Welcome to my first blog post about my learnings in X501 –
Marketing in the Era of Digital Technology! Today I will be focusing on what I
learned while reading Chapter 1 from the book The Age of Engage.
The first thing that rang true for me while reading this
chapter was the discussion about truth and authenticity in business. With the increase of communication in the
world brought on by Web 2.0, it is nearly impossible for any business to hide
anything from the public. All business
activities can and will be scrutinized by the public. This has lead to business policies that
aren’t as bottom line driven and are driven more by the social perception of
the policy. “Green” policies, which can
also be profit friendly, are adopted because of the social welfare they gain for
the company. Companies almost never get
away with sweeping anything under the rug.
The public holds them accountable for all actions and all lies.
Another interesting thing was the discussion of wikis. Wikis have easily become some of my favorite
sites on the Internet. From Wikipedia to
wikis about games I play, I send a lot of time on these types of sites. The ease of updating and sharing information
allows for these sites to be very thorough and informative about whatever the
topic may be. The idea of using this in
a corporate setting to share data and work on a project was something I had
never heard of. It seems very
interesting and possibly very powerful for project completion and data
gathering.
The trade off between interaction and data gathering was a
fascinating discussion about the value of Ajax.
I had never heard the term “Ajax” but I am certainly familiar with
websites that do something like this.
People can spend more time interacting with a single web page without
leaving it. The value of the data about
page view could be hugely important but the it is likely that another way of
tracking the usage of these websites will be developed to counteract this
negative effect.
Finally I was very interested in the topic of lack of value
of the traditional “4 P’s.” It makes since that as marketing drastically
changes that these staples of marketing philosophy would have to change or be
replaced. While this opening chapter
doesn’t go into much detail about the “6 V’s,” the one that jumped out to me
was “Voice.” In my current company this
is already a huge point of emphasis with marketing. With new products and marketing campaigns, we
try to focus on the story. We emphasize
the storytelling aspect of marketing to create emotional connections with our
customers. We believe that people are
interested in not only price and service but also the process. We have seen
great success with this strategy.
