Thursday, March 13, 2014

email - is it still a killer application?

Email, one of the earliest killer applications on the Internet is still going strong.

I have set up Mail to use colour coding to identify emails from clients because they are very important. The junk filter does a pretty good job on the rest, but then there are plenty of other legitimate emails that contain useful information, perhaps because I  have subscribed or from publications I  deal with and friends which are worth a quick look each day to keep informed.

But suddenly I  have a new best friend called David Cameron who tells me he is the Prime Minister and as a small business owner I  should be jolly grateful for the work he has already achieved and would I  mind sharing a graphic he has knocked up on Facebook and Twitter and then signs off with the suggestion that £10 to party funds would be appropriate. What Dave actually says is "Back our campaign for a referendum by donating £10 today." So hold on a moment. He is Prime Minister so if he really wanted to hold a referendum he has the power to do it now. Why does he need a campaign and who is he lobbying anyway? Nigel who may want a referendum on leaving Europe, or better still just leaving anyway would be the bloke doing the lobbying I would have thought, but somehow I can't quite see Nigel Farage being so blatant as to ask for money in an email.

Suppose we said to one of our clients - "Here's a great idea. Why not email all your clients, tell them you have great idea for a new product and would they mind sending a tenner to fund the R&D." No?

On the other hand purely as an experiment, if you have read this far you could send me £10 instead.

Thursday, March 06, 2014

What would the old style Ad men make of the Internet?

Anyone who followed the Mad Men series might speculate how they would deal with the Internet; indeed would their world survive?

In his book, The New rules of Marketing & PR, David Meerman Scott says,"Prior to the web organisations had only two significant choices: Buy expensive adverting or get third-party ink from the media."  

Aficionados of the Mad Men television series set in the 60s will have gained some insight into the presumed excesses of the advertising world portrayed by the fictional character of creative director Donald Draper. A world inhabited by snappily suited ad men with a prodigious appetite for the consumption of alcohol, smoking and the pursuit of attractive women. Set in a fictional advertising agency on New York’s Madison Avenue - home to the advertising industry - the name ‘Madison Avenue’ was used as shorthand for the industry itself. Hence the play on words for the series title. The only evidence of work appeared to be scribbling doodles on restaurant napkins or lying on a couch in their extravagantly appointed offices ostensibly thinking up creative ideas and occasionally attending client meetings to ‘sell’ a concept. The expensive offices and lavish lifestyle called for clients with big budgets to bank roll advertising land.

Of course the Internet allows anyone to publish almost anything, but just as a digital camera doesn't make everyone a professional photographer, neither do suites of software tools make everyone a creative genius. As Don Draper said in one episode,"They can't do what we do and they hate us for it."