Thursday, June 24, 2010

Democratization of Marketing?

Kevin Barenblat – Forbes.com

The social stream is the new search box. It’s your replacement inbox. Instead of focusing on search terms, placement and CPMs, marketers who win will focus on friend outreach, viral sharing and social engagement.

From a marketer’s perspective the focus has to shift from influencing the technology tools, system or channel to influencing individuals. This calls for a total shift in the way marketing is planned and executed.

Clearly, the focus on ‘human side‘ of marketing, especially branding, has to increase by leaps and bound. The marketing paradigm has to shift from today’s manipulative frame that tricks customers into buying your product to being transparent and become an attempt to connect with genuine care for a cause.

As customers become the primary marketing channel, marketing has to focus on creating messages that are with high 'share' value, packaged in a way that makes them easy to share.

To find its success, marketing of the future, has to be ‘for the people’ that can be shared and further advanced ‘by the people’. The days of doing ‘broadcast friendly’ messages for the masses might be over soon!

Sunday, June 13, 2010

The art of giving!!



Neither Sudama nor Arjuna were explicit about what they wanted. But
Krishna sensed what they needed. This sensitivity is something leaders
must possess.

Krishna knew what to give to whom – wealth to Sudama and wisdom to Arjuna. Imagine what would have happened if he sang the Bhagavad Gita to Sudama! Or gave wealth to Arjuna! When people enter a leader’s room, they come expecting to receive something. And leaders have to be sensitive enough to figure out what exactly they are seeking and respond accordingly. It is not always what they are asking!
Implied Needs | Devdutt

In the din of action points, deadlines and checklists 'sensitivity' never finds a place. In life and work, everyone is bound to fall short of some resource both material or intellectual.
Mostly, people do not explicitly state ones needs to the person who can offer help, worst still, sometimes one might not realize the need for help.

As friends, colleagues or leaders it becomes important to judge our work by how many times we sense the need of people around us, what they seek from us and then actually manage to give that without someone asking for it...

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

No Complaints Please!


Your friendly reminder to stop complaining... - Holy Kaw!


In addition to its incisive message, the design of the poster is equally forceful.
I remember ignoring the same message some time back when the content was placed in power point slides with bullets for each of the messages...worst still, imagine if it were to be in a poster with loads of pictures from poor and war prone regions....

Thanks to the design above the message clicks far deeper!

The war for information and knowledge

YouTube has been blocked in Turkey for long and now, according to some news reports, the government has also blocked Google Docs, Google Books, Google Analytics, Google Translate and most other Google services in the country.Unhappy at the ban, a group of Turkish bloggers has created an interesting poster mocking the censors!
[Poster] We Don’t Need No Google!

The trigger for first world war was material control, the second one was forced by ego ...to get back the glory and pride ....wondering if the next world wide war could be triggered for the control of information and knowledge.......?