Remaking public spaces
Imagine how you might be able to remake a convention booth, or doctor’s office for patients, or our office for client presentations.
Enjoy.
When Love Is Blind from MM&M
I recently heard about a yearly kickoff meeting for a well-known specialty pharma brand. The goal of the meeting was for the marketing team to lay out the promotional plans for 2012 and to get feedback from managers and field reps. Things progressed fairly smoothly, until the subject of being responsive to customer needs arose. A member of the brand’s marketing team gently admonished the sales people for not listening well enough to their customers.
After this went on for a few minutes, a sales manager fired back, “You guys can’t have it both ways. You say you want us to listen to our customers, but in the same breath you always tell us to bring it back to the product and deliver the message. Well, our messages aren’t what our customers need.”
What’s going on here? Hadn’t the marketing team and agency combed through their data? Hadn’t they developed pages of positionings and messages? Hadn’t they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop and vet them before bundling them all up into a well-executed sales aid? Of course they had done all of those things. They love their product. But you can love a product too much.
Continue at http://bit.ly/ID5hZa
It’s amazing how Nike has become a tech company. What’s also amazing is the democratization of sports data. Professional stats for the everyday athlete. Check out the video. I think the big question is, will there be a backlash?. Like in surfing where you have a return to “soul”, surfing just for the experience and vibe, will everyday athletes someday want the same? Is feeling good about what we accomplish in a pick-up game good enough, or will we need the stats to enjoy it?
Can Coding Save the World?
Some people certainly think so. I myself am a big fan of codecademy.com. Will it land me a programming gig in Silicon Valley? Probably not. But it’s a lot of fun and should be essential fodder for anyone in agency life. Check out the article on NYTimes.com. http://nyti.ms/HmTNow.
American Express and Twitter are doing a really interesting co-promote by linking the 2 together. It’s interesting to see what the value of a tweet equals in different marketing situations.
The intersection of health care and tech is getting really interesting. What’s going to stick?
