The topic says it all… the upcoming Journal of Marketing’s Breakfast Debate moderated by Jeremy Maggs is sure to be an interesting event. The panel that will participate consists of a variety of well known and exciting individuals in the online marketing arena: Continue reading

Vincent started his presentation by covering what Social Media is : web 2.0, social networking, user-generated content, the prosumer, attention economy, flattening time and space.

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I was one of the privileged to attend the 3-day Design Indaba Conference at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, held over the last 3 days (27th-29th February 2008). The Conference is one of the most well organised that I have been to in a long time, so well done to CTICC!
It is the first Design Indaba that I have been to and didn’t really know what I would gain from it, besides networking and perhaps to pick up trends. What I didn’t expect was to come away so inspired by people, everyday human beings that have made such a phenomenal difference to their lives and those of others because of the opportunity that they see in “things”. This was how Tucker Viemeister, LAB Chief at Rockwell in the U.S., referred to all items/objects/products as…. “things”.
For the first two days I sat in the simulcast event as we did not buy tickets well enough in advance, so I felt quite sorry for myself sitting watching some phenomenal people, that I know were right next door, on a screen. Today, however, a colleague from a Partner division couldn’t make the conference and handed me his card for entry. Watching the speakers in person makes a huge difference. Ninety percent of the speakers were from oversees, the highest calibre and from such different industries, designing “things” from motor vehicles: Oona Scheepers, to food: Marije Vogelzang, to web 2.0 platforms: Shin-ichi Takemura, to robots: Shunji Yamanaka.
They all have a message to give, delivered with such passion but still remaining so humble that you can’t help being inspired.
One of the quotes which I believe we can all try to live by is “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity”. Come on, I dare you….

More and more the balance of power is changing in favour of what the consumer decides a Brand is all about. Many factors have contributed to this but the most significant being technology and the ability to rapidly disperse information in a totally transparent manner giving the person-on-the-street that ability to voice her/his voice.

The internet and specifically web 2.0 has provided the various platform for this with blogs, social networking sites, forums, wikis to name a few. Marketers need to embrace this change, understand the conversations that are happening around Brands in this space and continuously find ways through passive engagement adding “content” value and allowing consumers to then “pull their Brands in” rather than aggresively pushing our one-sided messages onto them.

See Andy Rice of Yellowwood in an interview on eTV talking about this trend.