Convergent Tracks in 2011: Marketing and Technology

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Claudia Benassi Faltys

As we’ve seen it in the past couple of years, the acceleration of technological innovations has been impacting many sectors, marketing included. Some disciplines like communication, PR, marketing, customer service have partially blended, technology contributing to “dis-cluster” them, bringing along in the same time new challenges.

As stated in this excellent article, “Social technology is permeating everything in our lives. It seems that every medium of media has integrated social into the message. The Facebook craze has pulled over 500 million people into use of social technology for multiple purposes. Humanity is experiencing connectivity to the human network like never before in history.

The influence of technology on humanity is affecting all market sectors whether private or public, on-line and off line. The intersection of technology and the human network is disrupting old business models, organizational theories and beliefs systems founded in old knowledge. ”

In this disruption context, question is: How to bridge the gap? How to leverage those (r)evolutions to empower your organization’s global efficiency?
It has become essential to understand new technologies, how they can augment your marketing’s objectives, impact your business results.

New kinds of jobs are emerging: community manager, chief marketing technologist, digital strategist, etc, that all have in common to mix combined skills in technology and communication, marketing.

Paradoxically, the more fragmented the world becomes, the more “convergent tracks” we’ll see, with an emphasis on the convergence of: mobile (highly fragmented)-social-local.

Here are some of the -new- challenges marketers are facing:

keeping track of new trends
understanding the mechanisms underlying the power of technologies
understanding how they can impact your product/price/communication/distribution/customer experience
figuring out strategies optimizing a mix of media according to the objectives (acquisitoin, loyalty, brand awareness, ..)
understanding key data factors: analytics, performance, ROI, social CRM, …
diving into social media…
And enjoying this high-pace evolving environment!

And, at the converging point between marketing and technology, connections and emotions, the lattest being the central linchpin to valuable connections.

That’s why you see those 2 signs on the image: <3 is the symbol of love in the digital media and the other one, on the right, is the symbol of sharing/connecting (via 2.0 technologies).
It is my personal way of wishing you all a happy 2011, under the sign of love and connections, all real, no matter the media!

If you’re interested in decryptering the discussed trends, you can focus on these 2 information sources:
Adage Digital
The Marketing & Innovation Daily

And for the upcoming months:
10 digital predictions for 2011
Top 10 Stories on AdAge.com in 2010
Social Media in 2011: Six Choices You Need to Make

PS: social media is implicitely included in the article, as being one of the most disrupting trends, mix of platforms, technologies, participation, interaction, crowdsourcing potential, etc, etc…
PS2: Focus. It’s getting more and more noisy out there.
PS3: Follow your own track

Image courtesy of a dear friend, Jacques-Antoine Besnard, quadruple airship world champion who’s leading the engine on the image. Official site of the last world championship. His official Fan Page (not regularly updated). A model of a focused mind. Merci Jacot :-)
Icons taken from The NounProject

3 Keywords for 2010

Posted on January 14, 2010 by Claudia Benassi Faltys

January, time to think “strategy” and “action plan”.

And, as a starting point, I am looking back at 2009 results. It has been a very exciting year on many levels, for Sosoftware, culminating at Telecom, and for me, as a marketer.

As Jean-Claude Biver, charismatic Swiss entrepreneur, head of Hublot, recently stated it in a business review (this site is really missing its point!): working with little (marketing) resources will make you learn creativity, and learn quickly, as far as you are independant, fearless and endurant to work-load.
This is pretty much what I’ve experienced last year. And it fitted perfectly to the wave of social-media being much talked-about and progressively adopted for business purposes. These combined circumstances made it the ideal period to experiment, analyze and learn.

It brought out a big impact on general visibility and, over the months, leads acquisition. The tools have proved to be powerful, reactive, specifically the global mix of digital tools and offline actions. But still, slicing the figures into more specific ROI-oriented results is not yet highly meaningful.
So, in 2009, it’s been mostly the sexy part of the job!

What about 2010?

In order to harvest the fruits of the tools that have been rolled out, to grow and in order to stick to market trends, I will focus my attention on 3 keywords: content, metrics, mobile.

Part of it will still be experimentation: I’m not a fool ! :-)

And you? On what will you focus your energy this year? Do you have 3 keywords that could drive your actions ?

Have I been influenced by this article by Chris Brogan? Maybe. Anyway, reading this article could help you prioritize your actions for the coming year.

Image: taken a couple of days ago, next to my place. This frame inspires me a lot, it can be the metaphor of framing and at the same time the opposite, “framing out”. And it’s always changing.
Credit to @MAMK, who inspired me with his great post.

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