Getting Rich The Slow Way

Fruit market at the Cour Saleya market in Nice (France)
Pic proudly by myself

This is the title of a compelling post by Karl Greenberg, I read this morning on Mediapost.
I do share his point of view and I do believe that we have to rediscover some practice that give us the pleasure of using time to think and to do something with our own hands.
Something as handwriting, conversation vis-à-vis, engagement with ourselves.
We do talk a lot and write a lot about brand that must engage with customers, but when we will talk about the skill of engage with ourselves?

The economy up and down, more down to be honest, and the new world scenario should teach us the lesson that the time of growing without limits, the neverending expansion, the technology development without a real reason, the assault to the environment, this kind of world has to come to an end and leave the place for something sustainable and mindful.

Are we ready, as marketers, to this challenge? Are we ready as men and women to adapt ourselves to a different life style? Do we believe our customers, or ourselves as customers, are the same we were one year ago?

Social media insights via a social network

My Plurkaddiction is eventually generating some interesting insights about Social Media and their application in the business world.

Along with fellows plurkers Geoff Livingston, Frank Martin , Sonny Gil, Amber Naslund generated a conversation about the impact of Social Media on jobs other than Marketing: Sales and Business development, Customer and client services, Product and Brand managers.

The list is truly comprehensive and I wish to share with you all.
Enjoy the reading.

The myth of working less or die trying

While there is someone out there cashing on the myth of working far less, no more than 4 hours a week, most of marketers, communicators, advertisers, agencies all over the world do work far more.
Why?

I have some thoughts I want to share with you:

- fragmentation is urging to get not only the big pictures but all the pixels, too

(pic by julianbleecker from Flickr)

- matching new forms of communication with old business and reporting models does seem a try to break a Guinness world record of people squeezed in a phone boot
- conversation with customers does call for a far deeper knowledge of your business and your company: you never know what kind of question or issue may arise and must be quick in answering

Some answers?

- To spread the company culture
- To create internal metrics to measure the success of marketing activity
- To implement online marketing suites to manage complexity of data
- To shift and delegate brand image activity to internal evangelists
- To support external evangelists

There is a common ground in all these answers: knowledge.
Today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, knowledge is and will be the most valuable asset to work better, if not less.

Knowing before and anticipating issues and catching opportunity is the way to stay ahead.
You should no longer surf the waves but, as extreme skiers do, run ahead the avalanche.

(pic by Your new friend Pete from Flickr)

One million dollar question

While we are focused on get customers and prospects engaged, there is one single and straight preliminary question:

are you ready to get your brand engaged?

If you do not ask this question in complete transparency and honesty, beware of the consequence of asking clients to be once more time creditors to your company

The cleanest line to retain a customer

There is only one company where I really would love to work (other than Buzzdetector, indeed): Patagonia.
The ability to deliver great product, good vibe, clean and discerning approach to the world where we live. And the ability to make a customer feeling confident about the money he spend when purchasing stuff from Patagonia.

I bought few months ago a jacket to ride my Vespa around in winter. Few weeks ago, I ripped a sleeve: my fault. I brought the jacket to a Patagonia store, they took it, send it in Portugal where they have a plant, repaired and send it me back. Cost for this: 15 usd.
This is what I expect from a company and this is what they have delivered.

And, by the way, check their blog, The cleanest line.
It's a great example of selling company value and it is open to employees, customers and friends.

Still able to eat meat?

This video from Repubblica may have nothing to do with marketing, er, wait a minute this could have a lot to do with marketing.
Imagine you are approaching your favourite restaurant or fast food. You already feel the taste of a filet or a double hamburger or whatever is your meat plat du jour.
You sit down, got connected wireless and look at these images.
Two option:

1. your restaurant provide you with a certificate that the meat you eat come from places where animals are treated well and killed softly
2. your restaurant cannot exclude that the meat you are going to eat come from places where cruelty is the routine

In case #2, are you still able to eat that meat?

That's why this has to do with marketing.
Because in a world more and more conscious of the need of a fair treatment of the world, this may become a lethal weapon for your competitors.
To apply ethic principles at every step of the production is a must for all the companies. And it will be vital, at least I hope so, for all the business.

Me? After having seen the video, it's two days that I eat only vegetables.
No, I'm not turning to be vegetarian. But I'm thinking a lot about it because of video like these.

2008 new mantra

(picture by Francesco Esposito in Flickr)

There's a new mantra for 2008: Trust.
We shifted from Engage to Trust.
Why?
Maybe Engage was too far ahead: you can't engage someone without Trust.
Trust comes before and, apparently, we begun to build a house from the ceiling.

We advice, we speak, we write, sometimes we get paid for and we expect others to believe in what we do.
But our customers must have in us the same Trust that old kings and queens had when financing Columbus and Magellan's expeditions.

So be prepared: a diluge of posts and comments about Trust are going to flood the blogosphere.
Are you ready?