Faris Yakob is the chief innovation officer, MDC Partner, holding company of ad agencies including Crispin Porter + Bogusky and kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners and the former EVP Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson NY. He argues that the impact of digital is spilling off the screen into the real world, changing the way we think.
Originally, media was all about recording the world. We wanted to capture what we saw, freeze it in time and space, show other people.
Analogue media forms an attempt to recreate the world faithfully, transposing variations in amplitude and frequency to recreate the impact on our senses. It takes a property of a medium and modulates it to transmit information.
In analogue sound recording fluctuations in air pressure [that we hear as sounds] strike the diaphragm of a microphone, which induces corresponding fluctuations in the current produced by the electromagnetic microphone. That current is therefore an ‘analog’ of the sound.
The Marketing Society Annual Dinner
Celebrating Leadership
Join us for the marketing event of the year featuring a unique awards show.
Outstanding Contribution
One of the UK’s most distinguished leaders will be honoured for their contribution to business.
Brand of the year
Members of The Marketing Society and their guests will have the opportunity to choose, by text vote, The Marketing Society Brand of the Year Award.
Followed by live music and dancing.
Tables are £3100+VAT.
To book your place and secure a great position, simply email or call our events team on 020 8973 1360.
Host Lisa Snowdon
co-host of London’s 95.8 Capital FM breakfast show
Lisa currently co-hosts the Capital Radio Breakfast Show with Johnny Vaughan, London’s number one breakfast show and has also signed up to be one of the new faces for Marks & Spencer’s 2010 advertising campaign.
Congratulations to all the well-deserved winners of The Marketing Society’s Awards for Excellence 2010 announced at last night’s glittering ceremony at the London Hilton. The Grand Prix was awarded to Waitrose, the premium supermarket whose star is in the ascendant, despite the tough economic climate. Waitrose also won the top prize for brand extension, closely followed by Innocent, which was highly commended. Marks & Spencer was another retailer that stood out this year, awarded for best leading edge thinking. British Gas won the prize for brand revitalisation, recognised for its journey in ‘Getting back to great’ by placing customers, not competition at the heart of its strategy. Premier Food’s Hovis was recognised for its marketing communications, “As good today as it’s always been”, reminding consumers of 122 years of heritage in its battle against competitor, Warburtons. We’ll be profiling the winning case studies on our blog over the next month or so as well as an interview with the Young Marketer of the Year, Ewa Czapracka from Destination Skin.
What’s your golden rule? If people don’t understand what your product, service, solution or argument is, start by assuming that you have got the communication wrong and not that they are stupid! This has forced me over the years to continually update propositions, presentations and documents until my audience at least understood the point I was try to make. Agreeing with it is a different matter.
Who has been your biggest influence? No one person or thing. I am somewhat of a magpie, stealing the best of everything I have seen from multiple sources. If you forced me though I would give the answer ‘my wife Rachel’.
What is your most hated business expression? “We need better marketing” as I think it betrays an understanding of what marketing is about and reduces it to a set of functions.
What’s the smartest business idea you’ve ever had? The one in my head today or at least I hope so. I am not much of a one for revelling in the past.
Which leader do you admire most and why? Sir Alex Ferguson. A commitment to excellence, a willingness to continually change and re-invent and a stunning record of success.
What’s your favourite word? Serendipity! But United comes a close second.
Tell us a secret I occasionally take business calls while out riding my bike and then just pretend I am somewhere windy (sorry if I’ve done it to you!)
Richard Hytner, Deputy Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi and President of the Manchester United Supporters Trust, talks to Adam Morgan from The Challenger Project about how the creation of a visible symbol has helped grow the trust’s membership from 30,000 to over 150,000 in the space of six weeks (follow the campaign here: www.joinmust.org).
The Marketing Society Star Awards are central to promoting excellence and the vision of helping build a world class marketing community in Scotland. These awards are judged by a wide cross section of senior marketers across most sectors in our community and chaired by our Chief Executive Hugh Burkitt.
The awards night, at The Corn Exchange in Edinburgh on the 21st May, will be a great chance to celebrate making your mark with your colleagues, competitors and clients. And of course, this is your chance to be amongst the first to discover who has won these prestigious awards.
Key Times
Cocktails: 7pm
Awards Ceremony: from 7.30pm
Dinner
Champions Awards after dinner
Band, bar and dancing till 1am
Peter Fisk, best-selling author of Marketing Genius will be writing regular posts on growth drivers. He delivers the Fast Track marketing development programme in partnership with The Marketing Society and leads GeniusWorks, a business innovation firm.
There’s a lot of talk about getting “back to normal”. Economic fears subside, as stock markets rise… Think again. Times of turbulence leave a lasting impact on markets.
At a consumer level, the “crisis” has changed attitudes and behaviours forever. People are more considered (cautious, thoughtful, responsible, selective), more collaborative (connected beyond networks, wanting a piece of the action, loyal to each other), and more resourceful (able and wanting to do more themselves, more human and local, achieving happiness through simplicity).
This time it really is the end of “shout and sell” marketing. The end of gilded, packaged, frivolous, push. From Amazon to E-cloths, Tchibo to Tripadvisor, the consumer’s “value equation” has been shaken up.
At a market level, crisis has accelerated invisible power shifts – from west to east (if you want to find venture capital, or witness real sustainable innovation go to China), from big to small (the end of arrogant, monolithic brands), from mass to niche (market share is no indication of profitable growth), and business to customer (connected and intelligent, and demanding everything on their terms).
It’s the end of the “big is best”, “people or profit”, “them and us” mindsets. From Alibaba to Zipcars, Tesla and Threadless, there is a new order in markets and marketing.
As marketers, we are the growth drivers like never before – but in a way that requires more than great communication, increased sales and incremental innovation. We need to reframe what our brands do for people, make unusual connections to redefine categories, enable people to do more, and engage them in more genuine ways.
E-cloths, the Kent-based green cleaning wipes is a great example – combining the possibilities of nanotech fibres that clean better, while eliminating the need for eco-damaging detergents. EMT from Estonia has become the world leader in pre-pay phone cards, by moving from consumer to business markets with more focus and difference.
Coolest business in the world right now? Have a look at threadless.com. The “user-generated” T-shirt company asks people to upload their designs, with the best 50 voted for each month. The designers are paid for their limited edition shirts which sell at a premium. Next month it all happens again… from “value for money” to “value for participation”.
There’s nothing like a good shake-up. Yes, it’s time to get back to growth, but in more thoughtful ways.
Martin Hayward argues that while you may presume consumers have never had it so good, they beg to differ
Much has been written by many, including me, over the last few years about the transfer of power from companies to consumers, driven by freer access to markets, more competition, better information and ease of switching. Undeniably all these things have happened, but at a more prosaic level, it is useful to occasionally reflect upon whether the consumer’s life has really got better or has just become different. Let’s take a couple of markets and consider the outcomes.
Air travel
On the face of it, the consumer has been the outright winner in a revolution of airline practices and fares. There are more planes going to more places at generally cheaper fares than ever before. On average, at a rational level, we can safely say, as Michael O’Leary of Ryanair often does, that the consumer has won. However, there is a different side to the coin. The flight experience has undoubtedly got considerably worse – smaller seats, queuing to board, no refreshments, grumpier staff, less baggage allowance and so on…and if you need to book at short notice then the pricing strategy is best defined as rip-off. Like many families I know, mine is determined never to fly on at least one of the carriers due to the way they’ve been treated and overall I have to say that the case for the consumer’s victory is some way from being proven.
Financial services
Again there has undoubtedly been a revolution in the potential for consumers to manage their money between a dizzying array of providers and channels. Choice has exploded and switching is easier if not yet seamless, but there are several major flaws in the market, still woefully unaddressed. Firstly, most consumers do not have either the time, interest or skills to switch their money around the market to keep up with a decent rate and the financial Read the rest of this entry »
The inaugural ‘Makes You Think’ session on Monday 1 March was a great success, it satisfied the synapses and the guests picked up a mind virus or two from John Kearon’s Me-to-We Research ideas. Our second Makes You Think session comes from the frontiers of marketing and human behaviour. Mark Earls, author of theHerd will be sharing his dogma busting challenge that the ultimate marketing is not one-to-one marketing but Herd marketing. The latest science shows we’re much less individual than we think we are and far more influenced by other people than we would care to admit. We’re designed for a world of other people and what we do to each other has far greater effect than traditional ‘persuasion marketing’. Mark will help us challenge the way we think about marketing.
Format of the evening – Growth Drivers Marketing Think Tank This is an interactive breakfast session hosted by Alex Batchelor – one of our Thought Leaders. The format of this event is a talk, that will ‘Make you Think’ followed by a participation exercise where the audience will split into groups and then present their ideas to the rest of the audience and open to discussion or a vote.
Key Times
Registration: 8.00am – 8.15am
Presentation and working breakfast: 8.15am – 9.30am
Networking: 9.30am-10am
Location Grange Holborn
50-60 Southampton Row,
London
WC1B 4AR
We're here to curate inspiring and thought-provoking ideas and perspectives from our network and the marketing world at large. Read, listen, watch, comment and be inspired. The Marketing Society is the exclusive membership network for discerning marketers to learn, develop and share knowledge.
#WLTM: Marketing Society Business Leader Paul Wilson, CMO, Sunguard http://t.co/xZYSkyovFebruary 3, 2012 2:39
@BrainJuicer: How Can Brands Show Us They Care? http://t.co/SoDI8XQnFebruary 3, 2012 12:13
@RobinHoughton Thanks for braving the cold last night and joining us @SohoHouse. We will send you another book to review for #bookclub soon.February 3, 2012 12:03
Faris Yakob is the chief innovation officer, MDC Partner, holding company of ad agencies including Crispin Porter + Bogusky and kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners and the former EVP Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson NY. He argues that the impact of digital is spilling off the screen into the real world, changing the way we think.
