SIGMA::BLOG » Fuel for Thought

Are You Going Stale?

jkim — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:40:33 +0000

What scares you? What keeps you up at night, and nags at the back of your consciousness? There are few things that frighten me, one of them being that I have stopped learning and, like old bread, have gotten stale.

Can you imagine waking up one day to discover that your capacity to take in new knowledge has ended? That everything you are going to learn has already happened and that your brain, now filled to capacity, was blinking “hard drive full”? It can happen. I have experienced it.

One thing that occurs when you are the custodian of a marketing budget is that everyone wants to meet with you. If you allowed every new vendor to come in for a pitch, you could literally spend every day watching Power Point slides. To better manage your time you set up protocols and processes–your staff and agencies screen new opportunities and vendors and only highlight those that they feel are right and likely to interest you. This frees you up to focus on running your marketing programs, driving your business, and managing your time.

But all those protocols and layers are traps. They isolate you from the marketplace and insulate you from innovation. Your ability to compare and make decisions on new opportunities based on your firsthand knowledge/exposure diminishes… you are going stale. So what can you do to stay current and in-touch with new options and changing landscapes without being capsized by solicitation? Here are some fuel for thought suggestions:

Conference: Attend at least one conference a year that focuses on new marketing practices. It is a great way to explore emerging trends and opportunities as well as network, share, talk and collaborate with peers and experts. One conference series I highly recommend marketers to consider attending is the iMedia Summit – an excellent 3-day conference where they bring seasoned practitioners, marketers and vendors together. Sigma’s annual Fuel For Thought conference is also packed with great content and attended by senior-level marketing executives from a variety of sectors/categories. This year’s conference is planned to take place in October.

Follow & Document: Get into the habit of following trends and documenting what it will mean for your business in the near future. A well organized consolidation of trends can shape and provide clarity for new directions and opportunities. With the vastness of marketing related news sites, blogs, feeds, forums, groups, conversations on social networks, etc., there are numerous ways for you to create your own resource pool. I personally find Twitter to be extremely useful with their list building and aggregation. Here are a few Twitter lists I routinely scan throughout the day:

New Opportunity Day: Conduct a New Opportunity Day where you and your team meet only with companies you haven’t done business with–those that have been on your radar but you have pushed off due to lack of time, priority and/or perhaps even too many protocols. To make this truly productive, make one of your marketing goals where success will be achieved through expanding into new approaches, channels and tools (e.g., social media, mobile, augmented reality, etc.). Coordinate with your team and/or agency to issue an invitation to vendors/potential partners that clearly outlines your goal(s), timing and budget specifically tied to this initiative. State clearly that this is not a general sales meeting, but rather you are inviting them to share suggestions that will help you further innovate your marketing by leveraging on their expertise and solutions.

Fuel for Thought Recap: John Battelle’s Keynote Video

jkim — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:04:12 +0000

John Battelle shares his insights and offers suggestions on Social Media Marketing.

Related posts:
All Media Is Social. Now What? by Fuel for Thought

John Battelle & The Conversation Economy by C. B. Whittemore

Fuel for Thought Recap: All Media Is Social. Now What?

jkim — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:07:22 +0000

Last week, marketers from all around the tri-state area converged in New Jersey at our Fuel for Thought conference to learn, share experiences and develop ideas to get a handle on social media marketing. There’s a lot we covered/learned from each session and we’ll be sharing key highlights and materials here on our blog.

We’ll kick-off the first conference recap with John Battelle’s (CEO/Founder, Federated Media) keynote on “All Media is Social. Now What?” John’s keynote was brilliantly right-on-topic to get us all kindling new ideas. Here are four key areas he covered:

1. The Rise of Conversational Marketing: First we declared our intentions (what we want) through search. Then we declared our relations (social graph — who we are as defined by how we are connected to other people) on sites like Facebook. Finally, during the past year we declared our utterances (what we are doing, what we are interested in, etc.) on sites like Twitter. When you put all these declarations together — intention, relations and utterances, you have an economy of conversations.

2. Conversation Economy: Every marketer is a publisher and every publisher is a marketer. And every consumer is both. What was once a one-way conversation has now become a two-way conversation. To succeed as marketers, we must leverage appropriate digital media and have conversations with customers at scale. If you believe conversational marketing is real, we have to contemplate how we can best market in that native environment. It’s a new form of exchange between numerous participants, and we as marketers are one of those participants representing the brand. We are still in an early stage and we have to learn new skills by trying and relentlessly testing.

3. What Brands Need to Succeed in Conversational Marketing: Marketing must become everyone’s job and it must become a horizontal practice rather than a vertical specialty. This means rethinking from the top down and the bottom up. To succeed in the Social Media, brands need the same things that are required in a Packaged Goods environment.

Scale + Safety + Quality + Engagement

4. Conversational Marketing Guidelines: Fuel for Thought tips and suggestions include:
- Find conversations you want to join or start
- Find the natural leaders of those conversations
- Listen first, then join
- Add value to the conversations
- Make media annuities

To hear more great nuggets from John, be sure to follow him on Twitter at @JohnBattelle. To get an electronic copy of his presentation, please email me at jkim (at) sigmagroup.com. The next post will recap Radian6’s workshop on “Why Listen to Social Media?”

Seeking Growth & Innovation? Join Us on Nov 5th

jkim — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:50:23 +0000

A year ago, we launched the Fuel for Thought Series with the goal to create a forum for marketers where we could share the most relevant trends, insights and smart practices that would fuel growth and innovation for their brands. We made a promise to keep all content unbiased and free of sales pitches to ensure an authentic, no-strings-attached environment for marketers to engage.

Our first event last year focused on finding the optimum digital marketing solutions. Geoff Ramsey, CEO/Founder of eMarketer shared his Seven Strategies for Surviving the Downturn and it sure got our attendees engaged in various discussions to help them jump-start planning in the right direction for the coming year. Today, we’re thrilled to see that many of the attendees have implemented steps built from those insights/conversations into their marketing programs. We as an agency also applied those insights and it helped us innovate and grow during the downturn.

The second Fuel for Thought conference will take place on Thursday, November 5th at the Hilton Parsippany Hotel. This year, we’ll be focusing on Social Media Marketing — not on lofty, intangible theories and concepts, but on actionable smart practices, case studies, resources and tools that will help our attendees properly consider, test and incorporate them into their upcoming marketing programs.

We are thrilled to have John Battelle, CEO/Founder of Federated Media as our keynote presenter to fully profile Why All Media is Social and how it’s impacting the relationship between brands and consumers. He will share how marketers can embrace new strategies and best practices to ensure their brands are positioned properly in conversational marketing.

We are also delighted to have our partners Radian6, Visual Goodness and Federated Media on-board with us at Fuel for Thought. To equip our attendees with the right strategies and practical steps, each of our partners will lead an interactive workshop session customized for the conference. Attendees can join the session most suited to their needs:

* Maximizing the User Experience
* Why Listen to Social Media?
* Conversation at Scale
* Twitter for Business

The conference is complimentary to our clients and marketing executives seeking growth and innovation. To request for your seat, visit http://www.fuelforthoughtseries.com. We hope to see you on November 5th.

The Unexpected

smorris — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:53:54 +0000

Oscar Wilde said that “to expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.” He was right.

The reality is that things never go as planned. But when you think about it, is that a bad thing? Those shaping the world make a difference by going beyond the expected. They figure out ways to capitalize on the unexpected twists and turns that come their way. They relish in the opportunities that are presented when unexpected things happen and as a result make great strides in the economy, environment, society, etc.

Business owners and entrepreneurs…the best bubble up when they expect the unexpected. They plan for the unexpected. They know that nothing should be taken at face value. And even further, it’s their ability to capitalize on unexpected opportunities that really makes them superstars. Even world-class athletes qualify here. Think about the NFL player who intercepts a pass in midfield–do you think he wasn’t already prepared for what to do should he unexpectedly catch that pass? Maybe the sports analogy isn’t the best when it comes to thoroughly modern intellect, but at least it says the same thing: moving forward by leaps and bounds is about seizing unexpected opportunities and doing something with them.

But beyond expecting the unexpected, what about doing the unexpected? There is real power there. From a very positive and uplifting point of view, you can make someone’s day by doing something unexpected. You can get someone to laugh by telling an unexpected story. You can surprise someone by giving them something they didn’t know they were getting. You have the power to make someone’s day by unexpectedly telling them you “like that dress” or “you have a nice smile” or “you did a great job.”

Why all this deep thought around the unexpected? We recently launched a fun consumer campaign for our partners at Famous Footwear called Make Today Unexpected. And while the punchline for the campaign is really about elation and how women feel about shoes, it’s the twist and the unexpected way we tell that story that I think makes it sing.

The power of the unexpected.

Find an unexpected way to make someone’s day. Expect the unexpected or you won’t find it.

Finding Creativity

jkim — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:34:07 +0000

What kind of person would think about using a tree as a musical instrument? I was amazed by what Diego Stocco was able to compose using an ordinary tree in his garden. Shuffling leaves, tapping bark and strumming and bowing on twigs. By considering the tree from a different perspective, Diego transformed it into something completely different.

Diego Stocco – Music From A Tree from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

Discovering new and unique ways to create something different from a common object or idea is a challenge for all creatives. We often set our own boundaries and expectations of what something “should” be, defined either by the project parameters or personal preferences. Overcoming these limitations opens up a world of new experiences and fresh inspiration for our work.

Let’s consider the words of A.A. Milne, best known for his books about Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children’s poems:

“One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.”

What can YOU do with your tree?

Are You Ready to Commit?

smorris — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:29:59 +0000

In our line of business, we interact with many different businesses, from start-ups to Fortune 500 international conglomerates. It’s always interesting to hear them apologize for not being as educated as they should in the area of emerging media. They often tend to get disjointed or siloed. The truth is that as we get deeper into the diverse, converging landscape between digital media and marketing, many of the old rules of marketing no longer apply. Whether you are big or small, deep in resources or entrepreneurial in spirit, the landscape can be intimidating.

During a roundtable at our Fuel for Thought event, we discussed on a topic we often get asked by clients.

How can marketers incorporate the consumer’s point-of-view as a regular part of strategy sessions, extending beyond consumer-generated content, consumer-created advertising, corporate blogs and focus groups?

Being able to monitor, measure and implement consumer’s point of view has never been more important as the web is constantly opening up new avenues of conversation and new ways for consumers to voice their opinions on your brand. There are various resources and tools available in the market (more on this later). However before employing strategies, plans and applications, the first step is to commit to a long term brand initiative.

Strategy + Consumer Participation ≠ Success

Commitment + Strategy + Consumer Participation = Success

In other words, getting your consumer participation into your marketing and business strategy is not the silver bullet. It’s the commitment you make as an organization to an honest open discussions, marketing efforts, measurements and integration over time that will deliver success. This involves finding the right partners, monitoring conversations, measuring your buzz level, integrating offline/online efforts, properly setting website usability and conversion metrics, preparing your customer service and commitment to improve your initiatives beyond the test and launch stage. Our good friend Adam Broitman has an excellent point-of-view on this.

Just like any relationship, an organizational commitment to honesty and perseverance fosters brand trust. Wouldn’t you like to hear consumers say the same things about your brand?

The New Series

jkim — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:48:15 +0000

We launched the Fuel for Thought Series last week, a morning event hosted by Sigma Group, our trusted partners eMarketer and IncBizNet to present an overview of the current digital media landscape and provide clarity and insights on best practices for optimizing interactive programs.

Our thanks to Geoff Ramsey, CEO/Founder of eMarketer, for an enlightening presentation and sharing his Seven Strategies for Surviving the Downturn.

It was a pleasure to meet and greet our distinguished guests. The dynamic Round Table Discussions could have extended well into the afternoon if time permitted.

A wrap-up of Geoff’s presentation and each roundtable discussion will be posted on this blog in the coming weeks and topics are listed below. To get an automatic alert, please subscribe to one of our feed.

Seven Strategies to Survive the Economic Downturn

Focusing on Consumer

The New Web Page

Leveraging Innovation

Importance of Analytics

To Spark New Ideas

jkim — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:23:47 +0000

Businesses both large and small face similar challenges in today’s highly competitive marketplace: how to gain visibility, grow, innovate and connect with consumers — but do it all with less, with minimal risk, while bringing in fast results.

The convergence of digital and emerging media offers exciting new possibilities to connect and converse with consumers and stimulate brand awareness. But at the same time, it brings new challenges: with media fragmentation and brands being unleashed into unfamiliar frontiers, success depends on employing new marketing approaches and strategies.

Fuel for Thought will bring these phenomena down-to-earth with real-world data, case studies, insights and creative ideas. Our goal is to spark conversation, challenge conventional wisdom, and provide new options that will fuel growth and innovation for businesses. Please join us online and offline.

Blog: www.sigmagroup.com

LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1136477

Twitter: @FuelforThought

Fuel for Thought Series: A quarterly event covering today’s hottest marketing topics

Fuel for Thought Starter: A personalized meeting to discuss how some of the new marketing practices could be leveraged for your brand and business. To schedule a meeting, please email smorris@sigmagroup.com