B1BLOG

Image cour­tesy of http://www.adpulp.com/gamification_se/

There is a grow­ing opin­ion in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing com­mu­nity that the con­struc­tion of the social layer of the web is now com­plete, espe­cially with the dom­i­nance of Face­book. The next phase will move from estab­lish­ing social con­nec­tions to the devel­op­ment of game dynam­ics that encour­age long-term brand engage­ment and loyalty.

It’s cer­tainly easy to see how game the­ory has already been applied in con­sumer mar­ket­ing e.g. building-up points on FourSquare to get a free cof­fee at Star­bucks. But, the big ques­tion is how will it work for B2B?

Per­sonas – the fic­tional char­ac­ters cre­ated to help bring tar­get cus­tomers to life – are now pretty much ubiq­ui­tous in mar­ket­ing depart­ments and their agen­cies. They are used to more accu­rately depict var­i­ous cus­tomer seg­ments, giv­ing a firmer foun­da­tion on which to address customers.

You can see why. Where at one time our tar­get might be described as:

• IT direc­tor in an enterprise-sized business
• Located in EMEA with mul­ti­ple offices
• Cur­rently using tra­di­tional tele­phony across all sites
• Their cur­rent con­tract is due to expire in the next 12 months
• Etc

Now we have:

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Visu­alised ¹. past par­tici­ple, past tense of vis·u·al·ize (Verb)

1. Form a men­tal image of; imagine.
2. Make (some­thing) vis­i­ble to the eye

¹ Google Search Dic­tio­nary www.google.com

This week we look at ideas that take large chunks of infor­ma­tion and trans­form them into some­thing visu­ally appeal­ing, socially engag­ing or, in some cases, anti-establishment.

Social in 60 Seconds

Stuff that hap­pens while you boil your ket­tle

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“The cus­tomer is in charge. If you think you own your brand, you’re wrong – the cus­tomer does. In fact, for­get brand­ing. No one buys that stuff anymore.”

Sound famil­iar?

Cer­tainly, if you read many of today’s mar­ket­ing blogs, you’ll be left with the impres­sion that these days there’s vir­tu­ally noth­ing you can do to cre­ate, improve or sus­tain a com­pelling brand. The growth of social media and other peer-to-peer com­mu­ni­ca­tions has meant that cus­tomers don’t need to lis­ten to com­pa­nies to get their infor­ma­tion any more. They are more than happy to form their own opin­ions thank you very much. As the Clue­train Man­i­festo says:

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After the spring hia­tus, the Dig­i­tal Couch is back for another sea­son of enter­tain­ment. We haven’t been can­celled… yet.

This week we look at the fine line that sep­a­rates us from our dig­i­tal selves. Think about it. There are, in fact, 2 of you. One has a job, shops at the local super­mar­ket and waits for the bus. Then there’s the other you; the one who runs ram­pant across the inter­net, wreak­ing havoc and leav­ing a greasy dig­i­tal foot­print every­where you go.

So what hap­pens when some­thing from your dig­i­tal world crosses over into the world of bus queues and super­mar­kets? Here is a selec­tion of cam­paigns that do just that.

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Win­ning new busi­ness is always tough (and get­ting tougher). All that work, all that effort for the pitch, and you finally win! Then the work begins for real and it all becomes a blur of dead­lines, deliv­er­ables and more long nights.

And there’s no praise if you fal­ter in your tracks, fail to deliver and find your new client head­ing back to his pre­vi­ous agency or to the close run num­ber two… who said life was ever meant to be easy?

Win­ning is impor­tant but keep­ing a client happy over a sus­tained period of time is much more demand­ing and, unlike pitch­ing, con­ducted in the real world of blood, sweat and tears.

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