Aberdeen CMO Summitt - a few observations
Today, I've spent the day in San Francisco at the Chief Marketing Officer's Summit put on by The Aberdeen Group. This is not a large event - but if you can have time with the CMO of Wal-Mart.com and Wells Fargo and other high level marketing executives - in a small room with open question & answer - I find that it is usually time well spent. Today was no exception.
The executives in this group were very candid about what they know that works and what they are still learning about. The social marketing scene is definitely a place where world-class companies are still learning. Event-triggered marketing is another area where many learnings are still happening. The jury is out on how best to take advantage of these approaches to messaging platforms...
And yet, the event has been encouraging in that we are all in this together - figuring out how to adapt to the new interactions and what appear to be new rules that are in the market place. Let me offer one example:
Your brand can be hijacked. A reality check offered up by one speaker - if you have a world-class brand; go to Google and type in your brand name followed by the word "sucks". It is highly likely that your brand has a few critics and perhaps even a web site devoted solely to slamming your brand. So, you can either get out their and participate in the conversation or leave it to those who are going to slam you. The point being, when your brand is online, it's pretty easy to hijack the brand if you're not participating.
One more comment from another speaker - we love our data. One marketing executive that presented is working with 5 terabytes of data. 5 terabytes! In the olden days this would have been considered unrealistic and probably would not have made it through the IT vetting process. However, the digital world and the low cost of storage makes it possible to capture, analyze and act on massive amounts of data. My advice on this one - get used to it - and get in the game. If you're not committed to a serious analytics tool set for analysis purposes - get there as fast as you can. Otherwise, you will be at a large disadvantage now and in the coming years. Terabytes of data are here to stay and some very smart people are figuring out what to do with it.
www.iangilyeat.com
The executives in this group were very candid about what they know that works and what they are still learning about. The social marketing scene is definitely a place where world-class companies are still learning. Event-triggered marketing is another area where many learnings are still happening. The jury is out on how best to take advantage of these approaches to messaging platforms...
And yet, the event has been encouraging in that we are all in this together - figuring out how to adapt to the new interactions and what appear to be new rules that are in the market place. Let me offer one example:
Your brand can be hijacked. A reality check offered up by one speaker - if you have a world-class brand; go to Google and type in your brand name followed by the word "sucks". It is highly likely that your brand has a few critics and perhaps even a web site devoted solely to slamming your brand. So, you can either get out their and participate in the conversation or leave it to those who are going to slam you. The point being, when your brand is online, it's pretty easy to hijack the brand if you're not participating.
One more comment from another speaker - we love our data. One marketing executive that presented is working with 5 terabytes of data. 5 terabytes! In the olden days this would have been considered unrealistic and probably would not have made it through the IT vetting process. However, the digital world and the low cost of storage makes it possible to capture, analyze and act on massive amounts of data. My advice on this one - get used to it - and get in the game. If you're not committed to a serious analytics tool set for analysis purposes - get there as fast as you can. Otherwise, you will be at a large disadvantage now and in the coming years. Terabytes of data are here to stay and some very smart people are figuring out what to do with it.
www.iangilyeat.com
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