Dear Forrester. No, We Are Not Going to Die.

März 29th, 2010 • 2 comments Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Agencies, Brands, Business, Diagram, Forrester, Future, Ideas, Industry, Reports, Social Business Design, Strategy, Trends, Truth, World

Since Digital has initiated the revolution in Marketing the question for the ‘Agency of the Future’ has almost become an Internet Meme. Pretty much every agency around claims to have found the recipe. That’s in fact no very surprising. Over the time the already-complex agency-marketer relationship has been significantly altered by factors such as the recession and the rise of social media. With brands and agencies stumbling into the real time web and over interacting customers (OMFG!) the key question is obvious: Whose agency future is it anyway?

The challenge

In their late Forrester report about ‘The Future of Agency Relationships‘ Dave Frankland, Sean Corcoran, and Vidya Drego have tried to define a CMO’s challenges and their criteria catalogue when it comes to choosing an Agency of Record – a highly complex task. Agencies have always managed to adopt to changes. There were many paradigm shifts from the ad sales era of the early 19th century to our wired reality. Nevertheless agencies (or similar institutions) managed to offer services which were relevant enough. Today, once more, agencies are faced with new requirements in what they are supposed to deliver:

That may not exactly sound completely new. But it is quite interesting to ask which agency model might be able to accept these challenges.

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Technographics. Forrester’s Ladder just got a new Rung.

Januar 19th, 2010 • 1 comment Reports, Social, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Conversationalist, Diagram, Forrester, Groundswell, Model, Social Influence Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Technographics, Tool, Tools, Twitter

In 2007 Forrester’s Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff introduced the world to the Groundswell model. It has become something like a standard (if there is one) in Social strategies, summarizing data-based strategies for companies that want to harness the power of social technologies. One key aspect of it was the Social Technographics Ladder that profiled users from all over the world according to their level of tech-savvyness in the social realm (plus, they offer a handy online tool too).

No doubt, the Technographics Ladder was a great first model to profile overlapping customer groups and their ability to move in the social space. And – what I liked most about it – Forrester fed it with up-to-date data to turn it into a valuable model for marketers. Nevertheless there were too few rungs on the ladder. We understood that there are Inactives, Spectators, Joiners, Critics and Creators…but something was missing.

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Adaptive Marketing. How not to go the Dodo way, Part 2.

Dezember 9th, 2009 • Business, Intelligence, Reports, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Business, Forrester, Future, Ideas, Reports, Social Business Design, Social Influence Marketing, speed, Strategy, Trends, World

I did write about the concept of Adaptation Marketing two weeks ago. I admit, it’s another buzz word in the digital/social realm. But it’s a meaningful idea for what brand management might be like in the near future. A model which enables brands to deal with the social sphere without necessarily focusing too much on Facebook, Twitter & Co. A thoughtstarter for rather traditional as well as new marketers alike.

Adaptation is a term from Darwin’s evolution theory. Wikipedia knows that “when the habitat changes, three main things may happen to a resident population: habitat tracking, genetic change or extinction. In fact, all three things may occur in sequence. Of these three effects, only genetic change brings about adaptation.”

The life of the last Dodo ended in the 17th century. His habitat changed drastically when men appeared. An unwelcome surprise for Dodos as for brands who also struggle with real people who behave different than what they are used to. They talk and they walk and they don’t necessarily care for Dodos and brands. We, marketers or advertisers may like it or not – but things in our habitat change. Quickly. And two key aspects of it are  feedback and real time.

How social will we have to be?
The Dodo formula is simple: Humans arrive = Problem. Brands know this problem since the social web startet going mainstream. Some of them adapt quickly. But most of them behave like rabbits in the headlight.  Caught between a rock and hard place, the challenges seem to leave no other way than to use it or lose it, Facebook Fan Page or nothing at all.

I think there is a third way.

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Adaptive Marketing. How not to go the Dodo way, Part 1.

November 5th, 2009 • 7 comments Intelligence, Reports, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Business, Forrester, Future, Ideas, Intelligence, Reports, Social Business Design, Social Influence Marketing, speed, Strategy, Trends, World

Forrester has just published an article called “Adaptive Brand Marketing: Rethinking Your Approach to Branding in the Digital Age”. This article comes up with a couple of thoughts which aren’t completely new but leave you thinking. Agility and adaption are defined here as preconditions for brands to survive. Not new, you think? I think it is new in a certain way…simply because it left me with a couple of questions (which I try to discuss in the second part of this article, next weekend).

It’s good to have clever buddies. One of them is Johannes, my colleague who regularly sends me the articles I miss to read and starts a good discussion about it, usually. I had read a good post by BBH labs about a Forrester article which wasn’t even published at that time. But I missed the original Forrester report. Johannes made me read it (thanks again). And I recommend it as well now. Key question of the report: How do organizations respond to an even faster world in which they struggle to survive?

The challenges of speed and dynamics were always hard to put into a model for our social web driven world. All too often we focus on a different question as marketers: How do we respond to customers at all (not even really focusing on the real-time aspect of our digital world)? The question on how we hold conversations at all took our full attention away from its inlying dynamics and what it does to companies. But it’s crucial.

Think of the Dodo. A flightless bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Related to pigeons and doves, it stood about a meter tall, weighing about 20 kilograms , living on fruit and nesting on the ground.

The dodo has been extinct since the mid-to-late 17th century. It is commonly used as the archetype of an extinct species because its extinction occurred during recorded human history, and was directly attributable to human activity, hence the phrase “going the way of the Dodos.” (thx to Wikipedia). The Dodo and his ancestors were intelligent enough to survive for millions of years. But as his environment (well, humans came) changed he could not adapt fast enough. And this is a perfect example to introduce the topic I actually wanted to write about: Adaptation. Because evolution is a process that rewards the organism most capable to adapt to new environments, not the biggest or most intelligent. It’s an opportunistic and fast system…for the Dodo as well as for brands.

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Social Media Marketing. Good times ahead.

Juli 9th, 2009 • Trends
Tags: Business, Forrester, Prediction, Social Influence Marketing, Trends

Good news from Forrester Research. According to the company’s Interactive Marketing Forecast expenditures for Social Marketing 2009-2014 will rise by 34%. If you believe Forrester, Social Media will soon be more important than Mobile Marketing or Email. Not very surprising considering the fact that only social will be able to maximize the reach of traditional ad forms and reach the old marketing goals with a smaller budget… (via Webguerillas)