Yin and Yang of Digital

We have heard all the stories about how companies are getting 'Digital' and turning a new leaf with their online offer. Some hire agencies, others do it in-house. As long as the change is coming, it doesn't really matter how. Of course, the only exception to that note is buying fans, which is a big 'NO-NO'.

In my past life, when I was a budding social media self-starter, I learnt very quickly the importance of an integrated communications approach. It helps break down the spawning barriers between Marketing & Communications and Digital. Like with many others, you will have experienced Digital spawning out of the traditional MarComms role, because Digital used to be all 'websites and stuff'.

I was lucky to get Social Media dubbed under Corporate Communications and PR work, since it was more to do with regularly communicating in real-time with customers. Through trial and error, we realized that MarComms and Corp Comms need to co-exist, plan and execute together. This was before customer service was brought into the picture.

Today, the way I see social media is like a Venn Diagram, where there is a significant common overlap between all three functions, which are all tied together by a common organizational brand strategy. Brand isn't just MarComms, it's All Comms.

Demonstrating the functional relationship between all three is quite simple. Convert your online customers offline and vice versa. 

How? Have a competition on your Facebook page, offer a give-away, award a winner, celebrate them online, then invite them with family to your office, where you give the prize, take pictures and create a story to share back online with everyone. Your virtual customer just became real, one that won't soon forget. 

Congratulations! You've just created a brand advocate and understood the 'Yin and Yang of Digital. 

The Best Competition is Partnership

Image: Gamespot

"I destroy my enemies by making them my friends" ~ Abraham Lincoln, 

If you ever studied economics or the basics of supply and demand, you will know that they are kind of like yin and yang and go together like pieces to a puzzle.

Do you wonder why demand is sometimes high, but supply remains low? Aside from other complicated reasons like regulation, sometimes it's as simple as you don't know where your customers are - thereby missing out on a great opportunity.

Competition is good. It's healthy and it gives you drive to keep charging on. Complacency is a killer and the only way to kill the killer is to find new and better ways of improving your business, your product and your brand. This doesn't mean paying an agency millions of dollars to redo you, but rather simple things like staying true to your brand values. Consistency can kill the killer, without becoming boring.

These days it's all about keeping the customer in the center of it all. Isn't that how it's always been? Maybe I missed the memo. 

Feet on the ground. Get a solid partnership, even if it's with the competition. Some companies kill their own products by cannibalizing existing products with new ones. Don't reinvent the wheel, expand it's purpose. Partnerships lead to creativity and that is the best competition - with your own product. 

Image:   CK NG of Indonesia

I remember someone once telling me - it's not the ones ahead of you that you should worry about, it's the ones behind you; they have drive the drive you once had.

It's the same as 'keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer'. The positive side of this is simply don't wage a war, rather find common ground to succeed. Two is better than one.

Imagine if Coke and Pepsi tried this...

Social Rage - Part 2

Since my last post, I've been doing a little reading about the evolution of marketing and how social media plays a vital role in that process.

Strangely enough, I'm not sure how many 'marketeers' know about marketing evolution, which can also be known as New Media - a conspicuous term that encompasses

I have a theory - and I'm not sure if anyone has actually touched on this yet, but with all the social networking fuss, perhaps most have not stepped back to take a bird's eye view perspective and assess the changes we are so engrossed by...

Originally (and i'll explain why I use this term), marketing was known by 4 principles or P's

1. Product
2. Promotion
3. Price
4. Placement

All in that same order. When was the last time you sat down to review whether this was still relevant or 'accurate' for today's marketing environment? Speculation, maybe, but still worth a look.

A quick wikipedia search reveals a new assessment and claim of the 4 P's and their evolution. There is a new guy in town and his name (sorry ladies) is SIVA. Yes, finally an acronym that can narrow down the universe of marketing into modern-day means of creating a 'thing', making it 'available' at a reasonable 'cost' and letting people 'know' that it exists to serve a need that they may (or may not) have identified.

As defined by wikipedia

A formal approach to this customer-focused marketing is known as SIVA [11] (Solution, Information, Value, Access). This system is basically the four Ps renamed and reworded to provide a customer focus. The SIVA Model provides a demand/customer centric version alternative to the well-known 4Ps supply side model (product, price, placement, promotion) of marketing management.

Product → Solution

Promotion → Information

Price → Value

Placement → Access

I wonder how many of our industry experts consider this to be worthwhile knowledge...

On this note, I was watching Biz Stone's interview with Stephan Colbert a couple of days ago, where Biz was quoted repeatedly for having said..."The messaging system that we didn’t know we needed until we had it.” To which Colbert responds: “That sounds like the answer to a problem we didn’t have until I invented the answer.”

Taking the arrogance out (which is minimal since Biz is just very cool anyway), that statement is something I had believed for myself when working in Tharparkar, trying to sell drip irrigation to poor farming communities with a company I launched in 2007 called Micro Drip - started with the support of Acumen Fund and TRDP. The farmers didn't know they needed to:

• save water
• earn more money but work a little harder
• use technology that will not only make you the 'cool' neighbor, but also be able to provide a better life/future for yourself and your family

Interestingly enough, the technology itself is a 'twitter' of sorts - a replacement of existing, more prominent ways of doing things (mostly archaic) but the change aspect is like asking them to switch religions.

The bottom line in this lesson...is change something we should embrace or is it something that will embrace us? I was always told that the only thing permanent in life...is change!

Until next time.