It’s trendy for big companies to devolve authority to operating units, and the jury is still out on whether or not making them compete as collections of smaller independent ones makes any sense (the management consultants who came up with the plans will be long gone before there’s a verdict).
But it’s already clear that giving marketing communicators responsibility for overarching corporate communications is dead on arrival.
The relating that occurs between human beings is a function of the communicating that is occurring between these human beings; the communicating that is occurring between human beings is function of the relating that is occurring. Which is to say that the communicating and relating are essentially in a dynamic dance with one another.
Vermont’s tourism folks have decided to give up promoting their state to a rotating cadre of residents who’ll tweet whatever they please, following the broad outlines of Sweden’s experiment doing the same earlier this year. Social media evangelists praised both campaigns as “bold experiments” that recognized the immense potential of social interaction.
Does technology affect people – or just our access to them? This has been a popular question, which has defined much of the discussion concerning the digitization of communication for the last ten years. Unfortunately it is slightly irrelevant. And more importantly – and critically – it has managed to distract us from seeing the other important changes we are facing.
Levi's makes pants; jeans, specifically, but its brand aspires to art and beyond. I used to think this was utter nonsense, but now I'm wondering whether the company's marketers shouldn't get some credit for being so wantonly experimental. It might put them out of business, but it sure won't do so boringly.
Earlier today, Giuseppe Pacheco Tweeted "You No Longer Control Your Company’s Brand" with a link to You No Longer Control Your Company's Brand | Spin Sucks. BTW, I responded to Giuseppe right away with a link to one of my earlier posts about this topic and I follow him, so I usually like his links.
It happens every time. The moment those E.D. drug commercials list the possible side-effects: dry mouth, muscle weakness, nausea and, oh yes, erections lasting for more than four hours. I laugh out loud (or did the first hundred times I saw it).
Last week, neuromarketing firm Neurofocus released summary results of a study that compared the performance of the same ad when run on television and on two Internet websites, Facebook and a website controlled by the advertiser. The commercial tested was “Trip For Life,” part of VISA’s multimedia campaign built around the 2010 Winter Olympics. (Neurofocus conducted these tests for its own research purposes, not because they were commissioned by the advertiser.)
I've been trying to source the timeframe of this quote and haven't found an exact date yet, but here's what I do know. Leo Burnett died in 1971. So, even if he said this with his last breath, this still means in 1971 he was talking about interactive touch screen shopping.
OK, I have to add my two cents to the prediction business and label what I think might be an emergent, if not important trend for brands and marketers in our nascent new decade: we're going to see the return of paid commercial speech.
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