By Myra Norton on 6/25/2008 2:52 PM

With gas prices on the rise and job security on a downward spiral, businesses have tightened up on their expenses in recent months. As professionals, we recognize that we need to spend wisely, yet we still see mass marketing and the same prospects targeted over and over again. Granted, there have been a variety of studies conducted that connect increased brand visibility with purchase decision; however, this comes at a cost. This leaves us with the question, how much are we willing to spend on messaging that falls on deaf ears?

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By Myra Norton on 6/14/2008 9:58 AM

I had the pleasure of joining more than 200 B2B marketers this week at the annual Business Marketing Association conference in Las Vegas.  There were valuable panel discussions on topics like measuring marketing effectiveness, sponsorship marketing, managing agency relationships, and many others.  Two of the highlights for me were the keynote addresses delivered by Eduardo Conrado, Corporate VP of Global Business & Technology Marketing & Communications for Motorola (that's quite a title!) and Judith Sims, Oracle's CMO. 

 

Eduardo's address focused on the ways Motorola is leveraging Web 2.0 to reach government and public safety buyers, but he shared a lot of information about how he has structured the marketing organization for maximum effectiveness.  Judith shared some similar information from Oracle.  One of the key learnings I took home from both presentations was the power of a unified voice - unified across product lines, across geographies, across channels.  Judith talked about the impact they have realized by planning carefully their marketing efforts for optimum impact.  Instead of running disparate ad campaigns, events, online campaigns, etc.; they pool all of these channels around the most promising opportunities to reach and engage a given audience.  One example was a recent conference in New York where the key decision makers in one of their vertical industries were going to be gathered for a week.  Oracle recognized this as an opportunity to have a real impact on this industry ... Read More »

By Myra Norton on 6/3/2008 7:40 AM

A colleague referred me to an article entitled, “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus,” by Clay Shirky the other day. Shirky talks about our cognitive surplus and the need for media to understand that it’s a triathlon. By that he means, we are not running a single race focused on consumption; rather, we need to be aware that people also like to produce and share.

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