“I’ve been in this business for 30 years and I’ve never seen it like this.”

I can recall hearing that statement three times over the course of my career. The first time I heard it I was in my 20’s. My boss at the time had been a part of the Texas oil field service industry for over 30 years and the mid 80’s oil crash was taking its toll. What once had boomed was now busting, stripper wells that had been profitable were being plugged and new drilling activity came to a virtual stand still.

I also remember the second occasion as if it were yesterday. It was the early 90’s and I was at lunch with a co-worker who had just received their 30 year service pin from a major computer company. The World Wide Web was just beginning to make the world a much smaller place, and Louis Gerstner stepped in to save IBM from going out of business.

A couple of days ago I heard the statement again. Let’s just say that social media, digital marketing and mobile applications are proving to be major change agents for marketers in general. Tracking that statement for three decades it’s obvious that change is timeless and cuts across all sectors of the economy. How are you dealing with constant change? From my perspective I can vouch for the following:

Most people will agree that practical experience is a good thing. In fact, if you’ve been around the block a time or two, the old adage “experience is the best teacher” is probably anchored in your mindset. When I reflect on my lessons learned through practical experience I always find Will Rogers’ perspective insightful, but also at times, troublesome:

“The trouble with using experience as your guide is that sometimes the final exam comes first, then the lesson.”

Why troublesome? After all, at one point or another we all start out as greenhorns. And let’s face it; there are situations we occasionally experience that are really not possible to prepare for. What I find troublesome is the negative impact on organizations when key executives continue to scoff at the lessons offered, or worse, they refuse to acknowledge they were even handed an exam.

Are senior executives in your organization still scoffing at social media? In today’s environment your customer’s are testing your organizations ability to interact with them on social platforms in the same way you communicate with them through email and over the phone. In fact, you’ve probably seen the following factoids in a dozen presentations over the last six months:

In November 2009 Twitter launched an interesting feature called Twitter Lists. In short, Twitter Lists allow you to organize the profiles you’re following into groups. The filtering aspect of this feature is helpful if you are trying to zero in on something specific, such as Twitter users based on location, employer, or any other relevant categories.

Creating a new Twitter List is a simple process. In fact, the first thing you’ll be asked is to provide a name for your list. That’s where this feature can take an interesting turn. If you’ve been Listed you’ve caught someone’s attention. Something in your bio and / or tweets has made an impression. In the future, your Listor will be able to find you quickly because they filed your profile under a group they intend to monitor. In other words, your reputation or influence has been noted. A few examples:

I’m fortunate to be able to reflect on the role of marketing as both a CMO and educator. In my role as educator my student’s first assignment is always a short interpretive paper in which I ask for their personal definition of marketing; as well as their perspective on marketing’s importance in helping organizations achieve success. Over the years, I’ve discovered that these papers provide a glimpse into the mindset of individuals who are generally not focused on core marketing activities or marketing’s role in relation to broader business strategies.
Demographically, the class typically represents a diverse cross-section. One thing they do have in common; they are full-time working adults who are not shy when sharing their real-world working experiences with the class. More often than not, their original narratives will jump into examples of product-focused mass advertising or publicity activities. The use of sexy and manipulative promotional tactics for selling the audience on why they should want the product is representative of marketing’s tactical purpose in their initial points of view. In fact, for classes that start in January you can bet on at least one reference to a Super Bowl commercial. However; I can tell straight away who is reading ahead in the syllabus, or working for a company that views marketing strategically because those efforts reflect the leadership role that marketing plays as a core business strategy.

An Effective Marketing Strategy

Are you friending, linking, tweeting and blogging? Social media is driving a wave of human interaction around the world. My @AlanSee twitter page currently references over 4,300 tweets and nearly 7,100 followers. Those are fairly low numbers when compared to many avid twitter users; although high enough to rank in the top one percent of users according to Twitter Grader. But what does it all mean? Do social media sites encourage people to concentrate on their number of connections rather than build actual relationships? Is social media best used by individuals; or will it really change the way organizations engage their customers? And what about the ROI; is the return on relationships something that can (or should) be measured?

Some marketer’s are still eager to list the reasons why they don’t believe in social media platforms:

• It’s for self-promoters or the unemployed.
• It’s for teenagers.
• It’s just over-sharing too much trivial babble.
• It doesn’t directly drive sales leads.
• I can’t control the marketing message.
• There is no measurable ROI.

I recently attended a faculty meeting to kick-off the New Year. One of the presentations disclosed enrollment trends that did not surprise, but none the less disappointed some of my fellow faculty. An increasing number of students are enrolling in online as opposed to on-campus courses. In short, the online modality more closely matches many students desired method for consuming education. Although most of the faculty can teach both online and on-campus, their traditional teaching backgrounds creates a comfort level and natural desire to interact with their students in a class room environment. The shift from a class room setting to online just doesn’t feel right to some, and that can make it difficult to embrace change even when the data states the obvious.

Shifting business environments make change necessary, but it doesn’t mean it will be easy. In my role as VP of Marketing there are always struggles to keep new initiatives on track even when the data indicates that the change is not optional. Strong feelings to revert back to the old status quo are often lurking just below the surface. For example, a shift in our media planning recommendations away from traditional media products and into earned media programs at times creates fear, uncertainty and doubt within parts of our organization. You can just imagine the questions swirling:

I was in Junior High School during the early 1970s recession and I can still remember my parent's struggle to keep our small family business from closing. In the late 70s I enrolled in college and completed my undergraduate degree just in time to enter the job market during the recession of the early 1980s. According to a study by Yale University's Lisa Kahn, college graduates who entered the job market during that time period made significantly less money for at least a decade, compared with those who graduated in more prosperous times.

I’m really not complaining, although I will add that I went back to school and completed my MBA just in time for the 1987 stock market crash. Is that funny or what? OK, my timing seems to be a little off, and my children have heard all my ... "the snow was always deeper" ... type of stories. Still, how is your organization listening and learning to what's important to today's cautious consumer?

In my post "How to Engage the 2009 Customer Mindset" I mentioned that sensitivity to total price, intolerance of poor customer service responses, and a focus on quality and trust was very important. I still stand by those recommendations, but when your customer’s appear to be hunkering down for the long-haul how do you find out what they really value?

It's not just a cliché; when people get lost, they really do tend to walk in circles. According to research by psychologist Jan Souman; only when the sun or moon was visible as a reference could the subjects walk in a straight line. Otherwise, they often traced circles without ever realizing it. Reference points are a good thing because humans are perhaps the greatest wanders on the planet. From below sea level at Death Valley to Mount Everest, the highest point on earth, it seems we have a basic compulsion to see what's over the hill. Or under the hill as was the case with two young girls in South Australia.

Walking through storm drains is known as "urban exploring" and has a popular sub-culture following in many major cities. As reported by the Adelaide Metropolitan Fire Service two young girls found themselves lost in a drain system while on such an exploring adventure. Underground the girls lost their frame of reference ... they did have their cell phones though. However; rather than call their parents or 000 (911 in the U.S.) they used their mobile devices to send a message for help out to their friends via Facebook. Glenn Benham from the MFS said it was fortunate a young friend was online at the time and was able to call help for them; although the youth’s fixation on Facebook actually delayed their rescue by hours.

My post "Using Marketing Booth Babes" sparked some lively discussion. The original post asked marketer’s for their opinion on the practice of using booth babes (scantily clad women ... or men) to attract attention to their organizations booth at conferences and trade-shows. The use of sexual tension to create a direction for a movie plot or to sell products is an age-old strategy. However, many readers agreed that using sex as a way to suggest product "sizzle" was no longer very original, and in fact could be risky if it actually alienated potential purchasers.

So what is your opinion of the practice of using "Twitter Babes" to promote and draw in page followers? I'm not talking about spam accounts that are pornographic in nature. You can hit the block function on spammers easily enough. And I'm not talking about the properties where you might actually expect to see scantily clad women; for example, individuals who follow pages selling Victoria's Secret like brands and products probably expect to see women in lingerie. What I'm thinking about are those Twitter pages where the bio, homepage URL and even the customized background suggest a professional intention that in no way requires a string bikini woman or ripped abs man as the picture icon. The "June 2009 State of the Twittersphere" report from the folks at HubSpot lists some interesting Twitter factoids:

The September 2009 issue of Inc. magazine showcases the 500 fastest-growing private companies. Forty-eight advertising and marketing companies are listed and a recurring theme among those organizations is a performance-based business model. In other words, the client only pays when customers take action. Pay-for-Call, Cost-per-Action, Pay-per-Sale, Revenue-Sharing, Profit-Sharing; make no mistake, performance-based business models contain elements of risk, and are taking center-stage in our current economy.