Marketing 2.0

The Brand Called Me

Do you use your name as your brand? You might enjoy this article from Fast Company on personal brands. They interview 5 people behind the brands, including Tony Hawk, Nigella Lawson and Todd Oldham to talk about retaining control and staying true to your principles. Some good advice here, although it would have been great to get feedback from the queen of personal branding — Martha Stewart.

Link: Fast Talk: The Brand Called Me.

Best Business Blogs: Advertising

You can tell that final exams are fast approaching. I am busy preparing my students for the end of our Corporate Communication class and I have been unable to blog much lately. Here is a nice list of advertising blogs posted by Fast Company magazine.

I used to subscribe to this magazine and then lost interest after the tech implosion. It seemed to become somewhat irrelevant after being the primary cheerleader for the tech boom in the 90's. Now, it seems to have found its voice again.

If you are interested in blogs devoted to advertising, this list will get you started.

Link: Best Business Blogs: Advertising.

The Customer is King

Here is a link to a great article from the Economist discussing recent trends in marketing. The author, Paul Markillie provides insight into the changes in marketing facilitated largely by the Internet.

First, we now have transparency. Consumers are increasingly well-informed about products (both features and price comparisons) before they actually buy. The chief marketer at Dell notes that even small price changes result in immediate consumer reaction on Dell's site traffic and transactions, a sure sign that people really understand price points and price/value relationships in the computer market.

Another major trend is disintermediation — a marketing term than means taking out the middle man in plain English. With consumers able to do their own research and connect directly with companies, what happens to the traditional layer of marketing communications and advertising? Do we still need traditional advertising to attract customers in the digital age?

While advertising probably still has legs, companies are focusing on new media to deliver their messages. In this process, they are moving more toward genuine conversations with their constituencies. That's a really positive trend in my view. What do you think?

Link: .

Resource Compendium for Photographs

Do you spend a lot of time searching for images on the web? I spend an inordinate amount of time looking for just the right images. I incorporate them in the PowerPoint slides used for my lectures at Ithaca College. I find that my students are really oriented to multi-media. They respond to graphics, images and video clips so I try to use these tools to enhance my lectures.

Thanks to Robin Good, we now have a compendium of sites offering free images. He lists and describes several sites that offer royalty-free images for your projects. Read his article and visit a few sites to select one or two that fit your needs.

Link: Where To Find Great Free Photographs And Visuals For Your Own Online Articles - Robin Good's Latest News.

Microsoft Gets Its Groove

You may have already seen this but Microsoft recently acquired Groove Networks, a leading provider of groupware software. Groove allows workers who are physically separated to collaborate on a shared desktop platform and access common documents and applications. Other features such as IM are built into the program making it a powerful tool for enabling virtual teams to work productively.

I think that Microsoft is assembling a powerful suite of tools to enable collaboration among distance workers and eventually allow people to access virtually their entire corporate knowledge system from anywhere they can get a broadband connection — at home, down at the local Starbucks, anywhere. They already have Live Meeting, the web conferencing program so acquiring Groove is a natural fit.

While Apple continues to lead the way with elegant and simple tools for creating digital media, Microsoft is quietly moving to revolutionize the business computing market. Soon, you will find web conferencing and collaboration programs like Groove integrated seamlessly into the Windows environment. I predict these will be essential productivity tools, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that cannot afford expensive, proprietary systems. It will be interesting to watch this unfold.

Click on the link to read an article on the acquisition from Boston.com Business.

Link: Boston.com / Business / Technology / Gates gets Groove.