Marketing innovation
April 9, 2008
This week I’ve been involved in SAP’s Marketing Community meeting. It is a three day virtual conference designed to introduce SAP marketers to new technologies and techniques. I’m part of the blogger contingent which includes some of the finest minds in technology marketing. I would say that but seriously, these folk are making me think hard about what it means to be part of and operate in the context of a large dynamic corporate community. Four of the seven bloggers are part of the Irregulars which also includes a clutch of ex-CEOs from tech companies.
Some critics say that enterprise software has become dull and uninteresting because it is a mature market. I thoroughly disagree with that assessment. Innovation comes in a variety of ways.
As of now, 2,079 people have registered and as the site points out: that has saved 12,308 hours of people’s time and 724,000 km in travel. That’s the equivalent of 72 tons of CO2. To me, that’s innovative as both a contribution towards saving energy and in the use of modern technologies. From what I see, the feedback is amazing.
As another example, I’ll point readers to Zoli’s take on PowerPoint usage. Jeff Nolan’s quote at the end is priceless.
My hope is that at some point, SAP will open up the content so that everyone can see it. In the meantime, I can say that I have shared experiences around the sponsored feeds widget that’s top right on this site, what types of case study material work, discussed the issue of market influence and the value of being part of SAP’s blogger programme.
In the two days the event has been running, collectively, we’ve generated 69 blog posts. One more day to go.
10 signs you need a new accounting system
March 31, 2008
I’ve shamelessly ripped this title off from a great blog post by Bill Kennedy along with his top 10 signs:
10. The service technician keeps threatening to retire
9. “Reconciliation” is your middle name
8. You ask for “proficiency in DOS” when hiring staff
7. When calling Support you hear laughter in the background
6. Salesmen no longer call you about upgrades
5. You have to go for coffee whenever you click on “Post”
4. Your system came on diskettes
3. The last person to know the setup password retired to Florida
2. Nobody understands the reportsand the top sign you need a new accounting system is . . .
1. Your subledgers need counseling for “irreconcilable differences”
Given that we only change accounting systems once every 5-7-10 years then he’s pretty much bang on the money. But what I really like is the way he cleverly parses this into a discussion about switching from Quickbooks to Microsoft Dynamics. None of the usual ‘product X is crap, ours is gorgeous stuff’ at all. Far from it. I’d love to see more vendor representatives take this approach in marketing their wares.
Tags: microsoft dynamics, quickbooks
Marketing isn’t advertising, is it?
March 17, 2008
I was astonished to read that Deloitte’s marketing director Nigel Pyke believes that two million pounds spent on a national advertising campaign was money well spent:
‘External reaction has been positive; those that had seen the advertising were 22% more likely to consider using Deloitte services in the future than those who had not,’ he writes in this month’s Professional Marketing magazine.
Pyke also identifies another success that has resulted from the campaign, which saw the firm take over the entire advertising space around the IMAX cinema neat Waterloo station in London.
‘Internally, the campaign has created a great buzz amongst our people receiving positive feedback and a thirst for more, with 86% saying they would like to see Deloitte invest in further advertising,’ he says.
Duh? Well it’s not quite that simple. During the campaign, Deloitte went on an internal charm offensive designed to make staff aware of what was going on. It is therefore hardly surprising to see the results claimed. But…does this translate into increased client acquisition or additional work? Those questions remain unanswered. ‘More likely to consider’ doesn’t cut it for me. Which brings me neatly to the title of this post.
John Dodds recently wrote an interesting post on marketing where he says:
Marketing is not an expense, it’s an investment cost that is inherent in the creation of your product/service from development through promotion and distribution and on to the sales experience and post-sales service. That’s a subtle accounting distinction but a crucial one. The price you pay for not understanding marketing is much worse than mediocre products - it’s commercial extinction.
This is something with which many businesses struggle. They think that by pushing messages out to the world in the form of advertising copy, they will in some way magically attract business. It doesn’t happen. At least most of the time.
Hugh MacLeod has proven that by adopting smarter ways of engaging with people, you can do a lot more with limited budgets. In his Stormhoek campaign,
Hugh showed that tying a commodity product to an unorthodox method of communication could yield spectacular results. He showed that by getting a tailor to talk about the industry in an interesting and engaging fashion, sales could be improved to the point where Thomas Mahon’s order book is full well into the future.
The same principles Hugh expounds can be applied to the profession. They’re simple, direct and have genuine impact. It helps if you have a big foghorn like Hugh’s with which to amplify the message but then for most professionals, getting local attention is good enough. We have the tools, we only need the ingenuity and courage to go out there and say something both compelling and different.
Jive learning in the US
March 17, 2008
Last week I sat in on Jive Software’s customer advisory board meeting in San Francisco which includes representatives from Dell, Nike and Intel. Jive makes collaboration software for both internal and external styles of communication that is usually self hosted.
The meeting was interesting at a number of levels. First, it is clear that Jive is being driven by customer need. Several suggestions about new functionality were shuffled around the release schedule to better accommodate customer preferences. That’s unusual as more often than not, development organizations work to schedules that suit them.
More interesting though were the discussions around what works and what does not for business. I’ve been hesitant about using any expression that includes ’social’ in its phrasing and the notion of ‘friends’ doesn’t sit easily with me when put into a business context. It seems that big business feels the same way. Martha Ford of Intel said to me that:
“Social networking as an expression doesn’t mean much to the reseller channel we want to reach but they can relate to story telling and participation in forums and the like.”
Ms Ford prefers the expression ‘participative marketing’ something with which her community of resellers can relate.
On the ‘friends’ question, delegates agreed the indiscriminate use of this term is not a good idea but struggle to come up with an expression that works. My sense is that this is most likely to be industry specific. In the profession’s case, we’d probably be happy with ‘clients’ ‘business partners’ and ‘colleagues.’ Even so, I believe we should be given the choice to create expressions that make sense in ‘our world.’
In the meantime, I also made a short (6 minute) video in which Jive’s chief marketing officer Sam Lawrence discusses the difference between internal and external collaboration.
Jive is slated to offer a major release around 1st April which I hope to review.
