Pour a steaming mug of hot cocoa and drop in a handful of marshmallows, kids! It's that special time of year when Justice takes a look at the many facets of branding, marketing, social media, cultural trends and related offshoots, and tries to sound smart by prognosticating on what we can look forward to in 2013.
Whether you watched the presidential election results with a “the sky is falling” reaction or a “raise the roof” dance, you can’t argue that we’ve all been affected one way or another. However, the bigger question for me is whether people made their decision early in the campaign season or were influenced by information they picked up closer to Election Day.
There is still a great gap between social storytelling and social media. It’s not nearly as wide as the gulf on Facebook between conservatives and liberals. But it’s a gap nonetheless. The marketer in me says that if I get too far down the storytelling path, the “call to action” for my client may be overlooked within the content. However, social storytellers would say the application of a defined message from an external source could corrupt or misalign the audience’s attention.
Trying to explain the thrill of creating a new technology, startup, user experience or integrated marketing tactic is hard to do with just words. But that excitement is ramped up tenfold when you're creating something that affects the real world. Such is the case with the new patent-pending technology that is being released by Starmark. This is the integrated advertising agency that I call home. Here I get to play with some of the most amazingly talented individuals that I've ever had the pleasure to battle for the best ideas. However, when we were challenged to construct the technology that would reward people in the real world, it was a new level.
If you're a digital integrated marketing professional who isn't thinking 50 percent mobile deployment, then you are already behind the curve. Anything less and you’re acting like that last printer in town who refuses to utilize InDesign because he’s absolutely certain Quark will finally version out a better product. I get it. There are only so many hours in the day. And thinking about or learning about ONE more thing means taking time away from the “important things.”
So you intend to hire a social media professional. You come to the point in your marketing where you understand that you have too many social channels, too much conversation occurring and too many metrics to follow to make any sense of it. Consider this a measurement of your marketing growth. Five years ago, to staff for this position seemed ludicrous and something that you would just train for internally. Now we see that this isn't simply a necessity within your business, but an opportunity to serve your customers in a much better and engaging way.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012 at 11:14AM