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Category Archives: Marketing strategy
Seeing the opportunity to remove the mask
I liked this quote by Steven Taylor of hospitality group Starwood in last week's Marketing Week.
"Social media has removed the 'mask' from our business. With traditional media, you could push messages, but with social media, the hotel experience is very much fed back to consumers who are making their decisions…..We also encourage every hotel manager to get involved with Trip Advisor."
How refreshing to hear a marketer talking as if he really believes social media offers a new, fresh, positive oppportunity that was missing in the days of 20th century marketing.
An example of why social media shouldn’t be outsourced
I was recently followed on Twitter by an acccount claiming to be a social media agency, whose tweetstream consists entirely of brags and ads.
You know the sort of thing: XYZ client tells us how great we are, outsource your social media to us, we're the greatest, etc. Some of the ads were promos for their clients. Many tweets were repeated every week or so, with the wording just slightly changed (sometimes). I went back six months and the pattern was the same. Nothing of information, nothing helpful, no RTs, no real conversation.
Welcome to 2012 and the growth of long-term thinking… maybe!
What's going to be significant in 2012? I tend to leave the annual predictions up to others, but at the start of a new year it's very tempting to at least reflect and take stock.
Last year my loose round up of promising trends included QR codes, a new 'blogging golden age' and the growth of storytelling. Blogging does seem to be as strong as ever, but I'm not sure QR codes are being used effectively – at the moment they are 'the thing to have', appearing on billboards and newspaper pages like a rash.
Time for a story
Plenty of interesting food for thought in this quarter’s edition of Market Leader. I particularly liked Simon Glynn’s look at the role of storytelling being ‘at the core of building tomorrow’s brands.’
Marketing theory has boxed itself into such a rarified corner that it hardly impacts on the majority of business owners, but the idea of storytelling interests me because I think it is relevant not just to big brands but to small businesses.
Glynn differentiates between the more successful ‘brand legends’, based on truth and customer experience, retold by customers, and ‘brand myths’ – great stories, but invented and therefore less likely to draw an emotional response from people.
