In the last several years the shift of power to consumers has accelerated.

Customers have ubiquitous access to information, competing offers, and research shows their ability to make media now control’s more touch points in many purchase decisions that advertisers and brands themselves.

This is a freedom they’ve earned by purchasing digital tools which amplify their authority relationships. And they have the power to shift the terms of engagement with firms. They’ve migrated to mobile media, identified themselves with social networks, and in an increasing pattern are decreasing their contact with corporate websites and sales teams.

And while this may disrupt some static business models, it carries huge good news. Agile businesses can earn greater proximity to customers. Anyone can make a usable product. In this new relationship economy what matters is creating products that matter to customers – and that means focusing on the total customer experience.

For those of you who are digital marketers, your experience with data driven insights, creative brand expression, and marketing to serve rather than sell is the foundation to this corporate shift. Here are examples of the tools and patterns that adaptive firms are using to cross the chasm and join customers on their own terms.

The days when nobody can tell you’re a dog on the Internet are gone.

Mobile digital experiences are unquestionably the greatest open field opportunity for digital marketers. But this space is still new to both users and firms, and that the state of the art is still advancing rapidly.

The Challenge to Marketers
The key challenge for today’s marketers is to learn how best to serve a newly-empowered customer base, in order to forge lasting customer relationships. And how to line-up their business and technical platforms to deliver these experiences even as this channel evolves.

The Mobile Marketing Crash Course:
Mobile is absolutely the “breaking news” in the digital marketing world, and marketers are working to sort out its fit for their business, and the best way to build new mobile capabilities. So, I’m thrilled to be here in San Diego with ISITE Design’s Director of Mobile Solutions, Gene Ehrbar, where we’ll co-leading a half day Mobile Marketing Boot Camp. (See more on ISITE’s approach to business-focused mobile marketing here.) 

Join Us, or Have Us Join You
If you’re in San Diego for the Online Marketing Summit, please come join us. Or get in touch so we can discuss your mobile challenges personally, or bring this workshop to you. Besides building mobile experiences for clients across the US, we provide advice to teams on building the teams, business vision, and infrastructure to win in the mobile space.

Here’s today’s line-up:

1: Making the Case for “Mobile First”.
I’ll provide an analyst level view of the shape and speed of the changes being driven by huge mobile adoptions – and perspective to separate hype from disruptive change. After all, without a “why to” which is specific to your business, there’s no need to wrestle with creating new capabilities.

2: Mobile Web Crash Course.
Vendors may tell you this is a technical shift, but don’t believe it. Your audience and the brand experience you want for them set the development parameters for the mobile web. Gene will connect that decision around whether to make dedicated mobile sites, or to use responsive web designin, and how those choices connect to Search Engine power and overall user experience.

3: Mobile Apps Crash Course
Gene and I will discuss a typology of mobile apps and the financial models behind them. He’ll talk about the attributes of successful apps, and how app and web channels differ. And yes, we’ll be going deep on virtual reality, real-time social networks, and location based services sharing  real world development expriences.

4: Yes, you can measure it.
We’ll look at special SEO considerations in the mobile world, and specialized tools to measure mobile web and how to design “in-app” measurement features. Finally, we’ll talk about what “good” looks like by discussion what “lift” looks like in a mobile world.

5: Moving the State of the Art Forward
Finally, since people look at the world differently when you give them tools for making change, we’ll do some work together. Groups will take apart successful mobile products, and work on ways to improve them, while considering the development steps behind this kind of creativity.

 There’s a big day ahead, so wish us luck. We’ll be tweeting on the #OMS12 hash, and regardless of where you are today, we’d like to hear from you.

Hey, it’s time we caught up!
ISITE Design is sponsoring a free webinar in which I get to share the five things you need to do now to drive your digital business’ success. This has been an amazing year of working with great marketers around the world. I’m thrilled to have a chance to share some of these methods and views — and I want you to be in the house and part of the discussion.

We’re dialing in this Thursday, 2pm Eastern / 11am Pacific, and hope you can join us. (Jump to the registration details.)

What you can expect from #Digital2012
If you care about how the mobile web, video, and social media are coming together, then I think you’ll get fired-up by this. But knowing is different from doing, so we’ll also look at tools and techniques to help get your whole firm behind your digital business vision.

There’s just no way to write a post about all this stuff; it takes a webinar. But in just 60 minutes, it will be fast-moving and cover a ton. Please come join us, and bring friends. ;>

There’s an awesome give-away
Not that incentives are needed, but the first three audience members to log in on presentation day will get a copy of one of  2011′s best reads, Business Model Generation from Wiley Press. I’ll be demonstrating their business modeling rubric, and if you’re early, you’ll get a copy and be designing business revolutions from home.

You’re the first to know, so tell someone.
Since you read UsefulArts, you are the first to know about this free event. Act on this tip now, register here – *and* tip off your friends.

I’ll be tweeting about this using the #Digital2012 tag. Later today, I’ll start putting word about this on LinkedIn, and the usual channels. 

I’d be immensely in your debt if you’d spread the word — and I’ll try to pay you back Thursday with the smartest, most actionable, quotable presentation and discussion I can give. ISITE’s Chief Strategy Officer, Jeff Cram, will moderate questions and help get your voice in the mix.

This webinar is graciously organized by ISITE Design, with whom I have  ongoing business dealings. They do a lot of good promoting the discussion of online experiences that delight, reward, and elevate. I hope this will be one of those…with you in the house, it’s sure to be.

Thanks for encouraging my behavior!
Talk with you Thursday,
Dave

Good morning from London, where I’m with a collection of world class email marketers at e-Dialog’s European annual client meeting.

I had the chance to share some thoughts on the shift from corporate websites to social, the rise of mobile, and the benefit of building a brand identity that matters to customers.

If you’re new to my blog, you can get updates on the emerging future of our industry by email or rss feed. It would be great to stay in touch, so as always please connect with me here on the blog, or over on Linked In.

I’ve also added in a collection of tweets and images from the session. This is a fantastic tribe of marketers, and as I noted they have the skills in data, customer experience, and execution to be the first generation of digitally native CMOs.

As a tribute to Steve Jobs, Saturday Night Live has posted an un-aired video of fellow CEO / tech-rivals admitting how lame their work is in comparison to the now lionized tech legend.

The video crystallizes my criticism of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, and its a fitting send off to Jobs to allow him to be spoken of well.

I’ve been working on an industry talk that touches on both Hastings and Jobs – and can only hope I can comment on them a adeptly as this.

Watch this video, laugh if you like….then we can discuss it.

Yesterday, Herman Cain became the “Rebecca Black of political advertising.” She’s the teen who made a music video in unintentionally pointing out the banality of teenage life and pop music. It drew ire, and 166 million YouTube views. In a world where all press is good, Black’s epic fail created bigger waves than major label success.

Enter Poe’s Law: It Takes a Smiley to Mock Extremism
We had an interesting discussion of this over on my Facebook page, about whether this is a serious ad, or a parody or attack.

This brought Facebook, where Bill Cammack and Katherine Harris add their humor and professional insight (Bill produces video, Katherine is a former political insider.)

Yesterday I wrote about the huge marketing opportunity that Netflix squandered by sending out an impersonal message to announce they’d not split the company in two.

Today, RIM founder, Mike Lazaridis issued a video apology for service interruptions to Blackberry users around the world. I’ve delivered this same message running a secure, high-reliability service that disrupted business with unexpected downtime. You have to communicate regret, an appreciation of mission, that you know how to improve things, and then set expectations surrounding a still unfolding situation.

Though he did a good job in this phase, RIM was slow out of the blocks. My friend, Tom Catalini, listed some lessons he believes RIM and all of us could learn from their listless early response.  Of course, the apology must be expressed in actions that lead to improvement and active communication along the way. This is good act has to be just the first of other steps.

Meanwhile, consider Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix. He doesn’t have it nearly as bad as Lazaridis. His product is working, they’ve just made a some dopey management moves that have the markets and customers scratching their heads. It really shouldn’t be a faceless marketer from “customer service” making sense of this to customers and investors.

Why does the CEO of Netflix who loves speaking and being visible, need to take a lesson on the power of video in personal communications from RIM’s founder? If there’s a lesson to be taken from RIM, perhaps its “better late than never.“

Back in 2009, I went on a tear encouraging everyone to grab on to online video with a list of ten reasons marketers need video now.

Wow, three years later, this is still true. Lots of marketers get that video is huge, but when they think about content, too often they gravitate to written words and stock photos. That’s both a missed opportunity, and increasingly a road to marketing irrelevance. So I’m on the lookout for great uses of video by real, scrappy marketers that anyone can relate to. Please send me your suggestions and I’ll share them.

Everyone who reads this blog should be keeping an wary eye on the EU’s laws about websites using cookies. Check out this cheeky, fast explainer on this topic by Oliver from Silktide. It’s pure “content” without any explicit marketing; it establishes that there’s a firm called Silktide that just helped you a little.

The curious might look into who they are. Let’s just grok the video and we’ll discuss Silktide and SiteBeam on this site very soon.

Netflix has resorted to flailing, which is exactly what any company that has lost 50% of its market value in six months would do.

Just a few weeks after announcing it would spin-off its video-by-mail business an poorly named subsidiary, Quickser, they’ve reversed course. 

And the announcement couldn’t be less personal or remarkable.  The tone is so matter of fact, it makes me think they think this sort of behavior is normal.

Netflix can take a totally correct business change and make it sound awkward, half-baked, and even a bit insulting.  Raising their prices was a good idea badly handled.  Splitting the company was a stupid  idea made in haste. Honestly, its time for CEO Reed Hastings to cut a video showing people the awesomeness ahead in the Netflix future, and assure subscribers that management isn’t about to pull another Crazy Ivan.

Would you agree Netflix should be able to do better than this?