At the weekend I got a whole day to myself. No errands to run, no one coming round to see me. It was a rare treat I was determined to make the most of. So what did I do with my time? I got in some online gaming of course.
You see I’m from a generation who have been brought up on a healthy diet of video games. From the illustrious original Nintendo to the not so well known Sega Dreamcast – I’ve played them all. So it comes as no surprise that when I heard about the Gamification of the web and the positive effect it is having for businesses, I had to find out more.
So just what is Gamification?
Gamification is the idea that you can apply the elements that make games fun and engaging to things outside of a game environment… like your standard company or ecommerce website. It’s a technique that is becoming increasingly popular as more and more consumers become addicted to games such as Farmville and enjoy participating in social apps like Foursquare.
Picking up from where Julian left off on Day 1, I started my day at Earls Court by throwing myself into a seminar on “stories of multichannel marketing success” and started to quickly understand why Julian had been so impressed the day before!
“Consumers now have a megaphone”
Grabbed my attention straight away. The marketing landscape has changed dramatically. If we only look back to the year 2000 – it is enough to make me feel like I have been part of a pretty impressive revolution! Previously as marketers we all focused on a “push” strategy, we planted ideas in consumers heads, told them what to believe, and what to buy. The interaction was all one way and we just kept on banging our big marketing drums!
Technology. It does not like to stand still does it. In fact it makes me smile that if we grabbed someone from ten years ago and dropped him or her in the middle of the Technology for Marketing & Advertising Expo at Earls Court in London… they would probably think they were at least 100 years in the future.
It’s very easy to walk round here and look at some stands and just say ‘Wow, that’s clever’. It’s also very easy to attend some talks that really get your mind racing with the possibilities for your clients… so it’s probably a good job I’m spending today and tomorrow here then!
Thanks to it being painfully slow to get in, I missed the special keynote presentation from Google. From what I could gather, they are saying mobile phones are the future and they were amazed how many people relied on mobile browsing during the ash cloud crisis of 2010.
Anyway, despite missing that talk, here’s what I did manage to listen in on, on day one.
I was watching Harry Hill’s TV Burp on Sunday afternoon and it was whilst he was refereeing a fight between a “commercially available instant noodle product and River Cottage’s immediate noodle pot based item” that a rather random thought occurred to me.
What would happen if online marketing was to have a fight with offline marketing? Which one would win? Which one is more effective? Well for me it’s easy. Though I love the more traditional offline forms of marketing I think there is only one winner… and it’s online all the way.
So what am I basing this view on? Why do I think online marketing is the heavyweight powerhouse of the marketing mix? Well, my view is very much dictated by four key factors.
Google Analytics is a fantastic FREE tool for showing you everything you would need to know about your website: who’s viewing it, how many are viewing it, what they are looking at, how long they are looking at it and whether your advertising campaigns are working. But with so much information available at your fingertips it’s difficult to see what you should be looking at and how you can use it.
Below is my detailed guide that should help make things clearer. It shows the top reports you can get through Google Analytics and more importantly how they can provide insight that will help when making important business and marketing decisions.
If new products can come and go, why can’t the stores that display them do the same? Well they can, and this is known as ‘Pop-up retail’. Over the last year there has been a surge in the pop-up phenomenon. You may ask the question what exactly is pop-up retail? As I discovered, it can only be described as something that is a temporary venue — the space could be a sample sale one day then a host to a private cocktail party the next.
Pop-up retail is specifically an idea or mindset that allows a company to create a unique environment that engages their customers, as well as generates a feeling of relevance and interactivity. The main trend encompasses “popping-up” one day, and disappearing the next – creating a sense of being fresh and relevant – fantastic attributes for any brand. Read more…
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube… not what first springs to mind when you think about politics. But over the last few years, more and more politicians have started using the internet as a tool to drum up political support.
When the Presidential elections in the US got under way in 2008, Democratic candidate Barack Obama used the internet to great effect to raise funds and gain supporters in his race to be President. His success has seen UK politicians follow suit and with the current general election, UK political parties have been pushing their online activities more than ever. Below are some examples of what they’ve been up to:
As fellow marketers it can’t have escaped your attention that the marketing landscape in which we work is changing at an amazing rate. The way we communicate with our customers isn’t the same as it once was and it is certainly going to continue changing over the forthcoming years.
Traditionally, we have spoken to our customers via direct mail, email, tv, radio and the telephone. However, due to the boom of social media this one-way communication flow is changing into a more dynamic two-way conversation.
In my view, the major change that has occurred is social media is giving our customers a voice; it’s giving our customer’s power. So whereas the customer was only able to affect our business through their purchasing behaviour they can now have the power to influence our future by what they say about our brand, product and service offering. However, although these are undoubtedly exciting times they are times that should be treated with caution as we have very little control as to what our customers say about us and we have even less control over who they speak to.
Last year, like many brands and organisations, London Fashion Week flirted with Social Media by having event details, links to stories and comments posted on Twitter and Facebook… so far so very 2009!
This year, though, sees London Fashion Week take a great leap forward by embracing even more Social Media technologies and making London Fashion Week open to the masses rather than the privileged few… and they’ve done it in some predictable and also some surprising ways.
Earlier this week I gave a talk on digital video and how advertising agencies are changing to facilitate a wide range of video needs that are required by clients. From high budget brand TV adverts to medium budget DRTV adverts right to low budget web-video… the demand is increasing and now’s the time to invest in skills and training.
I gave the talk on behalf of GBM at ‘Band on the Wall’ in Manchester and have split it into three parts of around 10 minutes each. Thanks to GBM and everyone who came to the talk, I hope you found it informative… I certainly enjoyed putting it together.
Parts two and three can be viewed by clicking the red button below.
At the weekend I got a whole day to myself. No errands to run, no one coming round to see me. It was a rare treat I was determined to make the most of. So what did I do with my time? I got in some online gaming of course.
