Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog

Why Facebook Will Do Search and Why Google Needs Social

Futurelab — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 18:12:10 +0000

Mark Zuckerberg posted a picture of himself in front of his computer, and an eagle-eyed blogger noticed that his version of Facebook sports a larger-than-usual search box. An unintended leak or not, Facebook competing in search is only a matter of time just as, in retrospect, it was inevitable that Google would integrate social elements deeper into its main product.

The 70, 20, 10 Model

Futurelab — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:32:19 +0000

The 70,20,10 model for learning and development seeks to blend different approaches to into a sum greater than its parts. Powerful learning, the theory goes, is comprised of:

around 70% from real-life and on-the-job problem-solving and experiences
around 20% from feedback and working with role models
around 10% from more formal training

9 Elements for a Successful Marketing Program Mix

Futurelab — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:34:56 +0000

Guest Post by: Maria Pergolino

Demand Generation Managers are responsible for finding and executing the program mix that is going to drive revenue for their organization. This includes selecting programs that are going to identify new leads and campaigns that are going to cause current leads in the system to move farther down the funnel.

The 2012 Election as Technology Showcase

Futurelab — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:38:11 +0000

The Obama White House, as measured by its willingness to embrace new technology platforms on a rolling basis, is perhaps the most innovative in history. This week’s Google+ Hangout with the President – essentially an FDR fireside chat updated for the Internet era viewable by millions on YouTube – is just the latest example of the Obama White House embracing Silicon Valley innovation to communicate with the American electorate.

Successful Business Transformation Requires a New Logic To Handle Ambiguity and Change

Futurelab — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:39:11 +0000

The future is scary and there are reasons for it. I have been giving a lot of keynotes lately to different professional organizations and senior executive roundtables and my keynote topic of strategic innovation and design thinking went beyond innovating to find growth and adapting to new economic, market, political and social order.

Bright Lights Project -- Ad Agencies

Futurelab — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:34:19 +0000

The fallout of digital technology and its social applications continues to wash across the communications industry, with many leading advertising agencies starting 2012 with staff reductions while big-name brands like Microsoft and P&G fire hundreds of their marketers.

How To Be a Social Media Self-Righteous Jerk

Futurelab — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:35:39 +0000

The scale above shows the many stages one has to go through in order to become a bona fide self-righteous jerk in social media. Still, there are many people who aspire to reach this peak, but fall short in executing against it. Given this observation, I thought it would be worthwhile to piece together a few best practices which will ensure your status as a social media self-righteous jerk (or SMSRJ). In no particular order:

Social Personalization and the Doppelganger Effect

Futurelab — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:45:19 +0000

Are you overlooking a way to personalize your ads that goes far beyond the usual “Dear Roger” salutation? In my recent article, Put Your Customer in the Ad, I mentioned that LinkedIn was using profile pictures for targeted ads. Since then, I’ve been able to capture a couple of examples. The first one surprised me when it appeared, and to generate a second one I had to surf a variety of profiles. Here’s what I like about these ad:

Can Nike Fuel a Mobile Health Revolution?

Futurelab — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:19:33 +0000

The mobile health revolution, which started and took off in overseas emerging markets, is rapidly making its way to the U.S. The past few months have brought a surge of new innovations - the FitBit Ultra, the Jawbone UP and now the Nike+ FuelBand, all of which attempt to combine fitness tracking and health awareness into an attractively-designed mobile product.

Three Lessons for Fulfilling on a Green Brand Promise

Futurelab — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:23:11 +0000

When it comes to the environment, consumer behavior can be inconsistent or even a bit hypocritical. Two-car families will buy a hybrid and a gas guzzling SUV. Parents will teach their kids to turn off the water while brushing, but take a few extra minutes in the shower to enjoy the peace and quiet. Somehow, we tend to overlook our own inconsistencies, while holding others accountable for their actions.

Instagram and the Growing Power of Photography in Social Media

Futurelab — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:28:11 +0000

The Crimean War of the 1850s was a revolution in communication. For the first time reports from the battlefield were returned in what felt like near-real-time thanks to the electric telegraph transmitting messages in just hours rather than them having to be sent by horse across Europe. Many people complained about the impact of this real-time news, and the harm that it did reporting on the events tragedies of the war as they happened.

Turning Point

Futurelab — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:49:21 +0000

At the turn of the last century, AOL was the household name when it came to Internet access (not to mention a reliable source for spam CDs in everyone’s snailmail boxes). It was a portal...no, the portal to Internet experience through which people passed in order to access the content there.

World Economic Forum: More than Meets the Eye

Futurelab — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:11:45 +0000

I spent the last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. When my friends (y’all) learned I was going, some were supportive while others were horrified. A few called me an outright traitor. Given how much mythology there is around this event, I want to take a moment and briefly share my own experience there.

Status Update Anxiety and Facebook Timeline

Futurelab — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:33:18 +0000

Keeping up with the Joneses just got harder, with Facebook finally flipping the switch on its new Timeline Apps that make it easier to share every fleeting moment of your fabulous life with each and every one of your friends. The gossip and invidious comparison that goes on between Facebook friends each day is about to intensify, thanks to 60 new Facebook Timeline apps that give 800 million people around the world an easier way to share their Facebook status with others.

Media = Maths + Magic

Futurelab — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:09:48 +0000

Before Christmas, in an exceptionally insightful post on Ad Age, Adam Cahill suggested that it was time to change the orientation of media agencies and departments to be more reflective of what people do and toward what he called the math and the magic (hence the borrowed title to this post) of media.

Why Internal Culture Is Much More Important than Employee Social Media Guidelines

Futurelab — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:03:50 +0000

January has seen a spate of people tweeting things they shouldn’t – from Diane Abbott to Ed Miliband in the UK to countless people working for brands across the world. We’ve also seen a renewed debate in the UK about how the professions should use social media – notably about teachers befriending their pupils on Facebook.

Launching a Social Command Center (Without The Center)

mro — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:09:08 +0000

"Social command centers" are all the rage today and it's not without some merit. Many organizations now find themselves in a real-time business environment where news travels faster than sound, and information is set free. As a result, some forward thinking companies have put "monitoring" in place either in-house or in combination with partners. This isn't enough.

Digital Pirates, 3D Printing and the End of Copyright

Futurelab — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:55:17 +0000

If you think the copyright wars over SOPA and PIPA that resulted in the Wikipedia Blackout were contentious, wait until you see what happens when the debate over copyright is extended beyond music, film, video games and books and into the realm of physical objects like sneakers and toys.

Brand Experience Brief: Patagonia’s Tin Shed

Futurelab — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:11:11 +0000

(Here’s the latest “brand experience brief” — insights from my audits of new and interesting retail and restaurant concepts.)

Future: The Pirate Bay Loads Up on Physical Goods

Futurelab — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:00:11 +0000

Not science fiction anymore, this: "Once chairs and other things become content, the prospect of rampant chair piracy turns from unimaginable into very real." The Pirate Bay is opening a new category for the new kind of piratable stuff: "We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles.

Put Your Customer in the Ad!

Futurelab — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:24:24 +0000

In my direct mail days, we used personalization whenever possible. Starting a letter with “Dear Roger” instead of “Dear Friend” responds better every time (if the recipient’s name is Roger, that is!). A sweepstakes that uses a personalized address message like, “Imagine our Prize Patrol ringing the doorbell at 123 Shady Circle,” will garner more entries than one that uses a generic message.

Vickie Achee on the Grand Retail Eperiment at Patagonia

Futurelab — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:33:39 +0000

Today’s interview takes a peek behind the curtain at an extraordinary company, Patagonia.

Patagonia is known worldwide as an outdoor clothing and gear brand, but I wanted to better understand the company’s retail strategy. Who better to ask than the head of marketing for the North America Retail Division at Patagonia, Vickie Achee.

Enter the Dragon: Here Comes China's Creative Class

Futurelab — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:18:22 +0000

The Year of the Dragon – traditionally the year of big, innovative ideas and breakthrough projects - might just be the year that China's creative class enters the global spotlight. The latest signal comes from the art world, where the market for Chinese artwork is exploding, putting new Chinese artists on the same footing as the greatest names in the Western artistic tradition.

Trust Shifts from Institutions to Individuals

Futurelab — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:39:20 +0000

Today I had the opportunity to present to academics and industry experts from the international poultry industry (you can listen to a re-cap via a short podcast from "Agwired" here). During the presentation I was able to share some results from the recently released 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, in which the overarching theme is a general skepticism toward institutions such as government and big business with signs of hope when it comes to empowered individuals.

Reinventing Libraries

Futurelab — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:01:22 +0000

According to the 2010/11 Taking Part survey published by the Dept of Culture, Media & Sport the proportion of adults in the UK who visited a public library in the past year fell from 48.2% in 2005/6 to just 39.4% in 2009/10. At that rate of decline in less than two decades nobody will be visiting libraries.

How Parents Normalized Teen Password Sharing

Futurelab — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:23:11 +0000

In 2005, I started asking teenagers about their password habits. My original set of questions focused on teens’ attitudes about giving their password to their parents, but I quickly became enamored with teens’ stories of sharing passwords with friends and significant others. So I was ecstatic when Pew Internet & American Life Project decided to survey teens about their password sharing habits.

DLYohn 12 Truths to Guide Retailing in 2012

Futurelab — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 17:11:56 +0000

Key points about success in retail from speakers at the NRF’s Retail BIG Show in 2012

Raising Money: What Not to Say and What Not to Believe #OfficeandGuyK

Futurelab — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:28:33 +0000

Guest Post by: Guy Kawasaki

Over the past two weeks via my partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve provided templates of models for you to create enchanting PowerPoint pitches, Word business plans, and Excel financial models. They are all available for you to download from my SkyDrive account. I hope these documents and blog posts help you save a boatload of time and increase the quality of your efforts.

In Memoriam: Kodak Scenic Spots

Futurelab — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:58:17 +0000

I took my first Kodak Photo Spot (wiki) pictures at my spring break trip to the Disney World in the mid-1990s, and through all these years I've never stopped admiring their genius. It's a marketing idea whose elegance has rarely been emulated. I love how organically spreadable the signs were, how they subtly nudged you to spend another scarce frame of film, and how they made people's lives a little bit better by giving their memories just the right composition.

What Is Competitive Advantage?

Futurelab — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:18:55 +0000

Terminology like competitive advantage, differentiation and value creation tend to get overused in businesses. This HBR piece on the work of Michael Porter from Joan Margretta who worked with him for almost 20 years succinctly captures how often such terms are misappropriated ("Competitive advantage, for example, is often used to mean 'anything we think we're good at'.

Solving the “Invulnerable Customer” Problem

Futurelab — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:56:11 +0000

Often, consumers don’t buy products because even though they recognize a risk exists, they don’t think they will be victims. The belief may be irrational, but they see themselves as invulnerable. So, they don’t buy life or disability insurance, they don’t invest in healthcare products products or services, they don’t join a gym, or take other common and desirable steps to protect themselves. This poses a problem: what’s the best marketing strategy for consumers who seemingly believe in their own invulnerability?

Bright Lights Project - Standard & Poor's Rating Services

Futurelab — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:23:19 +0000

Standard & Poor’s is one of three major American rating agencies (Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investor Services are the others). They’re in the business of assessing risk of various financial instruments and the reliability of the companies and governments that issue or trade them, and their ratings affect both investor interest and the prices paid for said financial paper.

Pop-Up Human Capital: A New Employment Model?

Futurelab — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:45:22 +0000

Around the world, it's becoming easier than ever to sell your human capital - the sum total of your knowledge, experiences and talents - to the highest bidder. Using new P2P marketplaces like Sidetour and Gidsy, you can sell a lifetime’s worth of experiences and memories the same way you might sell a pair of used shoes. Using educational marketplaces like Skillshare, you can sell your esoteric knowledge to people with an interest in a specific topic.

Digital Device Manifesto

Futurelab — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:11:36 +0000

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) can be an intoxicating experience. Drinking in all the devices on the show floor, it’s easy to be dazzled by cool features, brilliant designs, and products you never even dreamed of. Speakers captivate your imagination as they describe bold visions and demo the newest products.

Stop SOPA And PIPA

Futurelab — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:23:45 +0000

It's a day of many voices of protest across the web (even on the Google homepage), but I didn't want to post about anything else today. I don't believe that censoring the web is the right thing to do and I don't believe SOPA and PIPA are the right way to end piracy.

Marmite vs Oxo: A Tale of Two Brands

Futurelab — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:56:22 +0000

Why do some brands make it into your basket while others stay on the shelf? What makes us want to buy one and not the other? Is it solely their inherent quality or is there something else at stake? A branding expert would say that this is no accident: it’s the emotional tug of a successful brand at work.

What Stephen Hawking Can Teach You about Social Media Marketing Strategy

Futurelab — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:48:18 +0000

Guest Post by: Maria Pergolino

Rock stars become famous but physicists typically work in obscurity. However, Stephen Hawking, a physicist and cosmologist, is a celebrity. He’s a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the United Kingdom and he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. One of his books, A Brief History of Time, was on The Sunday Times best-seller list for 237 weeks—a record that still stands.

Starbucks Loyalty Fail

Futurelab — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:11:34 +0000

Starbucks knows a thing or two about loyalty. I’m a Gold Card member, and enjoy the free refills as well as the periodic free drinks I accrue by using it. (Green Card members get the refill benefit, but not the free beverage after every 15 purchases. In addition, Gold Card members get a personalized card in that color and, theoretically, are addressed by name by the baristas.)

Are Newspapers Civic Institutions or Algorithms?

Futurelab — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:28:34 +0000

The current state of the newspaper industry is unsettled at best: more than two hundred newspapers have either folded or stopped publishing their print editions since 2007. Even the most acclaimed newspapers in the country are downsizing their newsrooms or suspending home delivery of physical newspapers. Even after embracing social media, newspapers are still struggling with paywalls and subscriptions.

Invent New Sports

Futurelab — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:59:12 +0000

There’s been little to no snow this winter, which has been a gift to those of us who commute in America’s northernly cities but an absolute existential disaster for ski resorts. You just can’t make enough snow (or keep making it fast enough) to come anywhere close to providing the sort of skiing experiences that most skiers expect. I can slide down ice in my driveway with no pricey lift ticket required.

We Need to Talk about Piracy (but We Must Stop SOPA First)

Futurelab — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:30:16 +0000

Much to my happiness, the internets are in a frenzy about the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (aka SOPA). Congress is currently in recess, but the House announced a hearing on the potential impact to the Domain Name Service on January 18 and everyone expects the Senate to begin discussing a similar bill “PROTECT IP Act” when they return to DC on January 24.

Massive-Scale Online Collaboration

Futurelab — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:27:53 +0000

I caught up with the super-smart Richard Sedley yesterday and he pointed me at this astounding TEDx talk by Luis Von Ahn, who was one of the people that invented the CAPTCHA. Luis talks about reCAPTCHA, the project to create human gain from the 200 million CAPTCHAs that are solved by humans around the world every day and apply all those millions of tiny actions towards helping to digitise old books (apparently over 10% of humanity have so far helped digitise human knowledge).

8 New Year Resolutions All Designers Should Have

Futurelab — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:11:17 +0000

We are two weeks deep into the New Year and I am sure all of you have already hit the ground running. If you are anything like me, then you probably either forgotten to make a New Year’s resolution or could not think of one. Therefore I’ve decided to save everyone the trouble and compiled a quick list of 8 New Year resolutions I think designers should have. Just pick one and enjoy!

Obsession – A Starting Point from Steve Jobs

Futurelab — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 18:01:28 +0000

I don’t think you can start any understanding of obsession without looking at the people that are driven by it. Although it may seem obvious to some, it is also completely right to start this theme of obsession with a quote from a man that was driven by it, Steve Jobs.

Time to Kickstart(er) the Consumer Electronics Biz

Futurelab — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:23:58 +0000

The big news coming out of the CES show in Las Vegas this week was the lack of big news coming out of the CES show in Las Vegas this week. The biggest news, quite possibly, was the Booth Babes Controversy. Despite thousands of new product launches, more than 3,000 exhibitors and more than 150,000 attendees, the annual Consumer Electronics Show seems to have lost its innovation mojo.

Mobile Commerce: How Brands Are Falling Behind

Futurelab — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:59:11 +0000

Guest Post by: Katie Glass

A recent report has revealed that the majority of premium brands are failing to keep up-to-date with the opportunities presented by mobile marketing.

Social Media Dashboard: Dec. 2011 Version and Analysis

Futurelab — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:13:44 +0000

A few months ago, towards the end of 2011, as I delivered a pitch on social media ROI/ROE at the iStrategy conference in Amsterdam, I asked my team at Orange to put a social media dashboard together, one that would be monthly, more appealing to managers than the weekly slapdash XL fires were produce for ourselves, and yet would be a useful tool for decision-making. Here is – below – its December 2011 version.

Bright Lights Project - The Consumer Electronics Show

Futurelab — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:07:27 +0000

The 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show ("CES") started two days ago in Las Vegas. Close to 150,000 people are milling around almost 2 million square feet of exhibition space filled with thousands of displays. Every device imaginable is playing, broadcasting, or otherwise beeping. Mainstream media types are trying to figure out what it all means. Bloggers have been flown there and often hired by companies so they can spontaneously tell the mainstream folks what’s what.

How to Create an Enchanting Business Plan #OfficeandGuyK

Futurelab — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:36:29 +0000

Guest Post by: Guy Kawasaki

Here is the second post in my series about planning, pitching, and launching a new business venture. In partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve created a Word document that outlines a good business plan. It’s saved to my SkyDrive folder here.

Creating Great Work: Willem Van der Hoven

Futurelab — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:23:34 +0000

Found this interesting video on the eatbigfish.com website. If you haven’t read the book by Adam Morgan and are interested in setting up your own brand, which I am, then you should read it. It is packed with great ideas and examples of how to build a better, more exciting brand.

Will Madison Avenue Become the La Brea Tar Pits of the Ad Industry?

Futurelab — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:15:00 +0000

The news that Ladies' Home Journal was turning to crowdsourcing as a way forward was a bit of a shock to me. The first company I started, Sports and Fitness Publishing, was a magazine company. You could say that I have ink in my blood. My Dad, Grandfather and Great Grandfather were all newspaper publishers. Almost every summer job I had in High School and College was working at the Canton Daily Ledger, my hometown paper.

Has Pinterest Pinned Down the Future of the Web?

Futurelab — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:29:03 +0000

After being created as a text-only destination nearly twenty years ago, the Web has increasingly become a visual destination, where images, photos and videos have replaced text as the new lingua franca of online influencers. In the evolutionary development from blogs to Facebook to Tumblr and now to Pinterest, there has been a steady shift toward more images and less text, as well as easier, one-click ways to share this visual content with everyone else on the Internet.

Social Media Cases Study: Tesco and Social Shopping Platform Foodie.fm

Futurelab — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:12:22 +0000

Guest Post by: Jo Stratmann

You may’ve heard that supermarket behemoth Tesco has signed up for Foodie.fm – a service which has been dubbed by its backers as “the Facebook for grocers”.

Microsoft's Next Big Innovation: Google Maps Meets Grand Theft Auto

Futurelab — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:34:11 +0000

What's new with GPS? There were the 3D maps, then traffic information with live refresh every two minutes so to help others avoid heavy traffic jams and GPS watch. What’s next?

How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK

Futurelab — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:39:14 +0000

Guest Post by: Guy Kawasaki

Welcome to the first in a series of blog posts I’ll be doing as part of a partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps. Over the next two weeks, I’ll cover everything a budding entrepreneur needs to turn an idea into an enchanting investment opportunity—from the perfect pitch to a killer business plan to financial forecasts.

Imbalances

Futurelab — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:58:17 +0000

Frederik linked to this short video of Sir Ken Robinson. It's not a new talk but a section of his session at the RSA about changing education paradigms. Specifically the bit in which he talks about divergent thinking (it's not brilliantly shot but it gets the point across and you can also watch a longer RSA animate of the talk).