Today was a great one for the people over at Last.fm - CBS purchased them and I signed up! There's even a widget connected to my blog now (click to enjoy some music "like" that produced by Blur).
It's an amazing service which shows just how far the web has come in the past 10 years. I remember signing up to a similar service seven years ago when Napster was still the real thing! However all sorts of issues meant that the previous service failed (no way to make money and not enough bandwidth).
In a way, i get last.fm more than myspace. By that I mean that I can see a way where it can become both a social AND a commercial success. I guess only time will tell.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
More great advertising from ...Microsoft?
In recent months, I've noticed that Microsoft have been coming up with some great commercials - Office 2007 was one example.
Now there's a new one aimed at people like me - online advertisers. I thought you'd enjoy this one.
However - one question - does anyone have any ideas how Microsoft is going to solve the gap between consumers and advertisers through technology? My concern is that the commercial highlights the natural gap between any database marketer and real consumers. There's no substiute for actually listening and seeing how consumers actually interact with a product.
Now there's a new one aimed at people like me - online advertisers. I thought you'd enjoy this one.
However - one question - does anyone have any ideas how Microsoft is going to solve the gap between consumers and advertisers through technology? My concern is that the commercial highlights the natural gap between any database marketer and real consumers. There's no substiute for actually listening and seeing how consumers actually interact with a product.
Monday, May 14, 2007
"You can't trust early adopters"
So says James McQuivey from Forrester who was commenting on the slow (read no) growth in iTunes video downloads as reported here - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/14/forrester_online_video/.
Early adopters have apparently skewed the forecasts for PAID online video downloads. Many analysts assumed that once the rest of us "got" it, we'd behave in the same manner as the early adopters did. However we didn't and it’s now looking like iTunes isn’t going to be the killer investment Apple and their media owner backers had hoped for.
What does this mean from marketing analysts? How does it make a difference to how we think about marketing? Well it shouldn’t change backward looking analysis too much in practice. However the focus has to shift for many organisations to start answering questions like “how do we shift this in the future?” It really brings home a point which was made to me over and over again by former colleagues – namely you have to add judgement to historical analysis in order to create a more reliable model for forecasting. In the past, I’ve been involved in a number of workshops which seek to qualify historical models with beliefs about how the future may differ from the past – Delphi style has been common. These workshops are a great way to test new hypotheses about the future and one key topic must encompass the question of “how might our consumers differ in the future?”
As many of you will be aware, my company is about to launch modelQED – a backward looking modelling tool which creates marketing mix models in record time. One of the key benefits of this tool is that it will cut down on the amount of time spend on backward looking analysis enabling organisations to spend much more time looking forward and understanding how the future will differ from the past. For me this is a winning combination – reduce historical analysis time (and increase the quality of the analysis) + systematically review how the future will differ from the past.
I hope that this powerful combination will prove irresistible to many organisations!
Early adopters have apparently skewed the forecasts for PAID online video downloads. Many analysts assumed that once the rest of us "got" it, we'd behave in the same manner as the early adopters did. However we didn't and it’s now looking like iTunes isn’t going to be the killer investment Apple and their media owner backers had hoped for.
What does this mean from marketing analysts? How does it make a difference to how we think about marketing? Well it shouldn’t change backward looking analysis too much in practice. However the focus has to shift for many organisations to start answering questions like “how do we shift this in the future?” It really brings home a point which was made to me over and over again by former colleagues – namely you have to add judgement to historical analysis in order to create a more reliable model for forecasting. In the past, I’ve been involved in a number of workshops which seek to qualify historical models with beliefs about how the future may differ from the past – Delphi style has been common. These workshops are a great way to test new hypotheses about the future and one key topic must encompass the question of “how might our consumers differ in the future?”
As many of you will be aware, my company is about to launch modelQED – a backward looking modelling tool which creates marketing mix models in record time. One of the key benefits of this tool is that it will cut down on the amount of time spend on backward looking analysis enabling organisations to spend much more time looking forward and understanding how the future will differ from the past. For me this is a winning combination – reduce historical analysis time (and increase the quality of the analysis) + systematically review how the future will differ from the past.
I hope that this powerful combination will prove irresistible to many organisations!
Saturday, May 12, 2007
The psychology of advertising.
The process by which advertising actually "works" on people is certainly open to debate and I'm not at all familiar with the psychology of what actually goes on in the heads of consumers. As a researcher, one of the key characteristics one needs is the ability to put yourself in the mind of the consumer and imagine how they may react to a commercial.
Nigel Hollis over at Milward Brown should know more than most about this and he's written a very interesting post on the subject here (http://www.mb-blog.com/index.php/2007/05/11/rehearsing-reality/) which is well worth a read if you have time. He suggests that "the concept of an ad exposure (serves) as a mental rehearsal of a brand encounter " which i think i get. See what you think.
Nigel Hollis over at Milward Brown should know more than most about this and he's written a very interesting post on the subject here (http://www.mb-blog.com/index.php/2007/05/11/rehearsing-reality/) which is well worth a read if you have time. He suggests that "the concept of an ad exposure (serves) as a mental rehearsal of a brand encounter " which i think i get. See what you think.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Being busy
I've been very lazy with the blog recently so apologies. We've been really busy getting ready for the official launch of modelQED - our new marketing mix analysis package. Watch this space for more details next wee!
In the meantime, for those interested in online analytics, can I draw your attention to Ron Shelvin's recent post: http://marketingroi.wordpress.com/2007/05/09/a-letter-to-web-analytics-from-the-ceo/
In the meantime, for those interested in online analytics, can I draw your attention to Ron Shelvin's recent post: http://marketingroi.wordpress.com/2007/05/09/a-letter-to-web-analytics-from-the-ceo/
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