Fads vs. Trends

Fads are furious and short lived. You need to quickly position your product offering to where a fad currently is. Throw all your short term resources at it. Coming up with extensions will keep the fad going, but it will inevitably die out soon. Then you must look for the next fad.

Trends are slow to build and long lasting. You need to position your offering to where you believe a trend will be. Build your expertise and long term strategy to meet a trend. Extensions are not as necessary and can take on a life of their own. Once you lock into a trend, focus on keeping a competitive advantage.


Love fads. Love trends more.

Context matters.

The Wife and I were looking for apartments to rent in London last week. We must have met around 6 real estate agents and seen many more properties. One of the noticeable aspects of the sales process was how important context was to the types of questions asked by the agents.

Only 1 out of the 6 agents asked us how many houses we had seen earlier. When you think about it, the answer to that question determines a lot. If it was the first house we were seeing, it would take something exceptional for us to say yes. If it's the 20th house, we have a lot of reference points to compare the property to. Obtaining this background allowed the agent to customize how she was showing us the properties. Incidentally, we ended up picking a house she showed.

Companies that sell their products online should operate in a very similar way, and the process is faster as well. If I were purchasing shoes, I should be shown related products that match my interest. Depending on where I am in the purchase process, I would be interested in exploring other options, or quickly hone in to the exact product. Either way, the site should be ready to accomodate my needs and consider the context. I feel that most sites do a inadequate job of determining this. Amazon does it well. If you have a business where you are selling products online, how well do you take care of context?

You Only Get One Shot.

Eminem rapped in 8 Mile, "If you had one shot, one opportunity, would you capture it? Or just let it slip?".  Social media works in a somewhat similar albeit less dramatic fashion. Do things right, and your business could have millions of followers that grow at a steady pace. However, make a mistake and most of those fans might leave and never come back.

One of the biggest mistakes is poor content. If you have loyal customers that are willing to track you down, follow you on Twitter or like your Facebook page, then at a minimum you need to keep them there. It doesn't take much. Brands like Barclays quickly realized the price of not having great content and then losing the attention of millions of fans. Don't make that mistake. You have an audience, so go out and wow them.

Marketing 3.0

The evolution has begun - are you ready?

Marketing, both as a science and job function, has evolved greatly in the past few years. From the advent of social media advertising, the relationship between customers and marketers has become more equal. Earlier, marketers could come up with a campaign that targeted their captivated audience through very precise channels. It was okay not to measure every single aspect of a launch. I call this Marketing 1.0.

Now the audience is distracted, informed and definitely more alert. Marketing campaigns need to be managed at multiple levels, with new customers flowing in and out of different channels. The biggest mistake an organization can make at this time, is use the same old principles to manage their ad campaigns. Setting up a social media presence without asking basic questions about your aim can be disastrous. Most firms have realized that, and now have dedicated and sophisticated social media advertising units. The best ones keep a captivated batch of loyalists coming back for more. (See: Red Bull). This is Marketing 2.0.

As organizations get better at recording data, measuring success ratios and creating specific campaigns for social media- the question is, what does Marketing 3.0 look like? The latest flurry of activity indicates that content is still king, and will increase in value over time. Content has always mattered, however, content used 'as media' is new (See Mitch Joel's blog on Marketing Agencies of the Future). Netflix has shown media agencies the way by creating their own shows and offering content that no one else can.

The same principles can be applied to organizations that create their own in-house newsrooms. By siphoning off content and marking your territory, customers are being told that "we offer something that no one else can". It would be interesting to see where this leads. My guess is that it will create more fragmented content in an already fragmented world. This in turn would feed into the impatience and luxury of choice that the audience already suffers from.

The question is: How does the media agency of the future handle it? How does an organization trying to build a brand deal with it? How do you gain credibility in a world where the customer gives you their attention for only a fraction of a second while your competitors distract them by colorful hand waving? Marketing 3.0 will be about creating fierce loyalists and giving them tremendous value in return for their loyalty. It will be about creating multiple fragmented products that can be customized with ease and tailored down to the individual. It will be about ads that are personal and displayed on media that enables one-on-one interaction. It will be more intimate and responsible than marketing has ever been. As a customer, that is amazingly good news. As a marketer, make sure you are ready to deliver in this new world.