Mark Wilson

You might be wondering… what are you talking about Mark? Well, you’ll understand the reasoning behind my title after you’ve read the blog. You also might want to see the movie – Surrogates, in order to appreciate my meaning.

If I had not been introduced to OMG What Happened and What Should I Do? I would have never read it.
The cost for this read? A tweet. That’s it, nothing more. But I wouldn’t have allowed it to access my twitter if someone had not suggested it to me.
The takeaway? An amusing read full of interesting facts, information, and digital marketing learnings.
Below are my top 5.

#1 – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
Ok, so for all of you fellow house, techno, electronica, etc. fans… yes, that’s a daft punk song. A bit off topic, but check out the Daft Punk Bodies video… it’s quite entertaining once you hit about 1:40 min.
Back on topic, my first point. If you watch the timeline and rate that we’re releasing new technology advances, you’ll notice that every year appears to have larger and larger clusters of big ‘moments’. Through the early 1900’s to 1980’s, we didn’t see too many significant breakthroughs in technology, but once you hit 1990, 2000, 2010… the breakthroughs are coming harder (bigger), better (improving on one another, faster (multiple every year), and stronger (faster breakthroughs and adopting from consumers.
If you get a chance, pay the tweet and download the book, take a look at what I mean. Things are advancing so fast and it’s amazing. We live in a time where nobody has patience for anything and expect the world, but at the same time, we manage to impress these people with new technology year after year. We’re a spoiled generation as it stands, so I don’t even want to know what my children will be expecting…

#2 – Apple – No, not the crunchy, sweet kind.
Apple came out with Itunes in 2001, they also opened their first Apple store. From that day, Apple has been booming and even with the economic struggles we have (and still do) faced, Apple has continued to grow. They are one company that was at one time seemingly small, more for the artsy people, that has grown so much over the past 10 years that experts have dubbed them ‘recession proof’. When that first apple store was released in 2001, critics said it would fail and that Apple would end up shutting it’s doors, but here we are 10 years later and Apple is stronger than ever. Long live Steve Jobs, he might have been dubbed a complete @#$%%, but he was also a genuis and so far ahead of every one of us.

#3 – Lack of Adoption from Senior Company Executives
I think this tale has 2 sides.
First, a lot of these executives probably lived through the dot come bubble and may have lost a lot of money. Therefore, they might have been weary of adopting all of the new online and digital media into their company operations and marketing.
However, these are also supposed to be the guys who are observing the new trends and working to stay ahead of their customers. I find it amazing how unresponsive many companies were to the new digital era… those who jumped in head first did well, very well… they had a fairly tight hold on a very large market, very large.
I’m happy to see companies getting involved online, but I still find they don’t put in the effort to be successful (i.e. not staying on top of their social media, or investing adequate time online). If a company has no use for being online, fair enough, but the majority of companies have SOME place online and need to be getting on this bandwagon if they’re not already. We’re a generation moving digital, get with it, or get lost behind it.

#4 – We’re going Global… whether we want to or not!
Companies going online are now offering their product or service information across the globe. They might only sell product within North America, but people around the world can see their website and everything they offer. Everything we put online is not only viewed by our Country’s target market, but also every other Country. So be cautious, very cautious, that your message is strong not only in its Country of origin, but also every other Country. Big task huh? It might not always be feasible, but consider it. Here are some famous examples of marketing campaign messages gone wrong abroad – Marketing Translations Gone Wrong 

#5 – Listening is FREE — too bad we have our ear muffs on.
This is something companies are slowly learning, unfortunately very slowly. Let’s make this short but sweet. When you set up Social Media, it’s not to blast our advertisements. It’s to LISTEN and INTERACT with your customers. Nobody listens to a robot, so talk back, be interactive, and learn from what your customers are saying. It’s likely one of your greatest tools for success and it’s completely 100%, no obligations or subscriptions required, FREE.

We’re learning, that’s the bottom line. It’s a long, slow process, but we’re making progress every day on boosting the strength of our online marketing campaigns.
The problem I find with the digital era? We’re going so digital that people are alienating themselves from the rest of the world. We’re creating digital personas and starting to live through our ‘e’ selves. While this is great, we’re still human and let’s not forget it. I steal this quote to make my point – “let’s make technologies that make people more human, and not less” – check out this short TED video, he brings my point home.

Thanks for following.

M

Sources
Abraham, L., & Behrendt, C. (2010). Oh My God What Happened and What Do I Do? New York: Leif Abraham & Christian Behrendt.

Daft Punk Alive. (2007, 11 27). Daft Bodies. Retrieved 01 31, 2012, from YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl6RJyZdBSU

Gleeson, R. (2009, 04 10). Busted! The sneaky moves of anti-social smartphone users. Retrieved 01 31, 2012, from TED: http://blog.ted.com/2009/04/10/busted_the_snea/

Kale. (2011, 05 19). 10 Years of Apple Retail Stores. Retrieved 01 31, 2012, from Geek Trio: http://geektrio.net/?p=7988

Qualman, E. (2011, 03 29). 13 Marketing Translations Gone Wrong. Retrieved 01 31, 2012, from Socialnomonics: http://www.socialnomics.net/2011/03/29/13-marketing-translations-gone-wrong/