A fantastic presentation by Rohit on reinventing marketing. I have been a long term fan of his work for many years and I found this recent Tedx talk particularly inspiring. In this talk, he states why we are all in the business of marketing. In everyday life we try to influence others to do something, whether its trying to convince a spouse over what dinner choices to make. Or, trying to convince our kids to eat their vegetables. However, over recent years marketing has experienced a bit of a bad reputation because “it will bend you to its will”.
Rohit continues to state that marketing suffers from what he calls “The Marketing Mirage”. Namely products have traditionally been marketed on the basis of:
Features – People buy things because of features. Or, the belief that it solves a particular need.
Promotions – If I give you something for free or discount it, you will buy it or more of it.
Demographics – If I know my target audience, I can just purchase media to target my segment better and succeed.
Such models worked particularly well during the 1960s and 1970s, when consumers were “mass media consumers”. However, consumers have changed and many marketing teams have evolved and become more complex (teams are spread throughout the world, some work together others work in silos). The consumer of today is different, they have full control, it’s become “a one button economy”. All the consumer has to do is publish his or her thoughts online, by a touch of a button and share them with the world quickly easily and cheaply than ever before.
For the first time, we have a huge shift where "virtual trust" now exists. In essence, I will trust the opinion of someone I don’t know, who no one in my network knows and I have no way of verifying whether they are real or not, or credible or not. But I will still trust them. If ten people all say that a digital camera is not good on Amazon I will believe that. Even if i don’t know who those ten people actually are.
Rohit, ends the talk with a great quote:
When it comes to marketing and when it comes to reinventing marketing, it’s not about retelling the features and benefits and having something that somebody can connect to. What it’s about is having a story that you can tell and that someone else can take, make their own and retell.
Earlier this week, I was fortunate enough to attend the TedxTuttle event in London. The event featured a host of great speakers, mixed in with some Ted Talks and an opportunity to meet some great people.
The keynote speech was presented by Maggie Philbin, who presented a series of great clips from the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World program. This was a real treat, as I was avid fan of the programme and even today, the theme music still brings back many happy memories of the programme. The clips centred around three decades (60s, 70s and 80s) and showed a number of technologies that became popular and others that did not. Incidentally, the BBC are now presenting an archive of Tomorrow’s World clips which can be accessed here: www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld.
Maggie also presented “Philbin’s Fact File”, which touched on a number of points, the she believed would make a business successful. Nothing new here, but all good stuff nevertheless.
Communicate as if person to person Be outstanding Innovate, don’t imitate Go beyond "just enough" Create an experience Exceed expectations
In all, it was an excellent keynote and it is great to see that she is still so passionate about science and technology.
The next talk was presented by Rachel Armstrong and discussed the future of architecture. Rachel, is a TED fellow and presented a fascinating talk, which at times was a little above my head, but interesting nevertheless. Rachel’s interest in architecture surrounds the materials that we choose to build structures. Her ongoing research examines how low tech biotech technologies could be used to build sustainable structures for the future.
Next up was Tuttle founder Lloyd Davis, who described the Tuttle experience to the audience. The Tuttle Club meets every Friday at 10am at the ICA in London and has been running for eighteen months. This is remarkable, since many social media networking meet-ups, disappear after only a few months. Lloyd, mentioned that there was no real secret to Tuttle’s success. However, he believed that ‘diversity and inclusion’ were important factors. Anyone is welcome to attend Tuttle and judging by the slideshow of photos that were presented, the event is growing with ever increasing numbers of people. Tuttle exists and is supported by social technologies such as Twitter. However, many argue that online social networking lacks opportunities to actually meet people in the flesh. Tuttle is the antidote to such thinking.
I grabbed a quick chat with Lloyd during one of the coffee breaks. I last met him during the Blue Monster Coffee morning, at a time just before Tuttle started. It was a great to catch up and I’m going to do my best to get along to the next Tuttle meet up.
Next up was Ben Walker, who delivered a great talk (mainly in song) about the value of Twitter. Babble+Context=Conversation! Conversation=Value! Ben is known for the viral Twitter Song, which you can see below.
The last of main speakers was Mat Morrison of Porter Novelli who delivered a very interesting talk on social media metrics. Mat debunked the traditional held view on viral marketing that person tells everyone in a cumulative fashion to spread and idea, instead he proposed that great ideas don’t spread evenly. In other words, not everyone in a network is equal. If, you take Gladwell’s theory from the Tipping Point, you get the idea here. He also, focused on Clay Shirky’s recent points that we are currently experiencing “social media overload” – We need adequate social media filters to reach out to people, to enable a great OTS (Opportunity To See).
He also shared with the audience some interesting words in relation to social media:
“Eigenfactor” – A Page Rank for people
“Betweeenness – Someone who is very well connected
“Egonet” – A relation where size = popularity
“Homophily” - A term relating to people who hang around other people who are most like them. (Birds of a feather that flock together)
Mat is conducting some very interesting research into the area of influencers and has some great examples here.
Mat summed with the following excellent point,
“We tend to associate ourselves with people who are like us, allowing us to judge people on the people they follow”.
He ended his presentation with remarkable honesty, “insufficient evidence for a real conclusion”. His research into this areas continues.
Between, each of the speaker talks, there were a number of excellent Ted Talks that were shown. You can view each of them below. Overall, TedxTuttle was excellent. Great speakers, inspiring talks and a great venue. Congratulations to Alan Patrick and his Broadsight team for delivering such an excellent event.
Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
Clay Shirky: How social media can make history
PW Singer on military robots and the future of war
Last year I reviewed Seth Godin’s latest book called Tribes. I enjoyed this book and Seth’s talk at TED is a great synopsis of the book. In a “Twitter world” where we follow others, Tribes empower individuals. The book serves as a good reminder that by starting a movement, it is possible to change the world.
