![Right now I want to tell you a story about two women who are doing Incredibly Smart Things with Fortune 50 marketing budgets and bleeding edge web software.
One is a Harvard MBA and experienced exec who co-founded an online video service. This service has only been featured in TechCrunch once, mind you (and few digerati would like to be caught dead with an active account). It’s a REALLY smart and well-designed service with loads of active users and a clear path to profitability that doesn’t rely on interstitial advertising.
This service was approached by Giant Multinational Consumer-Focused Corporation, which is familiar to everyone reading this (and which all ad agencies would love to do business with, because it’s marketing budget is Enormous). The service was approached because the Corporation wanted to collaborate and figure out a way to make more money.
This Corporation has built a large internal cross-discplinary “Institute” to investigate, test, and experiment with new modes of marketing in a world of hyperconnectivity (i.e. present-day Earth). They starting building this over a year ago, from what I can discern.
More importantly, the Corporation has charged the “Institute” with the task of listening to technology entrepreneurs and online community leaders. They know they have to listen because that’s the easiest way to find out what people want and why do what they do. You can’t know everything about everybody. And no matter how big your firm is there’s more smart people outside of it than in it.
(The other woman in this story, from all appearances, is a significant contributor to the design and implemention of this Institute.)
Here’s some detail on the relationship from the video service co-founder’s blog (very lightly edited by me to preserve the suspense I’m building up here ;-)
[This Institute], I believe, helps broaden [the brand’s] perspective on how to harness the power of passionate consumers — beyond the simple, direct control of them. By exposing their brand managers to a broad range of robust community sites in a learning environment, their marketers are afforded the proper structure to evaluate and understand the strengths of this delicate, but powerful new source of consumer connectivity…
The lab’s focus helps the conversation not slide into the predictable marketing mode of “what’s the CPM and how many eyeballs can I get”. I find that trodden line can singlehandedly stunt the emergence of new models and lead to unnatural, force-fit projects best suited for old media. Instead, our partnership discussions have been directed to define how engagement, influence, and dialogue can be measured (and priced) to ensure that the right consumers — the interested consumers — are reached. Our projects are focused on impacting the buying process, and on developing metrics which measure our members’ purchasing influence. [that’s some ambitious shit, even for me! -ethan]
By being invited to help craft the right success metrics, social networks involved in the [Institute] are empowered to make sure that their ‘consumer conversation’ projects don’t go as astray as they have when demographic reach and frequency became the end goal.
Because we are hyper-focused on our members’ expectations and needs, we think we can easily create something that will leave our community and [The Brand] better off than when we started. Can’t say that for most of the eyeball deals I’ve done.
The future is yesterday, for some people.
Thumbs up!
(5,000 bonus points for anyone who can name the two parties I’m referring to.)
(photo via /\/\ @ r 0 0 |\| 3 |))](http://28.media.tumblr.com/MvemLzUYvc8d0tbrsr4MLyTY_500.jpg)
Right now I want to tell you a story about two women who are doing Incredibly Smart Things with Fortune 50 marketing budgets and bleeding edge web software.
One is a Harvard MBA and experienced exec who co-founded an online video service. This service has only been featured in TechCrunch once, mind you (and few digerati would like to be caught dead with an active account). It’s a REALLY smart and well-designed service with loads of active users and a clear path to profitability that doesn’t rely on interstitial advertising.
This service was approached by Giant Multinational Consumer-Focused Corporation, which is familiar to everyone reading this (and which all ad agencies would love to do business with, because it’s marketing budget is Enormous). The service was approached because the Corporation wanted to collaborate and figure out a way to make more money.
This Corporation has built a large internal cross-discplinary “Institute” to investigate, test, and experiment with new modes of marketing in a world of hyperconnectivity (i.e. present-day Earth). They starting building this over a year ago, from what I can discern.
More importantly, the Corporation has charged the “Institute” with the task of listening to technology entrepreneurs and online community leaders. They know they have to listen because that’s the easiest way to find out what people want and why do what they do. You can’t know everything about everybody. And no matter how big your firm is there’s more smart people outside of it than in it.
(The other woman in this story, from all appearances, is a significant contributor to the design and implemention of this Institute.)
Here’s some detail on the relationship from the video service co-founder’s blog (very lightly edited by me to preserve the suspense I’m building up here ;-)
[This Institute], I believe, helps broaden [the brand’s] perspective on how to harness the power of passionate consumers — beyond the simple, direct control of them. By exposing their brand managers to a broad range of robust community sites in a learning environment, their marketers are afforded the proper structure to evaluate and understand the strengths of this delicate, but powerful new source of consumer connectivity…
The lab’s focus helps the conversation not slide into the predictable marketing mode of “what’s the CPM and how many eyeballs can I get”. I find that trodden line can singlehandedly stunt the emergence of new models and lead to unnatural, force-fit projects best suited for old media. Instead, our partnership discussions have been directed to define how engagement, influence, and dialogue can be measured (and priced) to ensure that the right consumers — the interested consumers — are reached. Our projects are focused on impacting the buying process, and on developing metrics which measure our members’ purchasing influence. [that’s some ambitious shit, even for me! -ethan]
By being invited to help craft the right success metrics, social networks involved in the [Institute] are empowered to make sure that their ‘consumer conversation’ projects don’t go as astray as they have when demographic reach and frequency became the end goal.
Because we are hyper-focused on our members’ expectations and needs, we think we can easily create something that will leave our community and [The Brand] better off than when we started. Can’t say that for most of the eyeball deals I’ve done.
The future is yesterday, for some people.
Thumbs up!
(5,000 bonus points for anyone who can name the two parties I’m referring to.)
(photo via /\/\ @ r 0 0 |\| 3 |))
