind the adult movie industry as well (thx to geekologie).
2010. The year of realistic self-assessment.
Januar 5th, 2010 • Comments Allgemein
Tags: 2010, Business, Future, predictions, Trends, World
2010. Another year which will be the year of mobile, of social media ROI, social media CRM , social TV, social commerce, the year of tablets and a lot of other technologies my sister or my dad don’t know anything about. In fact, I believe if it will be the year of anything special at all then it will be another year of failed prophecies.
No doubt, the advance of smartphones and the invention of mobile apps paves the way for the use of the mobile web. The progress made in social technologies opens new possibilities to explore new services in this sector. And hey, that’s great. But let’s please do one thing in 2010: Let’s turn it into the year of realism.
Just because we are in control of the air superiority in our self-invented communities, does not mean it’s relevant for anybody else than the usual suspects. Yes, I love Foursquare. But in my hometown Frankfurt maybe 200 players have registered…in a city of 600K. That’s not exactly what I call reach. Plus, the realities in the use of digital technologies vary to enormous degree even among the U.S., Japan and Europe…and we are not even talking about the 75% which we call ‘the rest of the world’ (like India and stuff).
If I have one professional wish for 2010 it is this. Keep on playing, keep on dreaming…but stop using superlatives when ever you like a certain smartphone or social service. One of the happiest tech moments in my life was when my family had a Skype video call with my step brother’s family in Australia during christmas. They waved, they laughed and they were happy to see each other over such a big distance. And hey, that’s cool, isn’t it? When I saw this scenery, I had the feeling that this (almost old-school piece of tech) had a sense – it simply made people smile and connect – in a very simple way. What a great invention: Skype.
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