The Adaptive Marketer

A New Approach To The Marketing Funnel

So, this week I was very pleased to participate as a speaker in a Webinar for Information Management and Syncsort.  The topic was bringing Web Analytics Clickstream data into a Data Warehouse.   Oh, stop yawning already....  It was actually really interesting - and some really valuable things came out of it. 

In doing my homework for the presentation, one of the conclusions I came to was just how valuable it is to develop a much tighter process for processing all the data we're generating in our online efforts.  If you think you're neck deep in reports with Google Analytics - just think of all the report combinations you could come up with if you wanted to start measuring Analytics combined with CRM, combined with Product Usage data.     

A Care Package For Everybody Who DIDN’T Go To SXSW

Are you at South By Southwest this week?   No?    Yeah, neither am I.  I would have loved to go - but just am too busy with client-work (which is a good thing by the way).  How about you - are you stuck with clients?  Stuck at work?  Just didn’t want to go?    Well, with all that’s being blogged, tweeted and generally discussed this week – you might be feeling a little lonely out there if you’re not walking up and down the streets of Austin.

In that spirit, I wanted to put something together for everyone who didn’t make it to SXSW this year.  Think of it like a little care package; a few things to keep you busy until late next week – when all those SXSW’ers come home, hung over and full of stories.  With any luck, and if you complete the below – you’ll not only be able to hang with those stories – you might even make a few of your own.

Without further ado… If you would have gone to SXSW.....

Feeling Lucky? 3 Marketing Lessons From Chat Roulette

Come on… You know you’ve tried it… Or, you want to… Yeah?  If you haven’t – well let’s just say you should probably do it without the kids around.  Let’s just say that the likelihood of a quick lesson in male anatomy is pretty high.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Chat Roulette is a site where you can have an anonymous video chat with random strangers.  If you don’t like what you see, you simply click “next” and you’re thrown to another random person (as um.. the case may be).  The same, by the way, goes for them.  If they don’t like you – you’ll quickly find yourself discarded. 

I tried it for the first time this last week.  It’s actually oddly fascinating.  And, it struck me that there were PPC, SEO and Social Media strategy reminders that we can take from Chat Roulette.  What are they, you might ask…

Well here you go…

Are You Extraordinary? Marketing Lessons From The Healthcare Summit

Have you ever been to one of those corporate off-sites?  You know the ones I mean - where the agenda is filled with all kinds of progressive, well-intentioned paradigm shifting, super-important initiatives.  And then, when you get there, it’s nothing but a series of 45 slide PowerPoint presentations where the presenter reads every word of each slide.

This is usually followed by checking email in the hallway (to get real work done), then a lively “life coach” in the afternoon that you just know lives in a van down by the river.  And then it’s all wrapped up with an awards dinner of chicken, beef or fish, a bad comedian and copious amounts of alcohol.

Do You Have A Shadow Brand? Lessons From AT&T & Apple

I was watching the Olympics last night and I saw one of the new AT&T commercials.  You might have seen it – where Luke Wilson has “secretly replaced everybody’s smartphones” with those available on Verizon.   As expected, everyone has a toxic freakout – ("where are my apps!") and the tag is that AT&T is “a better 3G experience”.    This ad caught my eye because while they focus on the actual hardware being better  there’s not one mention or sighting of an iPhone anywhere in the commercial.   Even at the end they feature a Blackberry Bold as the “smartphone” example. 

So, I was curious and went back and looked at past AT&T commercials.  And, whaddya know I actually could not find one AT&T commercial that mentions the iPhone by name.  If you guys can find one – let me know – because I couldn’t find any.

Now, there have been plenty of iPhone ads where the AT&T network bars and logo were prominently displayed.  But here’s the thing – they never once actually *say* it.  Even in the Apple ad that’s widely considered to be taking a swipe directly at Verizon – they never actually say the name AT&T.

Google Buzz - First Impressions & Five Questions

 I got into Google Buzz today and spent a couple of hours playing with it.   I'm going to continue to work with it - and see how it develops - but so far I'm a little underwhelmed.  Check out my profile if you wanna?

First, if you haven't played with it yet - and you want to - you don't necessarily need to wait for it to show up in your Gmail.  You can force it in (at least I was able to), by going to buzz.google.com - clicking on the "try it in Gmail" button - and then logging into your Gmail account.   BUT there's an important exception here - which brings up a really weird behavior (I won't go so far as to call it a bug) in Google's account management.

What’s Your Super Bowl Ad Strategy?

So, most of you will read this after the big game has been decided.  Whatever the outcome, as has been said before – I’m sure this year’s Super Bowl was a series of interesting and hopefully entertaining commercials periodically interrupted by a football game.

Super Bowl advertising has, of course, been around since Super Bowl I when the Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10.   The first really famous ad was a Noxzema ad featuring Joe Namath and Farrah Fawcett.  As a side note, you’ve got to check it out – it’s a gas.  Joe Namath saying he’s “gonna get creamed” and Farrah singing breathlessly.  Aaaaah the 70's!

Are You Selling Bibles Or Religion?

Well I think we can all agree that this last week was a good week for buzz.   We had, of course, the almost completely frantic, breathless rumors leading up to Wednesday's Apple announcement (you might have heard they launched a new product).

That was followed up with the equally buzzworthy State of the Union address; which was (by many accounts) one of the more interesting SOU speeches in recent years.  When was the last time a Supreme Court Justice mouthed off during one of these.

Certainly, the social media universe as well as the main stream media were all excited about both.

But was there a unifying thread for us marketers?

Who Wears The Red Shirt In Your Landing Party

You all know the Red Shirt phenomenon yes?   If you don’t, not to worry, I’ll wait here while you go earn some geek cred.  Okay, yes, it’s from Star Trek – starting with the original series and a tradition continued into many of the other television shows and movies.

It basically starts with Kirk, Spock and McCoy agreeing to beam down to a planet's surface to investigate some anomaly.  To accompany them, they enlist an ensign, a security detail or some engineering officer.  Whatever their “department”, they are inevitably wearing a red shirt.   There’s a wikipedia article on this.  And, of course you can’t miss the Family Guy treatment of it.

So... What does this have to do with marketing....