tl;dr research notes: Social Media and Marketing in 2013

The tl;dr research notes are (hopefully) de-nerded summaries of interesting (nerdy) research pieces I’ve come across.  

IDC Prediction: Social media technologies will become key arsenal in the marketing toolkit and the technology budgets to come from the CMO Office

Social media in 2013 will mature from being a simple basic tool of engaging with customers to a more advanced marketing tool.

Uptake of social media technologies in enterprises was stronger in 2012 with 42% of the companies surveyed stating that they already have deployed it.¨

The social media priorities in B2B marketing are to build market awareness, engage customers or prospect in real-time interactions, acquire information, exchange ideas, and gather customer feedback.¨

tl;dr says: Social media is allowing consumers to talk directly to brands, this “bottom up” feedback needs to integrate into product development and can help growth hacking efforts

Have the courage to start with the customer.

My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers.

- Andrew Mason, former CEO of Groupon, in his departure email

Growth Hacking 2013: Hack to the future – Mindset or Skillset?

Last night a great panel was hosted by MitchelLake Group, among the beer and the great minds gathered a solid discussion was had on growth hacking. Below is a summary of the event and some notes from the twitter-sphere on what went down.

” Some of the most successful startups of all time have used growth hacking techniques to grow products up to millions, 10s of millions, and in some cases 100M+ users, including Facebook, Dropbox, Zynga, Twitter, Pinterest and Quora.
But who are Growth Hackers, where do they hail from and who’s actually using them?
We’ve put together a panel of some of the leading Australian businesses who have already adopted this new (or not so new) practice for an interactive discussion. We will cover what it means to them, real life examples of how they are integrating the process into their businesses and

comment: QR codes vs Boxtcodes?

Aussie company Boxtcode launched  this week in what looks like an aggressive affront to the QR Code.

Getting people to engage with QR Codes is a perilous activity, most especially when you cross consumer impatience with technology fails.    Bad lighting, poor print contrast, scratched perspex billboard coverings, not to mention rotating billboards and very, very far away on-top-of-a-building billboards can often turn out to be insurmountable hurdles to getting a QR code to work.  I vividly recall going to a well meaning ‘new media’ presentation that was unfortunately based entirely around QR-codes that simply didn’t work under the conference room lights.

Boxtcode takes the interesting approach of

Advertising Activism: Steve Irwin, Sea Shepherds and Pixels

On Sunday the Steve Irwin set sail from Circular Quay, the Sea Shepherd’s skull and cross bones drawing the attention of tourists, hippies, grey nomads and yuppies alike. And it got me thinking about advertising activism, and how you successfully get public engagement on a Sunday.

Circular Quay is such a high visibility space, on a daily basis 36,000 visitors* pass through the quay itself with hundreds more looking on from the surrounding restaurants. In a space like this, social activism gets exposure to audiences that may never otherwise seek out information on the causes of the Sea Shepherd. While docking the Steve Irwin in the most famous international port of Australia certainly makes a visual splash, does it make the cause more accessible?

Memes, “viral” and advertising

This intended as a bit of a memes 101.  Because everyone deserves to understand our little meme friends.

A meme can be any idea that gains popularity via the internet, and it’s a slightly different take on what the traditional marketing guys may label as “buzz” or “hype” as it’s (usually) user-generated content that acts in a dialogue with the complex inter-textual network of a peer group or hyperlocal community. The most visible “memes” usually take form of appropriated images with captions: perhaps it’s to make a pithy comment on issues, express pet annoyances or just done for a laugh… some are quite layered and clever, others are not. There is not one main source for image memes. Anyone who has something (or nothing) to say can make one.

High Expectations Asian Father

Most memes don’t explain themselves very well — you have to know how to read them, and you most likely have to look at several examples before you “get” the joke or the internal language. However, memes are increasingly entering mainstream dialogues and take many forms. Christina Xu and Christian Twang started ROFLCon in 2008, a deep dive conference into internet culture. They’re unofficially considered the official meme heroes of the web.

NIKE case study: innovation and consumer influence

So a few weeks later I’ve managed to change jobs, book a wedding venue and reopen the Nike Case study series. With exams starting next week, I’m hoping for a prolific next 5 days with lots of writing and thinking and not much TV, couch or Fiancé (or as I like to call it, the Devil’s trinity of procrastination) I’ve managed to wrangle a week of study time between jobs and have dutifully set myself up in a suburban library, as far away from the Devil’s trinity as possible. So without further ado…

When we’re looking at Nike’s developments over the past decade, innovation and consumer influence over the marketing mix and key product developments have changed dramatically. As Yoo et.al. (2009) point out, digital technology has radically reduced the communication cost for remote collaboration and coordination. While this has implications for all global companies, and how their international supply chains operate, it also changes the ball game for how consumers can interact with the company and what innovations are possible.

Stefan Olander, the company’s director of digital content notes, ‘‘In the past, the product was the end point of the consumer experience. Now it is the starting point.’’ The digital space has opened up infinite avenues for both continuous and dynamically continuous innovation, propelled by both consumer and the brand. A great example of Nike engaging in this space is the Nike + innovation.