So I was going through Seth Godins’ blog (author of business books and a popular speaker.) and I came across this post (what do you know) of his where he writes about a bunch of things every good marketer should know. Thought it would be a good idea to share it on here.

1. Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
2. Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
3. Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
4. Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
5. Marketing begins before the product is created.
6. Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
7. Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
8. Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
9. Products that are remarkable get talked about.
10. Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
11. You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
12. If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
13. People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
14. You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
15. What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
16. Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
17. Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
18. People all over the world and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
19. Good marketers tell a story.
20. People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
21. Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
22. Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
23. Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
24. A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
25. Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.
26. Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
27. Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
28. Good marketer’s measure.
29. Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
30. One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.
31. In the Google world, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
32. Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
33. There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
34. Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
35. You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
36. You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
37. Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

Having read all of this what struck me is that it’s all so simple! and yet alot of these facts get overlooked only too easily. There is always room to learn more and more each day, but learning matters only when you put what you have learned to use.This is but a chip of the iceberg, feel free to add on.

Jelly’s a casual work event where everyone’s invited. It’s for anyone who’d like to work alongside other creative people…catching like wildfire across the internet, this could be a new begining of sorts.

Check it out..

http://wiki.workatjelly.com/

…and enlighten us!

Problem one: There’s too much information is on the web..not really your storybook where you know the  quantum of content already.

Problem 2: Our brain processes visual information faster when viewing (what we mostly do on the web..esp with ads) as compared to reading.

This is where the challenge lies – creating impact as well as depth for this 5-seconds audience.. It automatically makes it more challenging to create a web advert as compared to a print or TV one.

Recent research conducted by the University of Vienna shows just how fast people process visual information.

Results:
Subjects could register content in less than 1/100th of a second.

Within 1/20th of a second subjects had already started to interpret style.

All this happening before recognition of the whole object.

Simply put, our art directors and web designers need to do some serious rethinking of their creative concepts and the media planner need to reconsider the time and placement of banner adverts and such else…lest we lose the fellow to a different ad!

Food for thought?

Firstly, bravo to the team at MD for their effort in bringing out this collaborative space. Surely hope to see more chair-falling presentations (@Kika – it shows that you loved SlideShare) and thoughts exchanged between all of us.

When I started blogging, it was a similar need to create a space where I could pin my thoughts down and refer to it often. Taking cue from this need of collaborative realtime idea sharing, I have always thought of brainstorming and how we can do it better. I personally like to ideate within a group and write down all possible ideas that come to the table and then thrash out the do-able ones.

A great place to do this online and realtime is bubbl.us

The name came possibly from the idea bubbles that come out of our minds, and its a neat place to start a conversation and then draw out ideas or maps or flow patterns around it and cross link them and phew!! It really lets you brainstorm online. You can share the mind maps you draw. Even embed them in your site. A big round of applause to its creators – Kirril and Levon.

You should take a look. Not only is it cool, its really easy. Did I mention that it’s “FREE”.

I even drew out a mind map for Masala Digital!! When this opens, just remember to click on the image and move it around to view it completely….

What do you think? Where’s my idea-fee?

So we all thought that social media was strictly a B2C medium…at least from a marketer’s perspective. While the same is more or less accurate if you look at the numbers and the "consumer" propensity towards youtube, myspace, facebook et al, it may be worthwhile to note certain social inroads into the B2B space, that are getting bigger by the day…

Good reasons for us to keep an eye out on these considering our huge IT client line-up!

LinkedIn offers a pretty basic but comprehensive opportunity: a company puts up a profile and connects with LinkedIn members, then it can promote and supplement profiles with targeted display ads, dedicated e-mails, and sponsorships of the "Answers" category. For instance, if you are a B2B technology company, you might want to sponsor the IT category. This way you reach people who are actively seeking information about your product/industry, and you get to engage with them in a community setting.

ITtoolbox also offers great ad opportunities for enterprise IT companies. You can set up a vendor profile; have a variety of ad units, text links, dedicated e-mails, and newsletter sponsorships; and even help with lead generation through Webcast promotions and white paper programs.

TechRepublic where you can tap into a huge professional IT community is my personal favourite!

Minyanville Exchange (a financial social networking site)

Designer Pages (for architecture and design)

And let’s not forget YouTube. Some B2B companies might dismiss YouTube as simply a youth-oriented, amateur-video site, but it is far from that. YouTube has turned into such a powerful and relevant social media tool that anyone can leverage its reach and viral effectiveness. There are thousands of education, science and technology, news, and how-to videos about and produced by various B2B brands and companies. For example, a quick search for "software as a service" on YouTube generated 1,220 videos. One video has been viewed more than 38,000 times!

[download id="undefined"][download id="undefined"]Life is a search, quite metaphorically so, but it now pays!

It would be quite interesting to know how will Bill Gates still earn pots of money by offering cash- back rebates to its search engine customers. [download id="null"] Microsoft in a tardy aggressive move has launched Live Search in competition to Google.
This launch, said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, is a way of “simplifying the tasks and rewarding the consumers and advertisers for their engagement in a major way.”

In essence, Microsoft wants to incentivise users of Live Search. As you key in a search, the Live Search tool gives you a list of list of prices with “compare prices” button and cash- back rebates associated with the search. This is applicable on commerce- centric seraches.Marketers determine how much they’re willing to pay to acquire a buyer for a particular product and pay Microsoft that fee only when someone makes a purchase. But instead of pocketing that money, Microsoft offers it back to users in the form of a rebate.
Clever, considering Return of investment as the ultimate marketer’s manna.

Go experience it Live here

Andreas Roell of The ClickZ Network wrote the following piece on how TV channels are using web as an extension of their presence:

Ranjoy take note!

NBC

NBC has a dedicated page to showcase its mobile applications. Users can download ring tones, wallpaper, and games and subscribe to text alerts from their favorite shows. For example, fans of "The Apprentice" can get text updates and tips from The Donald himself. There are also options to upload video programming directly to mobile devices.

On the social media side, NBC has fan groups broken out by TV shows and organized according to programming schedules, which is a unique and user-friendly way to list social content. The site also has a calendar to track fan members’ birthdays. There are widgets available for download and embeddable video clips that can be added to any number of other social networking and bookmarking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. As with all the network’s sites, users can watch full episodes of their favorite shows — some of which are available for download. This site has also made some of its classic programming, like "Battlestar Galactica" and "Miami Vice," available to the online audience.

CBS

CBS offers exclusive content on its site, creating a reason for its fan base to visit the site. On the home page, CBS tracks and links to the most popular video clips, giving users quick access to the most watched content. As on nbc.com, favorite syndicated CBS content is available without a subscription on site. Programming like "The Twilight Zone," "Star Trek," and "Beverly Hills 90210" are accessible to users. There are also show-specific message boards where users can vent about cliffhangers and plot twists, while interacting with fellow fans. On CBS Mobile, virtual personality Ashley highlights content on the different Web pages and walks users through the perks of subscribing to CBS’s mobile options.

ABC

Last but not least is ABC. One thing that puts ABC ahead of the pack: on its mobile page, users can select their cell phone providers and phone models to make certain the mobile applications will be compatible. Abc.com also has text alerts, ring tones, and games available for mobile download. There are widgets that users can upload to their phones, post on their desktops, or embed on their social networking pages. These widgets have links to video content and include a countdown timer synced with the next scheduled airing of a featured show.

Abc.com also has message boards where users can have virtual conversations with some of their favorite TV characters. And there’s a section dedicated to CGM (define) where users can post their own Academy Award acceptance speech or make predictions about what will happen on the next episode of "Lost."

To drive television viewers online, these networks have gotten creative with incentives that other Internet outlets are unable to provide, at least in one place. The key is to provide a mix of unique content, such as mobile applications, widgets, and Web-only programming, with full-length streaming video of current primetime and daytime TV shows. This way, broadcast networks can convert their broadcast viewers to online users.

Of course, we all know that or at least claim to. A nielsen survey below is a good reference point.

According to the above data, if you really want to do word-of-mouth marketing well, you’re better off investing your attention on the boring stuff, like product performance, employee training, quality, and especially customer service.

Umm..do I hear dissent brewing…?

****UPDATE****

Guess the brands are listening in!

Product innovation back on the agenda at unilever

By Influx Insights – posted by Ed Cotton

At a time when product performance now trumps marketing spin, Unilever’s Chairman is looking for more product innovation from the giant multinational.

According to an interview in the Times of London.

“Michael Treschow thinks there is not enough “wow” at Unilever.

The Swedish chairman likes inventions, gadgets and new whizz-bang things. He has been in his job for a year and, after a shake-up and streamlining of the top team at the Anglo-Dutch food and soap company, he wants the men in white coats to work faster, creating an assembly line of new products.

The marketing is good, the selling is good, it’s the product line that needs attention, he says. “The single most important thing is that we speed up our innovation machine, which means that we bring more highly appreciated products to the consumer so that they say, ‘Wow, this is really something I would like to have’,” he says.”

Can we now expect increases in R&D spends as packaged goods companies go back in search of product performance and difference?

Adverblog’s Martina has an update:

Inbev’s global beer brand Beck’s is about to start a blog on their international homepage. They don’t have a blogger yet, so they are now looking for “the ultimate, offbeat columnist with an uncompromising point of view who can connect and interact with consumers in the digital world” . Interesting point is that they are not looking for a corporate blogger, but a person that will give a personal view on news, people and ideas that match the brands philosophy ‘Different by Choice’. The full job offer can be found on becks.com.

“Beck’s is a brand that has always refused to compromise and what we’re doing online is no different,” says Jorge Inda Meza, Global Marketing Manager for Beck’s in a press release on Monday. “Our consumers actively seek out links to new trends and genuine material from around the globe. They have a desire to learn about people who share the same values as they do. The Beck’s new columnist will help uncover and highlight relevant and exciting topics for our consumers, enabling us to better connect with them.”

Seems all brands need a blogger…we at Solutions|Digitas has an upcoming proposition that is quite similar but much more subtle…keep watching this space for more details!

This one apparently is a school project, and DHL isn’t involved. But considering its viral potential, they should happily endorse it!

While there is an intense cyber-debate regarding it’s authenticity and the unrealistic task (too many loopholes – did he fly over Iraq or drove thru it? etc), and DHL continues to deny participation, the most I can ask of you is to appreciate the idea!