There’s been a heated online debate about the ways consumers are influenced to buy things and adopt new social trends. Some people say a small group of Influencers drive most consumer decisions. Others argue that ideas spread through society from random starting points, without a hierarchy. The evidence shows that both groups are wrong in [...]
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Marketing in a Social World
The business equivalent of making sausage is the marketing of marketing. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (November 29-30, 2008), Tom Hayes and Michael Malone explain the new world of marketing in a Web-based world. They have a provocative name (“Marketing 3.0″) and a new concept (the business meme or “beme”). In the end, they sound like apologists trying to make a pitch for why advertising agencies are still relevant and reminds me of this humorous video imaging what would happen if a modern advertising agency designed the stop sign. In short, they are marketing marketing.
Online Communities, Why They Matter (III)
In strategy work with tech companies, my team and I are frequently asked about web communities — how they operate, what they can and can’t do, and how a company should look to work with them. To help answer those questions, we surveyed more than 3,000 US web users on their overall Internet usage, and [...]