My Clients and Why They Engage Me
My clients are primarily involved in information-, knowledge- and technology-intensive industries, including media, content development, telecommunications, software development, and applied R&D.
The common theme is that they are experiencing ‘pain’: the pain may be significant and obvious, or emerging; that is, there is an awareness of potential problem that can […]
Social networking sites will shortly face a crisis of their own creation, as consumers question the returns they achieve from the time invested in staying on top of their bourgeoning networks of friends and pseduo-friends.
In the past few months, Facebook appears to have hit a tipping point. It has quickly moved away from its college […]
I noticed an interesting job advertisement in the papers over the weekend. The job title – Online Communications Manager – caught my eye, as I had recently been wondering when we will see organisations invest the same levels of resources into managing their relationships and interactions with customers over digital channels as they do, say, […]
A recently published paper – Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities – presents a theory on the role services like Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce plays in our social interaction with others.
The primary differentiation between blogging and ‘microblogging’ (according to the authors) is that the latter encourages shorter posts, which, in turn, creates two important […]
IBM Institute for Business Value has released its findings in a new survey of consumer digital media usage in the U.S., U.K, Germany, Japan and Australia.
It contains some very useful data about the current and future demand for non-broadcast media viewing, especially PC- and mobile-based video consumption.
The study found that Australian consumers spend more […]
Henry Blodget recently posted some eye-opening data about the ‘big picture’ shift of advertising budgets from traditional media companies to online media in the US.
US advertising revenue at Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN grew by $1.3 billion in Q2, or 42%.
US advertising revenue at 15 big television, newspaper, magazine, radio, and outdoor companies […]
All too many would-be entrepreneurs engage in ‘me too’ entrepreneurship. They see that one or more companies are experiencing success with a specific product or service, and quickly enter the market with a similar offering. This “fast follower” strategy can in some instances lead to triumph. However, in many cases it leads entrepreneurs down the market equivalent of a cul-de-sac.
Wayne Gretzky is regarded as one of the all-time great hockey champions. When asked the secret to his success, his response was “Some people skate to the puck. I skate to where the puck is going to be.”
While most sporting metaphors are overused in the business context, this is a very powerful insight. There are two reasons why adopting a fast follower strategy is dangerous. First, markets are dynamic and constantly moving. In the time it takes you to develop a similar offering, the market may well have moved on (that is, the puck is no longer there).
Second, initial market leaders rarely secure sustainable market positions. Search engine pioneers, like Alta Vista, now stand in Google’s shadow. Early leaders in the social networking space, like Friendster, are losing market share, while late-to-market MySpace and Facebook achieved billion dollar valuations.
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I have been asked to author two articles for a forthcoming edition of Marketing Magazine that is focusing on ‘new media’.
In one of the articles, I expand on a theme I recently covered here – that Web 2.0 does not exist – so I thought I’d share a snippet:
At its core, the Internet […]