How We Work : Blog

The statistics on social networks are fascinating: My Space alone drives 2% of traffic to shopping and classified sites. Financial, travel and communication sites are all seeing traffic growth from social networking sites. The research shows that social networkers are more likely to rely on peer reviews and word of mouth than on the latest ad campaign and they spend 25% of their income online (vs 17% for non networkers).

For marketers, traditional online advertising within social networks has proven to be wanting. Integrated strategies through branded micro-sites, peer reviews and forums are the tools showing results.

Marketers are slowly but surely are moving into niche marketing, within the suburbs of the social networks. While this sounds good, (especially in Asia) marketers will need to grapple with a plethora of issues both within their organizations and the new consumers they market to. Within the organization, they will have to deal with possibly conflicting marketing initiatives, logistics issues and stakeholders who want to see more immediate results (For the corporate cat: a print ad in a leading paper is probably easier to comprehend than your product persona’s having 8,000 friends on My Space). With consumers, marketers will need to be prepared take feedback head-on and work out how to work with and reward buzz generators while helping them maintain their credibility.

It is going to be exciting to see how marketers navigate this new space. I’m expecting new technology and measurement tools to emerge that will help marketers justify and execute their strategies in this area.

Have a great weekend ahead!

Joanne

 

Technorati Tags: myspace, social network marketing, online marketing, niche marketing
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I was hearing out Rachel’s business plan, running through the business goals and objectives. In essence, she was seeking to create an online community where people could swap and meet items with other community members in their area. Anything from collectibles, used clothes, old toys and what not, such an online community service could be eagerly in demand she said.

After nailing down some concepts, we started to go into more specific details.
The first logical step to building the community is to build the website in which most of these activities would gain a ramp up from. As the website is not meant to be the online front of a brick and mortar shop, Rachel did not have any organization name at hand to be used as part of the domain name for the new website. She did have one idea for an easy to remember and meaningful name though:

“How about Goods Exchange? People can register in 3 simple steps and be on their way to exchanging goods with fellow community members!” she chirped enthusiastically. Amid my fits of laughter and her puzzled look at my reaction, I managed to pen down her desired website domain name on the notepad in front of us.


It took a while for her to get it and needless to say, she was understandably embarrassed but amused at the same time. In case you still do not get it, this domain name can easily be misread as GoodSexChange.com….

Choosing the right domain name can be critical to the success of your website. Your domain name is the only way visitors can find you on the Internet. Obviously you really need to spend more time coming up with the good domain name for your website.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, here are a couple of links which might help you along:

• Link 1
  
• Link 2
• Link 3
  

For those interested, Rachel didn’t use that domain name eventually. This might have or not been a good thing though. Sometimes a domain name such as the one mentioned above could garner the attention of the Internet community if only because it has viral marketing potential (think spreading of the domain name through friends and colleagues due to the humorous nature of the domain name in comparison to the actual services provided by the website). So that may have been what the following web enterprises had on their minds when they came up with the domain names for their sites……or not.

• A power generator company in Italy:  www.powergenitalia.com
• Searching for a qualified therapist? Try here: www.therapistfinder.com
• One of the best online knowledge communities of IT experts over at www.expertsexchange.com
• The community website for First Cumming Methodist Church: www.cummingfirst.com
• A website to search for agent representatives for Hollywood celebrities: www.whorepresents.com

Anyways, if you are genuinely interested in undergoing a sex change, here are some links you might find useful:

www.comicsexchange.com
www.veteransexchange.com
www.musiciansexchange.com
www.actorsexchange.com
www.exoticsexchange.com
www.graphicsexchange.com
www.homesexchange.com
www.kidsexchange.com
www.momsexchange.com
www.playersexchange.com
www.womensexchange.com
www.studentsexchange.com

I could go on and on...but I'll leave you to do the exploring.


Arthur

Technorati Tags: choosing, domain, url, name, domain name, website, company, internet

With the next round of the console wars reaching its climax this month, who would have thought that Nintendo would still be a viable player in the fray. Once the king of the hill with its Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), it has long been supplanted into third place by Sony and Microsoft.

 

With what could probably be its last hope to turn around its fortunes, Nintendo has decided to introduce the Wii as its next generation console. In my opinion, they have correctly chosen not to take on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 by competing on who has the fastest processor or who can render the most realistic and beautiful graphics.

 

It seems that the videogame industry has devolved into a impossible one upmanship on who has the most powerful hardware at that particular moment. Microsoft, with its Xbox 360, jumped the gun last year and was the first to enter the fray of the new generation of consoles. Touted as the most powerful console in its day, the upcoming Playstation 3 by Sony will soon shoot it out of the water, at least when you compare the spec sheets.

 

It seems that creating games that are actually fun to play and easy to pick have fallen by the wayside in the race to be the “biggest, baddest hombre” out there. I remember the golden age of gaming with my Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Simple 2D graphics with tight and excellent gameplay that offered hours of fun with nary a need to go to university to learn how to play.

 

Nintendo has finally understood this and is going back to making fun games again. Games that are not made for the narrow and traditional demographic of teenage and 20ish males. Witness the success of the Nintendo DS, with more than 21 million units sold, it has managed to reach non-traditional gamers such as women and older people. It is a brilliant stroke of genius by Nintendo. Why pour millions of dollars to fight for a slice of a diminishing pie, it is definitely much better to go for the whole pie where the competition is not present.

 

What Nintendo has learnt is a good lesson that many other companies can learn in many other industries. Sometimes being short-sighted and seeing a zero sum game in your industry may be crippling a much better strategy of going for the bigger picture.

 

Dan

Technorati Tags: Nintendo, Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PS3, videogames, Sony, Microsoft
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We are rolling out a global CRM system for Imedeen that will encompass the whole suite of our applications for content management, customer profile management, e-marketing management, e-commerce management and e-loyalty management.

Read the press release here.

Joanne

Technorati tags:
CRM, FMCG, Imedeen, loyalty marketing

The record companies and in turn their proxy, the Recording Industry of Singapore (RIAS), thinks so anyway.

Declining record sales, higher marketing dollars needed to promote our new artistes, ROI tanking. There's got to be only one reason for all of this, it has to be those darn teenagers and their rampant piracy. I digress, lots of ranting has already been spewed on the internet already, i'm not here to say how stupid they are (that fact has already been established).

The Straits Times today reported that the police raided some people's homes, confiscated their computers and recordable media. It seems every once in a while, the fat cats have to flex a bit of muscle. Like the saying goes, kill one person and you scare a hundred more. In Singapore, this tactic is definately a proven one.

Let's see what we have had to put up with so far, copy protected cds that have problems playing on certain players, wonky DRM that hobbled where i can listen to my music, rootkits that compromised my computer... and the list goes on.

Instead of coming up with stupid and alienating ideas to further discourage sales, how about introducing some of the good ones over to Singapore. Where is my itunes music store?!! Playnow and Soundbuzz don't count, their catalogues are miniscule and its not half as slick as Apple's rendition.

You would think that in the digital age, borders would be meaningless. I mean how difficult is it to allow people in Singapore to get their music from the itunes store in the US. Its not like we don't have the bandwidth. Well, greed is more powerful than technology it seems. Nothing like wanting to line your pockets to put consumer interest on the back burner.

As consumers, the most powerful weapon in out arsenal is to vote with our dollars. Refuse to buy CDs from artistes that are published by the major recording labels. We have to get it into their thick skulls that we are the consumers here, its your job to make us happy not ours to jump through hoops to prove we are not criminals. Until they get their act together and start making the process of purchasing music simple again, i say we spit on their faces.

Indeed, do you want to be no. 11? :) 

Update: Looks like some of them are getting the big idea after all, albeit in the US. Disney/ABC and Fox to my knowledge are embracing the internet finally. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061010-7946.html

Dan

Technorati Tags: Piracy, Music Downloads, Singapore, RIAS, MP3s
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