FutureM is here.
June 18, 2010 by Anita Tandon · View Comments
Like you, we’ve all been to one too many marketing events … and yet, we still have the feeling we are missing out on something. We’re constantly scanning any number of event calendars and wondering if that event last night was it. But it always feels like there are too many people doing too many things in too many places to keep up … and we just wish we could figure out the big picture.
It got us thinking — along with our friends and colleagues at MITX — that there had to be a way to stage a meeting of the marketing minds that would go beyond talk. And so, between cocktails and panels and whiteboards, FutureM was born. Slated for October 4-8th, FutureM is a week-long collaborative conference on the vision for marketing in Massachusetts through an intersection of people and ideas and inspiration. It’s a chance to hear about the latest in marketing, technology, and design– together. And if the thought of nonstop keynotes scares you as much as it scares us, fear not: FutureM includes panels, roundtables, summits, parties, meet-ups, and more, because the best ideas rarely get created around a podium. We can’t wait. Check out the rumblings of the future here.
In the meantime, we wanted to share the opportunity to be a part of FutureM. If you have a topic, technology, team, or even a question that can help define what’s next for marketing, submit an event idea. So get creative and join us at the future here.
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The Tweetwashing Agency Dilemma
May 26, 2010 by Mike Troiano · View Comments
“Greenwashing” is how cynics try to capitalize on the public’s growing predisposition to conservation and renewable energy. It’s a bit of flim-flam to make a product seem environmentally responsible, when it really isn’t.
It’s a lose, lose, lose proposition. First, some people are inevitably duped into believing that BP loves animals / trash bags can be biodegradable / coal can be “clean” – all to the benefit of charlatans and scoundrels. Second, the environment suffers despite the best efforts of downstream buyers to express their will in supporting it. Third, opportunity costs build up on two fronts: Buyers become cynical and indifferent, and sellers fail to invest in technology that would render their products more sustainable versus the competition.
The same thing is starting to happen in social marketing. Prospective clients are asking about whether they can “outsource Twitter and Facebook” to us, meaning will we put some underpaid 22-year-old on TweetDeck and ask her to “@” anyone with the poor judgment to tweet that his girlfriend dumped him while coolly sipping a cold can of BrandX.
Why do they want this? Certainly not because it’s effective in building relationships, in driving incremental sales. They want it because access to such a resource would enable them to plaster Twitter and Facebook chicklets all over their web site (which almost never allows comments because “the legal folks won’t let us”).
Call it “Tweetwashing.” A shallow and gimmicky handle for a shallow and gimmicky practice.
Is that the promise of social media? Will it become just another channel for back-slapping bullshit?
For me, the dilemma is this: I don’t believe social media can be an effective branding or promotional medium if it’s not embraced – authentically – by real people from inside brands that want to engage with the truth. I just don’t believe it can be applied as some kind of glossy outer coating by an agency partner, or any third party, and be truly effective over the long haul.
But that seems to be what clients want. They aren’t focused on the opportunities presented by social media. They seem to want to make the social media problem go away, as cost effectively as possible.
So what should we do? What do you do?
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Blessed Are The Meek
March 3, 2010 by Mike Troiano · View Comments
Look at this piece of utter hackery at left. It breaks every rule of good marketing communications. It’s unfocused. It’s ugly. It has giant freaking dollar signs, for chrissakes. Blecch.
And yet…
I find it interesting that humble brands – local restaurants, obscure b-to-b specialists, retailers like this one – seem able to embrace the “Content Marketing” ethos more readily than their advertising-addicted counterparts.
I look at this primitive execution – unfocused, horribly designed, e-mail based, etc. – and can’t help but admire the way it’s rooted in the belief that the best way to sell is to inform and empower.
And you know what? This stuff works. It’s arguably the best of two worlds, combining pull-worthy content with push-enabled reach. That would certainly explain Constant Contact’s lofty growth and impressive market cap.
While I of course believe that a dose of “professional marketing” could make something like this a lot more effective, I think there’s much to be learned from it by me and my fellow Big-Time Brand Folk.
Look again. What do you see?
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Chris Colbert joins panel at MITX on the future for advertising agencies
February 24, 2010 by Anita Tandon · View Comments
- Image of Chris Colbert
Here at Holland-Mark, we’ve been thinking out loud for a while now about how the agency business has changed for good. It’s no longer good enough for marketing to just be interesting – it must be imperative. As CEO of our resurgent business, Chris Colbert has been asked to join industry heavyweights from Mullen, Razorfish, Sapient, and W2 Group to discuss his perspective on the new age of agencies. The event by the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) will be held on February 25 from 6-8 p.m.
Keynoted by Sean Corcoran of Forrester Research, the group will discuss how agencies will adapt to new marketing paradigms, the impact of technology, and agency/client relationships in a new era.
“When I restarted Holland-Mark in 2007, I did it because I knew it wouldn’t be business as usual. The economy has allowed us to reinvent how advertising agencies work – and it’s a good thing.”
We’ve been thinking about this for a while, and we look forward to being a part of this new conversation. Come by and have a listen.
More details on this MITX event can be found on the event website.
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Mike Troiano keynotes at LaunchCamp 2010
February 3, 2010 by Anita Tandon · View Comments
Our very own Mike is the lunch keynote speaker at LaunchCamp Boston 2010 this Thursday, February 4. From what he’s told me, he’ll be sharing a bit about Scalable Intimacy, his philosophy on maintaining personal relationships while scaling your business. In short, what it takes to effectively leverage digital and social media to build meaningful relationships with your target consumer.
As most of you know, Mike joined Holland-Mark at the end of last year to head up our digital practice. In that time he has focused his efforts on imbuing new and existing clients with a practical understanding of the criticality of social media, as well as how it can be used to engage in more effective business practices. It’s great to have him out there sharing the wealth.
“Using the Web to build your brand is less and less about creating destinations, and more and more about creating content useful to the people you want to reach, then empowering them to access that content wherever and however they like. When you do this, you create a distinct and direct connection with a motivated consumer.”
A handful of Holland-Mark folks will be there and we’d love to see some of your familiar faces.
LaunchCamp is a day-long bootcamp focused on identifying and replicating some of the best practices in the market for moving entrepreneurial organizations along the growth curve. LaunchCamp takes a fresh look at the technologies and tools that are driving PR, marketing, social media and management, and attempts to identify the challenges that organizations face in the launch process.
More details on LaunchCamp can be found on their event website.
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The Siren Song of Perfection
January 26, 2010 by Mike Troiano · View Comments
- Image via Wikipedia
We’re getting close to the finish line on a handful of client projects right now, and I’ve observed that one of the biggest challenges “real marketers” have in embracing social systems is, for lack of a better term, cultural.
It’s almost a cliche now to say that embracing social media means giving up the sense of control marketing communications types are used to in other media. Like most cliches, there’s a kernel of truth in that observation, but it’s only part of the leap we ask our clients to take.
The less obvious but in some respects equally daunting leap has to do with embracing the ethos of successful software development, which differs quite dramatically from the ethos of successful print and broadcast development.
Marketers are shaped by the awareness that a typo in a print ad is pretty much grounds for termination. A brand manager will spend hundreds of thousands on a TV spot to get it exactly perfect before spending millions to distribute it over the air.
But that’s not the way you build software. It used to be, when software lived on mainframes, or whatever. The “waterfall” methodology was a lot like the ad creation methodology, a system oriented to deep and thorough planning before a launch where perfection was always aspired to, and sometimes required.
The problem with this approach as applied to business software was that it took too damn long, to the point that by the time the system launched, the business issues it was intended to address had evolved. To be more responsive, software development methodology evolved toward the sprint or “scrum” methodology, which is all about iteration, and the perpetual beta was born.
Entrepreneurs and social folk have an almost religious conviction about the design-ship-evolve model of creating software. But it’s an unnatural act for marketing folk, with the effect that building social software in marketing applications puts stress on the relationship between provider and client.
Have you seen this? Do you agree with the diagnosis? And either way… what strategies have worked for you in mitigating it?
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